Conversational Theology

My brother got married on Saturday. He is not a Christian, and after a certain amount of discussion and compromise, he and his fiancée decided to have a civil ceremony, followed by a church blessing. The church service was really very good in lots of ways – welcoming and warm, appropriate to the couple, clear on the distinctives of marriage, openly Christian whilst recognising the different opinions of others. But there was one particular thing about the service that made me very happy indeed in a wholly unexpected way.

I did one of the readings, and since they asked me to choose what I wanted to read, they got something from the Song of Songs. The passage that I read included the wedding procession of 3:6ff in which the bridegroom arrives perfumed with frankincense and myrrh, in a carriage inlaid with gold. In a totally unrelated decision, they chose to sing a couple of Christmas carols in the service, including O Come All Ye Faithful, with the following verse:

Lo, star-led chieftains,
Magi, Christ adoring,
Offer him incense, gold, and myrrh;
We to the Christ-child
Bring our hearts’ oblations…

Coincidence? I think not.

There are still spaces available for the study day on the Song of Songs, hosted by Emmanuel Evangelical Church on October 24th. More info is here. The day will be useful for anyone interested in learning more about this part of God’s word, whether pastor, student, or ordinary Christian. Everyone is welcome.

Thus the principal clue to the meaning of the Song has, to the best of my knowledge, never been noticed, namely, that there are twenty-six occurrences of the term ‘my beloved’ in the Song, and that twenty-six is the numerical value of the divine Name, YHWH.

From Sr. Edmée Kingsmill’s unpublished PhD thesis, The Song of Songs and the Eros of God.

A study day on the Song of Songs? Sign me up now!

Look, there will be sessions on:

Poetry and emotion in the Song of Songs
Canonical connections to the Song of Songs (oh, someone should write a PhD on that…)
Proclaiming the Song of Songs
Behold, he comes: the eschatology of the Song of Songs

Go here, for more information and to book your place. I suppose that means I’d better start working out what to say…

David Williams has some helpful things to say about the harem in the Song of Songs, and the problem it draws attention to in application to contemporary society as he suggests. None of us are Israelite kings, after all. And since the Song makes it quite clear that it is better to have someone for one’s very own than to have a harem, none of us should want to be.

One of the things that this makes clear is the situated-ness of the Song. Very often, it is hailed as timeless love poetry, whereas in fact the Song is very firmly situated within Israelite history, politics and geography. Not to mention, of course, salvation history. Marcia Falk’s translation makes this point in a fascinating way. She has stripped out all the specifically Israelite references she could find, to render the Song as generally applicable as possible. In so doing, of course, she makes it a completely different poem. Well worth reading, as are her notes on the Song, in ‘Love Lyrics from the Bible’.

A little while ago, someone left a question on the ‘Ask Ros‘ page (which is, after all, what it’s there for!) asking about explaining the Song to younger people:

I am wondering if you have ever had to explain SOS to young folk. I find myself in the situation, where this teenager asked me why this book is even in the Bible. It does not say anything about God even. No…? ;-)

I guess …fear… that what I have is a complicated explanation.

SOS has all sorts of cool connections with other books of the Bible – like Genesis, Exodus, Revelation.

SOS is that it is about love and relationships, something we all will have to deal with for better or worse.

SOS is aesthetically awesome… the colors … intoxicating… I am speaking as an artist now.

SOS is also aesthetically awesome in a literary way … poets and writers will dig this book perhaps more so than any other book in the Bible. … Something like that…

Incidentally…I think that one of the reasons why this book is so difficult to understand is because, its like watching all of the musical video parts of a musical, and then trying to figure out the storyline of the entire movie based on that. SOS reminds me a lot of the musical parts of Indian movies.

I quoted all of this, mainly because I love that last paragraph. That’s such a great way of explaining how the Song of Songs works. I haven’t seen a whole lot of Indian musicals (Monsoon Wedding, Bride and Prejudice – not sure if that even counts) but it’s the same for Hollywood musicals, too. Imagine trying to piece together the narrative of a Cole Porter musical from just the songs. The focus isn’t on the story, though there are hints of the story; the focus is on the experience of the moment of the song – the feelings that burst out into music.

Anyway, back to the real question. I’d basically want to explain to teenagers, and even younger children, the same thing that I’d want to explain to adults: that the Song of Songs is in the bible to show us how much God loves us, to help us experience that love and respond to it appropriately. Even a young child can know that Mummy and Daddy love each other very much, and the Song tells them that God loves them just as much as their parents love each other. I probably wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time teaching this book to young children, though. Not so much because of the content as because of the form. I could be wrong, but my experience is that children find it easier to understand stories and straightforward narratives, rather than complex lyric poetry full of metaphor and other literary devices. Maybe it’s just me, but I certainly didn’t come to appreciate poetry till I was older.

But I would want teenagers to read and understand and respond to the Song. Some are going to find that the poetic nature of the Song immediately appeals to them and others are going to find it harder going. That’s okay. I’d focus on the characters of the bride and the groom and their love for each other. If you’re a teenager, you probably have no difficulty understanding the burning desire of the lovers in the Song, and you probably have your own chorus of ‘Daughters of Jerusalem’ telling you to wait. That emotional response to the love displayed in the Song is what makes this a book so powerful for teaching kids. Because when you can then explain how the bridegroom in the Song is the promised Messiah (king, shepherd, anointed with oil, surrounded by gold, frankincense and myrrh and so on…) and the bride is his people and nation (the married land, Jerusalem and Judah, Lebanon and Tirzah…), the emotional weight of the Song is transferred to their relationship with Christ. I want Christian teenagers to feel that same urgent, passionate longing and desire (magnified a hundred thousandfold) for God, that they do for their boyfriend or girlfriend. They know, with the exquisite agony of youth, what it’s like to be separated from the one they want – and the Song teaches them that this is the agony of the Christian life, waiting for the final consummation of our marriage to the lamb.

I’d use the Song of Songs to teach teenagers about sex and marriage, and how great and wonderful those things are – so great and wonderful that they can even be used to illustrate the more profound, more intimate, more satisfying relationship between Christ and his church. The Song of Songs gives expression to the negative feelings of loss and loneliness, which may also be important things for your teenagers to learn about and to put into perspective as they think about the great wedding day stored up for us all.

So yes, I’d definitely teach the Song to a youth group or similar. Because after all, we want these young people to learn to love the Lord with all their hearts, as well as their minds, don’t we?