Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Song of Songs 5:2-8; Revelation 12:7-17; Luke 11:53–12:12 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)

Looking for love in all the wrong places. Today’s verses from the first half of Song of Songs chapter five form a matched set with those from the first half of chapter three. Both sets of verses have a dreamlike aura about them. In both sets, our female singer wanders nighttime streets seeking her lost lover. This time, his absence is due to her slow response to his overtures. Regretting her reticence at intimacy, she rashly rushes out into city streets in the middle of the night. As before, she is met by the city’s “sentinels” or “watchmen” or “guardians” (Hebrew shomerim). Unlike last time when the “guardians” left her in peace, this time, they rough her up. As though she were a compromised woman, they strip her of her mantle, and beat her. The vignette ends with her appealing to the “daughters of Jerusalem” to find her beloved and tell him: “I am faint with love.”

As with the previous reverie about a nighttime search for love, the story itself reads more like a dream—in this case, a bad dream—than a recollection. And its deeper meaning for the recorder of the song and for those who deemed it worthy of inclusion in the canon is probably to be found in its theological symbolism. As commentator Robert W. Jenson crisply puts it: “Israel is asleep, and the Lord is absent.” When God’s people are slow to respond to the Lord and he departs, “her lovesickness overwhelms her prudence.” She mounts a wild and unconsidered quest to satisfy the longing that he has awakened. This time the keepers of the faith—Moses and the Levites, and their prophetic heirs—“offer no comfort but only judgment.” 

The singer’s song in today’s verses tells a cautionary tale. In Israel’s history, one thinks of the Golden Calf, a wrong-headed attempt to make up for Moses’ absence during his forty days on Mt. Sinai—to which Moses responds harshly. Or Israel’s tendency to turn to Canaanite deities of fertility in the face of drought—prompting the prophets’ persistent reproofs. One may even fast forward to the Bride of Christ’s flirting with, even taking to her bed, alien lovers of secularism, nationalism, racism, materialism, spiritualism, occultism—countered by faithful preachers’ steady urging to return to “your first love” (Revelation 2:4). In such periods, the “guardians” do their guarding by rebuking. As well they should. 

And looking for love in the right place. Oddly complementary to today’s reading in Song of Songs is the vision in Revelation 12. Here, Michael the archangel fights the dragon who has been threatening the queen of heaven and her royal son. The queen of heaven sojourns on earth where the dragon, that is “the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world,” has been cast down from heaven. Ousted from the heavenly court, the Dragon-Devil carries out his campaign against her down here below. With this captivating cluster of images, John symbolically portrays the church’s career: transformed from queen of heaven to Bride-in-waiting during her period of persecution on the earth. 

With the devil’s forced change of venue, worship breaks out in heaven. The devil’s being thrown down signals his end, and, simultaneously, the inauguration of the Kingdom of God: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of the Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down….” (Revelation 12:10). 

I think that as John writes these words he expects us to recall what he had recorded Jesus saying about his upcoming death: “’Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die” (John 12:31-33). The cross of Christ becomes the place where the devil is deposed, disarmed, and defeated (Colossians 2:15), and where his grip on the sinful nations is broken (John 12:32, with Revelation 20:2-3). 

Happily, the grand arc of the biblical narrative does not culminate in the nightmare of our missing out on God’s loving advances, experiencing shame and pain like the lost lover at the hands of the “guardians.” Her Groom will not leave his Bride abandoned and shamed in the dangerous nighttime streets. The crux of the Bible’s story line is a Cross where our Heavenly Lover captures our hearts for all time, where all our resistance and all our reluctance fade away, and where the voices of our accusers — whether “guardians” or enemies — get drowned out by shouts of “Now have come the salvation and the power….” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

Thanks for joining us for Noonday Prayer! Peter Tepper will begin at 12:05pm. You can follow along on page 103 in the Book of Common Prayer or online at www....

Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 10/28/2020

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49-72; Song of Songs 4:9–5:1; Revelation 12:1-6; Luke 11:37-52

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)

Sacramental love. There a spiritual habit of soul—a capacity for “seeing through” to “the other side”—that is difficult for secularized Westerners to comprehend, much less experience. That’s why so many modern commentators flatten the physical similes and metaphors of love in the Song of Song. Late modern people have become tone deaf to supernal overtones—what sociologist Peter Berger calls “rumors of angels.” 

