NSFC: Spirituality, Sex, and Longing in the Song of Songs

May 31, 2026 - July 5, 2026

The liturgical season of “Ordinary Time” or “Sundays After Pentecost” is long – summertime and most of the fall (up to Advent). So we’ll have several short series this season.

First up: let’s read the entirety of the Song of Songs. This epic poem is categorized as “wisdom literature” in the Hebrew Bible, which gives us pause because it is one of two biblical books that never mentions God. (The other is Esther.) And the Song of Songs is very, very, very sensual- unto-sexual. Why is this erotic poem included in the canon? And why, especially through the Middle Ages, has it inspired the church’s most prominent theologians to return to it for theological wisdom again and again?

We’ll use a traditional outline to divide the book into 5 readings. Each of the first 4 readings ends with a short address to the “daughters of Jerusalem,” perhaps written by an editor to form the “stitching” that weaves separate love songs together in this compilation into one piece.

Each of these weeks is titled “[Blank] is Sexy.” Sexy is not a useful category for everyone if it refers to actual sex – but it is a useful adjective in this context for what is good, true, beautiful, right, and necessary.

Your Body is Sexy. We can’t get around it in the SoS – bodies are beautiful, especially in the eyes of someone who knows and loves your body. And sex, too, as something (most of) our bodies want, is sexy and good and blessed and biblical.