sermon excerpts: "Sex & the Family"

(Genesis 16: 1-10; John 19: 25-30)
It would appear that the purpose of marriage is to have sex and the purpose of sex is to have children. And it is in this understanding that the family is shown to be an exercise of obligations and status. Rarely is it mentioned in the Bible that a husband loved his wife; more often, duty and propriety are praised.

In the Genesis reading, we have an interesting dynamic of the family power structure. Sarai cannot have children so she entreats her husband Abram to sleep with her slave girl Hagar. He does and Hagar gets pregnant.

Hagar sees this as a sign of her moral superiority and begins to gloat and sneer at her barren mistress Sarai. In these ancient times (and in our so called enlightened modern times too), having children was a direct measure of value and worth.

In response to Hagar’s new attitude, and wounded by God’s insult to her dignity, Sarai mistreats her slave so badly that Hagar runs away. To preserve the social order, the angel of the LORD commanded her to return to her rightful place as the property of another person. There is no story of freedom or liberation here. Instead, it’s a moral lesson of “behave yourself and do as you’re told.” Incidentally, Hagar’s son, named Ishmael, would go on to have many descendants himself from whom comes the Islamic faith.

This little snapshot into a great family’s life and legacy provides a great deal of information about the place of women, the pressure to have children (preferably male), and the expectation that everyone will fall in line with the way things have always been done. It very much was a double standard, skewed in favour of men. As a symbol of power and fortune, a man would take have many wives as a show of how many people he could provide for and support.

The great, wise and noble King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Many of these marriages were of political necessity and convenience, in order to secure economic or political treaties with neighbouring countries. Still, that’s 1000 women with whom he was legally, and biblically, entitled to have sex with. I’m very rarely called conservative, but that seems a bit excessive.

So when I hear the complaints and anxiety about the loss of the traditional understanding of marriage, I think of Solomon and bite my tongue. I’m not sure these opinions have an accurate memory of what is in the biblical tradition. Marriage, in the original sense, was a business transaction. Marriage was the transfer of one man’s property, his daughter, to another man, the new husband. These formalized exchanges ensured a stable inheritance process and kept the peace.

The Bible’s laws have a lot to say about divorce, about the status of widows, instructions that seem quite heavy-handed and judgmental in making sure that society’s rules and regulations were preserved. Family relations and relationships were legislated and strictly defined.

We live in a society where families take on various appearances: blended families, adopted families, foster families. This is to affirm the value and worth every place and situation where people are bonded together by love. Sex had very little to do with it, yet we continue to assign morality and family values to its practice and prevention. Jesus asserts love is the most important ingredient in a family. Not capacity for reproduction or inheritance. ...

The last thing that Jesus did before he died (apart from a prophecy-fulfilling sip of wine) is that he exploded the notion of a typical, nuclear family. He created a new relationship between his mother and one of his disciples. There’s no blood connection or expectation of having children. All that was needed was respect, commitment and love.

We can’t all fit into the cookie-cutter expectations that society has of “normal” people. Our families do not match up with another families; we all have a history, tradition and identity (or lack of them) to make us different and unique. Be we are all deserving of God’s love and acceptance. Jesus was continually reaching out to those who had no connections or support system and offered them healing and care. Is that not also the work of the church family that is here?