Listening Is for Lovers

The “Song of Songs” might be the raciest book in the Bible, but can it offer some wisdom for better relationships?

This is a true story. It happened in a local high school in Toms River, New Jersey, in the early 1960s before the Supreme Court ruling that banned Bible reading in public schools.

Back in those days, the school’s opening exercises included a prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, daily announcements, and a selection from the Bible read by a student over the PA system. According to school tradition, it was up to the student to choose the Bible reading.

Students sat sleepily at their homeroom desks most days, only half-listening as the opening exercises droned on — until one particular morning.

On that morning, one by one, the students in homeroom sat up, paying close attention to the words of the Bible reading from the venerable King James Version:

How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter!
The joints of thy thighs are like jewels. …
Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor;

thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies.
Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.
Thy neck is like a tower of ivory …

The effect of those words on a school full of adolescents first thing in the morning was, to say the least, memorable. So memorable that the teachers were still telling the story decades later.

There’s an epilogue to the story. By order of the principal himself, the student reader was instantly sacked — despite his fervent protests that all he’d been doing was reading from the Bible! From that day forward (until the Supreme Court issued their ruling about school prayer), the principal chose the Bible passages for the opening exercises.

Dangerous stuff, those Bible verses!

 

Raciest Book in the Bible

The prankster was reading from the Song of Solomon, Chapter 7, that sensuous love-poem sandwiched in between the stern philosophy of Ecclesiastes and the soaring prophecies of Isaiah.

To generations of Christians, the Song of Solomon — or the “Song of Songs,” as it’s sometimes called — has been a bit of an embarrassment. It’s one of only two books in the Bible (the other one is Esther) that don’t once mention God!

Back in the Middle Ages, Bible scholars went to elaborate lengths to interpret this book as highly symbolic. Some taught that this florid love poetry was really about the soul’s relationship to God. Others — rather strangely — claimed it was about God’s love for the virgin Mary, and she for God. If you think you’re hearing lovers sighing to each other in a moonlit glade, then think again, say these medieval scholars. When you hear the woman’s voice crooning, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine,” all this is secret code for an earnest and devout — and thoroughly chaste — piety (1:2).

That sounds pretty far-fetched. What possible reason could the author have for hiding religious sentiment behind steamy love-poetry?

It’s more faithful to take the Song of Solomon at face value. It’s a joyous celebration of committed love — in every aspect, including the physical — as a wonderful and perfect gift of God.

 

Love Is Love

But still, something about the Song of Solomon makes many of us feel uneasy. This has as much to do with the hangups of our society as with the book itself.

Our society tends to understand human love in a binary way. Love is either idealized and spiritual, or sensual and physical — and never the twain shall meet. On the one hand, you have lacy valentine hearts and bouquets of roses. On the other is graphic content from the darkest corners of the internet. One extreme, according to our culture, is good; the other is bad. There is no middle ground.

The typical couple receives a colossal mixed message on their wedding day. They go from the church, where they’ve heard love extolled as a purely spiritual gift, to the reception hall, where they’re frequently treated to an off-color toast by the best man before going through the peculiar — some would say degrading — ritual of tossing the garter.

The Song of Solomon knows no separation between the physical and the spiritual. “Love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave,” the poet writes. “Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame” (8:6-7). The author sees no need to construct a wall between the spiritual and the physical. To this divinely inspired poet, they’re two sides of the same coin.

 

Through a New Testament Lens

So, what are we to do with the Song of Solomon, this raciest book in the Bible? One option appropriate for this Sunday is to consider it in the context of the New Testament lesson for the day. There we’ll find a principle for interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures. One of the wonderful things about the lectionary — those readings recommended for each Sunday — is how often the Scripture texts have such conceptual links between them.

James 1:19 says “… let everyone be quick to listen.” If there’s one thing the two impassioned lovers of the Song of Songs have elevated to a fine art, it’s the act of listening to one another.

Listen to this poetic rendition by Eugene Peterson:

“Look! Listen! There’s my lover!
Do you see him coming?
Vaulting the mountains,
leaping the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle, graceful;
like a young stag, virile.
Look at him there, on tiptoe at the gate,
all ears, all eyes — ready!
My lover has arrived
and he’s speaking to me!” (Song of Solomon 2:8-10, The Message)

The woman whose voice we hear is listening attentively for her lover: every thought, every action is attuned to his return. When she hears the sound of his eager footsteps, and moments later his voice, “Get up, my dear friend, fair and beautiful lover — come to me,” (v. 10) her heart thrills within her.

