Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: I Corinthians 6:12-20, 10:23-24
July 27, 2003
I begin with a pair of stories that I choose to call signs of our time. The first was told to me by one of my younger clergy colleagues, currently serving a church in that geographic region of the state known as Saginaw Bay. It seems my friend was doing a little preparatory work with a couple contemplating matrimony. When all of the other details and loose ends had been addressed, he said to them: “Are there any more questions?” “Just one,” said the groom. “I wonder if you can tell me why my bride and me are being forced to go to an AIDS class.”
For the uninitiated among you, it is no longer required that a pair of newlyweds submit proof of blood testing. Replacing it was a short-lived requirement to attend a county-sponsored class on sexually transmitted diseases, including the HIV virus. My colleague understood and even sympathized with this man’s protest, given the fact that the groom in question had already reached the ripe old age of 89. What’s more, his bride-to-be was 86 and counting. “Even if I get the disease,” the man continued, “they say that it customarily has an incubation period of eight to ten years. By that time I will have long since kicked off from other causes.” He was right. He made it to the AIDS class. He never made it to the altar. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage three weeks later.
My second story is not really a story so much as a Sunday comic strip, which I have carried in my files for a number of years. The strip is called “Outland,” and features the antics of a rather erudite penguin named Opus. In this particular strip, Opus is in a costume shop, having decided to purchase a Peter Pan outfit so that he (in his words) “can fly to Never-Never Land and never have to grow up.” The proprietor of the costume shop sells him a Peter Pan suit and then says: “But don’t forget to take along this kit of Peter Pan accessories. The kit includes Peter Pan mace, Peter Pan bulletproof vest, Peter Pan handbooks on drug abuse, sexual abuse, parental abuse, chemical abuse, pregnancy and disease control.” Rummaging to the bottom of the kit, Opus finds one additional box which contains several individualized packets. Opening them up, he says: “And what are these?” To which the proprietor says: “That’s your Peter Pan protection.” The only problem being that the kit is now so heavy that our would-be Peter Pan, in attempting to fly, never gets off the ground.
Taken together, the stories strike me as saying that, while it may be a difficult time in which to be young, it’s not all that easy a time in which to be old, either. “The rules have all changed out there,” said a suddenly-single 60-year-old to me. And it was clear from what he said next, that the change was more confusing than liberating. He was talking about intimacy and the “how far, how soon” question. Remember, this guy is 60, not 16. For him, hormones are less important than happiness. And, to some degree, correctness. He wants to “do right,” although he’s not sure what that means anymore. Where sex is concerned, he’d rather be safe than sorry. Notice he didn’t say he’d rather be “saintly” than “sorry.” But then, he’s not the kind of guy who is prone to using spiritual terminology. I mention him, only to demonstrate that kids aren’t the only ones trying to negotiate a highly-charged landscape without a freshly-tuned compass.
Last February, we showed up in this sanctuary four times in two days to hear noted author and Christian psychologist Kevin Leman talk about sex, love and parenting. But the biggest of the four crowds….the night we packed the place out….was when Kevin’s widely-advertised title proclaimed: “Sex Begins In the Kitchen.” And he said a lot of affirmative things about lovemaking….suggesting that “sheet music” really was designed to be “sweet music.” He even went so far as to admit that preachers have been perceived as wet-blanket throwers whenever the subject of “sex and its pleasures” became the topic of a conversation or sermon.
Warming to his critique, he wondered out loud whether you had ever heard a sermon from yours truly, based on the Song of Solomon (that wonderful eight-chapter poem filled with romantic love and sexual longing). So I preached it. Many of you appreciated it. And when Kevin Leman spotted me in the Des Moines airport, he commended me for it….thanks to Mary Feldmaier who sent it.
So this morning I won’t repeat it. If you missed it (and desire it), you can request it and the office will reprint it. Or you can go online and download it. Suffice it to say, it was good stuff about good sex, including the challenge to married people to live as if it were so….love as if it were so….and send informal signals to your children that (indeed) it is so.
