August 24, 2003 The Reverend Natalie Van Kirk
Cathedral of St. Matthew Dallas, TX
Proper 16
Deuteronomy 5:18
“Holy Sex”

"I speak to you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We come this morning to the seventh in our series of sermons on the Ten Commandments. The seventh commandment is the one which reads, “Commit no adultery.” That is a hard topic for a Sunday morning, but it is one we must examine. We, the church, must learn to think and talk clearly about Christian marriage and sexuality.


Several weekends ago one of the weekend’s banner headlines on MSN’s homepage was “Is Monogamy a Myth?” If one followed the link one was led to an article that trumpeted a newly released study that surveyed men and women and concluded that since men thought about sex more often than women and frequently thought about different partners, men must be hard-wired to have a many sexual partners as possible. Thus, the article concluded, all those old, fusty ideas about monogamy and staying true to the one to whom one was married were unrealistic. Besides, people lived lots longer today—being faithful could mean a long, long time. It couldn’t be done—at least not in the normal run of things. Much better if we learned to see that men—and lots of women--were just made this way and gave up asking them to stop behavior that they were genetically inclined to seek. It isn’t hard to see where the cultural push is going—monogamy is unnatural, and a progressive culture would not ask unnatural things of people. Biology is everything, we cannot choose to behave otherwise.

What utter rot!

One of the reasons I think we as a society have such problems with fidelity and marriage is that we don’t understand what we are doing when it comes to sex. Oh, we know the biology—we are inundated with the biology—but we know absolutely nothing about the place of this gift in God’s order of things.

So, this morning, for a little while, we are going to talk about sex, fidelity, and marriage.
God did not give us the seventh commandment, the one that says, “Commit no adultery,” because God is a spoil-sport, or because God is inadequately informed of the strengths and weaknesses of human nature and human bodies, or because God does not understand sex. God knows. God gave us this commandment because it is good for us, because it will help us become the sorts of human beings that God intends—beings only slightly lower than the angels and NOT beings somewhere on the level of a baboon troop.

God knows something that we often forget—for human beings the sexual encounter is holy, extraordinarily and gloriously holy in ways we barely imagine. We are too often inclined to treat it as something profane and animal-like; run entirely by our biology and disconnected from our souls.

Now, I know for some of you language like “holy sex” sounds mother’s code-language for “Don’t!” a blind injunction which you may have chosen to ignore. But, there is much more to it than that. Sex is sacred, and it is sacred because of the way that God created human beings. Part of our problem is that we have lost the capacity to see ourselves as sacred beings and we don’t really know how we are made.

Before we go on, however, I think I need to interrupt myself and say a word to those of you who carry the awful burden of having transgressed this commandment on your heart and in your lives. I want to say this now so that you hear it right at the beginning. Our Lord Christ promises us that if we turn to him with contrite hearts and ask forgiveness we will be forgiven. There is nothing that you have done that cannot be forgiven if you are willing to seek forgiveness. You do not have to stay stuck in guilt and fear of God’s rejection.

AND, for those of you who have suffered the betrayal of another’s transgression, and all the pain, grief and sorrow that it brings with it, I urge you to remember that Jesus promises healing if we will but seek it. Healing is not the same as forgetting, and healing is not the same as if it never happened, but healing is a restoration of wholeness so that you do not have to stay in this painful place in your life.

Now, let’s go back and talk about why we are sacred beings. Think back with me, if you will, to the creation hymn in Genesis 1. The text describing the creation of human beings is very clear. Human beings are made in the image of God. In the image of God…like God, but not exactly like God…in the image…like God, but NOT God. There are many aspects to this image of God, but one of the most important is also one of the most neglected.

God created human beings so that they can do something that NO OTHER CREATURE in heaven or on earth can do. Like God, human beings can choose whether or not to create a new life. ONLY human beings—not dolphins, not chimpanzees, no other creature, procreation for them is an instinctive act—only human beings can actually choose. It is a choice we make every time we come together. What an incredible power and dignity God has bestowed upon us in this gift—the pleasure and joy of sexual union with full knowledge of its possible result. In this act we most completely fulfill the image of God—male and female together He created them, and male and female together we complete the image of God.

So, there’s one thing that makes sex sacred—it involves us most deeply in the choice and creativity of living out of the image of God implanted within us.

Second, we are beings created in a unity of body and soul. What we do with our bodies affects and changes our souls. It was a heresy of the Gnostics that said that we could do whatever we wished with our bodies and never impact our souls, but it is not a Christian teaching.

In chapter 3 of Genesis we hear for the first time that man and woman together will become as one. This is about much more than a physical closeness in the sexual act. People who are intimate, whether they intend it or not, form a kind of soul-link that connects them for good or ill. This oneing is the reason that Christians are enjoined to keep their sexual activity within the bounds of holy matrimony. The commitment of fidelity in marriage means that you can trust your partner’s oneness with you. There is no reason to hold part of yourself back—you can give all of yourself and you don’t have to keep secrets. In this way marriage images our relationship with God—we can open our souls to another and live in union/oneness—just as our souls are to be open to God so that we might live in union with Him.

