Song of Solomon 2:8-15
It’s a love story … pure, plain and simple.
Nothing theological about it.
God doesn’t show up at all …
Folks wonder why it’s in the Bible.
The Song of Solomon has been celebrated and condemned … dismissed out of hand, or twisted into strange interpretations.
But interpreters these days shy away from anything but the obvious, and I quite agree … the Song of Solomon - a steamy love poem between two young people who are madly in love!
Flowers and figs, sweet and tasty, and those dadgum little foxes who spoil the vineyard. Such is love, in all of its wonder and all of its strangeness.
So, why is this love poem in the Bible?
And why would I bother preaching from it?
Well, first of all, it’s one of the lections … someone somewhere thought that we ought to include something written by King Solomon …
But more than that, the Song of Solomon, has a rightful place in the Bible.
Let’s begin in the beginning …
By the way, little Jackie came home one day from Sunday School and said, “Dad, did you know the Bible talks about baseball?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” says Dad.
“Sure,” says Jackie, “the Bible talks about the big inning!”
Let’s go to the big inning, shall we? … the first pitch! When God created the heavens and the earth.
God created you and me, male and female, God created us – with all our strange parts and amazing desires, and God said It is good.
Adam looked at Eve and said,
Whoopie!
Bone of my bones and
Flesh of my flesh.
Flesh … these bodies of ours:
Amazing.
We run a mile and scramble eggs …
We hug and kiss and have babies …
We sneeze and get sick …
We cough and we blow our nose …
We eat too much and put on weight … and then we work like mad to take off the extra pounds …
We work and we sweat …
We wash and put on deodorant …
We look at ourselves in the mirror, and we wonder …
We watch ourselves breath … we smile, we frown … we pose, we crouch … we look at ourselves with wonderment … we look at ourselves with shame … we like what we see, or we quickly turn away …
We have hair on our heads, and sometimes we don’t …
We remove hair from where it is, and grow it where it isn’t …
We might get another nose … and make other adjustments along the way …
We’re thin and we’re not …
We’re tall and we’re short …
We’re blond and we’re brunette …
We’re all the colors of the human rainbow, and then some …
We are flesh … we are flesh, blood and bone.
We are conceived in the passionate union of a man and a woman …
We spend the first nine months of our life nurtured in our mother’s womb …
And then, in a few excruciating pulses, we’re pushed into this world, and take our first breath …
Heart pumping …
Organs working …
Brain thinking …
Stomach digesting …
Kidneys producing …
Flowers and figs and foxes!
Amazing, indeed!
The story goes on:
We fall in love …
I like the expression, “fall in love.”
Like tripping on a sidewalk, it just sort of happens one day …
We fall in love …
And it’s all we can think about …
Our mind dwells on the beloved …
We sit across the table and look intently into the beloved’s face– we notice everything.
We touch … hold hands … rub shoulders … get close …
God says: This IS my image …
Arms and legs and mouth and nose …
Tummies and tonsils, toes and bunions …
Sneezes and snorts and belly rumbles …
It’s good, says God, every bit of it is good!
When Jesus came to us, he was wearing skin!
The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.
Barbara Brown Taylor, a guest preacher in an Alabama church… she arrived early, so she wandered around a bit … a beautiful Episcopal Church, it was, with Tiffany windows and a remarkable mural of Jesus emerging from the tomb behind the altar.
Taylor was all alone in the church, save a lovely lady in the sacristy polishing silver.
They greeted one another, and that was that.
The lady went on polishing the silver, and Ms. Taylor stepped behind the altar to get a better view of it … she writes:
Jesus stepping out of his tomb looking as limber as a ballet dancer with his arms raised in blessing. Roman soldiers slumped in sleep on either side of the tomb with Easter lilies blooming under their noses. Except for a white cloth swaddling his waist, Jesus was naked. His skin was the color of a pink rose. His limbs were flooded with light.
Taylor remarks:
I could not remember ever having seen so much of Jesus’s skin before, especially in church. …. But I could see the artist’s point. Even in Jesus’s most transcendent moment, the moment that set him apart from the rest of humankind, he remained recognizably one of us. He came back wearing skin. He did not leave his body behind [An Altar in the World, p.36].
Think of the Apostles’ Creed …
It ends with a roaring crescendo:
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the BODY, and the life everlasting.
We will not leave our body behind. Our skin goes with us!
Because that’s what we are - flesh, bone and blood.
Flowers, figs and foxes!
We’re not a spirit temporarily housed in a “prison house of clay” as some have said … waiting to flit off to some other world.
We are a human being … fully integrated - the soul needs the body; the body needs the soul!
We live and we die.
Mortal to the core.
But we belong to God - that’s the real story!
That’s the solution!
That’s the answer!
That’s our hope!
We belong to God!
Every last one of us, and every last bit of us - flowers, figs and foxes - and God is not in the habit of losing anything that belongs to God …
He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies… [Romans 8:11].
It is a mystery … how God shall do this … but God did it with Jesus, and God will do it for us, too … God created the first heaven and the first earth out of nothing; the second creation won’t be a problem at all.
We shall all be changed: the perishable will put on imperishability; the mortal will put on immortality … and death will be no more.
