Inside-out religion
Commentary
Object:
For the earliest part of a child's life, the mom or the dad picks out the clothes and puts them on the child. Gradually, however, little boys and girls want to take on those responsibilities themselves. They want to pick out their own clothes, and they want to dress themselves. Then, having done it themselves, the child will often appear with an air of pride and self-satisfaction. "Look at me! I did it myself!"
Sometimes, of course, the outfit is not much to be proud of. While a few children will have a knack for it right from the start, more often the novice ends up with outfits that are either impractical or ridiculous. On many occasions, the do-it-yourself method has resulted in some article of clothing being put on backward or inside out.
So it was with the Pharisees in Jesus' day. The Pharisees paraded about, wearing their religion quite proudly. "Look at me!" they said by how they lived. But Jesus saw -- and pointed out to them repeatedly -- that they had put it on and were wearing it the wrong way. Most especially in this week's gospel passage, the Pharisees were confused about the insides and the outsides of their religion.
We read the gospel accounts of Jesus' encounters with the Pharisees, and it is clear to us that they are legalists. That's not all bad, of course. In fact, legalism usually begins as a form of very sincere earnestness. Half-hearted believers never become legalists, you know. It is a function -- albeit a mutation -- of being earnest.
In any event, the Pharisees had become legalistic about their religion, and legalism inevitably focuses on that which is visible and measurable. After all, it's very difficult to focus on fulfilling all of God's requirements if you cannot quantify those requirements. And so religion becomes a hopelessly external endeavor with fixations on such things as proper hand-washing.
Jesus, however, reminded those around him that the inside is more important than the outside. It's not that the outside is unimportant; not at all. Much of God's law in the Old Testament, after all, speaks to the proper care and handling of things that are external -- material, physical things, which are part of our experience and life in God's created order. It's just that the inside is primary, for that is where the fruits of true religion originate.
Legalism did not die with the Pharisees, of course. And the tendency to slip into that easier focus on things external is always with us. Rather than pointing fingers and snickering at the Pharisees, therefore, we ought to take this week's opportunity to look in the mirror to see whether we are wearing our religion well or not.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Historically, the Song of Solomon has been the cause of some discomfort. It does not read like an overtly religious piece, at least as conventionally defined. Some folks throughout church history argued that it should not be included in the canon. Others have been willing to embrace it as part of the canon, but only by turning it into a grand metaphor, thereby spiritualizing it to the point of acceptability.
Apart from the highly spiritualized interpretation, the Song of Solomon reads like exactly what it is -- a passionate love poem. The structure is complex, with speaking parts variously assigned to the woman, the man, and an assortment of companions. Flowing throughout that complex structure, meanwhile, is a dialogue filled with energy, beauty, rich imagery, and love. Specifically, that love is the romantic and physical love between a man and a woman. Indeed, portions of this candid and passionate book would be difficult for many of our churches to have read aloud during a Sunday worship service.
Our small sample from the book gives us some of the flavor of the larger whole. We see, for example, the energy of the language in the beloved "leaping" and "bounding." We observe, too, the characteristically picturesque language of the book -- gazelles and stags, figs and vines, singing and fragrances, and more.
Central to this particular passage are the voice and the words of the beloved. We all have a natural point of connection with this imagery, for we know from our human relationships how much we cherish the sound of our loved one's voices. I know a family that has held onto a very old answering machine specifically because it has recorded on it a message left by a loved one who had died the following day. Just being able to hear again his voice is a bittersweet treasure for them.
"The voice of my beloved" is precious to each of us, whoever that beloved may be. And if we shift to the spiritualized interpretation of the passage, we see an even deeper beauty in the image -- for the Song of Solomon has often been used to illustrate the love relationship between Christ and his church. If his is the voice of the beloved, how much more beautiful it is.
C. Austin Miles famously captured this truth in his beloved Easter hymn "In the Garden." He writes fondly of "the voice I hear falling on my ear." And he notes, "He speaks and the sound of his voice is so sweet the birds hush their singing."
Jesus himself noted the importance of his voice to those he loves. Several times in his teaching about his identity as the gate and as the good shepherd for the sheep, he specifically mentions his voice (John 10:3-4, 16, 27). We know that the loved one at the other end of the phone does not need to identify himself or herself: we recognize the voice. And so it is between the Lord and his flock: they recognize his voice, and they respond to it.
Within that metaphorical context, the content of the beloved's words take on a new beauty. Naturally, the romantic invitation to "come away" is always an appealing one. How much more, though, when it is the Lord himself urging his loved ones to come away with him. We will explore in more detail the nature of that invitation below.
