Strong as Death by Pastor Ryan Braley

So today we are in the second day, or second Sunday, of our sermon series on the song of songs.

And I told you last week, when I told a number of my friends, and even Pete Knapp, who's our church council president, like, hey, I wanna do a sermon series on the song of songs, they were all like what are you thinking?

Why would you do that?

But I've been enjoying it.

And just a reminder the song of songs is this book that's in the Hebrew Bible.

It's wedged in between the book of Ecclesiastes, another great and profound book about wisdom and life and existential sort of philosophy.

It's wedged in between that and the prophet Isaiah, one of the greatest Jewish prophets in the Hebrew Bible.

And in between these two books you have this beautiful book of poetry, love poetry, called the song of songs, the song of Solomon, and it's the greatest of all songs, the greatest of all the songs.

It's the song of all the songs, like the holy of holies.

It's the song of all the songs.

And it might seem weird that the Bible has a whole book dedicated to love poetry, but really the whole Bible, actually a third of the Bible, is filled with poetry.

So here's some examples.

Maybe you didn't notice.

But the book of Psalms is poetry.

Proverbs, a lot of poetry.

Job, the song of songs, of course, lamentations, ecclesiastes, many of the prophet's speeches are poetry.

And then, of course, mixed in between all this prose, are these chunks of poetry.

A third many scholars say of the Bible is poetry.

So it's no wonder that there's an entire book dedicated just to love poetry.

This song of songs and this song, this chunk of poetry, is a back and forth between two lovers, a male voice and a female voice.

There's a third set of comments, sort of chime in, that's actually like a couple of other voices, but it's predominantly these two voices, between a man and a woman, and they describe themselves, they describe each other and their longings, their desires for each other, their love for each other.

It's marked by the absence and the presence of each of the lovers.

They'll disappear and then reappear, and vice versa, and they're absolutely in love and they express and explain their love in these incredibly explicit and erotic ways.

It's a wild book.

If you haven't read it, by the way, you've gotta read it.

So, just so you know too, in Jewish culture, young Jewish boys were not allowed to read this book because it was so explicit and so erotic they weren't allowed to read it until they were much, much older.

That's the kind of book that we're dealing with.

It's this incredibly explicit book of love poetry which again raises the question how should we read it, how do we understand it?

And last week we kind of unpacked one way to read it and one way that scholars have read it traditionally over the course of years.

That's literally just to look at it on the surface.

Here's what's happening.

It's two lovers and they're back and forth between each other and it's this book explaining their love for each other and their desire for each other, their longing for each other.

If you've ever been married or you've ever been in love, you kind of have this.

It's like, yeah, I get that a little bit.

So there's this one way to read it.

Literally it's this human love lyric, say, back and forth between these two people who are deeply in love.

And boy, it gets a bit explicit.

If you haven't read it yet, you should read it.

In fact, there's some great one liners in there.

In fact, if you are still in the dating game, I'd love to have you give you some ideas for some pickup lines.

So if you haven't read song of songs.

Here's a couple of them.

So, how beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful.

You should write these down.

These are good lines, by the way, if you're reading it literally.

Then it goes on.

The song of the poet writes your eyes are doves behind your veil.

Then he goes on and says this to her.

He says, by the way, your hair is like a flock of goats moving down the slopes of Gilead.

Now, wait a minute.

I've been out of the game for a long time, but this might work.

I don't know.

Try it.

Just see what you're bride, or your date, or maybe online.

Just drop this one.

How about this one?

Your teeth are like a flock of sheep, just shorn.

Not just sheep, any sheep, sheep that have just been shorn.

That's what your teeth are like, my lady.

How about this one?

By the way, baby, your neck is like the tower of David.

I told Olivia Olivia was helping with my slides and she was like so Olivia just got married.

She was like, if Trevor ever said this to me, I'm like what do you mean by that?

That's fair enough, some great one-liners.

Your teeth are like sheep.

Just show your hair as like a flock of sheep running down the hill of Gilead.