You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride…” — Song of Songs 4:9. Our male singer and lover finds in his “sister” and “bride” a rediscovered Eden. His garden imagery is not just exotic but fantastic—fruits and flowers that would grow together in no garden in this world: “…with all choicest fruits, henna and nard,… and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh, and aloes, with all chief spices—a garden fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon.” It is Paradise that he is imagining, for streams did not flow from Lebanon to Israel. In a Palestine that is perpetually threatened with drought, he has found, in her, his own secret garden with its ever-flowing supply of water. For him, she has become the place where he returns to Eden— where everything is possible and where life is always new.

Moreover, she takes him back to Israel’s entry into the Promised Land. Communion with her is the partaking of milk and honey: “I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk” — Song of Songs 5:1. Milk and honey, of course, were crowning symbols of the richness of the Promised Land (Exodus 3:8). Noting, by the way, the convergence of wine and milk and honey in the Song of Songs, the Apostolic Tradition, often attributed to Hippolytus (of the church of Rome, early 3rd  century AD), supplemented the Eucharistic wine with milk and honey, symbolizing thereby the notion that communion with Christ is its own way of enjoying the bounty of the Promised Land: “…and milk and honey mingled together in fulfillment of the promise which was made to the Fathers, wherein he said ‘I will give you a land flowing with milk and honey’; which Christ indeed gave, even his flesh, whereby they who believe are nourished like little children, making the bitterness of the heart sweet by the sweetness of his word.” 

What’s more, she who is herself “an orchard of pomegranates” embodies for her lover communion with God in the temple. Pomegranates adorned the High Priest’s robe (Exodus 28:31-36; 39:22-26). Solomon set two-hundred bronze pomegranates atop the two pillars of bronze in the temple (1 Kings 7:13-22). And the very smell of her (“with all trees of frankincense, myrrh…”) puts our singer in mind of the altar from which rises the fragrance of spiced incense. There is an enchanting beauty to God’s holiness (Psalm 98:6) that the sights and smells of the temple excite in him—a beauty to which the sight and smell of her sacramentally attune him. 

The biblical world is first and foremost a challenge to a redeemed imagination, and to a restored sacramental sensibility. One of the great gifts of the Song of Songs is to contribute to the reclamation of spiritual sight and taste and smell and touch. 

The same is true for today’s passage in Revelation. Here Christ’s entire earthly career is mind-blowingly summarized, as it careens from birth to ascension against the backdrop of murderous malevolent intent. But the focus is on the pregnant heavenly royal woman who, under attack by a great red dragon, gives birth to her royal son. The son is taken to heaven, while she escapes to the wilderness, “where she has a place prepared by God.” Who is the woman? Mary? a new Israel? the Church? all of the above? In the rest of Revelation, the mother who has become the woman-of-the-wilderness becomes the Bride of Christ. Meanwhile, we will discover that her eventual elevation comes at the expense of her evil counterpart, the Whore of Babylon. The biblical world invites—no, demands—a looking beyond immediate headlines and pressing duties to a larger cosmic drama. 

Luke & Jesus’s “woes” against faux faith. With so much at stake in the grand biblical drama, it is small wonder that Jesus speaks piteous woes against those who are supposed to be guardians and promoters of the faith in his day. Those who are tasked with enlarging and building up people’s faith have been diminishing it and undermining it. And so Jesus denounces:

• their externalism (“Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?”), 

• their elevating things less important above the more important (“you tithe mint and rue and herbs…, and neglect justice and the love of God”), 

• their pride (“…you love to have the seat of honor”), 

• the very vacuousness of their being (“…you are like unmarked graves”), 

• their lying piety (“…you approve the [murderous] deeds of your ancestors and build … tombs [to those they murdered]”) 

• their hypocritical cruelty (“…you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering”). 

May your time in God’s Word open up to you the vast horizons of his abiding trustworthiness, the grand hope of glory that is yours, and his overwhelmingly persistent love for you. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

Thanks for joining us for Noonday Prayer! Peter Tepper will begin at 12:05pm. You can follow along on page 103 in the Book of Common Prayer or online at www....

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Psalm 98; Song of Songs 4:1-8; Revelation 11:14-19; Luke 11:27-36

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Psalm 45 and Song of Songs - Beauty’s measure. “You are the most handsome of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever” — Psalm 45:2. 

