Christian
Sex?
Exodus 20:14, Song of Solomon 7:12a – 8:7a
A
Sermon Preached by
University
Congregational United
A young woman had signed up to take a class called Christian sexuality.
Her friend was shocked – “A whole class?! What is there to say except Don’t!”
Today we are going to see if there is anything more for Christians to say about sexuality than “Don’t!”
I don’t remember a single sermon about sex when I was growing up. So I called on our youth and their families for their advice. What is important to say in a sermon on sex, and what questions should it address? I received enough questions to fill a sermon series – and an outpouring of honest stories about loving.
We are human, “made by love, for love”. We all have stories of loving we need to share and stories we need to hear.
On Friday, three and a half year old Emma came by my office. She told me she had a new desk but that something was missing on it. “What’s that?” I asked. “A picture of my boyfriend, Nick.” “What’s a boyfriend?” I asked. “A boyfriend is a friend that you play with at your friend’s house.” When I talked to her yesterday, Emma was happy. She had a picture of Nick on her desk. “How do you feel when you look at his picture?” I asked. “Really surprised!”
It is really a surprise, and a delight, how pictures of loved ones show up our desks, those we call friends and family and boyfriends and girlfriends, lovers and spouses and partners. They show up in some wondrous and mysterious way in our lives and in our hearts. We wonder, “How did YOU get in there?”
Our sexuality is our energy for connection. It is made known in many ways - in our efforts to build community, in acts of tenderness and even in our struggle to find each other again after an argument. Our sexuality is the constantly burning fire within us that causes us to turn towards each other. In this sense, we are being sexual – expressing our relational energy as women and men, boys and girls, male and female – all of the time.
It is truly amazing to be a human being that has all these feelings in us. Feelings are just that – feelings. We all have them and they aren’t bad. It is what we do with our feelings that is important. And it is sometimes challenging and hard to make sense of all these feelings - as first grader Ashlin and her friend Patrick discovered:
“Billy has a crush on Annie. A real crush.”
“Oh, what’s a crush?” Ashlin asked.
“It’s when you’re around somebody and your heart starts beating really fast.”
“Oh right,” Ashlin responded.
But then it was Patrick’s turn to be puzzled. “What does it mean when your heart’s not beating at all?”
Ashlin smiled. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
The Christian scriptures are filled with stories of people whose hearts are beating really fast. Beating fast for friends and lovers, for God and for nation. They are all so human – and sometimes, often, they act without much thinking. But when the time is right – when we are mature and our hearts beat fast for one another, it is beautiful beyond measure. It’s the “Song of Solomon”. The Song of Solomon is a poem about the sexual awakening of a young woman and her lover. It is noteworthy that the most sexually explicit text in the Bible has nothing to say about our country’s favorite obsessions about sex – homosexuality, gay marriage, premarital sex and birth control. As if that is all there is to say about sexuality! Instead, the Song of Solomon just wants to sing to us about the wonder it is when love and sexuality come together.
The synagogue and the church
have often been terribly embarrassed by this text. When our ancestors haven’t been trying to cut
it out of scripture, they have mainly ignored it or explained away the sexual
imagery as a love song about
Instead, we need to talk about our loving. If adults like me aren’t having conversations about intimacy and sexuality and how they ought to be handled faithfully in our lives, chances are our youth and young adults aren’t having such conversations either. We owe our kids more than that – and they deserve to hear our stories about our loving.
It’s not just another “good
idea”. As church member Ashley Jackson
shared, adults and adolescents talking openly about sexuality saves lives. Ashley, a Pomona College Junior, came to our
Sunday night high school gathering last month to talk to us about the research
project she had done this past fall in the West African country of
Ashley’s questions challenge all of us: “How can we teach our congregation’s children and youth to respect themselves and their bodies?
“How can we teach our youth and adults to respect sex as an act of love to share with someone you deeply respect, trust and admire? I think God has our best interest at hand and Biblical commandments are not an attempt to control people. Rather they serve as good advice and direction so that even if we lose our reason temporarily, we won’t do anything stupid that we’ll regret later.”
What does the Bible say about sex? Not a heck of a lot.
