the all consuming love

I’ve been thinking about the poetry from the Song of Solomon and the image it portrays of God as lover. I’m reminded of Rumi and some of the Christian mystics who also write of our relationship to God as that of lover. The author of the Song of Solomon creates this wonderful image of a lover standing just beyond a lattice work, enticing their beloved to come and celebrate the bounty of spring. It is a poem of love and passion, and I think, a poem of ecstasy. Many have claimed it to be a poem celebrating the gift of human sexuality and the richness of its passion. Some claim it is a poem that is a metaphor for God’s love for us and the invitation we receive from God to live love to its fullest, to its most passionate. I believe it is both. Below I provide the NRSV translation of the verses I’ve been reading.

Song of Solomon 2:8-13

2:8 The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.

2:9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

2:10 My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;

2:11 for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

2:12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

2:13 The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

God has been leaping and bounding upon the mountains and over the hills, in celebration and God’s own ecstasy. Then God the lover stands at the wall, looking through the lattice work. I imagine seeing just a glimpse of God’s cheek and eye, and everything in God’s eye speaks to me of rapturous love and grace, inviting me out. Come out, come out and know life, know love!

I am both deeply moved by this poem and at the same time equally fearful. It is too intimate, to revealing, too too much. It feels dangerous to have God as lover. I need my space, thank you very much. It is so much easier and comfortable to keep God at arm’s length. But I wonder if this is not the God that Jesus came to know and become overwhelmed by? I wonder if it is not God the lover that enticed and drew the Old Testament prophets to their vocation? There is a much quoted verse from the prophet Jeremiah. He is tired of the problems and rejection that his vocation as prophet has heaped upon him. He began his ministry as prophet in joy and expectation and now he has felt the arrows of rejection and persecution for his trouble. His words are strong indeed, “You have seduced me, and I have let myself be seduced.” Abraham J. Heschel says in his classic The Prophets that the first part of that verse implies seduction, but the last implies rape. Is it too much to say that God the lover is so all consuming that Jeremiah find himself lost, used and even abused? Like I said earlier, such a relationship with God feels very dangerous.

Have I even known this kind of love? I wonder. Maybe that is why the radical call of God feels so frightening. Is it that somewhere inside of me I know that if I come out of my locked room and run with God and love so deeply that I will lose all control? I find myself hearing “My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; 2:11 for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone and I realize that I am far more comfortable with a God of rules and regulations, commandments and sacrifices than this passionate God of love.

And yet…