April Love
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle B
It's a bit odd that the lectionary committee placed this reading from the Song of Solomon in late summer, for it seems like a springtime text. Springtime, according to the poet Tennyson, is that time when "a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,"1 but I guess summer love is pretty exciting, too. Some recent research, however, suggests that what actually may be going on in the young man may have more to do chemical molecules than with seasonal madness. The researchers recruited a bunch of people who claimed to have just fallen "madly in love." After interviewing these people to document their passion, the researchers then placed them in MRI machines and performed brain scans on them while showing them an assortment of pictures, including shots of their lovers.
They found that compared to seeing photos of mere acquaintances, viewing pictures of the lovers activated parts of the so-called reward system in viewers' brains. This reward system involves brain responses that use the chemical messenger dopamine, so the sponsor of the study concluded that this dopamine is what creates romantic feelings.2 That study is not proof, mind you, but it's one of the current hypotheses that could be at least part of the explanation. And it certainly gives credence to the statement we sometimes make when a romantic relationship doesn't work out: We say, "The chemistry just wasn't there," but maybe that's a much more literal statement than we thought.3
Of course, I like the explanation offered by a nine-year-old girl on one of those "Kids Say The Darnedest Things" type surveys. She was asked why love happens between two people, and she said, "No one is sure why it happens, but I heard it has something to do with how you smell. That's why perfume and deodorant are so popular."
An eight-year-old boy's answer was, "I think you're supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn't supposed to be so painful."
Well, those theories are all interesting, but when we are experiencing the first blush of love, I doubt very many of us are sitting there thinking, "I wonder what causes this wonderful feeling?" Rather, we are just hoping it will last.
That feeling of being madly in love is what gave rise to the biblical book called the Song of Solomon. That this book is in the Bible always comes as a bit of a surprise to new readers of the scriptures. After encountering all sorts of heavy theological and spiritual themes in other biblical writings, readers coming to this little book are astonished to discover that it is a collection of fairly explicit love poetry -- and it's not love directed at God or the Christian "love thy neighbor" sort. No, it is passionate romantic love between a man and a woman, and the lovers take turns praising each other's attributes, including physical characteristics. What's more, the book does not talk about God at all.
The book is not difficult reading, but it can be puzzling because we cannot always tell which person is speaking when. In the original Hebrew, the gender of certain pronouns helps, but in moving the words to English, not everything transfers. Nonetheless, it is almost unimportant to identify the speakers because no matter which one is talking, the words are the language of passionate love. (If you do want to know who is speaking when, read the book from the NIV or the TEV, both of which add headings to identify the speakers.)
Thus, we need to give ourselves permission to read this book as part of our study of the Bible without trying to force from it a "spiritual" message. At the same time, however, it is worth thinking about what God might want us to hear from this book that is included in what we often call "God's Word."
Let's begin by looking at the verses in today's reading. The speaker in this case is the woman. She describes her lover coming to her, "bounding over the hills ... like a gazelle." Then she tells what he says to her. Calling her "my love, my fair one," he urges her to join him for a romantic tryst.
The man actually refers to springtime. He says, "for now the winter is past ... the flowers appear on the earth ... and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land." Springtime, with the newness and rebirth it brings is always a good metaphor for love, because when two people are deeply in love, it really is as if a new season has come into their lives.
I sometimes think of this when I am meeting with a couple prior to their wedding. I often begin those sessions by asking each partner to tell me what he or she likes best about the other. Sometimes they both are able to zero in right away on some quality in the other, but often the first response is "I like everything about him/her!" That's how the couple in the Song of Solomon felt.
Hopefully all of us have known the joy of a consuming love for another person. Experience tells us that even in the best of relationships, though, ardor cannot constantly flow with that same intensity. The passage of time affects it, as does the reality we see when the rose-colored glasses come off, but there are elements of April love that can still be going strong in the November of our lives. One of the commentators I read about this biblical passage said this:
This world, our bodies, the blossoms and the breasts, the gazelles and the leaping stags -- they are all spectacular creations of an abundantly creative Creator. The greatest sin would be, not to celebrate their beauty too much, but not to notice [emphasis mine].4
In high school, many of us read the play by Thornton Wilder called Our Town. In that story, a young woman named Emily dies in childbirth but is granted the wish to go back to relive one day. She chooses her twelfth birthday. She gets all dressed up and ready for the party, but her mother does not notice her because she is baking the cake. Her father, who is busy with business concerns doesn't notice her, either. Likewise, her brother, in his own world, does not acknowledge her. Emily is disappointed and, long before her time is up, she asks to be taken away. It is too painful to be where people do not notice each other.
