The Dance of Love

"The Dance of Love"
Proverbs 19:13; 21:9, 19; 27:15

OK; the drip, drip, drip of a nagging wife.  Ever hear a sermon about nagging wives?  That's not what I'm going to preach about.  Rest easy, all wives present.  There are also many traits of the opposite sex, we men, and if you are a husband, that are probably just as irritating.

I just got through reading a book that we used for our book group that I'm in with my daughter and her husband.  The title of the book was, Men:  Explain It To Me.  It's about a trait that we men evidently have, called "mansplaining."  It's how we men/husbands talk down to our wives/women as if they don't know anything, and need us overly intelligent men to explain everything to them, just because they're women.

So, if it's the drip, drip, drip nagging, or the arrogance of mansplaining, there's enough on both sides of the marriage relationship to erode marital bliss.

What is strange to me about the Proverbs that have been read is that they were written by King Solomon, one of King David's sons.  Solomon was supposed to be one of the wisest people who has ever lived.  But 1 Kings 11 lets us know that Solomon married 700 women.  Of course, some of those were marriages of convenience in order to keep the peace with some neighboring tribe or nation.  But still, what did he expect having that many wives?  One is certainly enough for most men.

But on top of that, Solomon also had 300 concubines.  A concubine was basically a kept woman, who had less status than a wife.  Solomon, as the story in 1 Kings 11 eludes, had poor impulse control.  Every pretty woman he saw, he grabbed for himself.  He just couldn't stop himself.

Then he complained about nagging wives in the Proverbs, and how awful that was for him.  Well, "hello!"  Don't have so many wives!  Women, can you imagine having 1000 men around you all the time explaining stuff to you that you don't need explained—how annoying that would be.  Whether husband or wife, why get yourself into that mess by having so many spouses!?  For all his wisdom, Solomon evidently was not very wise about relationship stuff.

Or was he?  As a counterpoint to these "drip, drip, drip" proverbs, Solomon was also the author of another book in the Old Testament, "Song of Songs" or "Song of Solomon."  In Proverbs, he writes about nagging wives.  In Song of Songs he writes one of the most beautiful love songs between a groom and a bride.

I wonder if Solomon wrote this love song, and then used it 700 times on 700 different women to woo them as wives.  Then they all get together in the back room of the harem, and have a conversation.  "Wait a minute; he said what!?  That's the same song he sang to me!"  Then all the other 699 women would chime in saying, "That's what he sang to me, too!"  And it's no wonder he wrote the Proverbs about drip, drip, drip nagging.  It's would have been his own darn fault!

Sooo, what I want to talk about this morning is neither nagging or mansplaining.  What I want to do is transition from the Proverbs to their opposite in the Song of Songs.  I want to talk about what love looks like between a man and a woman.


It all started at the beginning, in the Garden of Eden.  At first the man is alone.  God sees something is not quite right with Adam.  The man is alone.  We are all alone, essentially.  Individual entities with a unique mixture of body, mind and soul.  We are all alone, but it is how we handle that aloneness that matters—that makes us who we are.

God watched Adam for a long time.  There was something not quite right, God was thinking.  Adam is mopey.  He is withdrawn.  He is not quite as connected to his surroundings as God thought he should be.  Finally, God realized Adam was reacting to being alone by being lonely.

So God changed the situation, thinking he was making things better for Adam.  God made a woman.  But a whole new can of worms would be opened, that I wonder if God anticipated.  I always assume God knows what God is doing, and exactly what might come of each action God takes.

When Adam woke up from his rib removing surgery, opening his eyes to find a naked woman standing there, he is inspired to break out into poetry:
At last!
Bone of my bones
Flesh of my flesh!
A woman!

Or, loosely translated:  "Va va va voom!"  Or, "Hubba hubba hubba."  Whichever you choose.

Both the  man and woman fly at each other in a fit of mutual attraction and wonder.  But despite their innocent love, they would quickly find out that getting along in an ongoing relationship would be much more difficult than they imagined.  Certainly the man and woman loved being in each other's arms.  But fully understanding each other was going to be another matter all together.

I can't remember if I told the story about the man who was so pleasing to God that God came to him and said, "You are a great guy.  I am really proud of the way you have turned out.  I want to make one of your dreams come true.  Ask me anything, and I will do it for you!"

The guy stood there a minute, a bit overwhelmed, but finally said, "You know, I'd love a bridge between California and Hawaii.  I love going to Hawaii, but it is so expensive to fly there all the time.  If there was a long bridge, I could just drive there."

God looked at the guy and said, "You have got to be kidding!  That would be a bridge across the Pacific Ocean, stretching for hundreds of miles.  That would be nearly impossible.  Can you not think of another dream you would like fulfilled?"

