The Highest High

The Highest High Song of Songs 5:2-6:10 Cascades Fellowship CRC, JX MI November 13, 2005 I enjoy listening to sports talk radio. It some ways that is as much an admission as it is a statement because there is very little of consequence that gets discussed on ESPN radio. Let’s face it, on a cosmic or even a human scale, which baseball player is taking steroids or what basketball player is crying about the new dress code being required of NBA players is really a non-issue. As intrigued as we are about the recent implosion of the relationship between Terrell Owens and the Philadelphia Eagles, the reality is that the whole story just doesn’t matter in the greater scheme of things. Much weightier things are happening on a daily basis that command our attention. But I suppose that’s why I enjoy listening to it. It is lighter than the average news story. I can listen to it, enjoy it, and then dismiss it without any pangs of guilt or feeling like I have to do something to fix it.

In some ways, Sports talk

makes fun of all things with equal seriousness, if I may put it that way – it becomes a place of caricature. Even with something as weighty as love. Here is an example. Colin Cowherd, (yes, that’s his real name) got wind of the relationship that has bloomed between Survivor host, Jeff Probst and former survivor contestant Julie Berry. Probst is reported to have said, “I finally found someone who can teach me about love. She is teaching me how to love.” In

response to this Cowherd crowed “Michael Bolton would be ashamed to sing such lyrics.” Such light-hearted views of love are common in our world. We tease our young adults when they begin to take interest in one another. We write movie scripts and sit-coms based on the awkwardness and – quite frankly – the flakiness of love in bloom. We laugh and guffaw, we dismiss and all the while we secretly wish we could experience that first bloom of love again or maybe for the first time. Let’s face it, for all the awkwardness of young love, the passion and excitement make up for it. It is the highest of highs. What happens to that giddy, almost addictive sensation we call “falling in love?” Well, there are two things that happens. The first is that young love becomes mature love – it gets tempered by commitment and familiarity. The second thing is that young love gets somewhat jaded by experience – disappointments, betrayals, neglect. In our fallen world, love is a risky business. C.S Lewis says, “There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.

If you want to makes sure of

keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.”

1

Yet, we continue to fall in love, marry and give in marriage, have kids and own pets. We continue to find love worth the risk.

1

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves Harcourt Brace & Company, London 1988 p. 121

Last week we started a two-part series on the Song of Solomon. And we discovered that the Song of Songs is a love song – a song about the power of love between a man and a woman. The Song of Songs tells the story about love as it should be – as it was intended originally. We found the sort of mutual surrender – the sort of self-giving, self- sacrificing – that is the hall mark of love in its truest form. But the Song of Songs was not written in the Garden of Eden. Although it reflects love as it was meant to be shared, it also knows the pain of love after the Fall. In our text for this morning we have one of the passages that reflects the unrest, the insecurity, the vulnerability we all feel when we decide to love. We will begin there this morning, looking at the trouble that visits our lovers. As with last week, I am not going to do a verse by verse exposition – teasing out the sexual imagery found in the passage. Instead, I will focus in on the overall theme of the passage. After that, we will reflect a little bit about love in a fallen world – the risks and the joys. We will consider how one mode of love – that is love between man and woman reflects another love. Our text begins with a dream sequence – the beloved is dreaming about the lover. In her dream, she is in bed when she hears the gentle tapping of her lover at the door and voice softly calling to her. “Open to me, my sister, my

darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.”2 There is a playful moment when the beloved slyly suggests that she cannot open the door to her lover. You can almost hear the smiles in her words. But her playfulness costs her – when she arises to let her lover in, he is gone. He has flown – perhaps in frustration, perhaps in fear of discovery, we don’t know – but his absence pierces the heart of the beloved. Trial begets trouble as she searches for her lover. The watchmen on the wall see her searching for her lover and accost her, misuse her and steal her covering. Distraught, she calls out for her friends to help her find her lover. When they ask why they should help, what is her reason? Because her lover is the fairest of ten-thousand. The story of love lost because of misunderstanding or missed opportunity is one that is all too familiar for most of us. At some point in our lives we have probably all experienced hardship in our relationships because of a miscue or miscommunication.

We blunder, we stumble, we make light at the wrong

moment and suddenly find a wall stands between us and our love.

And

unfortunately, walls don’t just dissolve. Even when knocked down, the footprint remains, reminding us of where the wall stood and where it can be easily erected again.

2

All text drawn from The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.

The dream of the beloved is really about one of those moments in the love relationship where things go awry.

Iain Provan, in The NIV Application

Commentary for the Song of Solomon says about the dream sequence, “It is the fumbling, anxious side of male-female relationships that is in view here as the lovers fail to connect with each other and alienation enters their relationship.”3 The scene in the dream – as with most of the Song – is flooded with sexual imagery. This should not surprise us. But something interrupts the intimacy. Because of how the same imagery used here is used elsewhere in Scripture, the problem the dream details is one of those horribly awkward moments when something in physical intimacy goes wrong. When the man is ready for love, the woman isn’t. By the time she is, the moment is passed. But remember, this is a dream – the interruption in physical intimacy is a symptom of a deeper alienation, something has draped a veil between the lover and the beloved. The reality is, despite our best efforts alienation slips into all of our relationships. This side of glory there will always be an x-factor in even our most intimate relationships.

