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Swipe Right: This is the One About Our Bodies
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
See bodies aren't the problem. Beauty isn't the problem. Desire isn't the problem. Nudity isn't even the problem. There's a lot of good and important art in the world and some of it has nipples.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Welcome to commons today.
Speaker 1:Some people have asked, yes, I did get my haircut. That's because it's my birthday this week and it's in my calendar every year to get a haircut whether I need it or not on my birthday. So got that done. But welcome. My name is Jeremy.
Speaker 1:One of the people who hang out here at the church. And I'm really glad that you're here with us as we begin this new year together. I know it's technically the second Sunday of twenty twenty, but I am still feeling all of those New Year's vibes, so welcome. The team was back in the office this week. I'm getting back into the rhythm of writing regularly.
Speaker 1:And it's just a real gift to be able to love what you do the way that I do. And by the way, I talked a little bit about calling and passion, and how you can create some of that in your life this week on our YouTube channel. You can check that out if you're interested. Last year, one of our church's New Year's resolutions was to create consistent weekly original content just for our YouTube channel to supplement what we're doing here on the weekends. And this week, our channel just passed one million minutes watched.
Speaker 1:So thank you for engaging for the stuff we're putting up there. You can do us a favor if you haven't already and head over to youtube.com/commonschurch to subscribe. This is one of the ways that we are trying to learn and adapt and find ways to serve your story between Sundays, which reminds me of another plug here for our between Sundays podcast. Bobby has put a lot of work into bringing to the surface some of these incredible stories that exist throughout our community. And so we'll have more info later this year on a second season and then some new things to look forward to in that area as the year unfolds.
Speaker 1:So that said, we are into our series Swipe Right. Last week, we kicked off our new decade by talking about how to think about sexuality, which might not sound all that sexy. But the point is, before we can really even begin to talk about sex, we need to learn to think well about our sexuality. That means being thoughtful, means we have to be honest, We have to be open and willing to examine a lot of our assumptions in order to invite God to guide us in new ways. Today, we're gonna talk about our bodies, which is really about lust and desire and love and how all of those things are not nearly as neatly compartmentalized as we may have been told.
Speaker 1:Next week is about our souls, which is about relationship and trust and mutuality and the hard work of openness and commitment. Before all that, we do need to look back at last week because there were a couple things there that really are essential as we move forward today. And as a first, there was this sort of meta approach to reading the Bible as an unfolding story. As I said last week, the bible is not particularly easy to make sense of when it comes to sexuality. At times, polygamy is okay.
Speaker 1:At times, prostitution gets a pass. At times, strictly seems to be pretty much strictly a financial arrangement between two men. And yet at other times, sexuality blossoms as the culmination of desire and longing and deep deep love. Marriage evolves over time to become this commitment two people make to grow and journey and learn how to be united together. Sexuality becomes a sacred metaphor for human longing for divine reconnection.
Speaker 1:And all of these complex and at times conflicting images coexist within the text of our Bibles. And so we have a few options available to us. We can throw up our hands and say, well it's all a mess. There is no guidance to be found here. We are on our own.
Speaker 1:We can choose to pick and choose parts of the bible that reinforce the sexual ethic we are most comfortable with and dig our heels in there. Or as we talked about last week, we can choose to see the beauty and the grace in a long unfolding tale. Where God slowly, gently, lovingly invites us to move forward one small step at a time. And my argument is that this third option has always actually sat at the center of this Christian story. Every word of your bible speaks to God, but often in hints and whispers, glimpses of the divine that lead us and prepare us to recognize God in flesh in Jesus.
Speaker 1:And so, this is how we read our bibles. Not trying to relive any particular era of history, but working really hard to understand the story in its context so well that we might actually begin to recognize Christ alive and guiding us today. And so we used two examples of this last week. Both of which we're gonna find ourselves returning to today. We looked at the basis for the Song of Solomon along with Jesus' teachings on divorce.