James 1:17-27
Our excerpt from James certainly echoes the week's larger theme concerning words, the mouth, and the tongue. Yet the selected verses are broader than that theme, and so we want to attend to some of the other truths. We will explore James' contribution to our larger theme, to be sure, but let us begin elsewhere.
First, we are grateful to James for plainly expressing what we have all sensed: namely, that God is the source behind all goodness, all blessings, and all generosity. To the secular mind it makes no sense, for example, to thank God for the food on the table when it was so plainly earned, purchased, and prepared by human hands. Yet the man or woman of faith perceives the behind-the-scenes truth: that all our blessings originate with "the Father of lights." We do not confuse the one who sorts letters or delivers the letters with the one who wrote the letters. So, too, we recognize that God is the actual author of our blessings.
Second, we are well-rebuked by James' insight on anger. His juxtaposition of "slow to speak" with "slow to anger" is sobering to us, for we recognize in ourselves how often quickness to anger is accompanied by quickness to speak. Also, the observation that our anger "does not produce God's righteousness" is a helpful corrective. Indignation always seems like the righteous variety to the one feeling it. So we are tempted to give full vent to some of our anger, convinced that it is justified and righteous. James, however, invites us to consider the question of just what our anger produces in the end. I look back with profound regret on what I know my anger has sometimes produced. Meanwhile, the apostle invites us to ask ourselves what alternative to anger would produce God's righteousness in any particular situation.
Third, the apostle gives us a candid evaluation of our religion. Not religion in the sense of an anthropological category, as in "the Christian religion" or some such. Rather, James is speaking of "religion" as the personal, practical living out of one's faith.
Do you remember the old aftershave commercial that featured a startling slap on the face, followed by the recipient saying, "Thanks, I needed that!"? So it is that James gives us a bracing but needed slap. His sobering critique is not of people who have no religion or a different religion. No, his "slap" is across the faces of those of us whose "religion is worthless" simply because our tongues are uncontrolled and our hearts deceived.
Worthless religion is a diabolical business, to be sure. It is arguably worse than no religion or wrong religion, for it is inherently deceitful. And it is reminiscent of the unfruitful trees that are so often mentioned in scripture as disappointments to God and objects of his judgment (e.g., Matthew 7:19; Luke 3:9). Better to have no money than to be carrying counterfeit money. Yet that is the sad nature of the religion that so many carry out into the world day after day.
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Even though our culture (and perhaps also the church within our culture) is increasingly unfamiliar with scripture, some impressions persist. One of those involves the Pharisees. That sect within ancient Judaism has a reputation fixed in our consciousness because of how they are portrayed in the gospels within the New Testament.
Though the Pharisees were generally held in high regard in their day, all that most of our people really know about them comes from Jesus' critique of them. Consequently, they emerge as among the bad guys in the story. So, rather than a compliment, a word like "pharisaical" is a pejorative one in our present context.
Even though they make easy targets for us, and recognizing that they are not here to defend themselves, we mustn't caricature the Pharisees. If we over-leverage their bad reputation, we diminish our capacity to learn from them. And, even more to the point, we limit our own ability to see ourselves in them.
The first thing we might learn from the Pharisees in this passage is a technique that continues to be at work today. Their antagonism, as we know, was directed at Jesus. Yet in this particular episode, their critique is of "some of his disciples." That is a revealing detail, and one that becomes a cautionary tale for us. The people who oppose Jesus often cannot find fault with him. But it is fertile ground for them to attack Jesus based on the behavior of his followers.
In this instance, some of Jesus' disciples had not washed their hands properly before eating. The Pharisees, who were notorious for their emphasis on superficial compliance with legalistic details, latched onto the disciples' failure. In their minds, the disciples were not making cleanness the priority that God required.
Jesus did not dispute the importance of cleanness. Rather, he redefined cleanness, understanding it as primarily an internal rather than an external condition. So, in a paradox that is central to this week's larger theme, he noted that real cleanness and uncleanness is not determined by what goes into a person's mouth but by what comes out.
The redirection to an internal focus, of course, is typical of the teaching of Jesus. We see that pattern especially in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus' commentary on ancient laws and traditions raises the standard by making it an internal one. Most familiarly, the central issue is not murder but anger (Matthew 5:21-22) and not adultery but lust (5:27-28). We recall also Jesus' observation that the Pharisees were routinely guilty of attending to "the outside of the cup," while leaving it foul within (Matthew 23:25).