We are, unfortunately, bent, horribly bent, toward

selfishness. As a result, we find the kind of vulnerability that leads to the deepest intimacy intimidating. We find it hard to trust someone – anyone – that much. There are pieces of us we hide, we reserve for ourselves; a part of us we cannot bring ourselves to surrender to another. 3

Iain Provan The NIV Application Commentary: Song of Solomon p.341

There are a number of reasons why this happens. Some of us suffer from brokenness resulting from abuse.

Physical, sexual, emotional – all forms of

abuse leave scars that lead us to mistrust, to hold back, to draw in upon ourselves – sort of like an armadillo when it is threatened. The only thing left exposed is the tough, impenetrable shell. The wounds of abuse mistrust the bonds of love. But simpler things than abuse provide challenges to intimacy.

Broken

promises teach us not to rely on anyone else. Pride refuses to acknowledge the need for another. We become complacent, taking our relationship for granted. Even a simple thing like the differences between men and women can cause a break in intimacy. The good news is intimacy broken can be restored. By the end of our passage, the lover is once again “browsing among the lilies,” a euphemism for sexual relations. Alienation does not have to be the only experience of love we know. But we must be willing to be vulnerable, to be exposed, to admit our weaknesses. Figuratively, we must stand naked before our lover, trusting that which makes us unlovable to their charity and grace. upon our beloved and pursue them relentlessly.

We must set our hearts

Such abandonment of self

invites intimacy, fosters trust and permits us to enjoy each other deeply. Though we may not be able to experience perfect closeness all the time – the way Adam and Eve did in the Garden – we can enjoy moments when love is everything it is supposed to be and those moments make it all worth while.

The Song of Songs is about a love affair – between a man and woman. We know that. We also suggested last week that the relationship between the beloved and the lover – between husband and wife – reflects the relationship that exists within the Trinity. But what about the relationship between God and man? Can the love between two humans tell us anything about how we relate to the Living God? Genesis 15 is one of the most remarkable passages in all the Scriptures because of what the passage declares about God. It is the passage where God makes his covenant with Abraham, binding himself irrevocably with this stranger in a strange land. Abraham has already received the promise, but grows weary of waiting for the promised offspring that will guarantee that he his a blessing to all nations. He begins to ask God “How can I know that your promise is true?” God’s answer is simple but dramatic – he forms a covenant. The key to this covenant is in the animals that are sacrificed and split in two. Each half is laid opposite each other on the ground to form this aisle where a river of blood flows in the middle. If Abraham were making the covenant with another man, they’d join hands and walk through the river of blood declaring that if they break the oath may their life become like the life of the animals – split in two, their life-blood spilling upon the ground. But Abraham is not forming this covenant with another man, he is making it with the Living God. And what does God do? He causes a deep sleep to fall upon Abraham and he walks through the river of blood alone. Effectively, what

God does is say, “Whether you break the covenant or I do, I’ll bear the penalty. It will be my blood that is spilled even if it is you who fails.” God enters into a relationship with Abraham – and through him with us – in which he is the only one who is vulnerable. In other words, he empties himself of any self-interest, of any regard for his own gain, places himself at risk to insulate us from the danger and cost of failure. He takes on a love relationship with us where he bears all the risk. And as we have already stated, love is a risky business. Beloved, think for a moment about the outcome of the covenant made with Abraham. It was a venture doomed to failure – Abraham, and us, were bound to evoke the covenant curse – bound to abandon God, to disregard him, to act in bad faith. We were bound to misunderstand the magnitude of God’s grace, the depths of his mercy, the power of his love and in doing so, drape a veil between us. But God’s way is to take the veil away. If death is the only way to secure his beloved, God dares even to give his life away. In the cross, God declares his love for us in terms so bold – in such extreme – that even we cannot miss the message. You see, our human love relationships are indeed a reflection of another love affair – an affair to remember. And all the things that tend to plague our human relationships, trouble our relationship with God as well. Past hurts, fear of rejection, complacency and neglect – all of these threaten to break our intimacy with God.

We fear the vulnerability love requires, so God says, “I will be

vulnerable for both of us.” God abandons himself to make intimacy with him more inviting. How’s your love life? Not only with your spouse or with friends, but how is your love life with God? God gave all he had on the cross to woo us, to declare his love. He desires us to know him intimately – to experience intimacy with him. This side of glory we won’t know it perfectly – there will be frustrations, times when we feel alienated, even anxious. But if we keep our eyes on the cross, those times will melt away. The “gentle, but constant self-giving nature of God” will draw into a deeper intimacy with him.4

4

Ibid. p.146