What makes the poetry in the Song of Solomon so beautiful is that it gives voice to people who are fully gazing on one another, each paying attention to every detail about the other. In that child survey I mentioned earlier, an eight-year-old boy was asked, "How can you tell if two adults eating dinner at a restaurant are in love?" He answered, "Lovers will just be staring at each other and their food will get cold. Other people care more about the food." He hasn't quite got it yet, but in essence, he is right. People newly in love see mostly the object of their affection.
While the love stage of the pair in the Song of Solomon is one in which the lovers are hyper-aware of each other's physical characteristics and sensuality, there remains plenty for people in love to notice about each other even when the relationship is quite a few years down the tracks of life.
For example, sometimes you'll hear long-married people say things such as "My wife is an excellent mother" or "My husband is a good provider" or "Bob can fix anything" or "Mary takes good care of me" or "I thank God for Jack every day" or "Louise is the best thing that ever happened to me" or something similar. I especially like it when people say those kind of things in the presence of their spouse, for in their own way, those compliments have as much power as the poetry of young love.
Several years ago, I attended a retreat at one of our church camps. There were quite a few people there, and early on, the leaders broke us up into groups of about eight. They asked each group to sit in a circle, and, as a way of introducing ourselves, we were to go around the circle and each tell of one thing that was a positive influence in our lives. Most of us were either single or were there without our spouses, but there was one married couple in my group and they had been together a long time. When it came the husband's turn to speak, he said "The most positive influence in my life has been my wife," and he went on to give some specifics. As he was speaking, I glanced at his wife and noticed that she looked both humble and pleased. It occurred to me at that moment that Hallmark has no card with a text as potent as those words of praise spoken publicly by a man in the presence of the woman he loved. A dozen red roses would not have been better than the verbal flowers he was giving here. In effect, he was telling her, "I still notice and appreciate you."
Of course, loving is not restricted to romantic relationships, and we can tell the other important people in our lives we love them by noticing them as well. Beth Wilensky, a woman quoted in a newspaper article about the nonverbal ways people express love, said that when she was a kid at summer camp, her dad several times mailed newspaper clippings to her, with the words "thought you'd be interested" scrawled across them. The articles were about music, politics, and other topics she cared about. Wilensky saved those articles, explaining that they showed her dad was "paying attention" and were her dad's way of saying, "I love you." In fact, later, she wrote an article for her college paper giving thanks "for the pile of newsprint filled with my father's love." For Father's Day, she mailed him a copy of her article, saying, "Now, I finally have a clipping to send him."5
I mentioned earlier that new readers of the Bible are often surprised to discover this book of sensual poetry within the pages of scripture. But when you think about it, why should not the God whose very nature is love and who has created us with the capacity to fall in love, encourage us to appreciate his gift? Of course, when taken beyond its God-ordained limits, the gift can be used, misused, and abused to betray another to whom we have committed ourselves, but that does not make the gift a bad thing. According to a common practice in biblical times, the authorship of this book was attributed to the king, and thus the book is called the Song of Solomon, but it almost certainly was not written by Solomon. Some Bible versions call this book the Song of Songs, which simply means "the best song," and that's an excellent title for a book that celebrates one of God's good gifts to humankind. Love is worth singing about.
While I said earlier that we should not feel that we have to force a spiritual message from this book, there is nonetheless an underlying spirituality in the form of love expressed this biblical Song of Songs. Love means committing one's self to another in the hope that that person will reciprocate. In that sense, loving is an act of faith. And that is why having faith in God is sometimes described as loving God.
In the end, of course, the gush of feelings associated with April love cannot survive at that intensity forever, but it can get us started in a relationship that blesses our lives and warms us all the way through cold December, until the day death parts us.
____________
1.ÊFrom Alfred Tennyson's poem, "Locksley Hall."
2.ÊThe study was initiated by Rutgers anthropologist Helen Fisher and reported in her book, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004). Cited in "Molecules of Desire," The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2004, W8.
3.ÊThere is a 2003 movie actually titled Dopamine. The Yahoo movie site describes it as follows: "Dopamine, named after the natural amphetamine our bodies produce when we're falling in love, is a romantic drama for the hi-tech age."
http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808449510&intl=us
4.ÊWilliam H. Willimon, in The Lectionary Commentary, Roger E. Van Harn, ed., The First Readings (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), p. 290.
