The Birds and the Bees

My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone [Song of Solomon 2:10-11].

This Saturday (August 28), Jane and I celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary. I remember—as if it was just last week—the moment I followed the Rev. Dr. Charles Shannon through the side door of the chapel at First UMC in Gastonia, at High Noon, on a partly cloudy, hot August Saturday. Ours was a small wedding, with about 100 friends and family present. A minute or two after my entrance (twin brother, Todd, was my best man), Jane and her dad walked down the relatively short aisle toward the altar. My heart was racing. Both Jane and I were all of 20 years old.

About mid-way through our year-long engagement, we participated in several sessions of Christian marriage counseling with Dr. Shannon in his office there at the church. During the first session, he had allowed that Holy Scripture actually says precious little about married life. To be sure, he stressed that while the New Testament was full of “love talk,” in virtually every situation, however, the NT writer was talking about either love for God or for one’s neighbor. He chuckled with us and said that we ought always to treat each other at least as nicely as we were required to treat our neighbors.

At that first session, he continued that notwithstanding the paucity of scriptural guidance for marriage, he had a list of scripture passages that we might consider and pray over as we approached our wedding day. He said that these were not necessarily ones that should be chosen for the service itself; these texts would, however, provide us with important context. One of texts was the reading from Song of Solomon (a/k/a “Song of Songs”) that is appointed as the Old Testament reading for this upcoming Sunday [Song of Solomon 2:8-13, the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year B].

You might say, “Oh! Come on, Tom. Are you saying you remember all the texts on the sheet of paper given to you more than 50 years ago by Dr. Shannon?”

My response: “I remember just one—the one from Song of Solomon. Have you read this week’s Old Testament lesson? It’s like nothing you’ve probably ever run across before in Holy Scripture.”

Indeed, the entire book, Song of Solomon, is a celebration of erotic love.

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone” [Song of Solomon 2:8-11].

I’ll bet you’ve never heard a sermon using this passage as its text. I’ve been in church on many, many Sundays since August 1971 and I can tell you that I haven’t. How would you craft a “children’s moment” from that text? While it appears as a Scripture reading in the Season after Pentecost in Years A and B in the Revised Common Lectionary, preachers generally maneuver toward “safer” texts.

Early on, scripture scholars in both Judaism and Christianity decided that perhaps the text shouldn’t be taken literally. Instead, one could read the text in “safe mode”—deciding that it was allegorical and symbolic, expressing Yahweh’s love for Israel or Christ’s love for His Church. Large segments of the church have long had difficulty with sexual desire. Not to poke at my Roman Catholic friends, but how is the deity of Christ diminished if Mary, subsequent to the birth of Jesus, had a physical relationship with Joseph? And for my friends who insist on a literal interpretation of scripture, what’s the difficulty in reading this text literally? Why need we resort to allegory or metaphor?

As far as I can discern, the Song of Solomon stands alone in its use of passionate lyrics to praise the sensual love between a man and a woman. What made our ancestors particularly blush is the fact that it also allowed the woman a voice and a sense of urgency in the whole “affair.”

I don’t specifically remember Charlie Shannon’s advice to us with regard to this text. I suspect, however, that he wanted us to understand that human sexuality is an integral part of Yahweh’s Creation. It’s the way we are made. One wonders whether the garden setting depicted in the Song of Solomon is the writer’s fond look back to the original Garden and to the original man and wife, Adam and Eve.

Indeed, even after “the Fall,” to be human is to be formed and crafted by Yahweh for sensual, tactile interaction with those around us. When we gaze into the eyes of someone we love, are we not also staring into the eyes of Yahweh, who made us all in His image? When we are afraid or bewildered, are we not buttressed by the hug of a friend or family member? Generally speaking, what is the first thing the obstetrician does with the newborn? She or he places the child in contact with its mother. We are not meant to live within our own little hermetically sealed world. We are meant to have contact with each other.

And so, this text from Song of Solomon has taken on added importance for me as we’ve moved through 16 months of separation and physical isolation. I think I speak for many of you when I say that I’m beginning to see signs that “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone” [2:11]. Soon, hopefully soon, the fig tree will put forth its figs, and the vines will be in blossom; they will give forth fragrance [2:13a].

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” This is the life that Yahweh intends for us. Thanks be to God.