Song of Songs 3:1-4a
Psalm 63
2 Corinthians 5:14-21
John 20:1-18
This morning we remember before God St Mary Magdalene. And the readings all speak of a great love – and so I think this is where we should direct our thoughts on this day.
In particular, I want to consider Song of Songs, and this line: “I found him”. Now, when we read Songs, we should keep in mind why it was originally written, and for what purpose. I was ministering at a young adults camp recently, and some young women were lamenting that there was nothing in the Bible that gave them advice on the biggest issue they were facing in their lives: that is, dating advice! Enter the book of Songs. It is in the genre of an ancient Near Eastern erotic love poem; but there is this phrase repeated throughout the book by the author:
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem...
...that you not stir up or awaken love
until it pleases.
The author is a woman, writing about the type of man these young women (the “daughters of Jerusalem”) should be looking for. It is, in effect, an appeal to young women to have high standards in their dating life.
And so that is what it is about primarily. But if we were to take love itself – the concept of love, in its full divine sense – and see what conclusions about it we can draw from how Songs refers to it, I think we learn something about the love of the Lord for us.
Think of this line: “I found him”. Have you found him? Have you, as the Psalmist sings, tasted and seen that the Lord is good? (Ps 34:8) Then I think you may have a sense of what this must have been like for the author of Songs when she went out to look for “him whom my soul loves”, and then found him. In Jesus Christ we have such an endless ocean of the type of love found nowhere else. There is both quantity and quality. And having tasted that love, we say “I found him”. There is no other love that can come even close to the love of our Lord for us.
So that is the first reflection: remember the great love of the Lord for you.
But if I want to have more of it, what should I do?
There is one single competitor for our love. One person above all others that competes with Jesus for our love. Can you guess who it is? It is ourselves.
Whether you think you are wonderful or whether you think you are useless it doesn’t matter. The point is this: when you are deeply, madly in love, all you can think about is the person you are in love with. And so who are you thinking about more? Jesus, or yourself? That will tell you who is winning your heart. What then is to be done? How can we redirect our hearts towards the great Lover?
I thought about the opposite of love. What is the direct opposite of love – and if I can look at myself that way, then I will open myself up for more of the love of Jesus. I don’t think the opposite of love is hate, and so the answer is not to hate ourselves. (In fact, I would suggest hate is merely a side effect of misguided love.) Rather, I think the opposite of love is indifference. To love is to have a strong attachment; to not love is to not have any attachment at all.
So let us be indifferent to ourselves. My body is not my own – it is the temple of the Holy Spirit, bought with a price. (1 Cor 6:19-20). My soul is not my own – the faith that saves it is a gracious gift of God. (Eph 2:8-9) Whenever we think of ourselves, let the thought come, observe it with an aristocratic detachment, and let it go on its merry way. Because “I found him”, the true lover, the true source of love, the One who loves me with an everlasting love that no other love can top.