Speaker 1:Now, the Song of Solomon is a really interesting text, but as I described it last week, it is sexual poetry as social protest. A super sexy song about passionate sexuality expressed in mutuality. However, it is also exactly the opposite of everything we know about King Solomon who famously used his power and privilege to sleep with a thousand women. See, the Song of Solomon is about sex, but more than that, it is a protest against the sexual ethic of the day that subjected women as passive participants in the fantasies of men. And that means that to read the poem well is not just to enjoy the sexuality of the imagery, although there is that, But to read it well is to understand that this poem calls us to continually examine and challenge the sexual ethic that comes to us from those in power.
Speaker 1:You and I, we are meant to do better than what we have been handed by the dominant culture around us. Now, second passage was from Jesus. And on the surface, it was all about divorce. But in the context of the religious debates of the day, Jesus is again addressing structural imbalance. He talks to men about ensuring that even when a relationship is dissolved, even at the point where a marriage needs to end in a divorce, the priority is to ensure that there is care for the other.
Speaker 1:That no one is taken advantage of, no one discarded as if they were less than property. And I really do believe this, that relationships and marriages and trust can come back from almost anything. I've talked up here a couple times about the depth of dysfunction that Rachel and I found our ourselves in early in our marriage. And there are remarkable stories of healing and repair all around us right now. But sometimes even an end can be grace when we turn toward each other.
Speaker 1:And so again, just like the Song of Solomon, this is a passage that shifts the conversation, that moves the Overton window to say that actually, more important than our personal purity is the way that we care for each other in our sexuality and in our brokenness. Now, I rehash all of that because all of that is important because how we learn to think well about our Bibles and our sexuality is the necessary foundation for the conversation we want to have today about our bodies. And so today, we need to talk about polished ivory, black and beautiful, sex drives and reintegration. First, let's pray. God of all love, who points us toward each other.
Speaker 1:May we enter this conversation as completely loved in this moment. Free from shame, free from expectation, simply free to rest in your arms and embrace. Might you help us to begin to heal from all that is broken. The stories of our past that need to be brought to the surface and named. The ideas that have been pressed into us, keeping us chained to something unreasonable for us.
Speaker 1:May all of that slowly dissolve as we begin to know ourselves as you know us. Full of beauty and value, dignity and freedom. Might we believe that we are just as loved as you say that we are. And in that, may we discover the freedom to pursue your best for us. To chart that course with you as our very sexuality as human beings begins to highlight the goodness and the grace of our God.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. Today, we are gonna make our way back to both the Song of Songs and to Matthew five. So we might as well start at the start with our favorite sexy song, the Song of Songs, the Song of Solomon.
Speaker 1:And we're gonna look at some translation issues today, and we are going to find ourselves a little bit in the weeds. I think I can make this interesting if you stick with me though. And I've got two examples here of how we need to have better awareness of our humanity embodied in bodies when we read our bibles. And then we're gonna take those lessons and we're gonna go back to Jesus to talk about desire and shame. But first, let's start with the sex.
Speaker 1:And it's funny when I say it that way because you're supposed to work up to that. It's called foreplay, at least that's what I've heard. But this is a sermon, so it's okay. We can dive right in. And the first moment here comes from near the end of this poem.
Speaker 1:The woman speaks of her lover and she says, his arms are rods of gold set with jewels. His body is polished ivory bedecked with sapphires. Now, if I was being lazy, this is where I would insert the same tired joke about this actually being a quote from my wife Rachel, and then I would flex, but instead we'll keep moving. Because what's really interesting here is that if you look this up, you will see a little asterisk beside this phrase in the English Standard Version of the Bible. And if you go down to the bottom of the page, the note will say the meaning of the Hebrew here is unclear.
Speaker 1:Well, the word that they have translated body is the word me'e which means belly in Hebrew. And the words that they have translated polished ivory are eshet shen which mean a prepared or polished tusk in Hebrew. Fact, a is a verb that's used for when you take metal and you shape it into a bar. And so what the woman actually says is that my lover's belly is an ivory tusk that has been shaped into a bar and no one in the room who was translating this passage into English had any idea what she was possibly talking about. Your guess is as good as mine, so keep it to yourself.