That fault did not die with the Pharisees, however. And here is where we must keep ourselves attentive to the Pharisees not as villains but as ancestors. As we noted above, legalism is a common distortion of earnestness. We all know how easy it is for us to notice, emphasize, and fixate on external things, while missing or neglecting "the weightier matters" (Matthew 23:23) that lie within.
Finally, we should take heed also about this matter of "human precepts" and "human tradition." The recent history of biblical interpretation has undermined our understanding that the received text is from God. That, combined with the prevailing relativism that exalts the individual's perception of reality, makes our generation uncommonly ripe for this same error. All the factors are in place for us to replace God's commands with human options, yet never perceive that that's what we're doing. The enlightened biblical scholars and relativists would not think of themselves at all in the same group as the Pharisees, yet their paths all arrive at the same destination.
Application
We mentioned above that we should take this week as an opportunity to look in the mirror. We can see from our safe distance how the Pharisees had their religion on backward. But do we see ourselves so clearly?
The proper wearing of our religion, as evidenced by this week's three lections, is all tied up with words. First, there is the central issue of God's word. And second, there is the remarkably important issue of our own words.
James teaches us about the role of God's word. It is "the word of truth," by which we were given spiritual birth. And that word is the mirror into which we look. We do that together every Sunday morning, of course, and perhaps even more often than that. The question is whether we learn from what we see.
As every reader of this epistle knows, James is endlessly pragmatic, and his pragmatism cuts to the heart of the matter here. The issue is whether or not we are doers of the word. All of us are readers and hearers of it, and that's very good. But it is not an end in itself. To read it and hear it may remain a purely superficial business -- much like the seed that fell on the path (Matthew 13:19). But that external contact with God's word is insufficient; it needs to be internalized to be effective.
Meanwhile, as the first consideration is our response to God's word, the second consideration is of our own words.
On the one hand, there is our diabolical capacity for insincere words. So it is that Jesus quotes Isaiah with reference to the scribes and Pharisees: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." That superficial lip service becomes a noxious thing to God if it is not matched by what goes on in the heart.
On the other hand, Jesus insists that our words are the great barometer of our hearts. Even though we have the capacity for insincerity -- to "fake it" with our words -- they still remain the best long-haul indicator of the internal truth about us. Do you want to know what goes on inside a person's heart? Just listen to what comes out of his or her mouth. This, according to Jesus' insightful logic, is why the Pharisees focus on what was going into a mouth was so misplaced.
It should not surprise us that our words are regarded by Jesus as self-revelatory, for it parallels a part of our doctrine of scripture: namely, our conviction that God's word is self-revelatory. Inasmuch as we come to know him -- even to know even his nature -- by reading and hearing his word, so likewise our words reveal our natures.
Finally, if those words are unbridled, then James concludes that our "religion is worthless." So if all sorts of unwholesome talk comes streaming out of our mouths -- talk that is displeasing to God and inconsistent with his will -- then James just shakes his head at the outfit we are wearing. "It's no good," he says. "You might as well just take it off."
An Alternative Application
Song of Solomon 2:8-13. "His Invitation." Our Old Testament text focuses on the voice and words of "my beloved." We introduced above the possibility of interpreting this Song of Solomon passage as an invitation from Christ to his people. With that metaphor in mind, then, let us look more closely at the content of what the "beloved" says.
In the metaphor, Jesus invites his loved one to "come away." Interestingly, the rationale for that invitation is not expressly about place or purpose, but rather about timing -- namely, "now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone." Our instinct is to assume that an invitation to "come away" would focus on locations -- both the place being left behind and the intended destination. Likewise, we might suppose that such an invitation would include some statement of purpose: come away to do what? But no, it's all about timing.
What follows, then, is a vibrant description of the new time. It is a verdant time of flowers, fruits, birds, and fragrances. The time echoes the sensuality of the book as a whole.
If the invitation is from Jesus to his people, it might be understood at several layers. We think first of Paul's insistence that "now is the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2), and we might read the invitation at the level of personal salvation. The winter of sin is past and now the individual is invited into the vibrant new life available in Christ.
Second, we might read the invitation at a personal, devotional level. We recall Jesus' invitation to his own disciples to "come away... and rest a while" (Mark 6:31). The prospect is a time of refreshment and renewal alone with him. That is a recurring invitation in our lives.
