First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Song of Solomon, Selected Portions of Chapters 2 and 4
February 15, 1998
Sometimes I worry about the people I marry. Some, because they are so young. Others, because they are so immature. A few, because they are so broke. A few more, because they are so pregnant. Still others, because they bring such lousy marriage models from their parents. But the ones who worry me the most are the ones who don’t seem to be visibly in love.
I know that sounds ridiculous. I know that my judgment is subjective. I know I could also be wrong. So be it. But over the course of 1600 weddings, I have watched a lot of brides and grooms come and go. And I think I can tell the difference between those who are anxious and those who are indifferent. No one comes to the altar complete. Most everyone lacks something. But the ones it hurts to see are the ones who lack joy.
You might argue that such is all to the good. Marriage ought to be entered into soberly. For marriage is serious business. One could argue that weddings ought to be approached with fewer starry eyes and more clear heads. Romance ought to yield to realism. After all, isn’t that the note we clergy always try to interject into weddings? Sometimes our arrogance amazes me. We operate as if we were the last line of defense against fantasy and frivolity. Here we stand on the side of principle and piety. We believe it is our job to put a solemn perspective on things, lest anybody get giddy over things old….things new….things borrowed….and things blue.
But I have a confession to make. Sometimes we clergy overplay our hand. Amidst all this talk about “marriage as serious business,” we tend to lose sight of the fact that marriage is also delightful business. From listening to us, one might think we didn’t believe that married people could always be as happy as they are today. All our talk about the “work” of love gives us away. It betrays our fear that bolting and running might be the normal human response, did we not browbeat people into understanding that promises were for keeping.
Several months ago, I co-officiated at a wedding right here in our sanctuary. The other clergyperson gave the homily. By the time he got done, I was left with the feeling that marriage was a titanic struggle for all but the saintly, resembling a theater for heroism for all who would enter therein. I mean, when he got done speaking, marriage sounded like a sled ride down a mountain filled with stumps and moguls.
And I understood where he was coming from. All of us know that marriage is a challenge. All of us know that marriage is under attack. All of us know that marriage is darn hard work. But do we preachers have to make it sound so grim?
When I listen to my own wedding meditations (which I think are really good), I catch, nonetheless, a reoccurring litany of words like “commit”….“covenant”….“promise”…. “sacrifice”….“second mile”….“unconditional”….and, of course, “bear and endure.” All of which are biblical words. All of which are very good words. And all of which are heavy words. They sound obligatory….ominous….frightening. But more important, they sound impossible.
And they are. John Vannorsdall hits home when he writes:
What brides and grooms pledge to one another, they cannot keep. For there will be times of gross insensitivity to the pain and lostness of the other, which are far worse than any blow. There will be infidelities of subtle and various kinds, both known and unknown. Nevertheless, they vow to live beyond their capacity, setting themselves against the odds. To whatever extent they fall short, it is to fall short of the most glorious truth they know. Painful as such shortfalls may be, we still prefer them to the cynicism of making some lesser vow.
Fred Buechner is even more grim, when he speaks of a wedding as that moment when sentimentality comes face to face with candor. For the heart of a wedding consists of the promise to love the other, not only when he or she is lovable, but at half past three in the morning when the baby is crying and both of you have terrible colds in the head, and there is 40 percent less money in one drawer than there are bills to be paid in the other.
Both Vannorsdall and Buechner are right. I have been saying those words for years. I will probably say them again. But it makes me wonder. If people were to take me seriously, why don’t more of them walk out on me? Maybe I’m spending too much time warning people about what is to come, and not enough time celebrating what already is….including the wonder, the joy, the ecstasy, and the sheer romantic delight of it all.