In today’s epistle reading, James advises everyone to “be quick to listen” — but for a pair of ardent lovers, listening to one another is a given. Listening is one thing lovers do especially well — so attuned are they to their partner’s very heartbeat.

 

Listening Through a Lifetime

Listening comes easy when love is new. Yet, as the years go by and loving relationships mature — be they marriages or friendships — what becomes of the listening?

It’s easy for married couples to become like the one portrayed in a legendary magazine cartoon. The husband is reading aloud from his newspaper: “Honey, it says here that one of the reasons for marital problems is that couples don’t really listen to each other.”

Then, you look over at where the wife ought to be sitting, and you see an empty chair. Turns out she got up and walked out of the room some time ago, but her husband never noticed. Such are the perils of love that’s no longer new.

Listening is, in fact, one of the greatest gifts we can give to those we love — or anyone else, for that matter. There’s a universal human need to be listened to. And for those who find themselves suddenly bereft of listeners, life becomes tedious indeed.

If you have any doubt, try visiting a hospital or nursing home. Patients lie in their beds — sometimes draped with tangled tubes, surrounded by beeping monitors — but no one comes by to listen to them. It’s not that nurses aren’t on the case; nurses are wonderful. They’re in and out to change IVs and administer medication. The doctors drop by once in a while to scan the chart and issue new orders. Patient care assistants may ask patients the occasional question about physical comfort or if the water pitcher is full, but they don’t have time to sit down and really listen.

The problem is even more pronounced in nursing homes. In some understaffed facilities, it’s possible for patients to go days, even weeks, without significant human conversation, beyond the level of survival needs. This is especially true if their roommate isn’t well enough to speak or is suffering from dementia.

In visiting patients in hospitals and nursing homes, listening is the most precious gift you can give. It is truly a divine gift. It comes not from us, but from God, as James reminds us in the epistle reading: “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights …” (1:17).

We listen to others because we’ve first been listened to. Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Matthew 7:7).

When we pray, God listens. Because God hears us, we’re set free to listen to others.

 

Attentive Listening

On the purely human level, listening is a wonderfully easy gift to give. Anyone can do it. Once you discover how, as writer Fran Lebowitz has said, “The opposite of talking isn't listening … [but] waiting,” all you need to do is open the space and the time, and the other person will fill it, eagerly. A bumper sticker puts it even more succinctly: “WHEN I LISTEN, PEOPLE SPEAK.”

The late psychologist Carl Rogers was an expert at attentive listening. The non-directive school of psychotherapy he developed is all about waiting, reflecting, and opening a gracious space for clients to share what’s on their hearts. Here’s what he said about the experience:

“Hearing has consequences. When I truly hear a person and the meanings that are important to him at that moment, hearing not simply his words, but him … many things happen. There is first of all a grateful look. He feels released. … Almost always, when a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, ‘Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it’s like to be me.’”¹

One of the marvelous aspects of being in love is precisely that feeling of being heard — the certainty that someone else “knows what it’s like to be me.” This is what Adam is saying in Genesis 2, when he exclaims, upon casting eyes on Eve for the first time, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

The Song of Solomon simply revels in this sort of meticulous attention — this exuberant recognition and naming of the other. The man says of the woman:

You’re so beautiful, my darling,
so beautiful, and your dove eyes are veiled
By your hair as it flows and shimmers,
like a flock of goats in the distance
streaming down a hillside in the sunshine. (4:1, The Message)

As for the woman, her beloved …

… stands tall, like a cedar,
strong and deep-rooted,
A rugged mountain of a man,
aromatic with wood and stone.
His words are kisses, his kisses words.
Everything about him delights me, thrills me
through and through! (5:15-16, The Message)

The rich cascade of metaphors (some of them rather odd), tumbling down one upon the other, sounds almost ridiculous after a while — but who ever said two people in love are the picture of dignity? The point is, lovers demonstrate a high degree of very focused attention for each other, and it is this attention that makes love wondrously renewing.

“Let everyone be quick to listen,” says James. The couple in the Song of Solomon has no trouble doing that!

 

A Surgeon’s Story

A poignant story is told by the surgeon and author, Dr. Richard Selzer. Here it is in his own words:

“I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily?

The young woman speaks. ‘Will my mouth always be like this?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it will. It is because the nerve was cut.’

She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles.

‘I like it,’ he says. ‘It’s kind of cute.’

All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”²

“Kiss me,” says the woman in Song of Solomon.

