Sex: The Gift of Sexuality
Part 4 of the sermon series "The Seven Words You Can't Say in Church"
Rev. Dr. Charlie Parker
Kay Spiritual Life Center
October 19, 2008
Song of Songs 5:2-6, 8:4-7; John 4:4-26

Song of Songs 5:2-6, 8:4-7 I slept, but my heart was awake. Listen! my beloved is knocking. “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.” I had put off my garment; how could I put it on again? I had bathed my feet; how could I soil them? My beloved thrust his hand into the opening, and my inmost being yearned for him. I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and was gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but did not find him; I called him, but he gave no answer. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!  
Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?
Under the apple tree I awakened you. There your mother was in labor with you; there she who bore you was in labor.  
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned.  

John 4:4-26 But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

I.   Introduction

            Ok, so I don't get invited to preach on sex very often.   In fact, come to think of it, I don't think that anyone over at Metropolitan has ever suggested that I bring up the subject.   In fact, when we were talking about homosexuality and our becoming a Reconciling congregation, several folks suggested that I not bring up the whole sex issue at all; which, I ultimately felt would be a little bit of a problem.   So I'm delighted to have the chance to do something a little out of the ordinary for me.  

            One of the places that pastors often go in sermon preparation is a very helpful book called Naves Topical Bible , which lists Biblical passages by topic.   So I went to Nave's and looked up "Sex," and the closest it had was SEXUAL RELATIONS.   There were no verses listed, but the cross references were, "See Adultery | Bestiality | Copulation | Fornication | Homosexual | Incest | Lasciviousness | Prostitute | Rape." Wow. Is it any wonder we get a bad rap in the church on issues around sex? There's not a single positive word or even morally neutral word (except for "homosexuality," and I'm pretty sure that there we're going to have a list of the seven passages that are used to condemn gay and lesbian folks).

            We wrestle with this issue with the issue of sexuality as a church.   Now, I will say, in the church's defense, that what you see there - in part - is an over-reaction to the obsessive, fetishization of sex that is so rampant in other parts of our culture.   So it feels to me sometimes as though we're in this tug of war between an apparently sex-obsessed media and an equally lop-sided prudishness on the other side.   I actually think that the church can and should play a role in reclaiming a healthy balanced view of sexuality.  

            So let's take a look at a little of the Scriptural witness around sex:

II. Reflecting on the Scriptural Witness

            Sex is part of the Scriptural witness from the beginning.   In the very first chapter of Genesis, sex is part of the story:

So God created humankind in his image
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply.

So from the beginning it is clear that we are created as sexual beings.   In fact, we are created in God's image as sexual beings (we'll get back to this point a little later on).   And the Scriptural witness is equally clear that that is a good thing:   "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good."   So we have an affirmation of our sexuality right at the heart of the creation story that should put to rest any argument that religion is against sex.

            Sexuality is affirmed throughout the stories of the Hebrew Scripture as the patriarchs and matriarchs of our faith marry and have their families.   And there's a wonderful matter-of- factness about our sexuality as being a normal and joyful part of our experience of being human.   Nowhere is there a more clearly joyful celebration of our sexuality than in this wonderful book of the Song of Songs that we heard read this evening.   Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon) was probably written after the Israelite captivity in Babylon, and is a series of dramatic poems, that for the most part is a dialogue between two lovers.  

            It's entire book of the Bible that is dedicated to celebrating romantic and physical love.   So what does this wonderful book tell us about sex?

            The first thing it tells us is that sex is good and a great gift from God.   I don't know that any of us really needed that emphasized, but it's helpful to be clear on that from the beginning.   This book celebrates sex and often does so in some pretty explicit language.   In the passage from chapter 5 that we just heard, the girl's lover knocks on her door in the night and she jumps up to let him in, and she's very clear that there's no need in getting dressed.  

