The Voice of Your Beloved.mp4

Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)

13th Sunday After Pentecost
August 30, 2009

"The Voice of Your Beloved"
Song of Songs 2:8-13

What a great Sunday for my husband to be the scripture reader! Here he comes, my beloved, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. He literally did arrive that way to outdoor worship, with our new puppy leaping and bounding down the hillside ahead of him. Did you know that even though Song of Songs is a love poem between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, it was ultimately included in holy scripture as a reminder of Gods passionate love for us? Its actually one of the most controversial books of the Bible: God isnt mentioned even once in 8 chapters, so some ancient rabbis thought it should be left out of the official canon. And in the Common Lectionary, the preaching calendar for most mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, this dialogue between Sheba and Solomon is the only snippet of Song of Songs included in the entire 3-year reading cycle. Its a shame, because its poetry is really entertaining. Ive always encouraged my Confirmands to read it, because some of it is seriously R rated. Once they read the whole thing, theyll never again be tempted to say the Bible is boring. In Chapter 4, verse 1, Solomon describes Sheba like this:

4How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful! Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats, moving down the slopes of Gilead.

Seriously Solomon? Your hair is like a flock of goats? How is that exactly? Ah, my love. How your hair flops and bounces! How it sticks out, every which way, all gray and white upon the brown hill of thy head! I thought Solomon had the gift of wisdom; perhaps not so much with the ladies! But get this, when he moves on to verse 2:

2Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing, all of which bear twins, and not one among them is bereaved.

Teeth like cleanly washed sheep thats good enough. But you just have to pity the people of the ancient world when its a great beauty compliment to say, Oh my dear, how lovely and white are your teeth, and not one of them is missing! And this line:

5Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies.
(Song of Songs 4:5)

So Solomon loved her brown and freckled cleavage, but why would a respectable church ever want to read these verses out loud? Like any public display of affection, we kind of want to just look away and move on. In the Jewish tradition, where they also read through their scripture in a yearly cycle, the rabbis decided this book wasnt suitable for public reading at all, but for private contemplation during Passover. And in my preparation for this sermon, one Lutheran scholar warned pastors to not even try to preach on this book that it would get us in too much trouble.

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