Years ago, in the middle of a wedding, I slipped and mispronounced a single word. It was late in the ceremony. The songs had been sung. The vows had been said. The rings had been shared. I whispered for the couple to kneel. Then I petitioned the congregation with the words: “Let us play.” Most of the people never caught on. I suppose we hear the words in church that we expect to hear in church. A few who caught my mistake labeled it “Freudian.” But maybe, in some strange and accidental way, it was good advice. Maybe we ought to urge married couples to pray and play. If this marriage business is serious business, we still believe that it offers more enjoyment and pleasure than can be obtained from other “serious business”….else why would we do it? If it is God’s design that we are meant to leave mother and father, find a spouse, and go about the business of“becoming one flesh,” I do not think God wants each passing year of “one fleshness” to look more like a chore and less like a delight.
I know this is a strange tact for a preacher to take. Over the years, I have addressed the problem of good marriages that go bad. But I don’t ever recall addressing the problem of good marriages that go dull. But you can spot the dull ones, especially in a restaurant. Take a look around the next time you go out to eat at a nice place.
Some years ago, Dennis DeRougement penned an essay entitled “Does Marriage Kill Love?” It does, he said, if you restrict the discussion to romantic love. He claimed that romantic excitement cannot be sustained on a long term basis. I read that and it made me sad. Are moonlight and roses merely melodic memories? Will I never again cross “moon river” in style? Have I slipped beyond the entrapping spell of “that old black magic?” Will no one ever again“play Misty for me?” Will I never be “as helpless as a kitten up a tree….unable to tell my right foot from my left….my hat from my glove?” A father said to me: “I watch my 17 year old daughter sitting on the couch in the family room, all wrapped up in her date. They have that faraway look in their eyes, indicating that they are in a world of their own. My wife and I look at each other and neither of us has to say what we are thinking. For what we are thinking is: ‘Why don’t we do that anymore?’”
Well, why don’t we do that anymore? On the surface, it would seem that the Bible offers little help with such a question. In the New Testament, Jesus is not married. Paul is not married….and even counsels against it. Some of the disciples may have been married (since we are told that Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law). But it would appear that the disciples all left their wives in order to pursue loyalties they considered more important.
In the Old Testament, we read about many forms of marriage. Some were arranged. Some were political. Some were entered into for reasons of military alliance. Some were even polygamous. The study of these transactions is fascinating, but unhelpful.
Obviously, something akin to romance existed, but I have yet to find a Bible dictionary or encyclopedia that has even a single listing under the word “romance.” We can trace at least one biblical courtship pattern where feelings and emotions must have run high. For we are told that romance tended to flourish around wells. Which explains why the friends of Jesus were both surprised and “put off” when he stopped by a well and talked with a woman. Wells were not innocent places. Wells were provocative places. If you were looking for a woman, you would go look by a well. Isaac met Rebekah at a well. Jacob met Rachel at a well. Moses met Zipporah at a well. Young men hung out at wells, knowing that mothers would send their daughters to fetch water in the evening.
The courting scene followed a predictable formula. The man waited by the well, scouting the prospects. The woman came to fetch water, scouting the scouts. The man asked for a drink. If the woman was interested in pursuing the matter further, she gave him one. Violins were heard off stage. And the couple walked off together, with or without the water bucket. And lest you think this courtship pattern died with the Old Testament, consider the fact that single’s bars (where similar rituals take place today) are often referred to as “watering holes.”
But look more closely at the Old Testament. For you will find that the Jews preserved, within their canon of approved writings, eight chapters of the most romantic and (at times) the most erotic love poetry that the world has ever produced. In some Bibles it is called the Song of Songs. In others, the Song of Solomon. But while it is attributed to Solomon, it is almost certainly not from his hand. Let me read a few selections, carefully chosen and edited for the sanctuary:
The Bride Speaks: I hear my beloved.
See how he comes
Leaping on the mountains,
Bounding over the hills,
My beloved is like a gazelle,
Like a young stag.
See where he stands behind our wall,
He looks in at the window,
He peers through the lattice.
My beloved lifts up his voice.
He says to me, “Come then, my love,
My lovely one, come.
For see, the winter is past,
The rains are over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth.
The season of glad songs has come,
And the cooing of the turtle
is heard in our lands.”
The Bridegroom Answers: How beautiful you are, my love,
How beautiful you are!
Your eyes, behind your veil, are doves.
Your lips are a scarlet thread,
You are wholly beautiful, my love,
and without a blemish.