Five verses about same sex relations – none of which relate to same sex relations between loving, committed adults as we see today. Nothing that speaks to our modern understanding of sexuality as an “orientation” – a gift and mystery that all of us have – that draws us to be primarily attracted to people of the opposite sex or the same sex or both. The Bible says nothing about gay marriage. Not much at all about marriage itself.
Nothing directly about abortion or premarital sex or birth control. Quite a bit about the importance of celibacy.
Although the Bible is often misused and misinterpreted as “rule book on sex” the Bible does not have a clear “sex ethic”. Instead it has a very clear love ethic about how our loving relationships of all kinds should be with one another based in mutual respect, love and care.
The scripture is clear that our bodies, intimacy with others and sex are gifts of God. And they are especially precious because Christians have been given a story that God comes to us not in abstract principles or theories but in flesh. In the flesh of a real human being born 2000 years ago Christians have seen the face and way of God. In our own flesh, Christians have seen the hand of God at work, daring to believe that we really are made in the image of God, that we are the body of Christ, that God dwells in us. God gave us skin longing for touch, orgasms for pleasure and hearts to fall in love. Incredibly good and precious gifts that we need to hold in trust and care lest they be used to hurt and harm others and ourselves. .
This week I heard real life stories of the kind of Christian love ethic we are living out here. Stories and experiences we need to tell and proclaim in a world starving for Good News we Christians know about our loving and our sexuality.
A friend of mine has a grandson, Max, who is 16. Max wonders if he might be gay or bisexual. He wants to be truthful with his friends and he has turned to his grandmother for advice. His grandmother is worried how kids might respond. I went to a young person in our church for help on what to say who shared good advice on how to talk to friends. “Pick your friends carefully. Check it out with them one on one. Sit down with your family and talk about it so they can understand where you are coming from.”
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A mom shared, “I really think people need to be told that masturbation is not evil and just part of human experience. There are all sorts of odd ‘truths’ we pass on to our kids due to us not talking about sex.” That is the kind of freeing up of scripture from a list of “do not’s” to honest, open speech we need.
A dad shared with me, “I wish someone had shared with me as a teenager that biologically my whole body was trying to trick me into having a baby. Maybe then I could have understood a little more about what was going on with me.” That is the kind of conversation about our sexuality we need to be having.
Adolescent sexuality is not only or even primarily a biological phenomenon – we also long for connection, for intimacy, for real relationships. Most of us – adults and youth - don’t understand intimacy fully or do it very well all the time – but something draws us into relationship with each other. Intimacy doesn’t necessarily include genital sex. In fact, most of the time it doesn’t – and shouldn’t. We need to learn to be intimate with each other without being sexual.
Many times we may have stumbled into sexual intimacy because we have replaced or misunderstood sexual energy and excitement for love. As Tricia Gardner shared, “It is hard to find love when you aren’t sure who you are – let alone the person who claims to love you.”
Sexual development is best at a gradual, slow pace. As one mom shared, “Thicht Nhat Han, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk said, ‘You can not love somebody if you first do not understand that person.’ I read that and finally understood why lots of my love/sexual relationships did not work out to be ever so loving. If you have sex based on some shallow ‘below the belt’ feeling, that is not requiring of deep understanding, that is what you get and it can make really nice babies, but its just sex, not something deeply spiritual. To get love and sex you have to abstain until you get to know someone well.”
Sharing genital sex with one another is a big deal. Sharing physically with one another is a big deal. We make love in so many ways –ranging from kissing and touching to sexual intercourse. The physical and genital expression of our sexuality is a most tender place – full of the possibility of great hurt and of great joy. It gets out of place when the level of sexual involvement outstrips the level of commitment. As a pastor I have heard more heart-rending stories of angst and hurt when sexual involvement has outstripped commitment. You should only move at your own pace, and do not do anything before you are ready to. Never think you have to do anything related to sex.
A sexual relationship grows slowly over time. It requires a certain maturity that most haven’t had when they begin a sexual relationship with another.
Sex has the same dangers of all other escapes – alcohol, food, tv – and can become an addiction that is not healthy.