Speaker 1:But it's a silly example. I've used it before because it demonstrates a very real problem within Christian culture. If we aren't willing to be honest with ourselves about the raw sexuality on display in our Bibles, how are we possibly ever going to be honest with ourselves about the power and the beauty, the celebration of our personal sexuality? And this is not a small thing because it is incredibly demonstrative of how our cultural assumptions about sex have infiltrated not just our interpretations, but what we actually get to read on the page when we open our bible. We are being shaped by cultural norms of what we can and cannot speak of even before we open the bible.
Speaker 1:And this is incredibly damaging for what it does to our concept of self because it immediately associates our sexuality with shame. Think about what this attitude does to young women who are told from a very early age that they need to cover up their bodies lest they become walking talking sources of sin to all of the boys around them. I'm not saying you shouldn't have cultural standards about dress. Every culture develops norms that help shape our interactions. There is dress that is appropriate and not based on every context.
Speaker 1:But when it is a girl's choice exclusively that is framed in this way, no wonder we push ourselves toward associating our bodies with something to be ashamed of. Think of how we tell men not to be alone ever with a woman. Now again, there are times and there are contexts that are appropriate, there are times that are not. I do not have romantic candlelit dinners with any women but my wife. However, if I begin to assume that the men who work with me are my colleagues, the women who I work alongside with are potential sources of sexual villainy, then I have already shaped all of my interactions to deny access to people who could teach me immeasurably about myself.
Speaker 1:Not only that, I have begun to train myself to think that I am incapable of containing and therefore somehow actually unaccountable for my sexual appetites. And that is nonsense. I mean, have worked with women all of my career and every single one of them has had to exist in the orbit of my obvious beauty and none of them, not one has ever propositioned me inappropriately. It's inspiring really. However, all of this goes even deeper here because I wanna show you one more particularly difficult passage in this poem.
Speaker 1:It has a lot to say to us about our bodies. It comes from back near the start of the text and it is a particularly problematic passage to translate. Chapter one starting in verse five says, Dark am I yet lovely. Dark like the tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon. Do not stare at me because I am dark because I am darkened by the sun.
Speaker 1:My mother's sons were angry with me and made me take care of their vineyards, my own vineyard I had to neglect. Tell me you whom I love, where you graze your flock and where you rest your sheep at midday, why should I be like a veiled woman beside the flocks of your friends? Verses five through seven. Now, what's happening here is that this is just before the passage we looked at last Sunday where the woman then bursts into the man's bedroom and convinces him to run away with her. Here, she is addressing in the lead up to that proposition her economic status.
Speaker 1:She makes a couple really poignant statements. My mother's sons were angry with me and made me take care of their vineyards. My own I had to neglect. It's interesting here that she refers to her mother's sons. This could be a way of distancing herself from their cruelty.
Speaker 1:Could also be a sign that she is the child of a previous relationship and so she's actually been pushed to the edges of her family, not even fully a daughter in her own home. If that's the case, it makes her strength and her resolve to pursue the relationship that she wants despite her toxic family of origin even more remarkable. But remember this for yourself, your past is part of you, it always will be. But your past is not you. And I understand it can be incredibly difficult to transcend what you've been through, your family of origin.
Speaker 1:Now for a second, do I want to diminish any of that? But you are not trapped by who you have been or by who anyone else says you must continue to be. But, let's go back to the way she describes herself here. She says, do not stare at me because I am dark. I am darkened by the sun.
Speaker 1:And as I mentioned, this is about economic disparity. Everyone in this story is brown. There are no white people here. So when she says, do not stare at me because I am dark, this is not in contrast to being white. This is in contrast to being rich.
Speaker 1:You see, if you were poor, and particularly if you were forced to labor for less than your ideal brothers, while you were out in the fields from sun up to down, while the wealthy reclined in the shade living off the wealth that you created. So this woman is poor and she is in love with someone who is rich. Remember last week, we talked about Solomon's 300 concubines. 300 women he either refused or could not marry possibly because of their place in the social hierarchy so he employed them in sexual servitude instead. And you hold that in your mind and then read a story about a poor woman from the fields who pursues the man that she wants and convinces him to run away with her and try to tell me with a straight face that this poem was ever meant as a tribute to Solomon.