Finally, we might read the invitation at an eschatological level. The winter that is past is the present age, but the verdant time to which he invites us is the perfection of the new heaven and new earth. This, then, is not just his invitation to us as individuals, but is most plainly the word of Christ to his beloved, his bride, the church.
Sometimes, of course, the outfit is not much to be proud of. While a few children will have a knack for it right from the start, more often the novice ends up with outfits that are either impractical or ridiculous. On many occasions, the do-it-yourself method has resulted in some article of clothing being put on backward or inside out.
So it was with the Pharisees in Jesus' day. The Pharisees paraded about, wearing their religion quite proudly. "Look at me!" they said by how they lived. But Jesus saw -- and pointed out to them repeatedly -- that they had put it on and were wearing it the wrong way. Most especially in this week's gospel passage, the Pharisees were confused about the insides and the outsides of their religion.
We read the gospel accounts of Jesus' encounters with the Pharisees, and it is clear to us that they are legalists. That's not all bad, of course. In fact, legalism usually begins as a form of very sincere earnestness. Half-hearted believers never become legalists, you know. It is a function -- albeit a mutation -- of being earnest.
In any event, the Pharisees had become legalistic about their religion, and legalism inevitably focuses on that which is visible and measurable. After all, it's very difficult to focus on fulfilling all of God's requirements if you cannot quantify those requirements. And so religion becomes a hopelessly external endeavor with fixations on such things as proper hand-washing.
Jesus, however, reminded those around him that the inside is more important than the outside. It's not that the outside is unimportant; not at all. Much of God's law in the Old Testament, after all, speaks to the proper care and handling of things that are external -- material, physical things, which are part of our experience and life in God's created order. It's just that the inside is primary, for that is where the fruits of true religion originate.
Legalism did not die with the Pharisees, of course. And the tendency to slip into that easier focus on things external is always with us. Rather than pointing fingers and snickering at the Pharisees, therefore, we ought to take this week's opportunity to look in the mirror to see whether we are wearing our religion well or not.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Historically, the Song of Solomon has been the cause of some discomfort. It does not read like an overtly religious piece, at least as conventionally defined. Some folks throughout church history argued that it should not be included in the canon. Others have been willing to embrace it as part of the canon, but only by turning it into a grand metaphor, thereby spiritualizing it to the point of acceptability.
Apart from the highly spiritualized interpretation, the Song of Solomon reads like exactly what it is -- a passionate love poem. The structure is complex, with speaking parts variously assigned to the woman, the man, and an assortment of companions. Flowing throughout that complex structure, meanwhile, is a dialogue filled with energy, beauty, rich imagery, and love. Specifically, that love is the romantic and physical love between a man and a woman. Indeed, portions of this candid and passionate book would be difficult for many of our churches to have read aloud during a Sunday worship service.
Our small sample from the book gives us some of the flavor of the larger whole. We see, for example, the energy of the language in the beloved "leaping" and "bounding." We observe, too, the characteristically picturesque language of the book -- gazelles and stags, figs and vines, singing and fragrances, and more.
Central to this particular passage are the voice and the words of the beloved. We all have a natural point of connection with this imagery, for we know from our human relationships how much we cherish the sound of our loved one's voices. I know a family that has held onto a very old answering machine specifically because it has recorded on it a message left by a loved one who had died the following day. Just being able to hear again his voice is a bittersweet treasure for them.
"The voice of my beloved" is precious to each of us, whoever that beloved may be. And if we shift to the spiritualized interpretation of the passage, we see an even deeper beauty in the image -- for the Song of Solomon has often been used to illustrate the love relationship between Christ and his church. If his is the voice of the beloved, how much more beautiful it is.
C. Austin Miles famously captured this truth in his beloved Easter hymn "In the Garden." He writes fondly of "the voice I hear falling on my ear." And he notes, "He speaks and the sound of his voice is so sweet the birds hush their singing."
Jesus himself noted the importance of his voice to those he loves. Several times in his teaching about his identity as the gate and as the good shepherd for the sheep, he specifically mentions his voice (John 10:3-4, 16, 27). We know that the loved one at the other end of the phone does not need to identify himself or herself: we recognize the voice. And so it is between the Lord and his flock: they recognize his voice, and they respond to it.
Within that metaphorical context, the content of the beloved's words take on a new beauty. Naturally, the romantic invitation to "come away" is always an appealing one. How much more, though, when it is the Lord himself urging his loved ones to come away with him. We will explore in more detail the nature of that invitation below.
