A Song of Sex and Psyche
Semicontinuous Reading: Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Homily:
Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Song of Songs, Canticle of Canticles, Song of Solomon: whatever you call it, it is indeed remarkable that this rather lusty love poem has been preserved in the canons of sacred Scripture lo these several millennia. It’s amazing what you can find in the Bible, isn’t it?
The Song of Songs is overtly sexual. While our cultural context has changed—not terribly many women these days would appreciate their lovers comparing their bodies to flocks of sheep, gazelles, and clusters of grapes—none the less, the gist remains relatable to anyone with hormones. A man and a woman are infatuated with each other, and Song of Songs is the dialogue of their desire, familiar to anyone with a radio or a romance novel. To quote St Avril of Lavigne: “He was a boy. She was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious?”
We read this text now, in the sequence of our semicontinuous study of the Hebrew Bible, because we’ve come to Solomon, son of David, wisest and wealthiest of the Israelite kings. And due to his purported wisdom, several books of wisdom literature have become associated with him, even attributed to him: namely, the Song of Songs, the Proverbs, and the Book of Ecclesiastes. Taken together, they make quite the triad.
Legend has it that Solomon wrote the Song of Songs as a young man in his twenties, full of vim and vigor; Proverbs in his forties, during his calmer, more idealistic prime; and Ecclesiastes in his sixties, when he was tired, disillusioned, and more than a bit cynical. The truth is that he probably did not actually write any of them. But grouping them together, like the Fates of old, itself exhibits wisdom; for the wisdom literature of the Bible, after all, is an ongoing dialogue, a discussion, often an outright argument. Wisdom must be tested, as iron sharpens iron.
There is beauty in youth, is there not? Americans need little convincing of this. We worship youth, fetishize it. Half our economy is based on the false promise that we can be perpetually young, if only we buy the right products, the proper pills. It wasn’t that long ago that I used to come across clothing stores called Forever 21; and every time I’d pass by that sign, I would shudder and say to my wife: “That’s as close to hell as I ever want to get.”
Even so, despite our propensity to overdo it and commodify it, youth is a beautiful time. To feel young is to feel immortal, joyful, fearless, strong. Most of us in our twenties are practically superhuman. And life presents itself as pure potentiality. Yet few things occupy the youthful mind so much as sex. The passions of youth are nearly unbearable, like fire shut up in our bones. And that yearning to be one, body and soul, with some beautiful compliment, some man or woman who becomes for us our whole world, our every desire, is as agonizing as it is ecstatic.
We cheapen it, mass produce it, monetize it, but nevertheless young love is beautiful. Who’s ever unhappy at a wedding? And what is beautiful is good; and what is good is true; and this indeed is wisdom. Sex in the Bible is no bad thing. It is a gift from God, a gift of enjoyment, of comfort, of union, of wholeness, and of creation itself—for it is only quite recently that we’ve managed to convince ourselves that sex can be successfully separated from reproduction.
Love, marriage, kids: It’s a sequence of dominos as old as time, triggered, ignited, and initiated, if not sustained, by the passions of our youth, the song we love to sing.
In the classical world, the soul or the mind was understood to have three basic components: the intellect, the will, and the passions. The intellect consisted of one’s faculties for higher reason, for morality, the better angels of our nature. The passions consisted of instincts necessary for survival: when to fight, when to feed, when to flee, and when to—well, let’s just say when to be parents.
The will was the part of the soul that would choose between these competing impulses: between the rational counsels of the intellect and the primal urges of the passions. And to be clear, these were choices between different gradations of good. The intellect was good, yes, but so were the passions. Passions keep you alive, and moreover, they often make that life worth living.
In a healthy soul, the ancients taught, the intellect would direct the will, and the will would circumscribe the passions, to keep them within their proper bounds. Hunger is good, but overeating is not. Self-preservation is good, while extremes of anxiety or aggressiveness are not. Sex is good, but only when expressed in healthy ways. The will reins in the passions, telling them when to settle, and when to drive on forward.
But in a disordered soul, things work precisely backwards. The passions run out of control. They direct the will, so that we only choose extremes: extremes of lust, gluttony, cowardice, wrath, basically all the seven deadly sins. And then the intellect, rather than offering the guidance of reason, is instead hijacked to produce rationalization: excuses, false reasons, attempting to justify how we’ve already chosen to satisfy our lusts.
We love disordered souls today, because passions without limit lead to profits without limit. An economy of credit, debt, and mass consumption is an economy that runs on passions run amok. Get that pesky intellect out of the way and buy, buy, buy!
And lest you think this an outdated understanding of the mind, the world, and the soul, keep in your mind that psychology says the same thing. They call the passions id, the will ego, and the intellect superego, but it’s the same system, the same ideas. Psyche, after all, means soul. Even in biology they’ll talk about the mammalian brain and the reptile brain: an angel on one shoulder, a devil on the other.
And that’s why it’s so important, I think, that the Song of Songs is in here, is in our Bibles, and has been from day one. We had a few too many monks-turned-popes in the Middle Ages who really did seem to believe that sex was base and bad. But not in the Bible. People have tried to allegorize the Song of Songs—using it as a metaphor for the love God has for Israel, the love Christ has for His Church—but the text itself is hot and steamy, and has proven popular for exactly those reasons.
Sex is good. Wonderful, in fact. But only in its proper bounds. And it’s not simply prudish to say so. We all know, don’t we, the damage sex can do, when we let our passions run wild with no concern for others, no concern for consequence? We know the extremes of lust, when people are treated as objects rather than as people, people who are worthy of love and respect, who are bearers of God’s own image.
So avoid the extremes. Cherish the passions. And always act from love of both your neighbor and your God. This indeed is wisdom. This indeed brings life.
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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