What Manner Of Love

“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one.” (Mark 10:6-8)

Genesis 1:1, 26-28, 31--”In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.... God said, ‘Let us make humanity in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air....’ So God created mankind in God’s own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female God created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number...; God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the sixth day.”

What manner of love is this?

Above all, it is:

Creative

The love expressed in the first chapter of Genesis is a Love that brings forth life. It is a love that takes the form of flesh, male and female. This love that is flesh is declared to be absolutely:

Good

What manner of love is this? It is creative and it is good!

Song of Songs 7: 1-9--”How beautiful your sandaled feet, 0 prince’s daughter! Your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of a craftsman’s hands. Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies. Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon by the gate of Bath Rabbim. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon looking toward Damascus. Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. Your hair is like royal tapestry; the king is held captive by its tresses. How beautiful you are and how pleasing, 0 love, with your delights! Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine. May the wine go straight to my lover, flowing gently over lips and teeth.”

What manner of love is this?

Above all, it is:

Sensuous

The love that is celebrated in the Song of Songs is deliciously sexual, beautiful, adoring and filled with joy. This is also love in the flesh, a love that praises the body. It is also not embarrassed, not ashamed love. It is explicit love. And in case it needs to be said, it is explicitly Biblical love.

What manner of love is this? It is sensuous.

I Corinthians 12:31 -13: 13-- “...eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

What manner of love is this?

Above all, it is:

Transcendent

The love given voice by Paul in I Corinthians transcends the ordinary self-centeredness of our lives. This love makes us better than we have ever been. Love makes the impossible possible. It can even make me good. Love can heal and transform my life. Love calls me to maturity. Love will not let me stay lost and lonely. Love beckons me to grow, to transcend what I have been.

What manner of love is this? It is transcendent.

Consider this story. What manner of love is this?

“Two centuries ago there lived a very famous German-Jewish philosopher named Moses Mendelssohn. Moses Mendelssohn was brilliant and compassionate -- but he had one flaw. He was a small, hunchbacked man. Hunchback that he was, he fell in love with a beautiful and charming young woman named Gretchen, the daughter of a prosperous banker. Several months after he had met Gretchen, Mendelssohn visited her father and he asked him, very cautiously, how his daughter might feel about the possibility of marrying him, for he had come to love her very much.

“Please, tell me the truth,” Mendelssohn insisted. The father hesitated and then replied:

“The truth is that the girl is frightened by you because. . .because....” Mendelssohn finished his sentence for him “...because I am a hunch back?” “Yes,” said the father, “because you are a hunchback.” Mendelssohn paused. Then after some silence he asked permission to see the daughter on the pretext that he wanted to say farewell to her. The father agreed. Mendelssohn went upstairs and found Gretchen in a room where she was busy with needlework.

She avoided looking at him during the conversation, which Mendelssohn eventually directed to the subject of marriage. In the course of the conversation on the topic, the young woman asked him if he really believed in that old saying that “Marriages are made in heaven.”

“Of course,” he replied. “And while we’re on that subject, I might as well tell you that some thing unusual happened to me. As you know, when boys are born the angels in heaven call out for all to hear, ‘This little boy is destined to have this special girl for a wife. It is decreed from all eternity and no one may change it.’

“So when I was born, the angels made the usual announcement about me and the name of my future wife was announced. But then the angels paused and added, ‘But alas, Mendelssohn’s wife will have a terrible hump on her back!’ Then I shouted out loud before the court of heaven. I cried, ‘Oh, Lord, no. No. A girl who is hunchbacked will very easily become bitter and hard, and the object of awful jokes and hurts. No, Lord, a girl should be beautiful. Oh, Lord, please.. .please give the hump to me and let her be well formed.’

“And you know what, Gretchen? God heard my prayer and I was glad. I am that boy and you are that girl.

“Gretchen was deeply moved. She saw Mendelssohn in a whole new way and so she be came his faithful and loving wife.”

What manner of love is this?

Above all, it is:

Suffering love

The love of Moses Mendelssohn reflects the love of Jesus. Such love is body broken and life poured out. Love seeks the welfare of the beloved before the welfare of the self. All love that is truly Biblical love makes us vulnerable. Parents take enormous risks when they give life to children, just like God took an enormous risk when he created humanity. The true lover can be seen spending uncounted hours beside the hospital bed of the beloved. True love is always suffering love.

What manner of love is this? This is suffering love.

What manner of love is this? This! And I mean this!

This magazine.
This television program.
This movie.
This record.
This advertisement.
This behavior
This joke
This clothing
This value
This culture?
This! This!