5.ÊQuoted by Jeffrey Zaslow, "Keeping the Car Filled With Gas and Other Ways to Say 'I Love You.' " The Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2004, D1.
They found that compared to seeing photos of mere acquaintances, viewing pictures of the lovers activated parts of the so-called reward system in viewers' brains. This reward system involves brain responses that use the chemical messenger dopamine, so the sponsor of the study concluded that this dopamine is what creates romantic feelings.2 That study is not proof, mind you, but it's one of the current hypotheses that could be at least part of the explanation. And it certainly gives credence to the statement we sometimes make when a romantic relationship doesn't work out: We say, "The chemistry just wasn't there," but maybe that's a much more literal statement than we thought.3
Of course, I like the explanation offered by a nine-year-old girl on one of those "Kids Say The Darnedest Things" type surveys. She was asked why love happens between two people, and she said, "No one is sure why it happens, but I heard it has something to do with how you smell. That's why perfume and deodorant are so popular."
An eight-year-old boy's answer was, "I think you're supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn't supposed to be so painful."
Well, those theories are all interesting, but when we are experiencing the first blush of love, I doubt very many of us are sitting there thinking, "I wonder what causes this wonderful feeling?" Rather, we are just hoping it will last.
That feeling of being madly in love is what gave rise to the biblical book called the Song of Solomon. That this book is in the Bible always comes as a bit of a surprise to new readers of the scriptures. After encountering all sorts of heavy theological and spiritual themes in other biblical writings, readers coming to this little book are astonished to discover that it is a collection of fairly explicit love poetry -- and it's not love directed at God or the Christian "love thy neighbor" sort. No, it is passionate romantic love between a man and a woman, and the lovers take turns praising each other's attributes, including physical characteristics. What's more, the book does not talk about God at all.
The book is not difficult reading, but it can be puzzling because we cannot always tell which person is speaking when. In the original Hebrew, the gender of certain pronouns helps, but in moving the words to English, not everything transfers. Nonetheless, it is almost unimportant to identify the speakers because no matter which one is talking, the words are the language of passionate love. (If you do want to know who is speaking when, read the book from the NIV or the TEV, both of which add headings to identify the speakers.)
Thus, we need to give ourselves permission to read this book as part of our study of the Bible without trying to force from it a "spiritual" message. At the same time, however, it is worth thinking about what God might want us to hear from this book that is included in what we often call "God's Word."
Let's begin by looking at the verses in today's reading. The speaker in this case is the woman. She describes her lover coming to her, "bounding over the hills ... like a gazelle." Then she tells what he says to her. Calling her "my love, my fair one," he urges her to join him for a romantic tryst.
The man actually refers to springtime. He says, "for now the winter is past ... the flowers appear on the earth ... and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land." Springtime, with the newness and rebirth it brings is always a good metaphor for love, because when two people are deeply in love, it really is as if a new season has come into their lives.
I sometimes think of this when I am meeting with a couple prior to their wedding. I often begin those sessions by asking each partner to tell me what he or she likes best about the other. Sometimes they both are able to zero in right away on some quality in the other, but often the first response is "I like everything about him/her!" That's how the couple in the Song of Solomon felt.
Hopefully all of us have known the joy of a consuming love for another person. Experience tells us that even in the best of relationships, though, ardor cannot constantly flow with that same intensity. The passage of time affects it, as does the reality we see when the rose-colored glasses come off, but there are elements of April love that can still be going strong in the November of our lives. One of the commentators I read about this biblical passage said this:
This world, our bodies, the blossoms and the breasts, the gazelles and the leaping stags -- they are all spectacular creations of an abundantly creative Creator. The greatest sin would be, not to celebrate their beauty too much, but not to notice [emphasis mine].4
In high school, many of us read the play by Thornton Wilder called Our Town. In that story, a young woman named Emily dies in childbirth but is granted the wish to go back to relive one day. She chooses her twelfth birthday. She gets all dressed up and ready for the party, but her mother does not notice her because she is baking the cake. Her father, who is busy with business concerns doesn't notice her, either. Likewise, her brother, in his own world, does not acknowledge her. Emily is disappointed and, long before her time is up, she asks to be taken away. It is too painful to be where people do not notice each other.
