Song of Songs
Category: Sundays after Pentecost
Speaker: The Rev. Shearon Sykes Wiliams
Every summer four of our granddaughters come for a week of “Grandma and Grandpa Camp.” Each year we see different sights, but there is one place they want to go every year, a place that never grows old. They always want to go to the National Cathedral --to walk around and appreciate the majestic beauty of that sacred place, visit the Chapel of the Holy Spirit to light prayer candles for people they love and then have a picnic in the Bishop’s Garden.
The Bishop’s Garden is such a delight! It was designed in the early 20th century by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. and Florence Bratenhal, the wife of the second dean of the cathedral. The garden is meant to be an extension of the sacred space of the cathedral. It is a lovely gift, given over and over again, to everyone who walks through the 12th century stone arch in the wall surrounding the garden to wander its curved walkways, breathe in the scents of the flowers, listen to the water trickling from the fountains, and sit in the Shadow House (the gazebo) to contemplate the beauty of the cathedral and the beauty of creation.
The Bishop’s Garden is a place of deep peace and healing. It is also a place that can overwhelm the senses and be almost too much to take in. A place that incites an awareness of God’s mysterious and illusive presence. A place of desire and longing.
It is little wonder that our reading today from the Song of Songs is set in a lush garden, a garden of pomegranates and palm trees, with birds and flowers of many kinds. It is a feast for the eyes and for the soul. This garden too is an enclosed garden, a garden of love and delight.
The Song of Songs is unique in the canon of Scripture. It is a poem- or more accurately a series of poems, that celebrates human love. And interestingly, it is written primarily from the woman’s viewpoint, which is very unusual for a scriptural text. The man and the woman long to be with one another. They praise each other’s physical beauty. The language is very sensual. Today’s portion of the Song of Songs is one of the selections for Episcopal weddings.
“Arise, my love, my fair one and come away;
for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come…”
This is quite an idyllic vision of love and yet as the poetry develops, things become more complicated and near the end of the book, we hear…
“Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grace.
It’s flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame…”
The poet speaks of a deep truth- that love is the most powerful force in the universe and it requires steadfast commitment to be shaped and sustained. “Set me as a seal on your heart.”
That perhaps is the reason for the Song of Song’s inclusion in the wedding liturgy. Marriage, like a garden, requires both love and commitment- and a lot of weeding.
God is not mentioned once in the Song of Songs and yet God is on every page. Very early on in Jewish tradition the Song of Songs began to be interpreted allegorically. The lovers in the garden were seen as representative of God and the people of Israel, and the love and commitment they shared. Later in Christianity, during the 1st and 2nd centuries, and then especially during the Middle Ages, it began to be seen as an expression of Christ’s love for the Church and the Church for Christ. And also for the love that each Christian has for Jesus.
We express that love every Sunday when we come together for communal worship. And we are meant to develop an individual relationship with Christ through daily prayer. We usually think of prayer as asking God for things and thanking God for our blessings- and those are important- it is GOOD to give thanks and to ask God about things that are troubling us. And it is also good to just BE with God. Like two married or partnered people who have been together for 50 years and don’t have to say anything, who can sit silently and be deeply connected. Being silent and LISTENING for God is just as important as talking to God. Just sitting in a beautiful garden and marveling at the mystery of creation is a form of prayer, giving thanks without words.
Many of the Christian mystics LOVED the Song of Songs. Bernard of Clairveaux in the 12th century as well as others, found it a wonderful means of experiencing God- seeing the lovers as representative of God and the individual’s life-long dance of love and longing- us with God and God with us. Sometimes we experience God as very present and other times illusive, but through commitment to the relationship we become closer as time goes by. The mystics talk about the gift of “mystical union” with Christ through the Song of Songs, reading it contemplatively and with awareness that human love, as wonderful as it can be, is nothing compared with the love that God has for each of us. Nothing fills our need for God except God.
So, the Song of Songs is a great gift to us, a special treasure. Its presence in the canon of Scripture speaks to the sacredness of our closest relationships and most importantly, the longing that God has to be in intimate relationship with each of us.
Sources:
Bernard of Clairveaux, Selected Works, Translation and foreward by Gillian R. Evans. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987, pp. 209-278.
The New Interpreter’s Bible, Leander E. Keck, Senior Editor. Song of Songs Commentary by Renita J. Weems, pp. 363-434. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997.
http://www.nationalcathedral.org/visit/gardenTours.shtml