January 19, 2003

Ian Lawton

Epiphany 2     1 Cor 6:11-20     John 1:43-51

Woody Allen said "Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions." St Paul said, 'Everything is permissable, but not everything is beneficial.'

It was during the week as I was trying to square Woody Allen with today's epistle about sexual immorality that I received an email from Jesus. It hasn't happened before, but was a relief to me to know that the Godhead is now online! I had written to congratulate Jesus on a great web site, called "Density Church - On fire for Jesus". It is a parody of Brian Tamaki's Destiny Church, here in Auckland. You may have seen their informercials. It is a 'Bible-believing' church, and so the Density web site has a section which deals with answers from the Bible to life's challenges.

The questions include; "Does the Bible have a cure for pimples?", and "Does the Bible have any tips about sheep breeding techniques?" As the site says, there's an answer to everything in the Bible. So, I followed up the question, "Should I wear boxers or briefs?" and found that the Bible does indeed state in Exodus 28 that boxers are more godly than briefs. I quote: "You shall make for them linen underpants to cover their naked flesh; they shall reach from the hips to the thighs." And later in Exodus 44; "They shall have linen turbans on their heads, and linen underpants on their loins; they shall not bind themselves with anything that causes sweat." So I hope all you 'undy-wearing' men will follow the divine command and switch to boxers.

A woman wrote in asking, "Does menstruation make me filthy and impure?" Pastor Brian quoted the appropriate texts showing that yes it did make her unclean. In fact Pastor Brian said it was one of the reasons he refused to allow his wife to work outside the home. As the Density web master, (jesus@densitychurch.org), said in his email to me,

Dear Ian, I like to imagine that Jesus would have had a laugh about Density Church's attempt to parody fundamentalism, too. After all, Jesus was something of a parody-artist himself. The fundamentalists of his own day, the Pharisees, seemed so often to be the butt of his decidedly pointed humour. And you don't tell a person in a 2-garment-only society to "hand over your cloak as well", unless you have a fairly good sense of humour! By the way I can hear the bells of your church from where I live, each Sunday morning! Could I get you to add me to your ezine list, please.


The Density Church Webmaster

So, we don't know his identity but know he is within bell's range of the church, maybe even here this morning. And even better, we now have Jesus himself as a SMACA subscriber!

Our readings this morning gave me particular grief. I considered censoring some of them, particularly the epistle. I remember hearing a talk many years ago stating that this text from Corinthians is really an anti-smoking message. As we were told, you wouldn't light a fire in the house of God so why fill the temple of God with smoke? It was about to be outed as the text for today, when a new thought struck me. The text was rescued from fundamentalism. If you consider the world Paul lived in, this was radical and life affirming stuff.

In a world obsessed with the sacredness of the temple and the temple system, the physical and supreme revelation of God, Paul suggests that the human body is the temple of God. In a world which accepted without question the dualism which placed body in the sphere of the secular, the base, the worldly and the soul in the sphere of the spiritual, the enlightened, it was the body which was heralded as the temple of the spirit. In a philosophy which associated women with the body - sexuality, emotions, frailty - and men with the soul - rational, strong and closer to God - it is the body which is held up.

So, Paul may have been a chauvinist and repressed homosexual, as some have contended. His "thorn in the flesh" may have been an obsession with masturbation. He may have had an Oedipus complex or been classic Freudian. As one fascinating article I read called "Hearing Voices" suggested, "both Freud and St. Paul seem to have been influenced by Platonism. To Plato, physical reality was only a corrupted reflection of the perfect world of ideas, a world that could be grasped through language and the dialectic. The body, its demands and desires, were accorded an extremely low place in his thought." In other words when Paul writes of himself, "I know that in my flesh dwells nothing good," you could be forgiven for finding him a little uptight and repressed.

Yet today's text challenges the critique of Freudian Paul. Here Paul holds up the body, affirming women in that world, affirming our physical selves, our sexuality, our desires and drives as the very house of God.

And so, maybe the danger of celibacy is the denial of the body as the temple of God. Maybe the tragedy of the church's attitude towards homosexuality is actually the church's repression of sexuality in all its variety. Maybe one of the root causes of sexual abuse at the hands of church leaders is the devaluing of the bodies of the victims, as only temporal and worldly.

Paul's call today is to nurture your body, celebrate your sexuality, and to do it with an integrity which grows out of a belief that the body is a temple of spirit. Paul's challenge is a church which values other peoples' bodies and sexualities. As Walt Whitman said "If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred." As St Paul said, "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Honour God with your body."