James 1:17-27
Our excerpt from James certainly echoes the week's larger theme concerning words, the mouth, and the tongue. Yet the selected verses are broader than that theme, and so we want to attend to some of the other truths. We will explore James' contribution to our larger theme, to be sure, but let us begin elsewhere.
First, we are grateful to James for plainly expressing what we have all sensed: namely, that God is the source behind all goodness, all blessings, and all generosity. To the secular mind it makes no sense, for example, to thank God for the food on the table when it was so plainly earned, purchased, and prepared by human hands. Yet the man or woman of faith perceives the behind-the-scenes truth: that all our blessings originate with "the Father of lights." We do not confuse the one who sorts letters or delivers the letters with the one who wrote the letters. So, too, we recognize that God is the actual author of our blessings.
Second, we are well-rebuked by James' insight on anger. His juxtaposition of "slow to speak" with "slow to anger" is sobering to us, for we recognize in ourselves how often quickness to anger is accompanied by quickness to speak. Also, the observation that our anger "does not produce God's righteousness" is a helpful corrective. Indignation always seems like the righteous variety to the one feeling it. So we are tempted to give full vent to some of our anger, convinced that it is justified and righteous. James, however, invites us to consider the question of just what our anger produces in the end. I look back with profound regret on what I know my anger has sometimes produced. Meanwhile, the apostle invites us to ask ourselves what alternative to anger would produce God's righteousness in any particular situation.
Third, the apostle gives us a candid evaluation of our religion. Not religion in the sense of an anthropological category, as in "the Christian religion" or some such. Rather, James is speaking of "religion" as the personal, practical living out of one's faith.
Do you remember the old aftershave commercial that featured a startling slap on the face, followed by the recipient saying, "Thanks, I needed that!"? So it is that James gives us a bracing but needed slap. His sobering critique is not of people who have no religion or a different religion. No, his "slap" is across the faces of those of us whose "religion is worthless" simply because our tongues are uncontrolled and our hearts deceived.
Worthless religion is a diabolical business, to be sure. It is arguably worse than no religion or wrong religion, for it is inherently deceitful. And it is reminiscent of the unfruitful trees that are so often mentioned in scripture as disappointments to God and objects of his judgment (e.g., Matthew 7:19; Luke 3:9). Better to have no money than to be carrying counterfeit money. Yet that is the sad nature of the religion that so many carry out into the world day after day.
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Even though our culture (and perhaps also the church within our culture) is increasingly unfamiliar with scripture, some impressions persist. One of those involves the Pharisees. That sect within ancient Judaism has a reputation fixed in our consciousness because of how they are portrayed in the gospels within the New Testament.
Though the Pharisees were generally held in high regard in their day, all that most of our people really know about them comes from Jesus' critique of them. Consequently, they emerge as among the bad guys in the story. So, rather than a compliment, a word like "pharisaical" is a pejorative one in our present context.
Even though they make easy targets for us, and recognizing that they are not here to defend themselves, we mustn't caricature the Pharisees. If we over-leverage their bad reputation, we diminish our capacity to learn from them. And, even more to the point, we limit our own ability to see ourselves in them.
The first thing we might learn from the Pharisees in this passage is a technique that continues to be at work today. Their antagonism, as we know, was directed at Jesus. Yet in this particular episode, their critique is of "some of his disciples." That is a revealing detail, and one that becomes a cautionary tale for us. The people who oppose Jesus often cannot find fault with him. But it is fertile ground for them to attack Jesus based on the behavior of his followers.
In this instance, some of Jesus' disciples had not washed their hands properly before eating. The Pharisees, who were notorious for their emphasis on superficial compliance with legalistic details, latched onto the disciples' failure. In their minds, the disciples were not making cleanness the priority that God required.
Jesus did not dispute the importance of cleanness. Rather, he redefined cleanness, understanding it as primarily an internal rather than an external condition. So, in a paradox that is central to this week's larger theme, he noted that real cleanness and uncleanness is not determined by what goes into a person's mouth but by what comes out.
The redirection to an internal focus, of course, is typical of the teaching of Jesus. We see that pattern especially in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus' commentary on ancient laws and traditions raises the standard by making it an internal one. Most familiarly, the central issue is not murder but anger (Matthew 5:21-22) and not adultery but lust (5:27-28). We recall also Jesus' observation that the Pharisees were routinely guilty of attending to "the outside of the cup," while leaving it foul within (Matthew 23:25).
