Oh, hello again, you've survived and returned for the next day of sexual reading with pastor Nick. I can assure you today's reading is just as awkward and still fully encourage you to read the scripture yourself, but, the audio bible is available if you would like it. Also, just a reminder that our next live reading of the Bible is this upcoming Monday. (Gosh could you imagine if this book fell on Monday?) I'll share that info on tomorrow's post and Monday's. Till then, let's read!
Scripture to Read
Audio Bible
Questions to Consider
What does this teach me about humanity?
What does this teach me about culture both now and then?
Is lust holy?
- My Thoughts -
Because the book ends today and I still want to share the overview video I'm going to keep this relatively short, but I really wanted to add my comments on this book. Song of Solomon is facisnating to me. The content itself makes me uncomfortable to read because I'm a prude, but it also feels so far ahead of time in ways. The church has always had an odd relationship with sex. Very rarely is it talked about in sermons on Sunday or taught in bible study classes. In pre-marital we encourage partners to be fruitful and multiply but we rarely talk about it otherwise. Sexual activity is often viewed with shame or disappointment when someone becomes active before marriage. Yet, we have this book nearly in the very center of the Bible that is SOO sexual in nature with intense details. If we consider the whole Bible holy, than so is this. Thus we can conclude - sexuality is holy - and the Bible says it is.
The reason I bring this up is because of the struggles that we often have with the LGBT+ community. When it comes to straight people (like this scene) we tend to avoid the topic of sex or at least pretend that no one is doing it. But when it comes to those on the LGBT+ spectrum we obsess over the sexual acts by either fetishizing lesbian acts and/or shaming gay acts. In other words, we're so disturbed by what they do that we cannot in good conscious accept it as "normal." It's easy to read the Bible at face value and say "well this is about the young MAN and the young WOMAN not MAN and MAN" but I don't think this is really about the who rather than the what so to speak. It's about the 'umbrella' of sexuality not just a branch of it.
Song of Songs is helpful for me in this way because it speaks openly about sexual activity and the desire that children of God have for one another. If that's true (no matter how uncomfortable it makes me to read it) for Solomon and his 48,000 lovers, can it not also be true of God's LGBT children? I'd like to believe so
Overview Video
This will help recap everything you read in the last two days and offer some context on it as well.
Prayer
Our prayer for today is inspired by hymn 167 in our United Methodist Hymnal - The Canticle of Christ's Obedience
Let us pray:
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in our likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which in above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.
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