“How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful. … You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you” — Song of Songs 4:1,7. 

I hope you’ll take the time to read and linger over these verses in Psalm 45 and in Chapter 4 of the Song of Songs. Today’s readings bring together two elegant love poems for our consideration, not only of Christ’s love for his church, but for consideration of the exquisite character of an ideal love between a man and a woman.

Psalm 45 contains the love poem of a bride to her husband describing his physical attractiveness. She continues by describing his many admirable other qualities and exhorts him to fulfill his role as king. The psalm concludes with instruction for the bride to let go of her former life and embrace a life richer and more wonderful than the one she is leaving.

In the verses in the Song of Songs, the husband lauds the physical beauty of his wife. The features that he finds enchanting are clear enough to us: flowing tresses, perfect teeth, crimson lips, rosy cheeks, a noble neck, and enticing breasts. In a culture where images couldn’t easily be captured (say, by a painting or a photograph), descriptions had to support memory. What do I remember about the way she looks? What was her hair like? Her teeth? Her lips? Her cheeks? The husband reviews in his mind the physical attributes which make his bride desirable to him. 

Thus, the specifics of the imagery come from another world where no camera exists to capture a memory. There’s more than a hint here, of a deep, genuine devotion. This is no make-believe, no infatuation, no romance novel kind of love. The lover sees what the lover sees, and what the lover sees is its own standard of beauty: the specific features of love’s beloved. This is one of the beautiful things about language and imagination. It takes elasticity of spirit to be able to appreciate any work of art—poetry, painting, music—but especially those coming from a different time and a different place. But the effort is fundamentally humanizing and, in the end, God-honoring.

As we think about God contemplating us, it is worth keeping in mind that the Bible’s supreme message to us is what today’s opening verse shouts: “How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful.” Christ has come for his Bride. And he has done so because he finds her ravishingly beautiful. 

The Groom and the Bride. The psalm makes clear the speaker of these verses is more than a human bride, and her groom much more than a perfect vision of a human husband. The groom is the eternal Messiah, the champion of truth and justice: Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever. Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity; you love righteousness and hate wickedness. That the reference is to Jesus Christ himself is made indisputably clear by its inclusion in the letter to the Hebrews: 

 But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,   and the righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom.9 You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;therefore God, your God, has anointed you    with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

10 And,

“In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth,    and the heavens are the work of your hands;11 they will perish, but you remain;    they will all wear out like clothing;12 like a cloak you will roll them up,    and like clothing they will be changed.But you are the same,    and your years will never end” (Hebrews 1:8-12). 

Read from this perspective, then, Psalm 45 takes on a soaring perspective. Here, a thousand years in advance, Christ’s church, “the princess decked in her chamber,” extols the virtues of the God-man who will come “from ivory palaces” to wed her to himself. 

Revelation & the coming of the wrath. The Book of Revelation brings us to the third of three woes and to the seventh of seven trumpets. This is one of several times that this amazing book takes us to the very end of time, when all accounts get settled: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). The time of “judging the dead” and “for rewarding your servants” is simultaneously the time when “your wrath has come … and for destroying those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18). This thought can be a troubling one, except when we realize that it is borne out of passion for the protection and the purity of the Bride whose wedding is in view throughout. Regard for her well-being, and disdain for all that defiles her and all of creation, flow from the same heart of divine love.  

Luke & the offer of wisdom & mercy. In an altogether similar vein, Jesus rebukes his fellow Galileans for failing to “see” (“Your eye is the lamp of the body”) what is really going on before their very eyes. Israel’s poignant story of love lost and then regained is being played out in their very presence. Indeed, it is standing right in front of them. In Jesus is a wisdom greater than that which the queen of the South had found in Solomon. In Jesus is a mercy greater than that which Jonah had offered the Ninevites. To paraphrase a parallel thought in John’s gospel: “The Groom is with the Bride. Don’t miss it!” (see John 3:29). 

Collect of the Day: Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

The Very Rev. Dr. Reggie Kidd is leading Noonday Prayer today. You can follow along on page 103 in the Book of Common Prayer or online at www.ccslorlando.org...