Sex should not be an Olympic event at which people have to feel pressure to perform. Instead it requires an ability to speak up for yourself and your needs. A kind of maturity that knows there is something more than copying our friends or letting them decide when we are ready.
It requires something harder than slipping into relationships of abuse or domination and instead seeking the harder work of equality and mutuality which requires vulnerability, honesty, truth – and the embarrassment of talking about sex.
A kind of maturity that doesn’t give in to shame and keeps us from getting sexual protection to protect our partners.
If we are honest, I think many of us who are or who have been in a sexual relationship would have to admit that we didn’t do or know all this before a sexual relationship began. I think many of us wish we had – and we want more for our kids. Sexual relationships grow and change over time. You need a maturity that is willing to grow with changing bodies and changing selves.
And the maturity to enter a sexual relationship means that you know your boundaries and what to say NO to:
You don’t have sex with people you have “power” over – or potentially have “power” over – that includes children, parishioners, clients.
You don’t have sex with other people’s wives/husbands/partners.
You don’t force sex on anyone including your wife/husband/partner.
When asked about premarital sex, I am often tempted to respond, “Well, I’ve been enjoying it for the past twenty years!” But Dave and I have been trying to get married! After 20 years it is about time! And yet while our state Supreme Court ponders, we are glad that we are part of the United Church of Christ which was able to bless our relationship and recognize it as a holy covenant commitment.
Sex and marriage are not related in the way they once were. Maybe we need to make a distinction today as one person suggested to me between premarital sex and non-marital sex. Premarital sex is when there is intention for a relationship to grow in love. Non-marital sex is sex as an experiment, trying something out - when there is sex with another only for pleasure and no desire for lasting communion or relationship. We can and need to do a lot better than settling for non-marital sex. Indeed, I think that it is an abuse of the gift of sex and our sexuality. Sex is too important and holy to be used like that.
So much in our sexuality and sexual relationships has been bruised and battered – that is true for each and every one of us. Some of our bodes have been violated by others. Some of us have used our bodies against others. That is all true. And there is something else alive among us as well. There is good loving, good sexuality, and good sexual relations in this place and that is a gift to this community and to all of us.
As one couple shared, “When God is part of our coupling there is healing and joy and peace and love and it is wow.”
Another shared, “God is at the center of our lives and our relationship. We share deeply in a marriage based on mutuality and respect. The sex flows naturally and beautifully out of that.”
Christians do have a lot more to say about sex than “no”. Sexuality is more than a distraction that is keeping us from talking about crucial issues like justice, hunger, medical care, education, and economic improvements. Instead, our sexuality, that which calls us to turn towards the other, is what has the potential to break open our hearts to care for the sick and dying, the elderly and little child, to care for the earth, to work to end the way of war, and reach out to the stranger, to be and do the beautiful, challenging, amazing work of love that Christ calls us to be and do.
Friends, let us go forth to Love.
* * * * * * *
This sermon could not have been written without the outpouring of stories of loving and thoughtful questions that our youth, their families and members of this congregation have shared. I am deeply thankful. We must keep telling and sharing our stories of loving. Also, I am grateful for these people and resources:
Lloyd J. Averill, Reconsider Love. I got the quote “We are made by love, for love” from Lloyd.
Dorothy C. Bass and Don C. Richter, Way to Live: Christian Practices for Teens, chapter 3: “Bodies”.
Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation
Fran Ferder and John Heagle, Tender Fires: The Spiritual Promise of Sexuality. Ferder and Heagle, a Franciscan sister and diocesan priest have taught Christian Sexuality at Seattle University and opened up “sexuality” to a universal reality beyond “genital sexuality”. I am indebted to them for their definitions of “sexuality” and “sex”.
Ashley Jackson, “Unprotected Sex in the Face of AIDS: The Motives and Rationale of Youth in the North and South of Cameroon”, a paper for the School For International Training: SIT Cameroon; Fall 2005
Cory Maclay and Tony Robinson. Materials from their workshop “Christian Sex” at the Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry, January 17-20.
Amy Schalet, PhD, “Must we Fear Adolescent Sexuality?” by Amy Schalet, PhD. To view the article go to: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/494933