I wrote this piece more than nine years ago. And Flo and was repping Progressive even back then. I bet that actress is tired of playing that role by now. At any rate, I was looking through some old writings and thought this was worth reviving. We think too little about the Song of Solomon. It began with the first of the Great Commandments, but it wound up someplace else altogether.
Love the Lord Your God
Recently there’s been a commercial on T.V. for Progressive Insurance. It’s about “bundled” home and auto insurance, and it begins with a car whose “voice” is speaking in a “Barry White,” R&B style as it rolls down the street toward a home, talking about “time to bundle.” As the car approaches the driveway, the female “house” voice speaks, inviting the car in as lights illuminate the edges of the drive and the garage door opens.
The car rolls into the garage door and as it starts to close the camera jumps to “Flo” explaining “And that’s how bundling is done!” All this to the horror of a mother whose hands are firmly fastened over the ears of her pre-adolescent son. As she walks her son away Flo calls after her, “Better he learns in here than on the street!”
I thought of that commercial this week as I wrote this piece. In our Gospel Jesus answers the question put to Him concerning the greatest commandment. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul.” When I began to meditate on that this week I came to the realization that we can’t really talk about loving God that way apart from understanding the nature of God’s love for us.
We can grasp some of that by meditating on the Cross, certainly, but there is an entire book of the Bible that is intended to help us understand God’s heart toward us, the Song of Solomon.
That’s what got me thinking about the Progressive commercial, because most of us squirm a bit when we consider what that book says about God’s love for us, His desire for intimacy with us.
The Song of Solomon is an allegory. An allegory of the relationship between God, the Bridegroom, the King, and the soul, the Bride, the Shulammite woman. Men, this isn’t about gender, but it is about learning to understand what it is to be desired by God in the way a husband desires his wife, his beloved. Even that can make men squirm, I know.
And so today I want to lead you through some important passages from the Song of Solomon and show you the progress of the Shulammite, the woman who stands in for us, for our souls, in the story. Some of the passages I’ll read are a bit long, but it’s important for us to have time to settle into this new way of hearing God speak to us.
I’ll start with the second chapter. In this passage we have the voice of the Bride, but in it she quotes the words of her Beloved as He woos her:
The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.” (Song of Solomon 2:8-14 ESV)
She admires her Beloved as he “bounds over the mountains,” she hears His invitation to “come away,” but this is her response.
My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies. Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on cleft mountains. (Song of Solomon 2:16-17 ESV)
First – she declares that He belongs to her! Her first words are those of ownership. There is very little suggestion of surrender here. She is content to know that this Beloved, so admired not only by her, but by everyone, is “hers.” And so, when she hears His invitation to come away with him, her response is to say “no!” She tells him to “turn,” to go and be like a a gazelle or a young stag on the cliffs of the mountains!
“I love you, my beloved, but I am not prepared to go where you go, to do what you do! Go and be the star that you are, but without me. I will stay here where I’m comfortable.”
This is, in my experience is typical of the baby Christian. “I”m so glad I have my Jesus!” but following Him into the world, to be a visible partner is beyond us at that early stage. This is immature Christianity.
And the Beloved’s response is to withdraw.
On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not. I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not. The watchmen found me as they went about in the city. “Have you seen him whom my soul loves?” Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my soul loves. (Song of Solomon 3:1-4 ESV)
This is not a punishment. He could never do that to His bride. But it is a momentary hiddenness, something desigend to awaken her to her hunger for Him, to sharpen her desire. Note that He doesn’t stay gone long. Scarcely has she passed the watchmen than He appears to her. She doesn’t yet know the joy of surrender to His presence and so he allows herself to know the sorrow of His absence before returning to console her.
There is another phase that we can see in the growth of the Shulammite. This begins in chapter 5.
At the beginning of the chapter we hear the voice of her Beloved:
I came to my garden, my sister, my bride, I gathered my myrrh with my spice, I ate my honeycomb with my honey, I drank my wine with my milk.
(Song of Solomon 5:1 ESV)
And again she responds, and in her reply we hear His words:
I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking. “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.” I had put off my garment; how could I put it on? I had bathed my feet; how could I soil them? (Song of Solomon 5:2–3, ESV)
She is comfortable in bed. She has put of her robe, her daytime clothing. She has bathed her feet (remember, the houses generally had dirt floors) and gotten into bed. She hesitates to give up her comfort, her hard-won cleanliness. She isn’t quite ready to be inconvenienced and so she hesitates. Still, she gets up to open:
My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart was thrilled within me. I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, on the handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer. The watchmen found me as they went about in the city; they beat me, they bruised me, they took away my veil, those watchmen of the walls. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am sick with love. (Song of Solomon 5:4-8 ESV)
But because of her hesitation, the moment has again passed. He is no longer at the door, and this time her choice is more painful for her. This time she is wounded, beaten by the watchmen.
This is not a punishment, but rather an allegory for the accusation that she heaps upon herself for missing her Bridegroom a second time. The watchmen act out the punishment she believes that she deserves for her hesitation. They are the hands of the enemy whose lie she has accepted as truth.
And the Shulammite’s state of mind has begun to shift. No longer is her possession of the Bridegroom her first word (though it persists in her thinking).
Others encounter the Bride as she searches and they ask:
Where has your beloved gone, O most beautiful among women? Where has your beloved turned, that we may seek him with you? And this time her answer is: My beloved has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he grazes among the lilies. (Song of Solomon 6:1-3, ESV)
“I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine.”
As her ability to surrender to intimacy with the Beloved grows, her expression of that relationship shifts.
Chapter seven continues with the wooing of the Bride by the Bridegroom, her Beloved. And as we approach the end of the chapter we see the shift in her relationship to Him:
I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. (Song of Solomon 7:10 ESV)
“I am my Beloved’s and His desire is for me.”
Now she has reached the place where the knowledge that His heart is hers, that His desire is entirely toward her, this knowledge is enough, more than enough.
And look at how this manifests in her:
Come, my beloved, let us go out into the fields and lodge in the villages; let us go out early to the vineyards and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love. The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and beside our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved. (Song of Solomon 7:11-13 ESV)
Now she is eager to go out into the fields, to enter into the harvest with Him. (The harvest whose laborers are few!) She longs to go with Him to tend His vineyard. In this we first see the true love of neighbor of which Jesus also spoke in our Gospel today. As she discovers the sufficiency of His love for her, she also discovers that her heart has been conformed to His. Now she loves what He loves, whom He loves. Her heart now beats in unison with His and she can pour herself out as He does for the harvest. Everything she has now is His, because everything that was His is now her delight as well.
There is a phrase from the Song of Solomon that is perhaps my favorite. It comes from Chapter 4, verse 9:
You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride; you have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.
We could spend the rest of eternity meditating on that reality and not exhaust its riches.
You have ravished the heart of the King of Glory.
Say that to yourself. Over and over until you believe it. You have ravished the heart of the King of Glory. You have ravished the heart of the King of Glory! He is sick with love for you.
As you come to believe that, to understand the enormity of that one sentence, you will find your heart pounding with love for the Bridegroom. You will discover that you do indeed love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength. And you will love your neighbor as you never knew you could, with the same love with which you are now loved.