I pointed out that, for the last several years, over 98 percent of the intimate acts depicted or suggested on television were between unmarried individuals….suggesting that, from television’s perspective, the only abstainers in the culture are those whose sexuality is both expected and sanctioned by the church. I mean, if television still believes that all married people (from the days of Lucy and Ricky) still sleep in twin beds, who (if not God-fearing, pleasure-seeking, commitment-honoring husbands and wives) is going to tell the world otherwise? So let me say it out loud. Sex is pleasurable as well as procreational. I said it on February 16. And I’ll say it again. But I would not, for a moment, deny that sex is also problematical. And becoming more so.
All the protection in the world doesn’t seem to keep people from pregnancies they don’t want or diseases they don’t need. As if those were the only ways sex could hurt you. I once said in a sermon that no pharmaceutical company has ever made a prophylactic large enough to cover the human heart….which was simply my way of saying that there are ways of being hurt that will never show up in a blood test. To let another person get close to you physically is to let that other person get close to you emotionally. And, as I will suggest in a few minutes, to let that other person get close to you spiritually. To be sure, the closer you get, the more wonderful it feels. But the closer you get, the more vulnerable you are.
We were talking about all of this one morning in my Tuesday Women’s Study Group (great group….large group….no holds barred, let it all hang out, talk about anything group). When one of them said to me: “I’ve got a question for you. Better yet, I’ve got a question for you to ask your daughter. If it were possible to banish all concerns about pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases, is it possible for our children and grandchildren to have casual, consensual, consequence-free sex?”
So I asked Julie. To which her short answer was: “No, but I suppose it depends on how emotionally sterile their children and grandchildren are.” By “emotionally sterile,” I suppose she meant cut off from feelings….walled off against any possibility of woundedness….with little investment or commitment. Nothing to feel, meaning nothing to fear….but also nothing to dream. Everything focused on the present. Nothing focused on the future. Total freedom from guilt. But also total freedom from hope. Absolutely no strings. But ultimately, no connections.
I suppose that’s possible. But it doesn’t sound very enjoyable. And certainly not very biblical.
Warming to my challenge, Julie admitted that girls talk about this a lot. And one common conversation concerns the fact that casual sex is seldom movie screen sex. There isn’t any music. There aren’t any candles. It’s seldom beautiful, pleasurable or consequence-free. Worse yet, it doesn’t always work. Therefore, you’d better not have sex until you’re prepared for all of the things that do not work.
And one of the things that does not always work is how each of the participants views the encounter. Picture a girl who, for any number of reasons, stays the night in a guy’s room (or in a guy’s apartment). Maybe it’s too late. Maybe she’s too tired. Maybe they’ve both had too much to drink. So he says: “Why not crash here?” So she crashes there. Maybe there’s a lot more. Maybe a little more. Maybe no more. Still, the decision to spend the night changes the dynamic.
Which is why, when morning comes, the girl is likely to say: “So what are we going to do today?” Only to hear the guy say: “Well, I am planning to run a few errands, work on my car, toss the football around with my friends, then maybe have a couple of beers and take in a movie.” Leading her to realize that there is no “we” to “his” plans. Last night was last night….with no implied connection to any other night (or any other day, for that matter).
And, says Julie: “One of the sadder sights on any campus is watching some girl walk across the quadrangle at 8:00 in the morning, knowing that she’s in the same outfit she was wearing when she left her room at 8:00 the night before.” To which Julie added: “The most important thing a female needs to learn is who you are at 8:00 a.m., not necessarily at 12:00 a.m.”
But I believe that guys get hurt, too. Maybe in different ways. Maybe in different degrees. But hurt. Ask Kobe Bryant this morning. We probably never will know what went on that night in Colorado. Maybe the sex was consensual. Possibly, pleasurable. But, at the end of the day, all the courts will be able to do is assess the damage, not heal the injuries. The injuries will be a long time in the healing.
