What do we do now? 

That was the question the poet Andrea Gibson received from a friend the day after the election. 

What do we do now? It’s a question I imagine many of us are asking right now, regardless of who we voted for. What do we do now, in a country so clearly divided by lines of fear and mistrust? 

Andrea writes back to her friend, “I understand that people are frantic for a clear and direct answer. But it’s so important to choose curiosity over certainty in a moment that asks us to create something entirely new. This is that moment.” 

Curiosity while reading the Bible

Choose curiosity over certainty. What a sacred invitation—to move closer to mysteryA mystery is something secret, hidden and not perceived by ordinary means.  In the book of Daniel a significant mystery is revealed through divine revelation (Daniel 2); Paul speaks of a mystery of God in Romans 11 and again in Ephesians 3.  In speaking of..., closer to the unknown, closer to vulnerability. And yet … How do we make that move when we don’t trust our neighbors? 

It begins with practice. Curiosity is like a muscle. If we want it to grow, we need to use it. A place to practice curiosity is reading the Bible. The perfect place to start is the Song of Songs, a slim book in the Old Testament that often goes unread. 

Earlier this year, a reading from the Song of Songs came up in the Revised Common Lectionary: Song of Songs 2:8-13. These six verses are the only verses read from the Song in the entire three year lectionary cycle. I was preaching that Sunday and I jumped at the chance to preach on the Song, my first chance in 18 years of preaching.

When I preach I usually try to have a clear and concise takeaway point. Then I shape my sermon around that point. But as I sat with the Song, clarity wouldn’t come. Which in some ways makes sense, the Song is one of the great mysteries of our faith tradition. Its authors are unknown. We don’t know who it was written for or why it was written. We don’t even know when or where it was written. We don’t know why it was included in the Bible. In fact, it is the only book of the Bible that does not mention or refer to God. 

There is one thing we know for sure about the Song: it is a collection of beautiful love poems between two people. And I’ll be real: it’s pretty poetically saucy. It’s a celebration of young, physical, passionate, romantic love. 

Most people today don’t know what to do with it. The snippet in the lectionary is pretty tame and taken out of its poetic context. Because we don’t know what to do with the Song, we avoid it. But that hasn’t always been the case. 

A vision of romantic human love or divine love?

Once upon a time in the Christian tradition, the Song was one of the most often read and commented upon parts of the Bible. “There are more Latin manuscripts of the Song than any other Biblical book, and there are more medieval sermons on the Song than all other Biblical books except the Psalms and [the Gospel of] John. For these ancient men and women,the Song of Songs was their fifth gospel. It was read more often in some contexts than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke” (Carr).

These ancient readers read the Song as an allegory—a poem with hidden meaning. They believed the two lovers in the text represented the relationship between God and humanity. Other Christians believed the book depicted Jesus’ relationship with the Church. Within the Jewish community the lovers were understood as Yahweh and the people of Israel. 

In the 1800s interpretations started to change. Biblical scholars started arguing that the Song was not about the love between God and God’s people. Instead it was about the love between a woman and a man. The relationship it described was not spiritual; it was sexual (Carr).

So what is it? Is it a vision of romantic human love or divine love? Based on my own study, I tend to think it is a vision of romantic human love. Still, is it a vision we can incorporate into our faith lives or is it a part of our faith tradition we tuck away and ignore? Ignoring problems is never a good solution, but I still didn’t know what I was going to preach. How could I speak with certainty about a book few people agreed on how to interpret? 

I decided to lean into curiosity and instead of offering my congregation a solid answer; I gave them a tool instead. I introduced the idea of literary interpretation, which is studying the text as a piece of literature, in the case of the Song, as a piece of poetry. 

There are many ways to study poetry, but in this context I narrowed it down to three things. I asked my congregation to circle the nouns (people/places/things), the verbs (actions, occurrences or states of being) and the adjectives (description words). And then I asked them: When we look at these building blocks: the nouns, verbs and adjectives, where do you hear God calling us? What is God inviting us to do? What does life with God look like?

Here’s what my congregation had to say:

 “God is inviting us to get involved with the world around us.” 

“We are being sent.” 

“We are being invited into action.” 

“God is inviting us to get out into nature.” 

“It’s an invitation to push back against inaction and complacency.” 

“A call to move across thresholds: going from outside to inside, from winter to spring.” 

“It’s a call to joy.” 

“It’s a call to dive into and celebrate creativity, fertility, and abundance.”

My congregation and I got curious. Because we leaned into curiosity, we were able to reach deeper truths in this text. Our community conversation led us to a richer understanding of the Song than any of us (most of all myself) would have gotten to on our own.

The United States, and other countries as well, are deeply divided. Our future as a nation is unclear and uncertain. While we do not know the future, we can choose how we act in the here and now. We can investigate fear. We can lean into mystery. We can choose to react with curiosity instead of certainty. We can choose the way of the Song, moving closer to mystery, closer to the unknown, closer to where God is calling us to go. 

References

Gibson, Andrea. “Post-Election Letter to a Friend.” Substack, Things That Don’t Suck.

Carr, David M. The Erotic Word, Sexuality, Spirituality and the Bible. Oxford University Press, 2003, page 4.