That fault did not die with the Pharisees, however. And here is where we must keep ourselves attentive to the Pharisees not as villains but as ancestors. As we noted above, legalism is a common distortion of earnestness. We all know how easy it is for us to notice, emphasize, and fixate on external things, while missing or neglecting "the weightier matters" (Matthew 23:23) that lie within.
Finally, we should take heed also about this matter of "human precepts" and "human tradition." The recent history of biblical interpretation has undermined our understanding that the received text is from God. That, combined with the prevailing relativism that exalts the individual's perception of reality, makes our generation uncommonly ripe for this same error. All the factors are in place for us to replace God's commands with human options, yet never perceive that that's what we're doing. The enlightened biblical scholars and relativists would not think of themselves at all in the same group as the Pharisees, yet their paths all arrive at the same destination.
Application
We mentioned above that we should take this week as an opportunity to look in the mirror. We can see from our safe distance how the Pharisees had their religion on backward. But do we see ourselves so clearly?
The proper wearing of our religion, as evidenced by this week's three lections, is all tied up with words. First, there is the central issue of God's word. And second, there is the remarkably important issue of our own words.
James teaches us about the role of God's word. It is "the word of truth," by which we were given spiritual birth. And that word is the mirror into which we look. We do that together every Sunday morning, of course, and perhaps even more often than that. The question is whether we learn from what we see.
As every reader of this epistle knows, James is endlessly pragmatic, and his pragmatism cuts to the heart of the matter here. The issue is whether or not we are doers of the word. All of us are readers and hearers of it, and that's very good. But it is not an end in itself. To read it and hear it may remain a purely superficial business -- much like the seed that fell on the path (Matthew 13:19). But that external contact with God's word is insufficient; it needs to be internalized to be effective.
Meanwhile, as the first consideration is our response to God's word, the second consideration is of our own words.
On the one hand, there is our diabolical capacity for insincere words. So it is that Jesus quotes Isaiah with reference to the scribes and Pharisees: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." That superficial lip service becomes a noxious thing to God if it is not matched by what goes on in the heart.
On the other hand, Jesus insists that our words are the great barometer of our hearts. Even though we have the capacity for insincerity -- to "fake it" with our words -- they still remain the best long-haul indicator of the internal truth about us. Do you want to know what goes on inside a person's heart? Just listen to what comes out of his or her mouth. This, according to Jesus' insightful logic, is why the Pharisees focus on what was going into a mouth was so misplaced.
It should not surprise us that our words are regarded by Jesus as self-revelatory, for it parallels a part of our doctrine of scripture: namely, our conviction that God's word is self-revelatory. Inasmuch as we come to know him -- even to know even his nature -- by reading and hearing his word, so likewise our words reveal our natures.
Finally, if those words are unbridled, then James concludes that our "religion is worthless." So if all sorts of unwholesome talk comes streaming out of our mouths -- talk that is displeasing to God and inconsistent with his will -- then James just shakes his head at the outfit we are wearing. "It's no good," he says. "You might as well just take it off."
An Alternative Application
Song of Solomon 2:8-13. "His Invitation." Our Old Testament text focuses on the voice and words of "my beloved." We introduced above the possibility of interpreting this Song of Solomon passage as an invitation from Christ to his people. With that metaphor in mind, then, let us look more closely at the content of what the "beloved" says.
In the metaphor, Jesus invites his loved one to "come away." Interestingly, the rationale for that invitation is not expressly about place or purpose, but rather about timing -- namely, "now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone." Our instinct is to assume that an invitation to "come away" would focus on locations -- both the place being left behind and the intended destination. Likewise, we might suppose that such an invitation would include some statement of purpose: come away to do what? But no, it's all about timing.
What follows, then, is a vibrant description of the new time. It is a verdant time of flowers, fruits, birds, and fragrances. The time echoes the sensuality of the book as a whole.
If the invitation is from Jesus to his people, it might be understood at several layers. We think first of Paul's insistence that "now is the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2), and we might read the invitation at the level of personal salvation. The winter of sin is past and now the individual is invited into the vibrant new life available in Christ.
Second, we might read the invitation at a personal, devotional level. We recall Jesus' invitation to his own disciples to "come away... and rest a while" (Mark 6:31). The prospect is a time of refreshment and renewal alone with him. That is a recurring invitation in our lives.
Finally, we might read the invitation at an eschatological level. The winter that is past is the present age, but the verdant time to which he invites us is the perfection of the new heaven and new earth. This, then, is not just his invitation to us as individuals, but is most plainly the word of Christ to his beloved, his bride, the church.
