He would certainly have been in a position to know. The biblical pages from which this morning’s scripture reading are taken are attributed to Solomon – son of David, and last King of the united monarchy in Israel. Because he allegedly had hundreds of wives, we can stipulate the question of romantic experience and wisdom as a given. For that is what this book presents itself to be – erotically intimate poetry the likes of which most parents would hide from their children. But whether or not the lyrics flowed from Solomon’s libido, or someone else who simply borrowed his name, a more pertinent question might be how such steamy concupiscence made its way into scripture. As if the subject matter didn’t make the book strange enough, this is a writing that includes no mention of God, no mention of religious traditions and no mention of religious experience. By any naïve reading, it is a secular book, nested squarely in the midst of holy writings. Why?

The historical answer focuses squarely on that idea of “naïve reading.” Jewish scholars near the end of the first century made the decision that the book really is religious, if you read a little deeper. Though I suspect it wasn’t a unanimous vote, they chose to read the lyrics as allegories – not talking about human romance at all, but rather literary fancies reflecting the love shared between God and Israel.

Christian circles – no doubt debating in their own circles whether this curious book ought to be retained – settled on a similar verdict, interpreting the poems as sonnets on the love between Christ and the church. Medieval Christians thought of this morning’s particular passage as a metaphorical reflection of Mary Magdalene’s meeting with the risen Christ, but that seems something of a stretch to modern ears more inclined to credit a mischievous Holy Spirit for cleverly slipping this little piece of eroticism past the censors.

The truth, I suppose, is that we have no way of knowing what color were the affections going through the author’s mind. Our choices seem to me to be two: we could pass them over as an editorial mistake, or read them as the scripture they, for whatever reason, have been given to us to be.

As for myself, I accept them gratefully as the latter – as scripture, though not as any allegorical piety. That has always struck me as an overly manipulative abuse of the poetry. I prefer to read them – righteously if you will – as what they purport themselves to be: spiritually physical, sensuously holy poems that give honoring and reverent voice to passions exuberantly erupting from the core of God’s intent; passions that are, in other words, good.

But let’s also make available the space for considering the prospect that good passion can erupt from within more affections than just romance. Just to honor those old priests and scholars who first debated the place of this book, we aren’t unfamiliar, after all, with passionate love language when it comes to thinking about Jesus. How many times have we sung hymns such as "Jesus, Lover of my Soul" or "My Jesus, I Love Thee"? I think of George Herbert's beautiful poem "The Call," set to music as a Eucharistic hymn. It isn’t included in our hymnal, but perhaps you have sung it with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ music:

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart;

Such a Joy as none can move;

Such a Love as none can part;

Such a Heart as joys in love.

When was the last time we voiced our discipleship with such affection? In a time when God is often characterized as a punishing hammer, and faithful obedience as a cowering nail, couldn’t the world use the language of a love affair, instead? Wouldn’t it be nice if descriptions of our relationship with God really did sound this enthusiastic and rhapsodic?

But I am enamored with the passage for more general reasons than these – less for its celebration of sensual love or its nudge toward effusive personal piety, than for its overall countenance and flavor and spark.

Read it again with an ear and an eye for its mood. There is an almost irrepressible appetite for living. The setting, according to the beloved’s own description, is spring with all its signs of new life erupting – winds are warming, trees are budding, flowers are blooming, fruit is ripening and birds are singing. No longer a time for huddling in under a blanket; passed is the time for simply getting by and getting through. Life is fertile, exclaims the lover, exploding with possibilities; the lethargy of winter has given way to the animated vigor and strength of spring, and if good things are moving around us, he shouts, shouldn’t we be out among it all, in its very midst?

Now, obviously we are a little “off season.” Labor Day weekend is hardly spring. Typically observed as the ceremonial end of summer, it in some ways portends its opposite. Lake cabins, busy in recent months with splashing and fishing and boating and lounging, are closing up until next year. Swimming pools and aquatic centers are already dry pits – recreational ghost towns of the off-season. And the distant memory of perky jonquils of March and early April is now being replaced with the muted hues of mums. Autumn is just around the corner, as the cooler nights betray.

But that isn’t all the story, is it? Newness is the note in classrooms all across the country. New teachers, fresh from graduation, staring out over their first roomful of students. Veteran teachers, having unpacked boxes of favorite supplies, wonder how this year’s classes will respond. And students – wide-eyed kindergartners and seasoned post-graduates and everyone in-between – are taking deep breaths and plunging in to what for them, as well, is a brand new beginning.

And at church it is a new year beginning as well. The choir resumes rehearsing this Wednesday, Sunday School classes are poised to resume next Sunday, LOGOS preparations are well under way, and there is an energy in the air. It is more than mere “resumption;” it is renewal in all the fullness of the word – meaty, fruitful life, as when “the fig tree puts forth its figs.”

And sitting here on this holiday weekend, observing from the relative safety behind the lattice all that is leaping and dancing our way, we hear the voice of life abundant calling our attention to the blessing, and beckoning us to come out and play. “Life is fertile,” the voice exclaims, “and virtually exploding with holy possibility. The old has passed away and the field surrounding us blooms with new creation. And if good things are moving and ripening around us,” the voice continues, “shouldn’t we be out –enthusiastically, joyfully, exuberantly out – among it all? Come on with me! What about now?”

The year is, indeed, full and hopeful before us. What has occupied the months and days behind us has been good and engaging in its own way, but in colors and sounds and shapes we are still only imagining, the new is bursting open before us in ways that life behind the lattice cannot match. What would it mean to feel the sap rising in our own veins with new, invigorated life; to jump out onto the lawn with arms wide open and hearts fast beating? What would it mean for us, too, to feel an irrepressible passion for life, and an irrepressible passion for the life of faith in God’s own keeping? What would it mean to hear God’s voice, to climb through the window into God’s outstretched arms, and joyfully, exuberantly, passionately live?

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Come away – and what about now?