What manner of love is this that is all around us? We breath it. We buy it. We drive in it. We sell it. We do it. We experiment with it. We die from it. We get addicted to it. We pursue it. We spend our life energy on it. We watch it. We listen to it.

What manner of love is this in our culture?

Playboy
Free love
Anything can be sold with sex, including cosmetics, soap, restaurants, cars, clothes, and even politicians and religion.
Anyone can be destroyed by sex, preachers, politicians, innocent little children, “nothing could ever hurt me” teenagers, betrayed wives
Open marriage
The perfect ten
The perfect stud
On the make
Casual sex
Empty sex

What manner of love is this?

Above all, it is:

Cheap

Love, in our popular culture, is sex. And sex is cheap. There is no sacrifice involved and only the most superficial of commitments are needed. Anyone can buy it and many, including corporations and performers, can sell it and get quite rich. Love is titillating--I want it. It is exciting. I will get it. It is also empty. In our culture love is like an automobile without an engine or a computer without a micro chip. Love is an empty shell. The human spirit is degraded.

There is a Biblical story that has absolutely nothing to do with sexual love, but listen and maybe a connection will become clear. You may remember the story of how Jesus cleansed the temple. The Jews were selling religion.

Money was being changed, animals were being sold, and people were being cheated in the house of the Lord. Jesus was furious. Jesus blew them away! He swept their dirty money onto the floor and drove the scoundrels from the Temple. Then he said, “This is God’s house--it will be a house of prayer.” This is sacred space, Jesus told them, and you will not desecrate it. You will not make it dirty.

Consider with me the entire Bible. What does the Bible teach us about sexual love? What manner of love is this?

Above all, it is:

Sacred

When two human beings are sharing sexual love, they are on holy ground. And they must not desecrate the Temple of God--which is the body of every woman and man on this Earth. Your body is sacred ground.

Why is the body, the flesh, sexual love, so sacred? Let me share two answers that are really the same answer.

1) In the act of creation God created women in the divine image. Part of who God is is in every woman. Every woman is holy ground, for she is the image of God. And she is the beloved of God. Part of who God is is in every man. Every man is holy ground, for he is the image of God. And he is the beloved of God. When two come together as one in sexual love, two parts of God are coming together. It is as simple as that. Sexual love is sacred. Sexual love is holy ground because it makes us whole. That which was separated at creation-- some aspects of God in woman and some aspects of God in man--come together. As it is written:

“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. (Mark 10:6-8)

2) Why is sexual love sacred? It is the prayer of Jesus, in John 17, for all of his disciples, that we will all be one with God. Spiritual unity with God is experienced in a number of ways, most notably in worship and in prayer. Sexual love is another way for us to experience God’s love and to experience union with God. It is a way to learn to trust, to surrender, to sacrifice, and even to suffer for the beloved. Sexual love is a path to oneness with God. In the Bible sexual love is sacred ground.

But who ever would have thought it from the way many of us were raised and taught? Take the collective experience of all your friends who are Christians. Add together all that you were told and not told about sex, all that was preached and all the preachers failed to preach. Consider the view of sexual love that predominates in Christian churches.

What manner of love is this?

Above all, it is:

No, not creative.
No, not sensuous.
No, not good, certainly not good.
No, not transcendent.
No, not suffering love.
No, not sacred.

Above all it is:

Embarrassing
And
Shameful

That translates as:

We do not talk about it.
We do not preach about it.
We do not teach about it.
We turn our heads and turn red when the subject of sexual love is mentioned.
We threaten our children with fearful consequences but do not guide them with sacred obligations.
We allow the sick messages of our culture to dominate the media and abdicate responsibility for values education to the graffiti on toilet stalls.
In our churches there has been a near 100% refusal to grapple with the serious issues of our times. They are too controversial. And so we give no moral leadership to our culture.

Christianity is a collective coward.

How did we get into such a mess. It took awhile. It probably started long before New Testament times, but I want to pick it up shortly after the founding of the Christian Church in the first century. The Bible, I believe, had all the right stuff. The sensuous celebration of sexuality is there. Creativity is there. Goodness is there. Sacrifice is there. Sacredness is there. It is all in the Bible. Sexual love is very very good. But it did not take the men--I mean men here, not women--it didn’t take the men long to change the teaching of the Bible. I wish all of you could read some of the books I read back in seminary. The early church fathers, not mothers, fathers totally corrupted the Biblical understanding of sexuality.