Flesh is mighty important to God!
And mighty important to us, too.
We are our bodies, and our bodies are us!
Flowers, figs and foxes!
So, back to the Song of Solomon.
Read it this afternoon, if you will.
You’ll be surprised … maybe even slightly embarrassed.
It’s all about skin …
Just like the gospel stories!
Jesus, born of Mary, we say!
Born a baby from his mother’s womb.
Lived in his father’s house, with brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins and friends.
Ate dates and bread and fish and drank wine.
Laughed and he cried.
Walked and he talked.
Bled when beaten,
Nailed to the cross, he took one last breath, and then he died and was buried.
And three days later …
For years, I wondered why Jesus stepped out of the tomb with his very own skin – different, to be sure, but skin nonetheless … his skin … full of scars, recognizable to those who knew him, touchable … why not a new body? Fresh and clean? Why still the scars?
Might God be saying to us: Everything counts, nothing is lost, because I am work in all things for good, even those things that hurt you and harm you and leave terrible scars?
I was at work in my son’s humiliation and shame, in his death and in his burial … I was there, says God. There’s no need to erase the past, for in time, it shall be revealed how I used the past to bring you into Christ, and to bring Christ into you!
When Jesus ascends into heaven, he takes skin with him …
And with his skin, goes our skin!
Flowers, figs and foxes.
Because Christ is in us, and we are in Christ.
When the final trumpet is sounded, bright and clear, on that great getting’ up mornin’, Christ shall come again.
The dead in Christ shall rise from their graves … molecules and atoms of flesh scattered in time recalled from the four corners of the world … and everything put back together again.
What happens when we die?
Our breath returns to God.
Our flesh to the earth.
But only for a time.
An interlude.
A pause.
The spirit in heaven waits for the final day.
The spirit, without the flesh, is incomplete.
Without skin, the soul is hardly itself.
Without soul, the flesh is dead.
The saints in heaven wait.
Believers on earth wait …
Creation waits …
For the final day, the last chapter … the redemption of our bodies, says the Bible!
The redemption of OUR BODIES!
Jesus says: I will raise them up on the last day [John 6:39].
Paul writes: We await a redeemer from heaven … who will transform our body that it may be conformed to glory of his body [Philippians 3:20-21].
Because we know where it’s all going, we do not give up.
Paul the Apostle writes at the end of 1 Corinthians 15: Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
We live, here and now, for the sake of Christ!
With flower, figs and foxes.
Steadfast and devoted to the gospel.
We keep the church alive and well.
We forgive one another, and we bear one another’s burdens.
We stand with the oppressed, and we work for justice.
We challenge the powers and defy the principalities.
We don’t buy the silliness and nonsense of a false materialism.
Because we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting – the real materialism of God’s creation.
We believe in skin!
Someone asked Ted Kennedy why he devoted so much of his life to the underdog … and he replied, “Haven’t you read the New Testament?”
The New Testament IS all about skin.
The whole Bible is all about skin.
James says: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father, Is this: To care for orphans and widows in their distress… [James 1:27].
What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
If you say you have faith but do not have works?
Can faith save you?
If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food,
And one of you says to them,
‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’
And yet you do not supply their bodily needs,
What is the good of that?
So, faith by itself,
If it has no works,
Is dead [James 2:14-17].
John writes:
Those who say, ‘I love God’ and then reject their
Brothers and their sisters are liars; for those who do
Not love a brother or sister
Whom they have seen, cannot love God
Whom they have not seen.
The commandment we have from God is this:
Those who love God must love their
Brothers and sisters also.
Jesus says:
Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least
Of thes,e who are members of my family,
You did it to me.
You feed me when I was hungry.
You gave me water when I was thirsty.
You welcomed me when I was a stranger.
You clothed me when I was naked.
You visited me when I was sick and in prison.
You went to bat for me when I couldn’t even pick the bat up.
You defended me against the powers and principalities.
You fought for my safety and my well-being.
You took care of my when I was child.
You protected me in the workplace.
You cared for me in my old age.
The Song of Solomon invites us to love the real stuff of life.
Flowers, figs and foxes.
To live life well:
Bake chocolate chip cookies and fill the home with sweetness … take a big bite, with a sip of cold milk, and taste the wonder of it all …
Sail a boat on the high seas … smell the salt, feel the burning sun and the sting of wind on our face …
Hike the mountains and find a high place - sit there for awhile - the grandeur of mighty rocks and soaring trees … the wind rushing through a million pine needles … like the roar of a crowd in a distant stadium …
Hold someone’s hand and caress veins and knuckles and little bumps … rub their feet … wash their feet.
Help someone get across the room …
Work in a soup kitchen … sort groceries in a food pantry … dig water wells in Africa … go to Nicaragua … stand up for the fallen, defend the powerless …
Worship faithfully, pray deeply, live daringly.
Put our lives on the line for Jesus Christ and for the world: all the flowers, figs and foxes!
Love IS touching and hugging …
Sweat, blood and tears …
Love IS skin …
Love is real!
Keep it real, folks; keep your love real!
Flowers, figs and foxes!
Amen and Amen!
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