Excuse me, that's one way to read this text is by literally reading it as you would, with two lovers back and we get to kind of peer in.

It's almost like what am I doing here?

I shouldn't be allowed it sort of intimate space.

There's another way to read it, though that developed over time in the Jewish culture.

This is a Jewish book, it's a Hebrew book in the Hebrew scriptures, and so we use it as Christians because in our canon as well.

But the Jewish people began to read it over time as allegory, as a symbol, as an iconic sort of book.

Remember our series months ago about story, context and symbol?

Well, this is a great example.

You can read it literally.

What's the story?

What's happening?

It's these two lovers and they're out and they're expressing their love, their dynamic and their erotic love for each other.

But also in a deeper way, maybe the Jews began to use it as symbol, and whether or not the book was meant to be read like that, nobody knows, but they did it and it's quite compelling, and here's why they see it as a love dialogue between God and Israel, the people of God, the Jewish people, and God.

It's just back and forth between God and Israel.

I was talking with the Jewish rabbi this week.

This is his new rabbi I met and he's brilliant.

His name is Rabbi Joseph Edelhight and he lives in Rio, but we skyped and resumed whatever FaceTimed, and he said, ryan, everything you need to know about loving God is in this book.

That was quite a profound statement.

Here's the elephant in the room, though, and this week, is that the word God is never used in the book, the name God never used.

It's only one of two books in the entire Bible that doesn't have the word God in it.

Do you know the other book that doesn't use the word God?

Yeah, good for you, bible scholars, all right, esther and song of the never uses the word God.

So how can the people of Israel, or the Jewish people, how can they use this book to describe a relationship between God and Israel?

Well, around the year 90 AD, they began to use it in their liturgy, in their rhythms.

So, remember, the Jewish people have these rituals, these feasts, every so often throughout the year, and when they do, they open these scrolls.

They read the same scrolls at every festival, and they began to use the song of songs at a festival.

So it's a public reading.

They get up and they read it in public and they use it during the Passover feast, of all the feasts and festivals.

They use it during Passover, which, if you're like me, you're like.

Why on earth would you use erotic love poetry to celebrate the Passover?

Well, remember, the Passover was the pinnacle story of the Jewish people in the Hebrew Bible.

The Jews had been in.

Actually, they were Israelites.

Still, the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt For 400 years.

They were slaves, that's generation after generation after generation.

They were enslaved in Egypt under the mighty rule of the pharaoh and they lived there like that for 400 years.

Of course, god sends a deliverer.

The Passover is a story of God's redemption, of saving the people After 400 years of slavery.

God redeems them, saves them and brings them home.

It's a homecoming story.

Now, why does he do that?

I mean, who cares?

Why not let the Israelites just sort of suffer under the pharaoh?

It happens all the time.

Who cares?

Well, rewind even further back in the story of God, into Genesis.

God made a promise with the man and the woman named Abraham and Sarah Abraham and Sarah and he says hey, look, I'm gonna bless you.

I think I have the scripture, don't I?

Or do I?

Maybe I don't?

Oh no, I don't, sorry, chris.

In Genesis 12, one through three, he says God says I'm gonna bless you, abram, I'm gonna make your descendants as far greater than the number of stars in the sky.

I'm gonna bless you, you'll be my people and I'll be your God.

We're gonna create a covenant relationship.

We're gonna create a partnership, this beautiful dynamic thing between you and your people and me.

That'll be what we're doing here.

And then God promises all these blessings.

And Abram said great, that's awesome, I love it, I'll take it.

What do I have to do?

And God says I'm glad you asked have you ever heard of circumcision?

That's a joke, but it's true.

And God blesses them.

They grow in this beautiful people, the people of Israel, and God makes a covenant with them, this promise to be with them forever, that he would be their God and they'd be God's people.

They're the people of God.

Now, in the ancient prophetic story, the ancient prophets, they rendered this theme of covenant love between God and Israel.

They rendered it in terms of marriage tropes.

