“The song of songs, which is Solomon’s. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.” (Song of Solomon 1:1-2 KJV)
This week I peeked ahead at the lesson that was to be presented at Church this coming Sunday and read the lesson plan that they affectionately call “the scrolls”. I was infuriated. The guy rants for the entire first page or so on how difficult he, and conveniently “other scholars”, think that this book is to teach from. I mean really! If you spend all this time, detail, and attention to God’s law, history, poetry, prophecy, and the gospel of the new testament; then why is it so difficult to recognize love when you actually see it? I thought I was rereading the Screwtape Letters where Screwtape was wringing his hands to his nephew Wormword about Love not actually being real and “a disguise for something else” (see chapter 19 pp 100). It was like seeing a friend who thinks he knows all about love yet he continually shy’s away from asking the beautiful girl for a dance. I mean, come on people, this is not the time to drop the ball.
The book begins appropriately with the first verse clearly identifying this book as “the song of songs”. Perhaps you recall my earlier article entitled, “Song”. This covered Exodus 32 where Joshua and Moses had a short dialog on the goings on down in the camp and Moses identified the activity as really bad by the sound of their song. Without rewriting the article, I think it is simple enough to say that what we are singing about can be very heart felt and important to us. Our song contains meaning. Of course, the obvious perversion of that is to eliminate as much of that meaning as possible through dozens of methods, yet even then it is still, at the moment, packed with emotion. This is THE song of songs! We are told all over the Word of the comparison of God’s relationship with His bride being similar to the husband and wife relationship (see Ephesians 5 for starters). Here is a picture of what that relationship could look like and is played out in Earthly terms. What is it that Solomon, in his youth, finds so valuable and worth keeping pure that would cause him to warn his son about the perversion of the harlot so quickly in his book of Proverbs (see Proverbs 2:16-19)? Is there something that we as Christians can learn from the beloved and the way that she looks at and longs for her lover? C.S. Lewis appropriately mentions in his book The weight of glory that we consider the beauty of heaven too little rather than too much. Why do we hesitate when the smallest piece of a real love finally becomes really real?
And what a place to start… The kiss! Not just any kiss, but a kiss of the mouth. Such kisses can range all the way from the thankfulness and joy of receiving forgiveness while still in tears at the feet of your savior (see Luke 7) to the passion that enjoys your presence and wants you to stay awhile. Incidentally, it is Solomon who begins at his beloved’s feet latter in this same song (see chapter 7). The kiss identifies the realness of all you have been thinking about and looking forward to more than any other point of contact. Even in a much less passionate manner, the kiss is used to welcome and greet one another as the presence of other God fearing believers is just what your spirit lacked (see Romans 16:16). All that you have had to have faith in, all that you have had to trust for while apart, and all that you have run a race for culminates in no better reality of presence like the kiss. It identifies the realness of the presence of two people coming together like nothing else. Any remaining distractions can be most easily identified in a kiss and the kiss of a lover can tell so much more. Even Judas’ words were somehow a clear witness to those who loved Jesus least, yet no where was his distraction more evident.
“Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.” (Matthew 26:48 KJV)