Speaker 1:Come on. Here's the problem. She is talking about how even economic disparity transforms the way we think about our bodies and our beauty, but then we translate this into a language that now adds racial bias on top of it all. I mean the word in Hebrew is shakur which actually means black, but of course in Hebrew shakur has nothing to do with racial categories, it's simply a color. Now in a purely antiseptic world where words had no alternative meaning or nuance, the technically right translation would be something like, am black but I am beautiful.
Speaker 1:Meaning, I am poor but I have profound value. However, that is not what those words would mean in English at all. So we could go with something like, I am weathered but elegant. That's what Eugene Peterson uses in the message. I like that.
Speaker 1:He's trying to get us back toward that economic disparity we talked about, but I really like what Loris Wilkins Lawrence argues in her essay as part of the Wisdom Commentary Series. Now, she is, by the way, a black scholar, a woman, and she argues that the NRSV got it right when they said, I am black and beautiful. Now, on the technical side, part of which she points to here is that the conjunction vav in Hebrew can mean either and or but. So we can read this I am darkened but lovely or I am darkened and lovely and equally those would be correct. But she argues that despite the naming of her economic disparity, if you read the entire song what you find is that despite the fact that she does not want to be looked down on because of her poverty, she is actually instead incredibly proud of her strength and the place that she has won in her lover's heart.
Speaker 1:In fact, the woman continues here and she says, how beautiful you are my darling, how beautiful. How handsome you are my beloved, how charming, for I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. Now, some scholars have argued that the word translated lily here is actually a word borrowed from a dription that means lotus. And the lotus was a flower that carried erotic overtones in the ancient world. One scholar, Othmar Kiel, even says that she is quote, claiming herself to be the very center of life and love itself.
Speaker 1:She is not ashamed of anything here. She's proud of her body. So what does it matter if we translate this, I am dark yet lovely or I am black and beautiful? Well, the significance is that one reading conditions us to see our beauty and our value in spite of our bodies. But the other invites us slowly to see our bodies.
Speaker 1:With all of the complexity that comes along with that, with all of the baggage that culture places on them, we are still invited to see our bodies as part of our inherent beauty and value in the world. You are not a ghost in a machine. You are an embodied human who gets to learn how to love yourself. I'm not saying that is easy. I'm not saying that that journey is equal or the same for all of us.
Speaker 1:What I am saying is that you are not beautiful in spite of who you are. You are loved however you choose to live in your body. So ironically, maybe, it is a poem about sex that teaches us we don't need anyone else to affirm, to love, to value, or to embrace our sexuality for us to choose a healthy self image for ourselves. An imagination of our value that is grounded in divine love. But, if the song of Solomon can help us embrace our bodies in more healthy ways, how should we then embrace each other as embodied persons?
Speaker 1:For that, I want to return to Jesus and to Matthew chapter five. And, once again today, we're gonna talk about how this is really about that. So, let me read through and then we'll dig in. Verse 27, Jesus says, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away for it is better to you to lose one part than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Speaker 1:Now, this is the passage that leads directly into the section about divorce that we talked about last week. So right from the start, we have to keep in mind here that all of this is about all of that. Jesus is building to an argument for care as the highest virtue in our relationships even when they break down. But, first of all, I think we need to put on the table here that Jesus is saying there is a healthy and there is a destructive way to hold your sexuality. And none of it is dependent on having sex.
Speaker 1:People who are single, people who are celibate, people who are aromantic, people who have no interest in having sex can still get their sexuality wrong. Because sexuality is about connection and not coitus. But, to unpack this, we have to notice also that Jesus says some really important things here. He says, you have heard it said. And that means he's quoting from the Hebrew scriptures.
Speaker 1:In this case, the 10 commandments. In particular the sixth commandment, you shall not commit adultery. Except, that is not the extent of the language he pulls from those same 10 commandments. Because next he says, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Couple things are important here.