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Song of Songs 3:6-11; Revelation 11:1-14; Luke 11:14-26
 
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
 
Song of Songs: a wedding day. The scene in today’s verses from Song of Songs evokes the liturgical spectacle of one of Solomon’s seven hundred wedding ceremonies (see 1 Kings 11:3). The opening question is wrongly translated by the NRSV. The Hebrew is “Who is she coming from the wilderness, like a column of smoke?” (Song of Songs 3:6). The bride approaches just as Israel had emerged from the wilderness, accompanied by incense that recalls God’s presence in a cloud of smoke (Exodus 14:19-20; 40:36-38). The groom, with a wedding crown atop his head, receives her in his palanquin constructed of materials that recall the Temple in Jerusalem, and “inlaid with love.” With its inclusion in Scripture, the Song of Songs lays down a pattern whereby every wedding ceremony becomes a reenactment of God and his people entering into covenant.
 
Whether in a cathedral or in a city hall, every bride is a queen, every groom is a king. We all sense this truth, whatever cultural forces resist it, because God made us this way.
 
Congruently, to belong to Christ is to be betrothed to him, and therefore to be in the process of becoming beautiful, toward the day in which we emerge from our own wilderness and are received into the chariot of love of our greater Solomon, the King of Peace. O happy day!
 
Luke: a consequential presence. In the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus had announced his Messianic mission to set captives free (Luke 4:16-22). In today’s passage, he does just that. He releases a person from a demonic oppression that had left that person without a voice. Crowds are amazed when the formerly mute person speaks—something so fundamental to human flourishing has been restored!
 
Jesus has indisputable powers. The question is: where do those powers come from? … from below? … or from above? Jesus warns that it is a fatal mistake to get this question wrong. His miracles are evidence of the reestablishing of God’s benevolent rule. To miss their meaning is to put oneself on the side of malevolence: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Luke 11:23). To fail to see Jesus’s life-giving miracles as coming from “the finger of God” is to commit a kind of spiritual suicide. In verses 24-26, Christ portrays his purging a person of evil as creating a kind of spiritual vacuum. That vacuum will be filled again, either by the Holy Spirit, or by spirits worse than what had been driven out in the first place. Lord, have mercy!
 
Revelation: a season of witness. It’s impossible to tease out the richness of the symbolism of Revelation 11 in just a few words. John is told to measure the temple, because it will be protected, while the outer courts will be trampled by the nations. It’s not the physical temple in Jerusalem that John measures, for that temple was destroyed in the Jewish War. Jesus’s coming as the true temple had made of the earthly Jerusalem’s temple an anachronism. Now his own body has become the source for the building of a Final Temple (John 1:21), made up of his people, whom Peter likens to “living stones” (1 Peter 2:5).
 
This is the temple John measures. This temple, so John is being instructed, will be protected, while that which lies outside it will be destroyed during a limited, but intense, period of persecution. This season of persecution will be characterized by two things: witness and martyrdom. God will raise up witnesses whom he will empower with the same Spirit, who, under Moses, had turned water into blood and struck the earth with plagues, and under Elijah had “shut the sky” so that no rain would fall (Revelation 11:6). At the same time, there will be martyrdoms that have every appearance of being utter failures—but which will result in resurrection (Revelation 11:7-11).
 
It’s important to keep in mind that Revelation’s story line is leading up to a wedding day—a wedding day not dissimilar to the one the Song of Songs describes in today’s reading. In the next chapter of Revelation, John will shift his image of the church from “temple” to “woman.” In the same way that the “temple” experiences protection while the “outer courts” are trampled, just so, the “woman” will be carried into the wilderness where the “dragon” will pursue her, while nature itself preserves her—for her wedding day. Stay tuned!
 
Be blessed this day,
 
Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

Rev. Dennis Krumlauf is leading Noonday Prayer today. You can follow along on page 103 in the Book of Common Prayer or online at www.ccslorlando.org/noonday-...

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Song of Songs 3:1-5; Revelation 9:1-13 (and Saturday’s Revelation 10:1-11); Luke 10:38-42 (and Saturday’s Luke 11:1-11)

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6-11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Feeling love’s loss. I sought him whom my soul loves, I sought him but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer … I will seek him whom my soul loves — Song of Songs 3:1,3. Today’s verses in Song of Songs unfold as a mini-drama of love sought and love found. 