What makes the poetry in the Song of Solomon so beautiful is that it gives voice to people who are fully gazing on one another, each paying attention to every detail about the other. In that child survey I mentioned earlier, an eight-year-old boy was asked, "How can you tell if two adults eating dinner at a restaurant are in love?" He answered, "Lovers will just be staring at each other and their food will get cold. Other people care more about the food." He hasn't quite got it yet, but in essence, he is right. People newly in love see mostly the object of their affection.
While the love stage of the pair in the Song of Solomon is one in which the lovers are hyper-aware of each other's physical characteristics and sensuality, there remains plenty for people in love to notice about each other even when the relationship is quite a few years down the tracks of life.
For example, sometimes you'll hear long-married people say things such as "My wife is an excellent mother" or "My husband is a good provider" or "Bob can fix anything" or "Mary takes good care of me" or "I thank God for Jack every day" or "Louise is the best thing that ever happened to me" or something similar. I especially like it when people say those kind of things in the presence of their spouse, for in their own way, those compliments have as much power as the poetry of young love.
Several years ago, I attended a retreat at one of our church camps. There were quite a few people there, and early on, the leaders broke us up into groups of about eight. They asked each group to sit in a circle, and, as a way of introducing ourselves, we were to go around the circle and each tell of one thing that was a positive influence in our lives. Most of us were either single or were there without our spouses, but there was one married couple in my group and they had been together a long time. When it came the husband's turn to speak, he said "The most positive influence in my life has been my wife," and he went on to give some specifics. As he was speaking, I glanced at his wife and noticed that she looked both humble and pleased. It occurred to me at that moment that Hallmark has no card with a text as potent as those words of praise spoken publicly by a man in the presence of the woman he loved. A dozen red roses would not have been better than the verbal flowers he was giving here. In effect, he was telling her, "I still notice and appreciate you."
Of course, loving is not restricted to romantic relationships, and we can tell the other important people in our lives we love them by noticing them as well. Beth Wilensky, a woman quoted in a newspaper article about the nonverbal ways people express love, said that when she was a kid at summer camp, her dad several times mailed newspaper clippings to her, with the words "thought you'd be interested" scrawled across them. The articles were about music, politics, and other topics she cared about. Wilensky saved those articles, explaining that they showed her dad was "paying attention" and were her dad's way of saying, "I love you." In fact, later, she wrote an article for her college paper giving thanks "for the pile of newsprint filled with my father's love." For Father's Day, she mailed him a copy of her article, saying, "Now, I finally have a clipping to send him."5
I mentioned earlier that new readers of the Bible are often surprised to discover this book of sensual poetry within the pages of scripture. But when you think about it, why should not the God whose very nature is love and who has created us with the capacity to fall in love, encourage us to appreciate his gift? Of course, when taken beyond its God-ordained limits, the gift can be used, misused, and abused to betray another to whom we have committed ourselves, but that does not make the gift a bad thing. According to a common practice in biblical times, the authorship of this book was attributed to the king, and thus the book is called the Song of Solomon, but it almost certainly was not written by Solomon. Some Bible versions call this book the Song of Songs, which simply means "the best song," and that's an excellent title for a book that celebrates one of God's good gifts to humankind. Love is worth singing about.
While I said earlier that we should not feel that we have to force a spiritual message from this book, there is nonetheless an underlying spirituality in the form of love expressed this biblical Song of Songs. Love means committing one's self to another in the hope that that person will reciprocate. In that sense, loving is an act of faith. And that is why having faith in God is sometimes described as loving God.
In the end, of course, the gush of feelings associated with April love cannot survive at that intensity forever, but it can get us started in a relationship that blesses our lives and warms us all the way through cold December, until the day death parts us.
____________
1.ÊFrom Alfred Tennyson's poem, "Locksley Hall."
2.ÊThe study was initiated by Rutgers anthropologist Helen Fisher and reported in her book, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004). Cited in "Molecules of Desire," The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2004, W8.
3.ÊThere is a 2003 movie actually titled Dopamine. The Yahoo movie site describes it as follows: "Dopamine, named after the natural amphetamine our bodies produce when we're falling in love, is a romantic drama for the hi-tech age."
http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808449510&intl=us
4.ÊWilliam H. Willimon, in The Lectionary Commentary, Roger E. Van Harn, ed., The First Readings (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), p. 290.
5.ÊQuoted by Jeffrey Zaslow, "Keeping the Car Filled With Gas and Other Ways to Say 'I Love You.' " The Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2004, D1.
