Loving Rightly (Songs 1:4b)

 


Tuesday, January 7, 2025


Psalm 19

Songs 1:1-11

John 4:39-54


Loving Rightly (Songs 1:4b)


For the remainder of this week our lectionary takes us through the book of the Song of Songs. We won’t get to cover every last line, but we will get enough to get a handle on how it works overall.


It is a notoriously tricky book to read devotionally – when was the last time you heard a sermon on it? And yet it has held the highest place amongst inspired writings throughout the history of God’s people. One ancient Jewish Rabbi even went so far as to say that, when it came to holy scripture, “the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies”.


Two ways that this book has been read historically has been to try and see a relationship between Israel and God, or Christ and the church. Reading this way has led to some pretty wild interpretations! The plain view, the one shouting out at us from the pages before us, is that it is a love song between a wife and husband. But this is not your regular marriage – this one is perfect. It is a husband and wife loving each other exactly the way God intended.


In a world where sexual licentiousness is pushed on us even from the sides of bus stops, it is refreshing to turn to the pages of the Bible and read about a healthy physical relationship between two lovers. And it is reassuringly human, too – the woman is worried about her physical appearance, being sunburnt from all that outdoors work. Meanwhile the husband, searching for the highest praise he can give her, compares her to a race horse – an ancient way of telling his bride he loves her more than his V8 Falcon.


While we shouldn’t read too much allegory into this book, we should still search for Christ. So maybe we can come back around full circle. Marriage is, after all, a key image of the mystical union between Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:25-33) In a world that is searching for love, and is re-defining what love means, we see here between the man and the woman of the Song of Songs a type of love that reflects the divine love between Jesus and us. We can be honest, we can be confident, we can fill it with poetic beauty, we can rest assured that it is perfect, divine love.


What is your definition of love? What does the Bible teach you about true love?


Jesus, my love of loves: let me rest in your love, assured and confident that it is pure and bright and will never fade.

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