January 19, 2003 At Crossroads & Woodruff Churches

In Lakewood & Long Beach California

Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-10 1 Corinthians 6: 12-20

Generations Together: "Called to Serve"

Introduction

Paul was stunned. He had gone to the city of Corinth and preached a Gospel of liberation from all the things that enslave us. But now there was a problem with sex.

Paul had a new vision of freedom that was unbounded by race or class or tribe or clan. He saw a new kind of human being that lived in, and by, trust in Jehovah: trust in the God whose name is I AM. Trust in a God who was not the private god of one people or culture or race but, rather, the Truth behind every culture and every people.

This trust saw each living being as part of the process of discovery and awe, of witness and mission that proclaimed to the whole world that the Truth for everyone was love.

"Not your truth or my truth, but the Truth behind everything is love."

And just as that love embraced a Jew, Joshua Messiah, (whom we call by his Greek name, Jesus Christ) when Jesus offered himself in faith and trust on the cross, so that love would embrace each of us. And it embraces us with a love that must, by its nature be eternal. Paul claimed that when you and I live by faith and learn to trust this Truth - this God we do not control instead of the powers we think we control - then we become children of that eternal Truth. Then we share in its eternity and do not die.

But now there was a problem. The church in Corinth - it was not really a church yet, it was a Greek speaking Jewish Synagogue with a strong messianic bent and it had lots of former pagans accepted as members - this church in Corinth was divided and fighting.

You see, Paul had preached freedom to the people of Corinth because Jesus had made it clear that just following the rules is never enough. You couldn?t trust the rules, in the end, because rules, after all, are something we can appropriate - something we can understand and try to control.

But Paul said that, in the end, we had to trust the Truth. Truth was completely beyond our control. The rules didn't really work. What worked was the faith that the Truth loved you. And it was that love - called grace - not the rules that made all the difference in peoples lives.

Of course, Paul still meant that you should and must follow the rules as much as you can and then throw your trust to God "for the rest." Rules are never enough, to be sure. And rules are never right in every situation. They often need refining and adaptation to new situations. Paul knew that was true even for the rules he was making.

If you counted on grace: that is, if you 1) trusted the Truth and 2) if the Truth loves you then that was enough.

(And, Paul, who had had a vision of the risen Christ on the Damascus road, had no doubts about God, the Truth, loving us through Jesus.)

Because nobody could have, and know, and follow all the rules, the rules weren?t going to work. But Jesus showed us how to trust. And Jesus risked everything for us, therefore, we are not tied to the rules.

Well, it is not an easy message, and, of course, the Corinthian Church didn?t get it.

The Corinthians assumed that freedom in Christ meant license to do anything: including selling yourself back into slavery or supporting the slavery of others.

Most of all, the clever folks in Corinth asked, what about sex? They said: just as the stomach is designed for food, so, the body is designed for sex.

And the problem is, what they said made a lot of sense to them and it makes as much or more sense now, 2000 years later.

If you think about it, over the eons, God has brilliantly designed our bodies exactly for sex. You could argue, and lots of people do, that we got bigger brains in order to compete better to have more chance to have sex and have successful offspring.

God made us that way. So what is the problem?

2000 years later, we are still struggling with that question.

Without sex, none of us would exist, and without it most of us wouldn?t be very happy. Since God, who designed us, designed us to get profound pleasure - and a lot of health and emotional benefits - from sex, what was Paul?s problem? That is what I would like to begin - only begin - to talk about today.

So what does Paul really have to say about sex, and how is it relevant to us in the 21^{st Century?}

Here are the first three of a hundred thoughts:

One: Paul believed the world was ending.

Two: the soul, and the care of the soul, unites us and sets us free and makes us all one family while the body ties us to competition, earthly struggles, ethnic divisions and survival of the fittest.

And three: We have been set free by God, but the body and sex are often used to dominate, oppress, abuse, control and enslave. And if we are free, that must be avoided.

I. Crisis and the Transformation of the World

First, Paul was convinced, at least early in his ministry, that the end of the world was at hand. It certainly was pretty clear that Jewish life in Palestine was coming to an end. The geo-political signs all pointed to war with Rome and, if war came, either God would have to intervene in a whole new way in history to defeat the Romans or Jerusalem, the Temple and Jewish way of life as it was known by the people of Judah, Samaria, and Galilee, would come to an end.

