Down East

I'm off to a national meeting for the Year of Sabbath campaign that is presently underway through the Youth and Young Adult Ministries portfolio of the national church office.

For the next few days I'll be in Nova Scotia, returning on Thursday evening. I should have access to email still and will return messages left on the cellphone voicemail (I won't answer any calls because I'm too cheap to pay the roaming charges - so leave a message and I'll respond).

The Rev. Richard Golden is available for any pastoral care emergencies that might arise. See you when I get back!

sermon excerpts: "Sex & the Church"

(Luke 6: 37-42, Genesis 3: 1-13)
This is one of my soapboxes, a keystone of my ministry: I am compelled to try and undo and speak against the damage the church inflicts against the emotional, spiritual and even physical well-being of people when it comes to sex. How can such an important element of our personality and spirit be ignored or condemned by a church authority that claims to nurture and care for all?

... We’ll begin at the beginning, in the garden of Eden where the serpent tempts Eve and Adam. This is the story of scripture commonly referred to as The Fall. And when we ask, the fall from what? We answer, from grace, from paradise in Eden.

All because humanity wanted to know more, to have answers, to understand what the difference is between good and evil. Is that so wrong and misguided? Regardless, God finds out that Adam and Eve disobeyed and is displeased.

It’s an automatic reaction: Adam points to Eve, Eve points to the snake. The snake points to … well, the snake has no fingers and bears the brunt of humanity’s fall from grace. This is why our life is so hard, because someone else messed up long ago. So we have the common lesson from this scripture: obey God or there’ll be hell to pay.

Underneath all the fuss and fretting is the idea that it is wrong to be naked and that civilized and evolved people have decency, covering their shameful parts with fig leaves and Ralph Lauren. From the very beginning, we are taught to cover up and hide our bodies, ourselves, from each other.

Before knowing the difference between good evil, to be in the Garden of Eden was to not know shame. Adam and Eve were happy to be themselves and to not worry about what is normal, or right, or proper. It was a time of innocence, or ignorance, but it was a time of being close to God.

Reading about Eve and Adam’s reaction to their nakedness has me wondering if clothing a metaphor for hiding ourselves from one another? Not that I’m promoting nudism! Our true selves are covered up with a wardrobe designed to make us look slimmer, trendier, sexier, to project an image of something that we’re not? We rarely get to see and meet the real person behind all the appearances and screens that we hide behind. So maybe “The Fall from Grace” as read in Genesis 3 is a fall from true community and honest relationships, a fall into relying on appearances and judging books by their covers.

In a healthy sexual relationship, there is the mutual sense of intimacy and vulnerability. We expose so much of who we are, not just in a physical, anatomical sense of connecting body parts, but of our souls delighting in one another.

Sex is a natural and essential and wonderful part of our createdness. But because Adam and Eve suddenly feeling that they have to hide themselves from one another, we carry centuries of baggage with us when it comes to sex. We all have our stories, some simple and straightforward, others horrifically tragic, we all have had to make sense of difficult questions and deal with consequences. And under the disproving eyes of church and society, we can feel incredibly alone and unanchored.

So maybe the lesson is to withhold judgment as Jesus so often preached, to look to oneself before digging at the splinter in our neighbour’s eye. Certainly the church could do that. If we, as a church, can’t be forthright and truthful about something as common and universal to the human experience as sex, then how can we expect people to listen to what we have to say about complicated spiritual matters like our purpose in life, the state of our soul or addressing the crises of faith.

Meg Hickling is a stalwart United Church member and a highly praised woman in circles of youth ministry. She is the author of The New Speaking of Sex (Kelowna, BC: Northstone Publishing/Wood Lake Books, 2005). She’s written a chapter that speaks directly to the need of faith and sexuality and I’ll conclude with her words: p. 218 “Why Bother?”

for Apr. 6 - Genesis 3: 1-13

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

* * *

What feelings, questions, thoughts and prompts to personal action arise from this scripture? What about hymn suggestions or ideas for Children's Time? Share them as Comments below or in an email, and help shape Sunday's worship service.

In Anticipation

With the seasons of Lent and Easter recently concluded, preparations are underway for the highly-anticipated "Sex & the Church" series. Like sex, here's hoping it doesn't disappoint ... I still haven't figured out exactly what I'm doing (please refrain from the obvious joke!) so the usual practice of posting theme scriptures, etc. will be delayed. After all, good things come to those who wait.