Warsaw in the nineties, a long queue at the post office, and a young man discovering he would gladly stand in it even longer, because she is standing next to him. From that scene the speaker leads us through the Song of Songs, built like a mountain: from first fascination, through belonging to one another and the wedding, up to the summit where the chorus celebrates love. The sermon shows why intimacy cut off from God loses its context, like a bird with the sky taken away, and what marriage really is within it. Listen if you want to see love, sex and faithfulness the way God’s own poetry describes them.
Discussion questions
For your small group or for personal reflection after the sermon.
- The sermon describes Song of Songs 2:8-5:1 as a mountain: from attraction, through belonging and the wedding, up to the summit in 5:1. What does this structure tell us about how God sees love?
- The chorus repeats: do not awaken love until the time is right, yet at the summit it says: eat and drink. Why does the same love call for waiting at one point and for celebration at another?
- The speaker used the picture of the earth cut loose from the sun. What happens to love, relationships and sexuality when we separate them from God, their source?
- The bride says: my beloved is mine and I am his. How do you understand the idea that love needs a context the way birds need the sky, and that exclusivity frees more than it limits?
- What might the "little foxes that ruin the vineyard" be in your life or relationship, the ordinary everyday things that get neglected in the rush or in the excitement?
- Before the wedding the speaker's father told him: remember, you no longer belong to yourself. How can you show attention and care to someone close to you in a concrete way this week?