So, if the world was about to end, why worry about children or pregnancy or offspring or competing for sex? In crisis times, sex is just a distraction. Like the 19th century Shaker communities, your faith should be enough to get you through the "end times" and there is no reason for the distraction of sex. This is, I think, the first thing Paul thought about sex.

And after 2000 years, some of us still sometimes wonder if our world isn?t too much of a mess for us to bring children into it.

Keep in mind that Paul wrote to the Corinthians less than 15 years before Jerusalem is burned to the ground and most of the residents were slaughtered or enslaved. If the Messiah was to return, it needed to happen soon. And it wasn?t going to be pretty either way.

Violence was everywhere, and the most powerful hope for these early Christians was for the transformation of the world.

All this violence made sex, families and children something to be postponed or avoided altogether. That is the first thing Paul thought about sex.

The second thing he thought was much more complicated:

But maybe we should think of it like some giant World Wrestling Federation match:

II. The Immortal Soul verses the Immortal Flesh.

Paul thought, "If we truly are different people because of our faith, then there is also a different way to carry on the human race."

Some of you may have heard discussions about "meems." Especially about "meems" verses genes:

Meems are ideas. They are the mind understanding and developing strategies and tools to survive in the world rather than the body developing biological adaptations to survive.

Sex, of course, is all about genes. Those whose bodies successfully adapt - who have better genes - are better competitors and have more access to sex and successful child rearing.

Meemes, ideas, are passed along in songs, stories, nursery rhymes, prayers, rituals and books, not sex.

Genes make us immortal because they are passed on parent to child for thousands of years. Meems make us immortal because the ideas and strategies for life are passed on forever. Indeed, they seemed to live before we discovered them and they - and we in them - continue to live long after our bodies are gone.

We are now ?souls? who are immortal because we are part of the immense project of learning, discovery and culture which gives us one God as father of all and makes all of us - at least anyone who ever wanted to learn something - sisters and brothers in one family.

From Socrates to Saul, all this stuff about souls and heaven was the struggle of the Hellenistic mind to express this new reality which they were just beginning to understand.

But if we are immortal souls rather than genes, that, clearly, gives a different meaning, priority and purpose to sex. And, more importantly, it gives a completely different role to human - and particularly male - competitiveness in sexuality and for sex.

And that is exactly where the problem lies. Every time I hear about spousal abuse or see a drama based on family conflict ?and almost every time I read about violence of any kind including tribal wars and gang violence in Los Angeles or downtown Long Beach, I am reminded that: central to male sexuality is male aggressiveness.

If sex were just about two people coming together to celebrate their bodies, it would probably never have been a problem for Paul or anyone else. If it were just about babies, it would not be a problem. But it is not.

Sex is just as much - at least for males - about competition and even violence as anything else.

Sex is about who is stronger and better adapted. It is about passing on the stronger genes. And that means, for each one of us men, it is about passing on our own genes.

Now sex may be used in lots of other ways and the vast majority of people who have sex today are probably desperately hoping not to pass on any genes at that particular moment.

But the whole thing is designed that way. And power and violence and selfish division are as much a part of sex as any pleasure and joy.

If you separated out crimes related to the drug war, there would probably be more people - more men - in jail because of this connection between competitiveness and sex than any other reason. Jealousy, spousal abuse, the crazy competitiveness of adolescents: all this is tied to the competitiveness of our innate sexuality. Before language and our ability came along to pass on ideas, that competitiveness was essential for human adaptation and survival.

Now, however, that competition is in most ways destructive to human survival.

Real learning takes place when men and women live together in peace, not in combat. Souls and brotherhood and understanding and the human family grow in peace.

Genes get better with struggle, violence and competition.

Ideas get better with the challenges of peace.

Paul, growing up as a Jew deep under the thick blanket of Hellenistic Greek culture that Alexander the Great had spread over the whole middle east four hundred years before, saw an end to the struggle of tribe and clan and ethnic group against tribe and clan and ethnic group. These ethnic and tribal struggles were symbolic of the struggle for genetic survival. Paul saw their replacement by an immortality that came from learning and ideas - that came from trusting the love of God the Truth. In other words, an immortality that came from the explorations of the soul.

If trusting the truth was how your learned and if learning was what mattered, then sex did not matter. In fact, since sex made men fight, it was evil. Indeed, sex was only good when it was safely controlled within marriage, fidelity and monogamy.