So when you read the prophets so Ezekiel, jeremiah, isaiah, hosea, and maybe here in the Song of Songs, when you read it, the prophets depict this relationship between God and the people of Israel as a marriage, over and over and over again.

So it uses images like a bride, a groom, a wedding, so that's how it's talked about.

Now it's weird for us in the modern world.

I get it.

Maybe it's for us guys too.

Or like, wait a minute, I'm married to God.

That's how it was depicted.

It's like God has married Israel.

It's like the deepest form of covenant that the people knew was a marriage.

So God uses that language and the prophets did as well, which is weird again.

And for us guys, like how am I married to God?

That's sort of weird Because I think in our minds we envision God as sort of like a man.

But either way, it's sort of strange.

But in the context of Israel out of which these books came, it was not weird at all, it was totally normal.

We live in a totally different time.

We are thousands of years removed from when this book came out of Israel's culture, out of the Hebrew language, and back then, in that culture out of which this book came out of Israel's culture, there was all kinds of poetry in that day, like love poetry between gods and goddesses.

So people would write poems and it would be like this erotic love poetry between the gods and the goddesses.

It was ubiquitous in the ancient world, in antiquity.

Everybody did it.

In fact it mirrored and it was sort of religious poetry, but it mirrored the secular love poetry.

In that day, in the ancient world, that was kind of the water in which they swam.

So Israel, as Israel often did, they would adopt the cultures and practices of the people around them, happened all the time.

By the way, one example the temple looks just like Egyptian worship temples, but Israel takes it and they kind of make it for the God Yahweh.

It's a long story, but there you have it.

Many times Israel would adopt the practices, the cultures, but they would redeem them and make it about Yahweh.

So Israel, oh, we can write some love poetry as well, since we're all doing that.

Except, instead of between gods and goddesses, they wrote love poetry between God and Israel, and they adopt this practice as a love song between themselves and God.

So that's how they frame it.

So this song, then, is this beautiful song, the song of songs, that suggests the mysteries of love and the longing, and of course they'd use it at Passover, the great festival when God's love is poured out for the people to bring them home, because God loved them and promises to never leave them or forsake them.

So they read this story, the song of songs, every Passover, and this song suggests the mysteries of love and longing and desire.

It's filled with pathos and possibility and it provokes the imagination.

That's the idea behind potrates.

To invoke the imagination, would you please stand up.

I'm gonna do my best to invoke your imagination this morning.

Close your eyes for me, if you would.

I promise now I won't steal your wallet Sonia might, but I won't Now close your eyes.

I'm gonna read you that same passage that Sam read, but as I do, I invite you to open up your imagination, your mind's eye.

What do you see?

What do you hear?

What do you imagine and imagine?

This somehow is a dialogue between God and Israel.

Here's what the book says.

Stamp me in your heart, upon your limbs, sear my emblem deep into your skin, for love is as strong as death.

Love is as harsh as the grave.

Its tongues are flames of fierce and holy blaze.

Endless seas and floods, and torrents and rivers Never put out loves.

Infinite fires.

Those who think that wealth can buy them love, they only play the fool and meet with scorn.

You can be seated.

What do you see?

Love is a strong as death.

It's as fierce as a blazing fire.

Love is not some touchy, feely, passive hallmark greeting card no offense hallmark, or Ben brothers, he loves hallmark.

Love is fierce, it's as strong as death and it's a blazing fire.

And In this story, the song of songs, you have this presence and absence, this searching, this longing and this desire between Two lovers or, in the case that Israel began to use it, between God and God's people.

I Can remember vividly in high school I was searching for something.

I had this deep longing in my heart for something.

I didn't know what I was looking for, but I was looking for it.

I looked everywhere.

I Searched for it in parties, I Spent time drinking a lot looking for it, spent time in relationships that weren't the healthiest, searching for something and I couldn't find it.

And that whole time I Was just so thirsty.

And there were times when I would find things that would appeal in a different way, or times when certain things would satisfy a Little bit and make me go back for more.