            So the second thing that we learn from Song of Songs about sex is that its appropriate place is within committed love relationship.   All of this dialogue is between two people who are clearly madly in love.   Now, on some level, again, this may be obvious, but it's worth paying attention to: this is not a story about bar hopping, while hoping to "hook up" with somebody.   This is about sex as a natural extension of the love that two people have for one another.   It's within the context of their conversations, their planning their future together.   It's about passionate, committed love.   And sex is clearly both an outflow of that passionate love, and a support and reinforcement of that love.   Sex grows out of love and binds to people together in a powerful way in that experience.

            Men, let me talk to you for a minute; women close your ears.   Women - by and large - understand this better than we do.   We can learn something from them.   Billy Crystal said, "Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place."    And while we may be genetically wired differently from women (and there may be all kinds of evolutionary reasons for that), the fact is that in this case, our genes are no longer doing us any service.   And we need to be careful about that because of the third thing that we learn about sex from the Song of Songs.

[Women, you can listen now].   The third thing that we learn from the Song of Songs: its that sex is a profoundly powerful force; and motivates us in ways that we can never understand.   And when it is used incorrectly or inappropriately, it can be dangerous.     And can lead to all kinds of unexpected results.   Sex always has consequences.

"Do not stir up or awaken love
until it is ready! ...[says the writer of Song of Songs]
... for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame."

            The analogy of passion as a fire is an appropriate and insightful one (and one that has been used in poetry and music through the ages).   It gives warmth and heat, but it can burn; and if it gets significantly misused, it can burn whole structures down.   President Clinton had one of the most successful presidencies in modern history, and ended up under impeachment and with his place in history significantly compromised because he couldn't keep his pants on.  

            One of the dangers that sex presents is that even when it gets used inappropriately, very often sex still does what it's supposed to do, which is to bind two people together.   When we try to use sex casually, it often ends up binding two people together emotionally who are really not good for each other.   And we've all seen this happen: two people are not a good match (for any number of reasons), they have sex, and end up in a very long term relationship which may not be particularly healthy.

            The other danger of our using sex inappropriately is that when we use it casually repeatedly, we risk stripping it of some of its power to bind us to one another.   It's like taking tape off a box and trying to re-tape with it.   Eventually, it can begin to lose its stickiness, and therefore can have a harder time doing what it was intended to do, which is to support and nurture healthy relationship.

III. Some Random Thoughts

            That being said, it's also important to recognize that we're all human, and sex is such a powerful gift, it is not particularly unusual when we make mistakes with it.   And it may be helpful cut ourselves a little slack when that happens and speak a word of grace.   It's noteworthy, particularly given how much some preachers rant about sex, to note that Jesus never brought up the topic.   I don't want to suggest that it was unimportant to him, but rather, I think that he assumed that if people were working on being faithful to God, healthy sexual relationship would flow out of that.

            When Jesus was presented with questions of sexual ethics, he invariably dealt with them gently.   In John 8, when he is presented with the woman caught in adultery - a capital crime - he defuses the crowd and then simply says, "go and sin no more."   In the passage from John 4 that we read tonight, he asks that woman at the well to bring her husband, and when she says she doesn't have one, he tells her that she's been married five times and now she's living with someone.   He doesn't chide her, he simply suggests that that's a situation that she should deal with.

            So I think that we can afford to take a page out of Jesus' book, and address this issue with a little bit of gentleness and grace than we often do.

            I want to close this evening by noting that mystic writers throughout Christian history have often noted that sex is ultimately a precursor to the kind of intimacy that God desires with each of us.   Marcus Aurelius said that "The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer."   Some of the language that the medieval mystics used to discussion their experience of God is quite overtly sexual in nature.   And there are writers who talk about the incredible intimacy of the Trinity in quasi-sexual terms.

            So, on some level, our experience of sexual intimacy here on earth helps us to understand the complete knowing of us that God desires and that will come to fruition in the kingdom.

IV. Conclusion

            Sex is a great gift from God, a gift of great power and beauty.   And like all gifts, particularly those of great power and beauty, it deserves to be handled carefully and respectfully.   I think that our church can play a role in reclaiming a healthy appreciation for sex, and I appreciate Mark giving us the chance to have that discussion tonight.