“Kiss me — full on the mouth!
Yes! For your love is better than wine,
headier than your aromatic oils.
The syllables of your name murmur like a meadow brook.
No wonder everyone loves to say your name!” (1:2-3, The Message)

—Carl Wilton contributed to this material.

 

Sources:

1. Carl Ransom Rogers, A Way of Being (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1995), 10.

2. Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996), 45-46.

The Other Texts

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

Have You Washed Your Hands? At first blush, it would seem to the casual reader that in this case the Pharisees have it right and Jesus has it wrong. First, what the Pharisees have right: The Pharisees “noticed that some of his [Jesus’] disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.” They understood the importance of washing one’s hands.

Second, what Jesus had wrong — or so it would seem: “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” In terms of basic pathology, we know that this simply isn’t true. Airborne viruses and bacteria introduced by our hands to our mouth or eyes can introduce disease from “outside a person” and “defile” our insides. In other words, apart from diseases that may be genetically inherited, disease visits us through the germs we inhale, bodily fluids we exchange with someone else, the smoke we breathe, the toxins we ingest and so on.

After jolting your audience with the suggestion that Jesus is clueless about cleanliness, make mention of the fact that the most effective way to avoid colds and flu is to rigorously wash one’s hands. Note the signs in public restrooms, particularly in restaurants, reminding that employees are required by state law to wash their hands after using the bathroom. Recall that before eating supper, your mother always asked you if you had washed your hands. And when you said, “Yes,” she followed that up with a second question: “With soap?”

Now you can move to unpack what Jesus is really saying: The Pharisees thought that if their hands were clean, i.e., if they did everything that tradition and the Mosiac law required, God would consider them righteous. Jesus says it isn’t a question of the hand but of the heart. If one’s heart is pure, then one’s hands will be pure also. What defiles is that which comes from within us, from our hearts, from our very essence and nature.

What Does the Text Say?

As this story opens, Jesus is once again attracting a crowd. In this instance, a portion of those gathering around him are religious leaders: “the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem” (v. 1). While they are with Jesus, “they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them” (v. 2). From their perspective, Jesus’ disciples are dishonoring not only their traditions, but also God.

It seems that the first readers of Mark’s gospel don’t understand why the behavior of Jesus’ disciples is problematic. Therefore, Mark provides the necessary background information: Both Pharisees and orthodox Jews “do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders” (v. 3). Mark also describes other traditions that are expected to be honored by Jews (v. 4).

After he offers this clarification, Mark immediately returns to the story’s chief focus: the unconventional conduct of Jesus’ disciples, which the Pharisees and scribes question (v. 5). Responding to their concern, Jesus rebuffs them by quoting Isaiah 29:13 (vv. 6-7). They are “hypocrites” because they “abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition” (v. 8). In short, they supersede God’s law by elevating their traditions above it.

After reprimanding the religious leaders, Jesus turns to the crowd to instruct them about real defilement. Contrary to what the traditions of the elders imply, the source of defilement is not external, but internal, because “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile” (v. 15). In other words, unwashed hands don’t carry defiling agents into a person. Impurity is caused not by what goes into a person, “[f]or it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come” (v. 21a). After Jesus identifies behaviors that defile and reflect evil intentions, he unequivocally declares, “All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person,” not unwashed hands (v. 23).

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

Résumé for a Bridegroom. This psalm is rightly paired with the reading from Song of Solomon 2:8-13. The theme is love, and love sometimes leads to marriage. The psalm is an ode for a royal marriage. The writer waxes on about the attributes of the groom. Perhaps the most important ones are mentioned in verse 7: “You love righteousness and hate wickedness.” There it is. This ability to do right and flee from evil is mentioned in other places in the psalm, such as, “Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity” (v. 6). And, he rides “victoriously for the cause of truth and to defend the right” (v. 4). A preacher might not deliver this sermon on Sunday during worship, but, instead, tuck it away for use at a wedding. What better attributes could be found in a bride and groom than those of loving right and hating wrong?

What Does the Text Say?