But I kept on looking and longing and searching.

Maybe you've been there, searching, longing, hoping Cs Lewis says it this way about longing.

So the books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located, it will betray us if we trust them.

And I was like there's this beauty in these books that we find, or music, or in poems or in movies or certain events, but even those don't always fulfill us long term.

It was not in them, it only came through them.

So the thing we were longing for wasn't in the thing, but it's sort of behind.

The thing was coming through the thing, but there's something deeper that I'm longing for, and what came through them was longing.

These things, the beauty, the memory of our own past, are good images of what we really desire.

What do we really desire?

He goes on to say this but if they're mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols breaking in the hearts of their worshipers.

For they're not the thing itself, they're only the scent of the flower that we've not yet found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country We've never visited.

What do you long for?

He goes on to say this about longing.

I love this If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy.

And friends, I'm telling you, I Looked a lot of places for what I was looking for and longing for and I couldn't find it.

And if we look in this world and nothing can satisfy it, the most probable explanation Is that you and I were made for something deeper, something more grand, another world I Realized over time because I had some friends who began to give me religious language for this, like, hey, what you're looking for isn't these things, you're searching for God.

That longing deep in your soul, ryan, is a longing for God.

And Like Augustine said I love, augustine said, hey, our hearts will always be restless until we find our rest in God.

Maybe you're restless today.

So I long for God and I still do.

To this day I long for God and there are moments where I still feel restless Because I'm not quite at home, things are not quite as they should be, and I still miss God in many, many ways and I still feel restless.

But here's the song of songs would also say so.

I realize I long for God.

I began to name that.

But if the song of songs is true, then not only do I long for God, but God longs for me.

That's a long for God.

But God longs for me, at least the song of songs seems to say so.

My son, logan, was home for about three hours the other day.

He came home to get some stuff.

He left at Christmas time, drove home, came in to see me and Katie on this was on, I don't even know what day Wednesday or something like that and he comes in, he's hanging out in my office and it's me and him and Katie.

He's a sophomore at Gustavus down the road now and I miss him a lot and his whole life growing up I just loved him.

He's my first born son, he's my man.

I just love that kid, you know.

And so we're talking and I go what are you doing now?

I'm going to get some lunch.

I'm going to go back to the school and he's got practice that day as a swimmer.

He goes what are you doing?

I go I'm going to go get some lunch and then I'm going to come back here and work on some stuff.

And he goes oh, where are you going for lunch?

I'm like, oh, I'm just going to go home and get some food.

He's like, oh, okay, okay.

And then we kind of went about our ways and we hugged, we prayed for me to let him go and he'd gotten his car and was driving away and then it dawned on me I think he might have wanted to have lunch with me.

I go, katie.

I think he was asking because he wanted to go to lunch with me, which I was not used to.

I'm always wanting to go to lunch with him, but here, so I felt bad.

I got to text him.

I go, hey pal, I text him.

Hey, buddy, I'm so sorry.

Did you want to go to lunch with me or were you just kind of curious what I was doing?

And he writes back oh, I was just curious.

And then he said but I would love to go to lunch with you.

I know how, how let's go.

And I had plans to go home and make my lunch at home and do all my.

But I was like, no way, we're going to lunch with Logan.

So I took him to Chipotle.

Of course I go, I'm buying because you're my son.

And then Katie later on goes I gave him money for lunch, you bought him.

He was all too happy.

Oh great, thanks, dad, no problem.

But I loved my son, but I was blessed in that moment to realize he wanted to have lunch with me.

I know that I long for God and I love God, but this song of song seems to suggest that God longs for me, that God desires me.

It reminds me of the beautiful story of Hosea.

There's a prophet in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible, called Hosea, and if you don't know the story, read it.

It's incredible.

See, hosea is this drama?

It's when God tells Hosea hey, you're going to act this out and it's actually going to be part of your life and I'm going to teach the people of Israel about me in this drama.

So God tells Hosea to marry a woman called Gomer Gomer.

But here's the deal Gomer is an unfaithful wife.