You ravish my heart, my promised bride,
You ravish my heart,
With a single one of your glances,
With one single pearl of your necklace.
What spells lie in your love.
Your love is more delicious and sweeter
than wine.
What is fascinating is that this stuff is in the Bible at all. All kinds of critics say it shouldn’t be there. Some say it is “humanistic literature,” in that it makes no mention of God. Others claim that it has no religious value whatsoever. So why did Israel preserve it? Four answers have been suggested.
1. Some feel that these love poems are allegorical in nature and are meant to describe the love of God for the people of Israel. Those who adopt this theory often go the second step, drawing parallels between Christ as the bridegroom and the Church as his bride.
2. Others feel that the poems are lingering remnants of Canaanite fertility rituals which infiltrated the Jerusalem Temple, prior to the reform of Josiah in 621 BC.
3. A third group traces this material to the erotic fertility cult of Adonis.
4. A fourth school of thought suggests that the poems are remnants of a primitive Jewish wedding festival.
But none of these views is the prevailing one. Current scholars believe that these poems are just what they seem to be….uncomplicated verses of romantic and intimate love. B. Davie Napier takes delight in that explanation, when he writes:
If these poems inform, nourish and enrich the category of joyful, rapturous love….and if they have the power to restore something tender and fresh to the marriage relationship….then they have all the justification they need, and clearly belong in the sacred literature of a people who looked at all the gifts of God’s creation and pronounced them “good.”
Don’t miss his phrase “to restore something tender and fresh to the marriage relationship.” What a lofty goal. For he’s talking about lighting up this so-called grim business, so that we can recognize that Christian love is as much about Eros as it is about Agape. Preserving the poems enhanced romance. Apparently, Israel didn’t want love to grow dull either….this love that they said was “sweeter and better than wine.” Which explains why Israel kept the poems.
Where did we lose it….this thing called romance? I suppose some of us were handicapped from the start, because we spent 20 years living in a home with two unromantic people. They may have been very good people, but they distrusted their feelings in general, and distrusted intimate feelings even more. So what we failed to learn at home, we have struggled to learn through endless courses in “remedial romance.”
This subject often comes up during premarital counseling sessions. I sometimes ask the following questions:
1. On a scale of one to ten, would you call your parents romantic?
2. On a scale of one to ten, would you call your parents affectionate?
3. On a scale of one to ten, would you call your parents physically demonstrative?
Some of us were lucky, in that we had good teachers. But then we let this business of “romance” slip through our fingers through thoughtless inattention. Love became buried under a mountain of collected neglects….words not spoken….cards not sent….adventures not planned….flowers not bestowed….simple ceremonies left untended….and rich memories carelessly trampled. Without realizing we were doing so, we offered the best of our time and energy to everybody else…. meaning that the “one at hand” always got second or third best, simply because it is easy to overlook people who are always “at hand.”
Still others put romance on the back burner while they concentrated on meeting the needs of their children. What they forgot was that children need to be taught, not only the nature of parental love, but the nature of marital love. Probably the best lesson we can convey to a son or daughter is how to properly love a spouse.
But flames can be rekindled. For everyone who has lost “that lovin’ feeling,” there is someone else crooning: “I saw you last night and got that old feeling.” Which is not always a matter of technique….although technique never hurt. Most of us know how to pay attention to another in ways that are tender and caring. Our failure to do so is not one of ignorance so much as one of indifference. Techniques of romance are secondary to a desire for romance. Do we want it? Are we hungry for it? Are we yearning after it?
Yearning….to discover more of you, believing that there is more of you to be found?
Yearning….for you to discover more of me, believing that there is more of me to be found?
Yearning….to discover more of us, believing that the more we learn about our love, the more we will understand about God’s?
I think that while God expects love to be responsible, God has also set things up so that love will be pleasurable. What does that mean? It means that lovers are supposed to enjoy themselves. It’s part of the plan. Therefore, on St. Valentine’s weekend, let the word go out that marriage was never designed to be grim. Or boring. Or dull.
So….let us play.
