爱要怎么说 Make you feel my love

Title: Make you feel my love 爱要怎么说
Date: 13th Feb 2022
Preacher: Rev. Wong Siow Hwee

There is a caution that was repeated 3 times in Song of Songs. Songs 2:7 Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. And it was repeated in 3:5 and 8:4. This caution from the lady to her female friends is wise. “The verse is a warning of the woman to other women who may look on the relationship and want to experience something similar; she is, in essence, telling them not to force it. Wait for love to blossom; don't hurry it. In a sense, then, the daughters of Jerusalem are surrogates for the reader. We too are to learn the same lesson: Wait for love to blossom; don't try to stimulate it artificially. She warns the others not to arouse love until they are ready to meet its rigors, both physical and emotional. Love is not a passing fling but rather a demanding and (sometimes) exhausting relationship.” 【1】

If the caution is for love not to be aroused easily, then when should it be? When is the right timing to allow love to flourish? Some people believe in love at first sight. Some people believe in fulfilling the stages of life, such as the right age to be married. Although such timings, whether spontaneous or planned, may work out for some people, I don’t think these are the best answers. Love is about mutual acceptance and belonging. That takes maturity. If you have been following the Song of Songs sermon series so far, I believe the moment for love to flourish should be the moment when you are ready to commit. There are two parts to the undertaking of this commitment. One, you must be the right person, and two, you must meet the right person. To become the right person, we will address in the Proverbs sermon series from May onwards how one can grow in maturity. A person who is suitable for a romantic relationship should be someone who is virtuous and wise in thought, speech and actions. Today, I will focus on the second part, reflecting on the topics related to meeting the right person.

Our Song today ended with the woman arriving at this conclusion. Song 7: 10 I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me. She felt that she had found Mr. Right. Her conclusion was based on the second waṣf from the sermon passage two weeks ago 【2】, as well as the third waṣf which is our passage today. Honestly, my first response to her conclusion is: Thank you, Ms Obvious. If you are attractive, of course he has desires for you. It was explicitly stated by the man in Song 7: 8 I said, “I will climb the (date) palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” But the issue is, how do you conclude from the waṣf that he’s Mr. Right? What if he doesn’t only want to taste your date fruit, but also the mangoes from the mango tree, the oranges from the orange tree, and every other fruits you can think of? This is the key conundrum about sexual attraction: if someone is attractive to you, then surely he/she is also attractive to others; if someone is attracted to you, then surely he/he can also be attracted to others as well. In short, we want to know, what is the necessary ingredient to transform from attraction to commitment? And the answer to that is comfort and trust. 【3】

To elaborate on comfort and trust, I will start with the allegorical interpretation of Song of Songs today. Usually the God-Man allegorical interpretation is placed at the end of the sermon as an alternative application, but I think the allegorical reading might provide some key insights to our topic of romantic relationships. Just as how our love should be modeled after God’s love, in the same way, we can learn more about comfort and trust from God. In the allegorical interpretation of Song of Songs, especially to the Jewish rabbis, if the Man represents God, then the woman would represent Israel. One prominent rabbi even said: “For all of eternity in its entirety is not as worthy as the day on which Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Writings are holy, but Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.” 【4】This leads me to think that Song of Songs is more than just lyrical expressions of mutual attraction; it is also a romantic demonstration of comfort and trust.

Allegorically speaking, our song today is about God gazing at Israel (6:13) in an appreciative manner, just like how a lover would look at his partner dancing before him. The description goes from the feet to the hair, presumably because that’s how you would take in such beauty in motion, from the bottom up. If you have been enjoying the figure skating in the winter Olympics you would know what I mean. Here’s a key point to make about comfort and trust: how you gaze and what you say about your gazing matters. I’m sure many women detest all the unwanted ogling and leering looks from men, yet if it is someone they are attracted to, they would enjoy the attention. So we need to understand the context of the gazing in our song. In our waṣf today, God gazed upon Israel as if he was surveying a landscape.

When we survey a land for its beauty, it can be interpreted possibly as exploitation. As Julius Caesar said, “I came; I saw; I conquered." 【5】 Some men look at women like lands to be conquered, and that objectification is what makes women uncomfortable. But the lyrics of our song convey comfort and trust instead. It has to do with how the gazing is communicated. If I were to write a love song for Singapore similar in style to our song today, I would describe the legs like the towers of MBS, the belly like the flavors of char kuay teow and laksa, and the eyes like our projects in Suzhou, Tianjin and ChongQing. If I were to write a similar love song for Jubilee, I would describe the legs like the slope from the entrance, the breasts like the warmth of our two worship services, and the eyes like our mission works in DaGuDi and Seremban. What brings comfort and trust from each of these examples is that they reveal that I know Singapore and Jubilee: their visions of faraway lands convey distance, but intimate experiences convey closeness.