Psalm 45 is one of many biblical reminders that the text considered sacred Scripture is derived from a variety of sources and historical circumstances that were often quite specific and far removed from the Bible’s modern context. The reading is from an ode for a royal wedding, an occasion for which neither Christians nor Jews would have frequent recourse, with non-royal American Christians having even less. Today’s reading extracts from an otherwise remote text its most generic verses. The psalm begins with the psalmist’s self-reflective (and somewhat self-promoting) statement that his heart is overflowing with a “goodly theme” (v. 1), that theme being, first, the king’s beauty (vv. 2-3), and second, the king’s chivalry (vv. 4-5), defined in terms of defending the truth and the right (v. 4). The psalm appears to take an abrupt turn in verse 6 away from the earthly king and toward the divine king. Although such a move is possible, it is unlikely, given the immediately surrounding verses as well as the rest of the psalm, which is focused entirely on the king and those around him. A more likely translation of verse 6 is found in the NRSVUE footnote, indicating that the translation, “Your throne, O God, endures forever,” can also be rendered “Your throne is a throne of God,” referring not to God’s throne but to the king’s. The New International Reader’s Version captures this more closely with “Your throne is the very throne of God,” explained in the next lines as enduring “forever and ever.” The king’s reign, symbolized with the literary device of synecdoche (in which “throne” and “royal scepter” refer to the entirety of the king’s rule, v. 6), is characterized by equity and righteousness, traditional attributes of Israel’s kings. Failure to live up to those standards was unflinchingly condemned, not only by Israel’s prophets but also by the anonymous compilers of the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy–2 Kings; see, for example, 1 Kings 15:26, 16:25 and many other passages). In the concluding verses of today’s reading, that idea is expressed as prosperity flowing from righteousness (vv. 7b-9).

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall. One of the cool things about going to an amusement park or carnival is a visit to the “house of mirrors” or “hall of mirrors.” When visitors look at themselves in these mirrors, their images are distorted! Perhaps they’re very tall and skinny. Or they might be short and wide. Some mirrors make people look like their heads are very small, but their middles are very big. But the next mirror may show one to have a huge head and a very tiny body. In today’s epistle reading, the apostle James mentions funny mirrors. He says there are mirrors that show we’re in need of some cleaning up. The funny part is that even when we see the dirt on the end of our nose, we walk away from the mirror without cleaning our face! Who would do that? he asks. Have you ever thought about what your life would be like without a mirror? Seriously, what would we do without mirrors? Similarly, we can’t get along without God’s Word. We absolutely need it. And we must heed it.

What Does the Text Say?

James’ letter to the 12 diasporic tribes (1:1) is a pithy, practical set of instructions — easy to read but hard to digest — that encourages its readers to get about the business of living their faith. The latter half of the first chapter is an excellent snapshot of James, in that it takes up several of the letter’s key concerns. Because that Word is already implanted within them, in order to truly receive that Word, they must practice it, a key concern for James (2:14-26). If they just hear the Word and don’t practice it, the only thing they are practicing is self-deception. James appeals to the metaphor of a mirror to make his point. Those who only listen to the Word are like a person who sees the face he inherited from his family in a mirror, and when he turns from that image forgets what sort of person he is. If they only hear the Word and do not practice it, they forget what kind of people they are — namely, people who have been birthed by God and therefore people with the responsibility to do what the Word of God says. The antidote to forgetting who they are is to never turn away from looking into the law, a law that is perfect (maybe the quintessential perfect gift given by the Father of lights, 1:17), and a law that is — instead of something that binds — something that leads to freedom (see also 2:12). The one who fixes attention on the law will become a doer, and in that doing will be blessed.

Worship Resources

As members of Christ’s body, put love above all else. Do not love in word or speech only; love also in deed and truth. May your relationships with each other be symbols of God’s relationship to you. All praise be to the God of love!

One: A gift of a new day,

All: Unlived, untried, ready to be opened.

One: A new day with surprising miracles;

All: With love to be given,

One: Kindness to be shared

All: And peace to be enjoyed.

One: A gift of a new day,

All: God’s gift to us.

One: Let us receive it with joy

All: And live it in expectation.

God, you are the Gardener gently cultivating the soil and seeds of our lives. You give us water and sun and wind and nutrients and life. Thank you for all you give us, for your Spirit that nurtures and sustains us, for growing seasons and especially for the warmth of the sun. May we be nourished into new blossoms of abundant life. May we learn the gifts of gentleness, kindness, compassion and peace. Help us now to always be forgiving and loving. Show us how to turn away from anger and hate. Help us, Lord, to appreciate all that we are — our lives and spirits, our bodies and our thoughts. And always, Lord, grow within us the desire to live and work for peace in our church, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our nation, and most especially in our world. Amen.

Hymns
O Love Divine and Golden
Help Us Accept Each Other
When Love Is Found

Worship and Praise*
Love Never Fails (Heath)
Commitment (Hammitt)
Seasons (Smallbone, Kerr, Buzz)

*For licensing and permission to reprint or display these songs on screen, go to ccli.com. The worship and praise songs suggested by Homiletics can be found in most cases on Google by using the title as the search term.

COMMENTARY

on Song of Solomon 2:8-13