A sermon by Associate Minister Elsa A. Peters, August 30, 2009
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
I found their love letters. Before I had experienced love myself, I found my mother’s love letters with her high school boyfriend… and it wasn’t my father! These letters were from John. John typed these letters to my Mom during typing class, which by the way, was obviously not John’s best subject.
Finding these letters was like discovering this thin book tucked into the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures. It’s surprising. It’s so unexpected. Like any other young child, I couldn’t imagine Mom loving anyone but Dad. But, this poor logic falls just as flat when reading the Song of Songs. There may be other parts of the Bible that offer rigid definitions of love, but here in the Song of Songs, love leaps across mountains and bounds over hills. Love comes in the voice of the beloved.
In this ancient poetry, it’s all about the beloved. It’s about that voice and how it feels to hear his voice. It’s about the power of their love and all of that irresistible attraction that inspires him to invite her to come away. They insist upon this love. Over and over again, in this ancient poetry, these two lovers insist upon the importance of their love for each other. They won’t give it up. They won’t let it go. Their love is that important.
And so, there have been many sermons preached about this poetry as an allegory for Christ’s love for the church or even God’s love for each of us, but God is never mentioned in this poetry. Nowhere in these eight chapters is the name of God called upon. It’s all about these two lovers who insist upon their love. Of course, for those of us who know love, that doesn’t mean that God isn’t there.
Whether or not God is mentioned, it’s the lovers’ stubborn insistence that captivates. They’re so wrapped up in it. It consumes them. It overwhelms them to the point where the world looks different around them. Winter is past. The rain is over and gone. Flowers bloom. Birds sing. Spring has come… and they’re surprised. They had no idea that spring could have come so quickly because it doesn’t matter. The world will change around them. It doesn’t matter. What matters is their love. What matters is the “beauty of their love for each other.”
This week, after the news of Ted Kennedy’s death, all week long, the headlines echoed of this similar insistence. President Obama insisted upon his love for this dear friend and wise colleague. Senator Chris Dodd grieved for his best friend in the Senate. The Kennedy family insisted that they lost a joyous light in their lives, but they’re not alone.
Regular Americans have been offering their tributes on websites like Legacy.com – each of them insisting on the beauty of their love for Ted Kennedy – like this tribute from George Kilpatrick of Syracuse, NY. He typed:
Thank you Ted for standing tall and being a lion. Thank you for your legacy on civil rights, equal rights, and human rights. May we all use our own talents to make real the promises of democracy that Senator Kennedy valiantly fought for.
Pages and pages of internet space are filled with these love stories for a man that was their Senator. Not their father, not their uncle, or even their high school boyfriend. And yet, each tribute insists on the same kind of love that these lovers coo about in the Song of Songs. It’s the simple beauty of human connection. It’s the wonder that one life can mean so much to another. It’s the miracle that one person can disorient us enough so that we only notice the flowers blooming. That person meant that much. That person allowed us to see all of the growth around us. Or like George Kilpatrick of Syracuse, NY, we’re aware of what we can do.
Of course, we arrive at this conclusion after death has come. And this year, with the deaths of so many important personalities in the news, in our community and in our own church family, it seems so much clearer. With each death, it seems more and more obvious that what really matters is the beauty of our love for each other. That is what we should insist upon – but we don’t. Something happens between these deaths. Somehow we forget. We don’t insist.
Instead, each one of these deaths brings up the same feelings. Each headline about another larger-than-life personality hits us hard. Each prayer request for the members of our church stings in such a way that seems impossible for these idyllic lovers in the Song of Songs. Unlike those lovers, we know it’s winter and we’re aware of the persistent rain. It’s not a surprise to us. We saw it coming – ever so slowly – as we grieved the end of another love story.
But, the lovers in the Song of Songs don’t know about endings. Their love story is still unfolding. It’s still happening at such a heady pace that they don’t seem to know anything else. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I want to be that oblivious. I’m not convinced that it would be easier or even better to be so naïve that you miss out on all that rain. I mean, I complained about our soggy summer. I complained a lot – but I don’t think that I would want to be so naïve that I wouldn’t have known it was happening. I mean there’s something about the rain. It’s part of being alive – to experience the both the winter and the spring, the rain and the sun. I don’t think I would want to miss out on all of that life, would you?
And yet, it’s that insistence. However challenging it may be, I wish I could remember that insistence to love between the headlines and the prayer requests. I wish we could each insist upon our love for each other between those obituaries. Like these lovers in Song of Songs, wouldn’t it change our world to always insist on beauty of our love for each other? Wouldn’t we see more signs of spring? Wouldn’t we enjoy the rain? Wouldn’t we find more hope if we could find God in that insistence to love?
Maybe it’s naïve. Maybe it’s too idyllic. After all, it doesn’t seem like very much. It might not seem like enough. And yet, as the obituaries fill our newspapers, it might be all that matters – simply to insist on the beauty of our love for each other.