If genetic competition is what mattered, then sex was everything. And, if that was true, the evil world of warring nations, tribes and ethnic groups as it existed in Paul?s time was never going to change. But, of course, Paul was convinced it would change. Change soon. And change forever. And - in more ways than we recognize - it did.

There is one more thing that must be mentioned as we try to make sense of what Paul was thinking.

You see, when we are living by the old ethic of competition and genetic survival

?and when our sexuality is intimately connected - at least for men - to competition and often to violence, then sexuality often - very often - was used as a vehicle of domination oppression. Very often sex is not a gentle embrace. Often sex is used like a hammer.

So Paul, a Jew, member of a race who had so often experienced oppression and domination, was very sensitive about doing

III. Justice with our Flesh.

If sex were always between equals with equal strength and equal ability to say no and equal resources to deal with the consequences of sex, then sex might be a pure and wonderful blessing: a gift from God.

But that ideal reality only rarely exists, and it usually only exists in the contest of a true committed and consecrated relationship between partners who are of equal worth and strength.

Ask any women and she will tell you of cases of abuse she knows. Almost every woman knows someone where the man ceased being the gentle embracer and began to act like a hammer.

For so many men, the reliable possession of a sex partner without interlopers feels like the core purpose of their lives, and divorce, rejection or spousal unfaithfulness makes them bitter, crazy and dangerous.

And, because of the very core nature of male sexuality, and the competition that was created to be part of it, male violence is, in fact, less an aberration than the norm. I admit I am less and less shocked when male violence happens, than I am one who wants to celebrate when it doesn?t happen. Celebrate those men who manage to keep their violence under control.

And I think Paul recognized this, too. Sex and violent competition were connected deep in the hearts of most adult males.

But there is more. The spoils of war in Paul?s day were slaves. And slaves - male as well as female - have always been liable for sexual abuse.

Remember that the founding of the City of Rome starts with the story of the abduction and rape of the Sabine Women.

The rich and powerful have - again and again through history - used their power to spread their genes around or to dominate and even humiliate others.

What happened outside of Rome three thousand years ago was still happening in Bosnia less then ten years ago. Only there, and in Rwanda, for the first time, rape was labeled a war crime.

And then there is male rape.

Why do men fear the affection of other men? They fear two - perhaps three things. First and foremost they fear being dominated. They fear that the affection of another man will become sexual domination. Second - and perhaps the greatest fear - is that they might enjoy the feeling of being dominated. There might be a sense of safety and satisfaction in belonging to the dominant male. And finally, there is the terror that if the temptation presented itself they might find it too easy to become dominators of others. The weak men are too willing and the strong men are too able to avoid turning the pleasure of sex into a process for creating slaves and masters instead of equals.

So, for all the gentleness and affection of which men are capable? For all the ways that men live lovingly with their wives and peaceably with other men, still, because we are designed to survive by genetic adaptation through competition, our bodies are profoundly well designed to struggle, dominate and compete sexually with each other.

So sex is has - built into it - the temptation to hurt, damage, divide, and abuse.

Sex almost seems designed for injustice because it truly is designed - again, at least for men - for the most selfish of ends. It was designed for the old genetic way to adapt for survival. It also often flies in the face of honesty and sharing needed to discover new ideas together, to explore and understand not with our flesh, but with our minds and our souls.

In all this, Paul was looking for justice and mercy at a time when the world was being transformed - and what he saw was a hundred ways that sex could, instead, be used neither for justice, nor mercy but for their opposites.

Conclusion

Of course this is a huge topic, and today, we can at best scratch the surface. And, more importantly, we need to consider all this from the point of view of Christ?s call to us. ?God?s calling our name in the middle of the night and our answering "Here I am." ?Christ?s calling us along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and our answering, "we are here to follow you."

What does it mean to follow Jesus, and how does that affect who we are as sexual beings in the beginning of the third millennium of the Christian era?

I went to Woodstock. I love my body. I love sex. But I love justice and mercy, freedom and peace more. And that has given me and will give us all plenty to think about for a long time.

God calls to you: your whole being, body and soul.

God, the Truth calls in the middle of the night. Will you seek answers with your whole heart?

Will you answer, "Here I Am, Lord?"

When Jesus calls you to follow him with your whole life, will you leave your fishing and follow him down the shore of Galilee?

When God calls you, are you - your mind and your body - ready to go?