This is not the case in relationships outside of marriage. In such encounters it would be foolish to open all of oneself—especially if the encounter is a one-time event. People who have lots of casual partners learn to withhold parts of themselves from their relationships. The relationships are not completely safe so they always keep something back—they never make a complete, wholehearted commitment. All this avoidance of commitment, all of this holding back, shapes their souls—they become tight and hard, finding it hard to give and ever harder to trust that someone else might actually give to them. This is true even for couples who end up marrying the person they have lived with before marriage. I can tell you that from a pastoral standpoint, and as a spiritual director, I have never, ever heard someone say that they thought that living together was good for their marriage. I can also tell you that it takes a long, long time for people to undo the habit of withholding and learn to engage and love their spouses wholeheartedly.

I also know from working with people who have committed adultery that when we engage in sexual activity with someone else after our marriage it remains a secret hidden in the depths of the marriage. The partner who has erred cannot share all of him or herself with the spouse, because to share all of the self would be to share the secret and cause terrible pain. The spouse may never actually know, but he or she will sense the withdrawal and will begin to withdraw in return. Souls are disengaged and separated in a mocking reversal of the engagement and intertwining that the sacrament of marriage began.

We, however, have become a culture that wants to believe that “Friends” and “Sex in the City” are telling the truth; that we can be with whomever we wish, whenever we wish, and so long as we are careful to be “safe” about the public health issues, there are no serious consequences, no regrets, no costs. It’s a lie. And we must learn to tell our children that it is a lie.

We pay a terrible spiritual price for sexual activity outside of the commitment of marriage. God knows this, and it is why we were instructed to keep strict boundaries around our sexual activity.

Our lack of understanding about the relationship between the sacredness of human nature and human sexuality are two reasons why we are having such a hard time as a culture with marriage and fidelity. There is also a third reason that is related to the other two—we don’t really have a deep understanding of marriage in the Christian context. There has been a lot of talk lately that makes it seem like marriage in a Christian context is little more than some sort of cosmic permission giving—at least for so long as one’s partner makes one happy, or for so long as one feels “in love.” That’s a pretty thin, self-centered view of marriage, and it leads to excuses for adultery like, “I don’t feel in love with you anymore,” or “This relationship just isn’t making me happy.”

I think marriage is about something much more important than making us happy—marriage is about making us holy. Marriage works only when both partners are willing to put the needs of the other before their own. It is about disciplining our own needs and seeking the good of the other person in all things. That’s what this morning’s passage from Ephesians is talking about, tenderly caring for your spouse and putting his or her needs before your own. That’s hard. That is Christ-like. Let me be clear, this is NOT about being a doormat for your spouse. It IS about doing your best to provide the sort of loving security, and accountability that will help your partner grow into the sort of person that God intends for him or her to be.

You know, Scripture promises that priests will be held accountable before God for their commitment to helping the people come to know God and grow into the sorts of people God intends for them to be. As married people, I think we will be held to the same sort of accountability with regard to our spouses—how well have you helped your spouse grow into the sort of person God intends for him or her to be? And, you know what? If you direct yourself toward that goal, you will find that you are happy, too!

Have you ever read the Song of Songs? It is a love poem of extraordinary beauty and tenderness. The tradition of the Church says that Solomon wrote it as a poem that speaks on two levels—the first one the rapturous love of a bride and a bridegroom, the second on the level of the passionate desire and longing that God feels for God’s people. By working on these two levels the poem shows us the beauty and holiness of the sexual relationship, and the way that the expression of that marital relationship mirrors for us the passion and love that God feels for us. You see, this too is a place where we are “in the image of God.”

Set me as a seal upon your heart, [say the lover and God]
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
passion as 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 one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned. (8:5-7)

I cannot read it all to you here, but I give you this challenge. Read the Song of Songs this week. Read it so that God might use it to show you how much He loves you. Read it so that you might understand the joy, the passion, and the sacredness of human sexual expression. In a Christian understanding marriages are—like the Song of Songs—to be images of God’s love for God’s people and Christ’s love for the Church. Marriages set on such a foundation will not fail. For marriages set on this foundation the seventh commandment will ultimately be irrelevant, because there will be no temptation to do that which the commandment forbids."

Thank you for those words, I must say this thread makes so much sense, thanks Hurtin

SD, thank you for sharing this. It was uplifting. It's good to hear of some who still believe 'old-fashioned' values.
Especially in Texas, home to my heart!
Harold

I personally have a very difficult time w/ the mass media spreading the gospel of Infidelity nad glorifying it.

I am such an old fashioned girl. I feel that my morals are pretty well inorder. I cringe everytime I see anther form of mass media promoting Sexual Permiscuity (sorry for the spelling). I cringe alot. I look like I have a tic.

When will the pendulum swing back to fidelity in mass media?

Why is there so much money in selling infidelity?

I just do not get it?

How dare they!!!!!
xo
Hypatia

I have a HUGE problem w/violence as well. When did it become the norm to show such much on TV and video games???? Even commercials!

I took the kids to Cici's Pizza on Saturday. There was NOT ONE friendly video game, i.e., Frogger, Pac Man, Tron, Centipede, Donkey Kong, etc.

I know these are old but they do not promote violence or have kids using guns! I do not understand this at all. My 3 year old son kept wanting to go to the game w/the fake guns to shoot at people. Very disturbing. I do not think these should be allowed in places geared towards youngsters. In fact, I think I am going to e-mail Cici's and see if I can get a response. I am so sick of all this and it being so accepted.