The guy thought for another minute, then said, "Well, I would really like to understand women.  I would like to know exactly how they think and why.  I want to know what makes them tick, and how to read their emotions exactly.  I would really like to fully know how to figure out women, inside and out."

Then God paused for a long minute and finally said, "Would you like that bridge with two lanes or four?"

I wonder, if by creating a woman, God was creating someone even God would have a hard time figuring out.  God created us men as fairly simple creatures.  Not much mystery there.  In the movement from creating man to creating woman, God was going in the direction from the simple to the complex, the banal to the sublime, the animal to the aesthetic, the blank canvas to a piece of art.  And somehow those two would have to come together in a relationship.  All of a sudden the man and woman would be asking new questions, like, "What is love?"  And, "How do I love this other?"

That is what the Song of Songs is all about.  It is a love song.  There are three parts in this love song:  one sung by the husband, one sung by the wife, and the third sung by a choir who are are watching this love relationship unfold.

The Song of Songs is realistic about love.  It recognizes that love can take you to the top of the world, and it can sink you into the valley of sadness and a deeper loneliness than that which comes from being alone.  This love poem knows that sometimes a relationship is like a woman's drippy nagging or man's condescending blah blah blah.

I'm just going to hit some highlights in the Song of Songs, hopefully letting them sink in as you think about your love relationship.

In the first chapter, the bride sings, "…the very mention of your name is like spreading perfume."  Love and intimacy has to do with personal names.  There is nothing abstract or casual about love.  Instead, it is personal and familiar.  Love with a person who has a name is the corrective to how love, in our day, has become nothing but hook ups and pornographic and lusting, where there are no names.  True romantic, and loving intimacy does not treat a person like a thing, but a person with a name, and all that name signifies.

And then comes a string of compliments sung back and forth between the man and woman.  It isn't cutting remarks like dripping faucets and denigrating mansplaining.  In the Song of Songs, both the man and woman are intent on building each other up.  Like true artists and poets, they see the beauty that lies within each other, and they celebrate, out loud, what they see.  How much stronger relationships are when lovers look at each other with the artist or poet's eyes, and paint complements on each other rather than smudging each other up with the degrading and demeaning.

In the next movement of the Song of Songs the man sings about the seasons of love:

Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.  (2:10-13)


Winter is used by poets to describe the time of self-reflection and evaluation.  It is during the winter of the soul when a person (or a couple) searches for their identity and meaning in life.  Or for a new identity and meaning.

Spring is used by the poets to describe the challenge of finally seeing everything differently.  It is the challenge of following the Spirit.  It is the time of testing the truth of what you have come to see during your Winter searching.  Spring is the time to approve or reject the new that is around you.

Summer is described by the poets as the invitation to live in love and companionship.  To feel love's warmth on your face and soul.

And Autumn is described as the time to come face-to-face with big life decisions.  It is the time of maturity when you decide to choose love and commit yourself to live life in that love.

These are all the seasons of love that are described here in the Song of Songs.  The images of the seasons speak poetically about how love and intimacy are not easily achieved, and don't just automatically come to us.  That is one of the fallacies in our modern thinking about love, that we just fall into it, and it is so easy after that.

Instead, the Song of Songs realistically, through the imagery of the seasons, lets us know that love comes with a lot of reflection, searching, and testing.  There are times when intimate love, and the one you love seem distant, distracted, aloof, and detached emotionally.  Love becomes hard work in constantly defining and redefining what love is at each new season.

The final point I want to make about intimate love in the Song of Songs is in the first seven verses of the 4th chapter.  This part of the song is considered the wedding song.  Part of the wedding ritual in that culture was that the bride danced before those assembled at the wedding feast.  The groom, in turn, sang her beauty.  The various movements of the dance made the entire body of the bride an expression of adoration, joy, and enthusiasm before her groom.

It is interesting also, that dance to the ancient Hebrew people was a form of prayer.  It was getting caught up in the expression of worship, making the whole body a prayer message of adoration to the glory of God.

In the song sung by the man to his dancing bride, look beyond the descriptions of her body parts to the feelings they invoke:  awe, reverence, desire, gratitude.  These are the kinds of feelings that fuel a deep and meaningful human love between a man and a woman.

But they also describe well the feelings and sensations evoked in prayer.  Both prayer and intimate love have to do with feelings that are evoked by another.  Prayer is the language spoken by us when we are captivated by the beauty, passion, and power of God.

Love is dance, a dance not only of intimate romance, but of true relationship.  So, dance.  I encourage you to move beyond any snippy comments that denigrate each other, and dance, and sing your love for each other.