Speaker 1:First, he addresses only men. I do not think that this is because only men are visual, only men can fall into this lustful trap. I think that is one of those unfortunate gender stereotypes that we use when it comes to sexuality. I think it's actually part of why we tend to speak differently about men and women who are sexually active. Of course, and women can equally be guilty of this.
Speaker 1:The reason that Jesus addresses men here is because he's building to his point about divorce, and only men had the ability to initiate that in this culture. Second, we have this word lust in the English. And that is a really interesting and loaded choice for translating this Greek word epithumeo. See epithumeo is used 62 times in the Greek translation of the Bible. Only twice is it used in contexts that have anything to do with sex.
Speaker 1:In fact, probably the most familiar translation of this word comes to us from the 10 commandments, exactly where Jesus already happens to be quoting, and there it is used to say, you shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not covet his male or female servant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. See, lust works in the context here, but actually I think it obscures Jesus' real meaning. Because I think Jesus has read the Song of Solomon.
Speaker 1:I think Jesus celebrates a full human experience. I think Jesus knew what a beautiful woman looked like. I think he enjoyed that, and I don't think he saw that as problematic. Because the problem he is addressing here is not sexual desire. The problem he is addressing here is when sexual desire begins to turn human beings into objects to be possessed and bodies to be used.
Speaker 1:See bodies aren't the problem. Beauty isn't the problem. Desire isn't the problem. Nudity isn't even the problem. There's a lot of good and important art in the world and some of it has nipples.
Speaker 1:The problem is when we begin to disconnect the pieces of our humanity and we start to live as if people were things to be acquired and then used. This is why we struggle with pornography. It's not because sex is dirty, and it's not because your desire is shameful. It's not. It's because often, it is easier for us to treat humans as objects to separate bodies from the living breathing persons we see worthy of respect and autonomy and dignity.
Speaker 1:And so just as the song of Solomon reminds us to be embodied, to live in our bodies, to enjoy our bodies, to honor our bodies and our sexuality as good and holy and sacred before God. It's Jesus that reminds us now we have to do the same for each other. See, Jesus may not be speaking literally here. He does not want you to gouge out your eye or cut off your hand, but he is speaking very, very seriously here. Because he wants us to understand that when we begin to imagine that another human being could have their humanity ripped away, separated from their body, We have already begun to dismember ourselves.
Speaker 1:And we objectify ourselves. We lose ourselves to the desires that were meant to serve us and connect us to each other. You see, our greatest responsibility toward each other as humans is to know each other as human. Because this is how we become fully human. And so whether it is your body, your sexuality, your desire that you need to get in touch with again today, to come to know is good and holy and human, or whether it is this disintegration that you need to heal from, that tendency to break apart human beings into objects to be possessed.
Speaker 1:May you come to know your sexuality, your body, your desire flowing from the love and the care, the mutuality and the respect that Christ calls us toward continually. And in that, may you begin to discover yourself free from whatever shame has bound you in the past to unhealthy expectation. May you find yourself ready to love yourself fully today, all so that you might be ready tomorrow to love someone else with that same freedom and embrace. Let's pray. God of great gift, who has created us as embodied persons, most fully alive when our physical, our spiritual, our emotional, our relational, our sexual experiences feed into each other.
Speaker 1:For all the ways that we have dismembered ourselves, Begun to assume that we could separate our humanity from our bodies. The ways that we have treated other human beings as objects to be possessed. We are sorry. We pray that you would begin to heal us, to knit us back together, so that we might come to know ourselves in all of the complexity, in all of the baggage, in all of the struggle to know ourselves as love, that we might actually begin to know ourselves that way. And as that begins to take root somewhere deep inside of us, may it become the story through which we engage with each other.
Speaker 1:May our sexuality point us in ways that draw us together, that elevate the other, that honor the dignity and the autonomy of the people around us. And whether it is in our sexual relationships with our partners, whether it is in conversations with strangers, may our understanding of sexuality point us in love and care toward the other. And in that, may we become more like the Christ. May our hearts be transformed, and may we be drawn back closer to you. In the strong name, the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.