Night after night, our singer lies on her bed longing, longing, longing for “him whom my soul loves.” Her pining drives her (unwisely, no doubt!) into the nighttime streets. Happily she meets, not muggers, but the city’s “sentinels” or “watchmen” or “guardians” (Hebrew shomerim).  They have no answers as to the whereabouts of her lover. And, suddenly, he “whom my soul loves” appears. She clings to him, and he brings her to her mother’s home. And, as she had done in the previous chapter, she warns her friends not to awaken love before its time. 

The logic of the story is hard to follow—it reminds me of trying to narrate a dream. I suggest a more indirect and analogical approach. In this passage, the Targum imagined errant Israel feeling the loss of the presence of the One she was called to “love with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Even “the sentinels/watchmen”—that is, Moses and the Levites, who are tasked, in Deuteronomy 33:9, with “guarding” (shameru) the people through teaching—even they can only point to the mercy of God. Only the return of the Presence will satisfy Israel’s longing. Only the Presence can bring Israel home.  

For Christian interpreters, our deepest longing has been answered—the Bridegroom has come. As Jesus says, in John 3:29, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” However, until Jesus returns for the consummation of Revelation 19’s Marriage Feast, there are long nights of the Christian’s longing, longing, longing. Blessed be the gracious God who provides songs (this “best of songs” and psalm upon psalm — e.g., Psalm 4, 31, 91, 139) for those nights. 

And, parenthetically, in the best and most satisfying of marriages, there are periods of separation, when there is longing, longing, longing. Keenly felt too are the yearnings of those called to singlehood, and those widowed or divorced. The Song of Songs meets us in whatever state of need for love our life finds us. 

We’re not always given the full picture. “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down” — Revelation 10:4. Unfulfilled longings and unanswered questions are part of the Christian’s experience. Fearsome images announce destruction upon the earth in Revelation 8 & 9, in preparation for final judgment. Then in Revelation 10, just when the reader is expecting some explanations—what do the various symbols mean? when does all this take place?—we have a curious note. John is about to write down the meaning of seven thunders he has heard, only to be told: “Seal it up, and don’t write it down.” Then he is told that with “no more delay, … the mystery of God will be fulfilled, as he announced (euangelizesthai) to his servants the prophets” (Revelation 10:7). And as though that weren’t enough mystery, John is told to take a little scroll from an angel’s hand, and eat it: “it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth” (Revelation 10:10). Finally, he’s told he must resume prophesying about “peoples and nations and languages and kings” (Revelation 10:11). From this point on in Revelation (looking ahead for a moment), we will see the unfolding drama revolving around the contrasting destinies of the Bride of Christ (chapters 12 & 19) and the Whore of Babylon (Revelation 17 & 18). 

For all the speculation about its details that the Book of Revelation has brought in its wake, there are three simple messages Revelation wishes to convey:

1. Don’t write it down. We only get, and apparently only need, a limited amount of insight. 

2. … it was sweet as honey in my mouth. Nonetheless, we know that God is working a “mystery” that is “good news.” Ultimately, there will be release from all the pain for “peoples and nations and languages and kings.” Telling that story of victory and offering the hope of the gospel brings sweetness to our mouth. 

3. but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. Until that victory, death, destruction, and decay are part of earth’s story, and thus, what God’s people must live through, right along with everybody else. 

Persevering at Jesus’s feet. “Ask … search … knock” — Luke 11:9. Mary’s desires are superior to Martha’s because, like the singer in “the best of songs,” she wants nothing more than to bask in the Presence and to hear the voice of “the one whom [her] soul loves.” Mary’s great privilege is to be in the room with the very One whom Israel’s “sentinels” had long awaited. 

What an apt follow-up is the subsequent section containing the Lord’s Prayer, and the Lord’s encouragement to persevere in prayer. Like Martha, we find life’s distractions (some important, some unimportant) pressing upon us. Unlike Mary, we don’t have the option of sitting physically at Jesus’s feet and listening to his physical voice. However, we have the profound words of the prayer he has left us. Furthermore, we have his promise that if we ask, search, and knock, we will find him faithful to give what we need, to be himself the end to our searching, and to open the door to his presence at our knocking.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Noonday Prayer

Deacon Rose Sapp-Bax is leading Noonday Prayer today. You can follow along on page 103 in the Book of Common Prayer or online at www.ccslorlando.org/noonday-...

