Sermon: To Be Human

Heart of the World

Lectionary: Year B, Proper 17

Text: Song of Solomon 2:8-13

Introduction

If your experience is anything like mine, your recollection might be quite hazy (if there is if any at all) of the last time you heard a sermon on text from the Song of Solomon. It’s not too difficult to put together sermons on stories and parables. Sermons on clearly didactic texts are usually quite straightforward.

But wisdom literature? Because that’s what the Song is. And within the genre of wisdom literature, the Song is all poetry. Poetry that doesn’t contain any kind of explicit instruction. The book of Proverbs contains plenty of instruction. Even many of the poetry in Psalms has theological direction that can be discerned.

But the Song? Like the book of Esther, there is no mention of God. There is no theological direction to the poetry. Yes, both Jews and Christians have interpreted the Song as allegory. For the Jews, it can be interpreted as God’s relationship with Israel. For Christians who have built upon the Jewish allegorical foundation, the Song is an allegory of Christ and Christ’s bride, the Church.

Other interpreters approach it historically and suggest that the Song is describing King Solomon’s relationship with one of his wives, perhaps his first or the one he actually loved; rather than most of harem which were mostly motivated to seal alliances and political objectives. However, there is only weak circumstantial evidence to support the assertion that the Song relates to Solomon.

But these are later interpretations. Some scholars suggest that the allegorical interpretations were developed to justify the inclusion of the Song in the biblical canon.

Because at the core, the Song is a description of human love. Modern scholars are generally of the opinion that due to similarities with other such poetry of the time, the Song originated as a piece of secular romantic poetry that somehow (perhaps due to a wealthy patron) was included in scripture.

Now, what do we do with this information?

Opinions About Inspiration

One of the first things that comes to mind is the question on the nature of inspiration and inspired writings.

There is a spectrum of how Christians think divine inspiration worked and works as it pertains to scripture. Here is how I think about scripture and its relation to divine inspiration.

At one end, there are those that believe that every word (at least in its original composition) was inspired by God. Moving along the spectrum, there are those who don’t believe in the literal, verbal inspiration of scripture, but believe that every individual who wrote the text was inspired by God. This is sometimes referred to as “thought inspiration.” Moving further along the spectrum, there are those who believe that even if the texts themselves aren’t the result of close divine revelation, the process of editing and collecting the writings to form the canon(s) we have today was inspired by God. At the end of the spectrum, are those who value scripture as inspired, but the inspiration is not inherent in the text but rather, inspiration is received as individuals and communities read the text together and seek divine guidance to understand what it might mean in the present moment.

In my own experience, there was a shift in how I understood the nature of scripture and inspiration. In the belief system that I grew up in, we never accepted literal, verbal inspiration and inerrancy of scripture. I grew up where we believed that all the authors were inspired.

But as I learned and understood more about how the text of the Bible came to be, how they were edited and compiled, how nearly every book of the Bible has authorial or redactor agendas, it became increasingly difficult to accept overall divine inspiration in the writing of the text.

While I can accept that there might be inspiration at work in the writing of small sections, I no longer hold to the idea that there is any kind of inherent inspiration found in the actual text of scripture.

In case you have never heard it before, there is what is sometimes referred to as a high view vs. a low view of scripture. The so-called “high view” asserts that the text itself is inspired. What is intended as the pejorative “low-view” is a rejection of the high-view.

Anyway, if a person doesn’t accept that the words of scripture are inherently inspired, what value does scripture have? And here is where I think that the inclusion of the Song in the Bible offers us an alternative response.

Humanity and Shared Experience

I noted earlier that the current scholarly opinion is that the Song was most likely originated as an anonymous secular love poetry. We might think that this is just an anomaly, but there are other textual pieces found in the Hebrew scriptures which are also seen as originating in texts of other people around them. Even when we venture into the New Testament, we find examples where the text quotes verbatim from Greek and Roman texts, or the texts contain allusions to Greek and Roman philosophical thought.

The incorporation of secular texts and thoughts in scripture does not invalidate its usefulness or devalue it. On the contrary, I think that it allows scripture to be more relatable and as a consequence, more useful and valuable. Scripture offers us, readers that are removed from the text by thousand of miles and thousands of years, a window into peoples who had vastly different experiences in some ways, yet struggled with the same big questions that we still ask: What is the meaning of life? Is there an ultimate power, and if so, what is this power like? Why is there good and evil? What happens after we die? And so on.

Scripture is the record of people wrestling with these metaphysical questions. The answers that people find are rooted in their time and place. Some of the big brushstrokes may hold true over time and space, but we should be careful in how we take and interpret specific responses. All interpretations have a context, and that context includes history and culture.

The value of scripture is that it helps us understand that we, as humans, have always wrestled with similar questions. It also helps us see that the responses to those questions have been developed in community. Scripture is not a lone-wolf exercise, either in its formation or in its interpretation. Scripture has value because it forms a foundation and a starting point for community discussion and debate into the questions and nature of ultimate things.

Just as sermons today might bring in quotes from books and movies, talk about popular music and artists, and how they are part of our experience and how they might help explain to us and to help us experience a touch of what we think upon as ultimate reality. Ancient authors, editors, and audience did the same sort of thing with the materials they had on hand.

To Be Fully Human

The Song touches on the meaning and experience of human love. The experience, the passion, the playfulness, the mystery, and the discovery found in romantic and erotic love between two humans is nearly entirely absent from the Bible, except in the Song. There were enough individuals in ancient history that found value in the Song to preserve it through inclusion in the canon. Romantic love, eros and sexual intimacy were seen as part of what makes humans human, to make sure it was part of the sacred collection of texts.

Once we accept the goodness of romance and passion in our human relationships, we can ask what that means about God who placed those things in us and called them “good.” We can begin to explore how the scripture texts describing God as a lover might mean. We might gain better sense into how much passion God feels toward creation. When we speak of Jesus as God become fully human, we cannot exclude portions of the human experience simply because they are theologically inconvenient or uncomfortable. God sees humanity to be so full of wonder and value that God became one of us. We must never devalue ourselves or anyone else.

Finally, we should not reject allegorical interpretations either. They shouldn’t be asserted as the only “correct” interpretation, but neither should be rejected. It was in community that allegorical interpretations were formed and they form a part of our shared history.

Let me conclude by reading the rest of chapter 2 of the Song. Here the woman continues to quote her lover, before resuming first-person voice in the final two verses.

¹⁴ My dove—in the rock crevices,
hidden in the cliff face—
let me catch sight of you;
let me hear your voice!
The sound of your voice is sweet,
and the sight of you is lovely.”
¹⁵ Catch foxes for us—
those little foxes
that spoil vineyards,
now that our vineyards are in bloom!
¹⁶ I belong to my lover and he belongs to me—
the one grazing among the lilies.
¹⁷ Before the day breeze blows
and the shadows flee,
turn about, my love; be like a gazelle
or a young stag
upon the jagged mountains. (Song of Songs 2:14-17 CEB)

A celebration of human love and what it means to be human. That is the Song.

In the name of God who composed the Song,

In the name of God who sang the Song,

And in the name of God who accompanies our Singing…

References

Bartlett, D. L., & Taylor, B. B. (2008). Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 4 (Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

Dunn, J. D., & Rogerson, J. W. (2003). Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

McDaniel, S. (2017, Marh 9). Greek Writers Quoted in the New Testament. Retrieved from Tales of Times Forgotten: Making the Distant Past Relevant to the Present Day: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2017/03/09/greek-writers-quoted-in-the-new-testament/