July 10, 2011

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 4

Song of Songs 2:8-13 (editor's note: lections used are from Pentecost 3)

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Today I want to talk to you about sex. That woke you up didn’t it? 

Yes, I want to talk to you about the birds and the bees – no, not about the details. I assume most of you have that sorted. This sermon is G rated. No need to send the kids to their rooms. 

One of you once commented to me that you found my sermons “quirky.” I think you meant it as a compliment, at least I took it that way, but today you may think I’m pushing the bar a little too high. We don’t talk about s-e-x in church. And you may be right. I can’t remember ever preaching a sermon on it or even hearing one solely on the topic before. That might be a good reason to do it, to make today memorable. Since I’m going on an extended holiday this week I don’t want you to forget me.

But I have other reasons as well: I’ve always wanted to use a favourite quote of mine that I often use in relationship counselling but I’ve never had occasion to use in a sermon. It is by theologian Frederick Buechner:

Contrary to Mrs Grundy, sex is not a sin. Contrary to Hugh Hefner, it’s not salvation either. Like nitro-glycerine, it can be used to heal hearts or blow up bridges. [i]

The second reason I want to preach on sex is to name the elephant in the pew that is being studiously ignored in the debate over the discrimination against gays and lesbians seeking ordination.

As one colleague I spoke to this week who is out of the evangelical wing of the church admitted with some embarrassment, “I once thought not too long ago that God really does care about what happens between the sheets.” Actually, I think he was right. God does care, but not about the sex. I think my friend was embarrassed because he thought God cared about who was between the sheets and what they might be doing there. What I believe is that God doesn’t care about the “who” or the “what,” but about the quality of the relationship of those between the sheets. 

That is the elephant. The debate doesn’t really hinge on justice and human rights or how to interpret the Sodom and Gomorrah story or what Paul did or didn’t mean or what can be inferred from church canons. It’s about how we feel in our gut about what should or should not happen between the sheets and between whom. To avoid revealing or defending our feelings we then attribute them to God using some pretty limited and flimsy Biblical evidence.

The last reason I want to talk about sex is that our first reading is from the Song of Songs, a love poem full of erotic imagery and not so subtle sexual innuendos. It isn’t often offered as an option to use on Sunday mornings and even when it is it is often avoided. It has been giving rabbis and Christian thinkers fits since it first made its way into scripture. Today, some consider it too secular, as it doesn’t mention God and way too sexual for modern sensibilities. About the only time you might hear it in church is at a wedding. So I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity.

The Song of Songs is traditionally attributed to Solomon (who reportedly had a thousand wives), but no scholar accepts that he wrote it or had quite so many wives. It is a collection of secular love poems put together as a conversation between two lovers. While modern scholars tend to ignore it, Origen, an early Church Father, wrote numerous homilies and a ten-volume commentary on it. Maybe his obsession with sex is why he famously made himself literally a eunuch for Christ. Bernard of Clairvaux, the mystic founder of the Cistercian Order of monks, gave 86 sermons on the subject and never got past chapter two. That would take the joy out of any subject.

What most Jewish and Christian thinkers have tried to do is spiritualize the poem. The lovers are either Yahweh and Israel or Christ and the Church. But even after such tortured attempts to de-sex it with allegory, one cannot escape the impression that the author of the Song of Songs actually was doing what he appeared to be doing, and what more straitlaced interpreters seem loath to admit he was doing – namely, celebrating human love with poetry, reveling in romance and sexuality. I believe the author revels because there is a mystical quality to our sexuality. Love like the song describes is a medium to experiencing union with the divine. Could that be why “Oh God!” escapes lovers’ lips at the height of passion.

As best as we can tell the lovers are being kept apart by family and society because they come from ‘different sides of the tracks.’ There is an indication that they may have been from a different race or ethnicity, or possibly from different socio economic statuses.

These poems celebrate the passion, playfulness, and determination of lovers to be together regardless of race or class or family or, in terms of today’s debate, sexual orientation. There is no mention of marriage or procreation in the book – their sexuality is celebrated simply for what it is. It affirms the goodness of human sexuality full-stop. Marriage and procreation as a holy justification for it are not even mentioned.

While marriage is not mentioned it is worth noting that the Song describes a love marked by fidelity and mutuality. The lovers are faithful to each other. They have eyes for no one else: She says, "My beloved is mine and I am his" (2:16; 6:3). He says, "My vineyard, my very own, is for myself; / you, O Solomon, may have the thousand" (8:12).

The Song celebrates faithful human love. In a culture saturated with sexual images but sorely lacking in prominent examples of lifelong faithful love, this text celebrates love marked by mutuality and fidelity.

If the church ever needed to embrace a sacred text with regard to its attitudes about human sexuality, it needs to embrace the Song of Songs. I’d wager most of us are reticent to talk about sex and sexuality in our private lives as Christians, much less in church. Some of us may even get squeamish, giggly, or indignant when sex and God are mentioned in the same sentence. And it is precisely this kind of ‘ostrich in the sand’ approach that has allowed the Religious Right and fundamentalists to perpetuate slanderous stereotypes about LGBT people. They are the only ones talking about it.

Like the brothers in the Song of Songs, they want to control, wall off, enclose everybody’s sexuality I suspect because they are afraid of their own. In the words of the Song they want human sexuality to be a “garden locked, a fountain sealed” (4:12), but I say with the woman in the Song, “Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad.” (4:16)

One of the ironies for me in the present debate is the bishops are willing to ordain celibate gays and lesbians. Even the Church of England is now considering the possibility that a gay man (no women yet) can be a bishop if he has been celibate since ordination and not in a committed relationship. At the same time the church expects its leaders to have a “right ordering” of their relationships. While some conservatives think this is a euphemism for heterosexual marriage, most of us think it is about not using sex to blow up bridges. It expects it leaders not to be involved in exploitive sex. It expects that when we are in an intimate relationship that it will be respectful, committed, mutual and faithful. Any other kind is destructive to gays and non-gays alike. 

For the church to deny gays and lesbians the opportunity to live out legitimately and joyfully the kind of love the Song of Songs describes is cruel and unjust and probably unrealistic – this goes for heterosexuals as well. To make it dirty and unseemly by denying them access to the sacrament of marriage and then using that to justify excluding them is diabolical.

For me this debate is about honouring the kind of sex that heals hearts. The need for intimacy and trusting relationships anchored in respect, mutuality and fidelity is basic to being human. It crosses all lines including sexual orientation. So let’s talk about it. Promoting and nurturing those kind of relationships should be the church’s business, not who is beneath the sheets.

[i] Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Harper & Row, New York: 1986. p 87.