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37:1-18; Song of Songs 2:8-17; Revelation 9:1-12; Luke 10:25-37

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)

Wedged in the Bible between the Poets and the Prophets, the Song of Songs insists that biblical faith is hopelessly romantic. That is the Song’s chief gift. Biblical faith, asserts the Song, believes in the utter enthrallment of human lovers with one another (all evidence of love’s failures to the contrary). And it believes, by analogy, in the utter mutual delight that God and we take in one another (all evidence of “religion’s” or the synagogue’s or the church’s inadequacies to the contrary). 

…now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come — Song of Songs 2:12. Where love is, springtime always seems to break out. Senses become attuned not just to the sight, the sense, the sound, and the touch of the lover, but to everything else as well. In love’s presence, you notice things you had taken for granted before: stags and gazelles frolicking on the mountainside (if you are fortunate to live near majestic mountains!), doves in rock clefts, figs blossoming, the smell of a vine. The day seems to breathe, and nothing has to remain shadowed—everything is fresh, new, and innocent (2:17).   You and your beloved inhabit a renewed Eden where together you discover the innocent intimacy of a perfect love.

Biblical faith stubbornly inhabits an enchanted universe. In the face of divine love—to which the gift of human love has the ability to attune us—the heart sings, “all nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.” 

Featured in today’s portion of the Song are two things: his exuberant arrival, and her declaration of mutual exclusive possession. 

Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills — Song of Songs 2:8. Jewish commentator Michael Fishbane observes, “Just as a gazelle bounds from place to place, so has God come in successive manifestations on Israel’s behalf: to Egypt, to the Sea, and to Sinai. With this image, the people anticipate God’s immediate advent … and even beseech it….” Naturally enough, the Christian reader sees the “bounding” taking the Divine Lover all the way to Bethlehem. The Song of Songs evokes the joy that is anticipated each Advent and that breaks out every Christmas. As the Advent song of Tim Manion and the St Louis Jesuits puts it: “Leaping the mountains, bounding the hills, see how our God has come to meet us. His voice is lifted, his face is joy. Now is the season to sing our song on high.” 

Hard as it is for most of us to believe, I suspect, the Bible portrays God as eager to find you and me, to love us and to care for us. 

My beloved is mine and I am his — Song of Songs 2:16. Here the woman declares the mutual love between herself and her beloved. Again, from Fishbane: “This proclamation of mutuality (‘[he] is mine,’ li, and ‘[I] am his,’ lo) expresses the theological relationship between God and Israel.” In Scripture, the covenant-affirming voice is characteristically God’s: “I am your God, and you are my people” (Jeremiah 30:22; 31:1,33; Ezekiel 36:28). God as husband declares the covenant to be in effect. The prophet Hosea anticipates that when God has won his straying wife back and says to her, “You are (once again) my people,” she will (finally!) respond, “You are my God” (Hosea 2:23). Here in Song of Songs, the Bride gives voice to her unreserved commitment and her affection. No wonder this book is named “the best song”: it celebrates God and us in love with each other. 

Our Good Samaritan. It is impossible to say enough about the significance of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It propels us to love our neighbor, regardless of who they are or where they come from. The astute reader realizes, however, that the Parable works its magic not so much by guilting us, as by inviting us to reflect on ourselves as having been sought out and found by the Divine Good Samaritan. The parable gets its full force when we see ourselves as half-dead on the side of the road, when our Good Samaritan is “moved with pity,” comes to us, bandages us, pours oil and wine on us (who can’t be reminded of Baptism and Eucharist?), brings us to a place of healing (who can’t think of the Church?), and makes sure that any price necessary to our healing is paid (who can’t think of the Cross?). 

A hymn by Ed Clowney memorably captures the logic of this parable of parables: 

You came to us, dear Jesus, in our dying, 

as broken, bleeding we could make no sign. 

Compassion, Lord, brought you where we were lying, 

to lift us up, to pour on oil and wine. 

You came to us, dear Jesus, in your dying;
your wounds poured love as blood upon the tree. 

Compassion, Lord, from Calvary is crying,
“Bind up their wounds as you would do for me!” 

Because of the Advent of just such a Good Samaritan, the Song of Songs—“the best song”—becomes so wonderfully ours: “Look, he comes…” and “My beloved is mine and I am his.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+