Moments ago, I said that the closer two bodies get to each other physically, the closer they also get spiritually. Which is what Paul is saying to the Greeks in Corinth this morning.
By way of background, you need to know that the Greeks looked down upon the body. There was a proverbial saying among them that “the body is a tomb.” Or, as Epictetus once wrote: “I am a poor soul, shackled to a corpse.” The important thing was the “soul” or “spirit” of a person. Bodies were of lesser importance. Which led to a pair of attitudes. Some Greeks so despised the body….and the desires of the body….that they tried to rise above all bodily appetites. Some, by abstinence. Others, by fasting. Still others, by celibacy. Sometimes by beating the body. And occasionally, in the case of women, by binding the body.
But this was rare, compared with the second (more prevalent) attitude….one which said: “If the body is of no importance, why not do anything you like to it (or with it)?” Meaning, if the body has a hunger, feed it. If the body has a need, meet it. And if the body has a desire, satisfy it. If a man has a stomach, he eats. Therefore, if a man has other parts….
To which Paul said: “Look, the body is not a tomb. The body is a temple. Treat it as such. What’s more, body parts (Paul calls them “members”) have an intrinsic relationship to Christ. Therefore, treat them as such.”
This is a very “high” view of the body….the logical extension of which is to say that sexual intercourse makes two people one body…. “becoming as one flesh”….and therefore ought only happen between two people who desire such a union, are ready for such a union, and will do whatever it takes to sustain such a union. So to a Corinthian culture that was clearly telling Paul that “everybody’s doing it, no law against it,” Paul counters by saying:
All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.
Or, as William Barclay translates it:
True, all things are allowed me, but not all things are good for me.
I would like to believe that the church can reverse the culture and change the messages the culture sends. But I don’t think we can. I think that’s just spitting in the wind. I don’t think we can change television. I don’t think we can change advertising. But the church can operate as a mini counter-culture….preaching a different gospel….sending a different message….operating like leaven in the loaf….shining like the solitary light on a lamp stand….and living out what Paul calls, in that loveliest of all New Testament passages, “a more excellent way.”
One of the arguments we often use in sweeping each other off our feet and onto our respective backs, is the argument that says: “Hey any more, it’s no big deal.” But instinctively, we know that’s not so. We know it’s a big deal. We know it’s a very important deal. We know it’s a deal that is central to the core of our self-understanding, image and worth. And we know that cheating on that deal, once we are involved with someone, will end up kicking great big holes in our trust and enjoyment of that someone. I’m talking “sexual monogamy,” which is not one partner at a time, but one partner.
Sexual intercourse is God’s gift for procreation and pleasure, for conception and closeness, for perpetuating the future and for enjoying the present. It is physically charged. That we know. It is emotionally loaded. That we know, too. So I fail to see how ordinary human beings can handle everything it offers and asks, apart from a singular relationship marked by length and love, and secured by the promise that the one who knows you fully tonight will not bail out on you in the morning….or on any foreseeable morning.
One powerful argument against high school sex is that virtually no enduring relationships come out of those years. If I have two weddings in a hundred where I marry a pair of high school sweethearts, it’s a lot. As for the question, “How old do you have to be to have sex?”, it’s the wrong question. The bigger question….the better question….the right question, is: “How mature does a relationship have to be to have sex?” And the best answer is: “You go ‘all the way’ with the one you’re willing to go all the way with.” Which is a question you have to ask if you’re 35, 45 or 65, not just 16.
We talk a lot in our society about child abuse. But one way society abuses all its children is when it fails to protect them. And if society will not take the responsibility to tell its children to postpone sex, then the church should. For we live in a dangerous world. And one of the gifts to those who walk in the face of danger is to teach them that sometimes saying “No” to the present is the very best possible way to say “Yes….Oh yes” to the future.
