Beloved
Song of Solomon 2:9 July 28, 1991
"A Raisin In the Sun" is a play about a black family on Chicago’s southside. The father dies and leaves a small legacy in the form of an insurance policy - several thousand dollars. The mother was going to use the money to fulfill a longtime dream of buying a small bungalow for the family to live in. It would not be the Taj Mahal, but they would be able to move out of the tenaments, and call it their own. The son also had a dream. He’d never had a decent job, so he convinces the mother to give him the money as an investment in a business deal (a deal that couldn’t miss). The mother wanted happiness for her children more than anything. And so she gives him the money, and the so-called "friend" of the son promptly skips town with the money. The young man is left alone to face his mother and sister. His shoulders are slumped in defeat, his head bows low as he tells them the money is gone. The sister, Benethea, rips into him. She screams at him. She calls him names. In every way possible she lets loose on him with contempt and scorn. When she finishes her tirade the mother speaks, "I thought I taught you to love him." Benethea shouts back, "Love him? There is nothing left to love." The mother says, "There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don’t mean for yourself and the family ’cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t learning - because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right."
Human measuring, like human love, is rarely satisfactory. The measure of God towards His "beloved" is different. An old hymn says it well:
When we have exhausted our store of endurance;
When our strength has failed ’ere the day is
half done;
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s forgiving is only begun.
His love has no limit,
His grace has no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto man;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.
The Canticles (Canticum Canticorum in Latin) is translated, "The Most Beautiful Songs". It is the most exquisite poetic expression of human love you could ever read. The allegory many have seen is the love of God for man. The Spirit of God moved King Solomon to write this magnificent love story. And there is contained in 2:9 the germ of the gospel. It shows us how the nature of God caused Him to draw near to us for two PURPOSES:
To reveal Himself
Solomon pictured a young man like a suitor coming to a young maiden’s home. She is standing behind a screen-like window. It is made of wooden-lattice, arranged so that she can see him, but he cannot see in.
Rooms like this were often built on the second story of homes, extending (dormer-like) over the busy streets. There, a young girl could watch the interesting people passing by below, and catch the cool evening breezes. God came two thousand years ago as a babe in a manger to reveal Himself to us. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold the Lamb." Jesus came to reveal God to a world full of darkness.
Christians are to reveal God to the world. That is our task. Citrienne, bishop of Carthage in 252 AD, lived during a horrible plague. The christians were blamed for the disease, like they were blamed for everything. Citrienne led the church people to care for the dying, bury the dead, and fight the dreaded plague. Single-handedly, it was the christians that fought off the crisis.
This is the revealing love of Christ, come into a heart. Jesus taught us that it was the deeds done that revealed the condition of the heart. God came to reveal Himself, and charged the church to continue that revelation.
To fall in love
Do you recall what it is like to fall in love? Do you know of the first dizzying wave of colliding senses; when your heart leaps, and everything is intensified in a rush of exploding wonder. Life seems to surround like a sea of sweet and gentle breezes. Suddenly there is the existential knowledge that life was made for love. When you’re apart from your love, you’re busy savoring the thought of her image and essence.
Solomon’s imagery is the remembering of "dove eyes" of his wellbeloved, the rose of Sharon. When together new lovers are overpowered with each other’s presence (like a "bundle of myrrh"). There is the sense of being lost in abandonment, totally absorbed. The female voice in the Song felt the "banner over me was love" and it "ravished my heart."
To fall in love is to be irresistably drawn, inexorably to the source of that love. Jesus came to be in love with His own. Standing on a hill outside of Jerusalem Jesus cried, "O Jerusalem,...how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings,.."
Solomon pictured the "beloved" as a young roe, or gazelle. If we could steal away right now to the edge of the farmer’s field; and if it were early morning or late evening in the springtime...we might catch a glimpse of a young Damascan gazelle peering through the barrier at the young and tender shoots of the farmer’s crop. Tall fences and wide ditches, and the rocks the farmer might throw are small obstacles when you are drawn to that which you love. All winter it has been bark and brambles...Now the tender green shoots. The gazelle MUST have them.
Jesus brought this love with Him from heaven. He came to earth, to us to fall in love. And His beloved hung Him on a cross. For you and I that might have ended a love affair. Divorce would have been the first words on my lips. But the first words on the mouth of Jesus were, "Father, forgive them."
God entered time and space in a manger in Bethlehem, grew up and died as a voluntary sacrifice in our place. He did that because we are His beloved, and He wished to reveal Himself to us and fall in love with us. What do you say to such love? All He really wants to hear from you is, "Yes, I love you, Lord. I will give myself to you."