What manner of love is this? Above all, it is:

Evil

At best, for the continuation of the species, it is a necessary evil. This transmutation of the “sexual as sacred” to the “sexual as evil” began with the elevation of “celibacy” and “virginity” as superior ways of life by the early church fathers. St. Jerome wrote that the only good of sexual love was that it produced virgins. St. Augustine, one of the most influential thinkers in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, taught that sexual intercourse, even within marriage, was a venial sin.

The writing and teaching and preaching of these men made, over hundreds of years, a collective declaration that not only sex was but also that women were evil. Women, like Satan, were the tempters who seduced otherwise holy men into vile corruption. That teaching stuck. It stuck in the church for 2000 years. It stuck in the cultures and the churches that brought the Christian faith to our times and our lives. And unless we do something about it--like going back to the Bible as if for the first time--those notions of evil are stuck in us. And they are experienced as embarrassment and shame.

Those distorted teachings of the Church Fathers became a deeply embedded part of the western psyche and they are experienced as:

The ease with which some of us can tell a dirty joke compared with our discomfort with a serious discussion about sexuality.
How effective advertisements are that sell anything and everything with sex.
Again, how unwilling the church is to grapple with serious issues of sexual morality.
How few of us have a deep understanding of what the Bible teaches about sexuality.
The fact that this may be, for some of you, the first sermon on sexuality you have ever read.

Just about every one of you struggles with issues related to our sexuality. There are mountains of pain in our lives related to sexuality issues. Many of us carry deep scars from what was done unto us. Others of us have made terrible mistakes and fear there is no forgiveness. Abortion, homosexuality, AIDS, teenage pregnancy, sexual addiction, impotence and fear of the same, betrayal of trust, all of these are live issues for Christians everywhere.

Most of you already know that the Biblical concept of “sex as sacred” faces a pernicious enemy in our culture’s concept of “sex as cheap”. And God’s truth is not winning this war. One reason God’s truth is not winning is that God’s soldiers, the churches, have been fighting for another General, whose banner says, “sex is evil”. For 2000 years, maybe longer, Biblical truth has been fighting a losing battle for the souls and the minds and the bodies of God’s people. The weapons of embarrassment and shame have defeated us. Uncomfortableness with our sexuality has dulled our swords. We are trapped in our own armor, unwilling to be vulnerable. We cannot be victorious because that would require us to celebrate our flesh, our humanness. And for 2000 years we and those who taught us and those who taught them believed that flesh was evil.

So, what do we do?

First, we remember that we have two enemies:

Enemy number one--the sex as cheap armies of our culture. And never underestimate their power--they have most of the money and they appeal to a sinful place in every one of our souls. Enemy number two--the sex as evil armies of our Christian heritage. And never underestimate their power--they have possessed our souls for a very long time and they will not easily give up the fight. We fight these enemies with, the truth, the Bible, and with our own flesh and blood. We fight as we seek in our relationships, in our loving, to find the sacred ground, to love sacrificially, to celebrate sensual beauty, to participate with God in the awesome task of creating life.

I hope no one is too offended by my use of a very masculine, militaristic metaphor as I bring this sermon to a close and try to answer the question, “what now?”

The truth is that I do perceive it as a battle. I do see enemies, within and without. My own shame is an enemy. By learning how much God loves me and how much God loves flesh-- God became flesh after all--I overcome this enemy. By drawing some lines in our family about how much television is watched I try to oppose the enemy. But I cannot fully protect my children. They will have to fight their own battles. So I talk with them occasionally to teach them how to resist the stuff “out there” that will hurt them. I fight the battle by preaching this sermon. When I use a phrase like “the collective cowardice of the Christian Church”, I am striking with a sharp sword at the refusal of the church to exercise moral leadership. The greatest weapon when battling any darkness is light. So I seek to expose to the light the “sex as evil” armies hidden in the soul of the church.

I fight this battle because I am a person, a parent and a pastor. I fight it for myself, for my own wholeness. I oppose that which would drag me into the mud and seek that which promises me nothing less than a sacred union with God. I fight it for my children so that the enemies arrayed against them will not be so formidable, so they will have a good chance of experiencing sexual love that is creative and transcending and beautiful and sensuous and sacrificial. I fight also for the people I serve with, for all of you who are wounded, and for you who are seeking more than what you have found, and for you who are imprisoned by shame or by behavior that controls you. I seek the courage and the wisdom to fight as God’s warrior on behalf of God’s people with the weapon of God’s truth. I fight with the weakness of my flesh. But I am told that this flesh is good. I fight with the weakness of my humanity, but I am told this man reflects the image of God. I fight the armies within and without in order that this body might be sacred ground, the temple of God.