She has multiple affairs on Hosea and God had told Hosea marry her anyway.

And so Gomer now has to deal with this unfaithful wife.

What does he do?

Well, he doesn't send her away, like maybe we would do.

He doesn't send her away.

Instead, he doubles down and he buys her a bunch of gifts, a bunch of presents.

He shames himself.

Can you imagine buying your lover gifts when she's cheated on you copious times?

No way, I look like a fool.

But he does it anyway.

He buys her gifts, buys her presents, and she takes those gifts and gives them to her lovers.

Dude, not cool, not cool.

That would be the final straw, if you ask me.

But Hosea doubles down again.

He's so consumed with her, his longing, his desires, love for her.

He takes her out of the wilderness to win her back.

What a fool this guy is.

What a dang fool.

He takes her to the wilderness because he can't stop loving her.

Hosea longs for her.

He desires to be with her.

Well, things go from bad to worse for Gomer.

Gomer, if somebody finds herself in need of money, so she becomes a prostitute, begins to sell herself her body for money, and so she sells herself as a slave, a prostitute.

Now, here she is, she's lost, it's all gone, all right, and at the sale, when she's selling her own self, gomez shows up.

Now this is a chance to rub her nose in it.

I told you, woman, she would have stayed with me.

You left me many times.

Look at you now.

You gave my gifts to your lovers.

Look at you now.

This was his chance to rub her nose in it.

And maybe you've been there like so, consumed with your own guilt and shame.

You just know that God's gonna show up and rub your nose in it.

But guess what Hosea does?

And, by the way, god tells Hosea to do these things so he can reveal to the people of Israel his heart for them, his longing for them, his desire for them, this bride who's been unfaithful many, many times, who's taken the gifts of God and given them to her lovers.

Israel's done these exact things and I'm sure Israel's like, oh God, it's gonna show up and rub our noses in it.

But Hosea doesn't do that.

He shows up at the sale of his own wife and he bids honor and he buys her back.

Are you insane?

Somebody told me the only way to really change somebody is to embrace them and love them as they are, not as they should be.

And I'm convinced in my 44 years of life that's really true.

Hosea buys her back and he brings her home and he tells her I've bought you that you wouldn't call me master, that you'd call me husband.

Again he brings her home.

The prophet Zephaniah says it like this God's love for Israel.

Oh, by the way, it reminds me of this quote by Augustine in loving me, god, you've made me lovable.

Zephaniah says it this way the Lord, your God, is with you.

He tells Israel a mighty warrior saved.

He will take great delight in you, you unfaithful bride who's taken the gifts of God and given them away to your lovers.

You've been so unfaithful, but God will delight in you, in his love.

He will no longer rebuke you, but he will rejoice over you with singing.

He'll dance over you.

He will buy you back and bring you home.

Fast forward to the book of John.

First John, actually the Gospel of John.

John isn't talking about the song of songs here, but John writes in this is love, not that we've loved God I know I long for God but that he's loved us.

I desire I long for God, but God longs for me.

Friends, when all other loves disappoint us and they will, when our other loves disappear and they might God's love is strong as death.

It's a blazing fire that if you tried to buy it you'd be made.

You look like a fool.

You can't buy this kind of thing.

It's fierce.

That's what love is like.

And I'll close like this.

This is what Brandon Manning says the furious longing of God is beyond our wildest desires, our hope or hopelessness, our rectitude, our wickedness, neither cornered by sweet talk nor gentle persuasion.

That isn't what love is like.

It's not a hallmark card.

The furious longing of God is not to be reduced to a thing.

A grand ideal is not to be reduced to a plaything, a cage songbird for the amusement of children.

It cannot be tamed, cannot be boxed, captivated, housebroken or temple broken.

It's simply and startling, jesus, the effulgence of the Father's love, central Lutheran church.

May you know that love is as strong as death and fierce like a blazing fire.

May you feel your own longing for God, but may you know the furious, untamed longing of God for you this morning.

Amen.