“The perspective assumed throughout these descriptive poems requires both distance, in order to see the young woman as a landscape, and closeness, in order to appreciate her body as a body. (In ancient cultures, such) visual would necessarily be constituted by some degree of physical presence and the personal knowledge and multisensory experience that such presence implies. (I do not know how to appreciate art, but art experts share that the description from feet to hair, in piecemeal shapes like Picasso’s drawings of women, is) a steady and passionate artistic response. Like the affection for one’s particular landscape, it is not constituted first and foremost by objective evaluations, but proceeds out of intimacy and experience. What comes first is love— for one’s lover, as for one’s place— and the attempt to convey the rationale for that love, for example, by presenting an experience of the presence of beauty, is only secondary.” 【6】

In short, the third waṣf today brings comfort and trust because God had demonstrated that he knew Israel, and was appreciative of her unique beauty in an intimate way. You can sense that his love is genuine because he knew about her memories of the past and the visions for the future. “The boundaries that had previously enacted the distance between the speaker and the lover have dropped, creating the sense of a new, private proximity to the lover’s body. In the intimacy of the parts that are described, as well as in the emphasis on fine crafting, the young woman is more fully visible, and her value more fully appreciated, in this description than in the previous poems.” 【7】

You might have heard of this saying about BGR: “Men need understanding, and women need love.” I don’t totally agree with the dichotomy because I think understanding is love, because it is through understanding that you find mutual comfort and trust. I think that we can apply God’s love for Israel to our romantic relationships as well. The issue with many broken relationships today is that we move too quickly from attraction to seduction, and so we mistaken physical intimacy for true intimacy. This is especially so after the sexual revolution. 【8】 The sexual liberation that started in the 1960s was great for feminism, bringing about equality in terms of respecting women’s sexual needs and allowing them to be free to express themselves. But with the accessibility of abortions and contraceptives, it seems like we can enjoy sex without consequences. You might even have heard of the term sexual compatibility, where premarital sex is not just condoned, but necessary for finding the right lifetime partner. But if this is truly the case, why are relationships less lasting these days and marriage rates on the decline?

It’s because physical intimacy is a complement and not a replacement for true intimacy. The relationship remains fragile if without comfort and trust. It is even more so when we are still too immature to deal with our insecurities. This is why we need to look at flourishing life holistically, using Song of Songs, as well as Job and Proverbs. “The celebration of flourishing in light of fragility creates a fuller sense of goodness as a precious, even threatened possibility, and heightens the need for human responsibility and care.” 【9】The more we treasure our relationships, the more we should put effort into them. What happens when we move from attraction to seduction without comfort and trust? We feel insecure about our partners. There are those who will check their partner’s phone. Some will ask them to delete the contacts of the opposite gender. Others use domination: if you love me then you would obey all my demands. Some use material possessions as their security: since I control all the finances, you won’t dare to leave me. If you have done any of these things, I can empathize. You have given your life to the relationship, but what if the other person is not as equally committed as you?

Allow me to share what I’ve learned from today’s passage. To convey comfort and trust, you have to show intimate knowledge of your partner. But I don’t mean it in a creepy stalker manner, so this knowledge giving and acquiring must be mutual and consensual. God constantly reveals himself to Israel and demonstrates his knowledge of Israel. That’s how Israel knows that God is committed to her and loves her. I think you can use this to examine your own relationships: to know and be known. How do you make your partner feel your love? Through knowing their uniqueness and appreciating them. At the same time, you share your vulnerable side and let your partner be a part of them. Needless to say, this knowing and being known takes time, commitment and openness. Some couples make sure there is a weekly date night to share such moments. Some do it as a family over dinner. Talk this through with your partner as a time of intimacy. Then express your appreciation based on your knowledge just like our song today. It is the expressive part that is often neglected. Yet such expressions are intimate, just as important as physical intimacy. Children can feel the closeness when their parents cook their favorite meal, friends can feel the same when they share their silliest memories, and this closeness can be felt between lovers when a partner brings them to a familiar and significant place, because you know you are loved when someone takes the effort to know you and express love. The comfort makes you secure, the trust makes you safe. And you will arrive at the same conclusion as the lover in Song 7: 10 I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me.

【1】Longman, Song of Songs (NICOT)
【2】https://www.jubilee.org.sg/sermons/?sermon_id=1148
【3】Oesch, N., & Miklousic, I. (2012). The dating mind: Evolutionary psychology and the emerging science of human courtship. Evolutionary Psychology, 10(5), 147470491201000511.
【4】Schiffman 1998, pp. 119–20. The speaker is Rabbi Akiva.
【5】https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veni,_vidi,_vici
【6】James, E. T. (2017). Landscapes of the Song of Songs: Poetry and Place. Oxford University Press.
【7】Ibid.
【8】https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_revolution
【9】Ibid.

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