If someone were to ask what book of the Old Testament received the most attention from Christian commentators throughout the middle ages, I suspect most of us would guess at one of the "big" books, like Isaiah or Genesis. I was very surprised to read this week that the answer is the book from which we read today, the Song of Solomon.

A big part of the reason for all this attention was the embarrassment it caused, first by never mentioning God at all, second by its frank and graphic language extolling the joys of physical love between a man and a woman. The medieval scholars tried their best to make it behave as an allegory for the love between Christ and the church, or between God and Israel.

But a plain reading of the text tells us that it is what it appears to be—love poetry, plain and simple. It rejoices in sexuality, in unbridled romantic love between two people.

So what’s it doing in the Bible? We might well ask. What does it have to say to us today in an age that makes an idol of romantic love and celebrates lust (the cruder expression of romance)? Don’t we get enough of this stuff on TV and at the newsstand?

It seems to me that the book’s presence in Scripture is a reminder that passionate romantic love is not a sin, but is rather a gift of God. God blesses all of life. The breathtaking attraction between a man and a woman is so much a part of life, and so much a cause for joy that we have to see it as God-given. Like any gift, it can be misused, but that does not make it evil.

It also reminds that Christian love is not limited to dispassionate self-giving or simple friendship. The capacity for passionate love is an integral part of our humanity—children of the God who is love. Made in the image and likeness of God, we share in the power of God’s passionate love for his people and for all creation.

So, let us rejoice with the woman who hears her lover calling her to "Arise… and come away." Let us rejoice in the delight these two take in each other—the joy that brings a man and a woman together, and sets the foundation for a life together.

However…

Very few people can live forever in the raptures of romantic love. It’s too intense, and ultimately limiting. The man and the woman in the Song of Solomon can see no one else while they are in the throes of passion. A universe of two will not last, but while it persists, it is cause for celebration.

"Being in love" is one of those mountaintop experiences that give our lives meaning, setting the course for years to come. Life is not lived on the mountaintop, but down in the valley of ordinary existence. All too often we hear of people saying things like, "I woke up one morning, and realized that I was not in love with my spouse any longer. So I needed to leave."

And that’s sad.

The kind of love celebrated in the pages of the Song of Solomon is necessary and good, a true gift of God. But it is only one kind of love, needed to give us the "push" into making a life decision. The love that keeps us following that decision is the kind of love that informs the Letter of James—that day by day and hour by hour act of will by which we set other people’s needs before ours.

That love is the love that builds and sustains marriage relationships, and which builds and sustains the church. It is the love that Jesus bore for all humanity, revealed fully and finally on the cross.

People leave marriages for what sometimes seem to others to be trivial reasons. People also leave churches for apparently trivial reasons. But in any relationship—between man and wife, or between parishioners, or whatever—what keeps it going is the decision to keep going once the first joy of infatuation has ended.

One of the things that keeps a church growing is its members’ willingness to live with each other—to be slow to anger, and quick to forgive; to be honest in our relationships, always ready to listen before speaking; to be doers of the word in every way.

People can fall in love with a church, and we should hope that they would do so. What will be the attraction? Surely it should be for us as it was for the Christians of Asia Minor, about whom the governor Pliny the Younger wrote around 100 AD "Look at these Christians, how they love each other."

A church that lives out God’s love will be attractive to others. And a church that knows that love can not last if it remains inward-looking will thrive and blossom, and "will be blessed in their doing," as James wrote.

Friends, let us continue to fan the flames of holy love for our God and for his people, that it may blaze forth from this place, blessing our community and all who enter here.