Our "Disciple IV" class has been enjoying a semester break over the Christmas holidays. We're back to work now reading the Song of Songs. We're coming down the "Old Testament homestretch" as we race toward the New Testament Gospel According to John.

Reading the Song of Songs (also called the Song of Solomon), it's easy to see why the book did not garner universal acceptance as holy scripture! It's quite erotic in places. This book is definitely rated R in spots. But when the book came to be seen as a poem of love between God and His people, it found its place in scripture. Both Jewish and Christian interpreters came to similar conclusions, although Christian writers saw it as a description of the love between Christ and His Church.

The 12th century mystic, Bernard of Clairveaux, actually preached 86 sermons on the Song of Songs!! (If you're interested, these can be found at http://glorifyhisname.com/sys-tmpl/stbernard1/.) I would be hardpressed to come up with one!

Reading Bernard's first sermon (which is on the TITLE of the book), in this pre-critical age, I find his interpretation of the place of the SOS in the wisdom book genre fascinating. Bernard says there are two main enemies of the human soul: love of the world, and love of self. He sees the Book of Ecclesiastes as directed to the former, and the Book of Proverbs to the latter. Once one has applied the lessons of these two books to these twin enemies of the soul, one is ready to feed on spiritual bread, having moved beyond milk.

That gets us to the Song of Songs. If one complains that he or she is not getting anything spiritual out of the SOS, Bernard would reply, "before the flesh has been tamed and the spirit set free by zeal for truth, before the world's glamour and entanglements have been firmly repudiated, it is a rash enterprise on any man's part to presume to study spiritual doctrines."

Are you spiritually ready for the Song of Songs?