These Are Our Bodies, Foundation Book

Talking Faith & Sexuality at Church & Home - Foundation Book

Leslie Choplin, Jenny Beaumont

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781606743096
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Easily accessible, theologically progressive, mainline Christian Education resource on human sexuality. Our inherent value and worth comes from God's love for us, but our modern world is filled with sexual expression that too often leads us away from the life of Christ. As Christians seeking to live a life worthy of our calling and desiring to pass along these values to our children and youth, this book explores how we (as parents and adults) can explore issues of sexuality in the context of our faith. A sexuality education resource from a mainline/progressive denominational prospective aids the adult reader/teacher/parent in learning and using skills that enable them to embrace and affirm the wholeness of sexuality and to talk openly and honestly about the connection of sexuality and faith. This book, grounded from a theological perspective, focuses on foundational issues for addressing how we (and why we) are called to have these conversations in a faithful community to support families. The importance of looking at one's sexuality throughout the lifespan through the lenses of decision making, faith and daily life, respect, growth and change, behavior, responsibility, values, prayer, and intentionality is be explored, offering a grounding as well as stand-alone resource for individuals and churches to build upon.

The whole story of creation, incarnation, and our
incorporation into the fellowship of Christ’s
body tells us that God desires us, as if we were
God, as if we were that unconditional response
to God’s giving that God’s self makes in the life
of the Trinity. We are created so that we may
be caught up in this, so that we may grow into
the wholehearted love of God by learning that
God loves us as God loves God.

––Rowan D. Williams⁵

CHAPTER 1

THE MYSTERY OF SEXUALITY

As children of God we are born into the world beloved by God. We are filled with hope and promise of the future. We come into the world inherently worthy of love and awe—awe at the mystery of our holiness in who and what we are.

As we develop, our experience and our sense of self are shaped and molded by those around us. This includes our sexuality. It is inherently part of who we are; living as a sexual being is unavoidable and unavoidably complex. Sexuality is good—a gift from God since the beginning.

Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth. God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them. God saw everything he had made: it was supremely good.”⁶

We are made in the image of God, the Imago Dei, a reflection of the divine. As such, there is much we will never know about our complexity and the diversity that exists within all humankind. By considering our sexuality (in essence, our true selves), we can contemplate the mysteries of human existence. To better understand human sexuality, we need to remind ourselves that “theologically we are dealing with matters at the very limits of our intellectual capacities; we are involved in profound puzzles, conundrums that we cannot solve and that we should not expect to solve.”⁷ It is within this context that we begin to explore human sexuality.

The overarching ethics of love, grace, and compassion serve as the foundation of our lives as faithful people, seen in the biblical theme of covenant. As a faith community, we re-tell the story of God’s grace in our lives and how that unearned love compels us to love others. In Genesis, we learn that God formed a covenant with Noah and set the rainbow in the sky as a reminder of that promise. Later, we hear the call for the people to be God’s people—a deep covenantal relationship through Abraham. Moses delivers the Ten Commandments to God’s people while seeking the Promised Land. “The most familiar covenantal relationship is marriage, to which the Hebrew prophets and New Testament writers turned as a way to describe God’s desire and commitment to be in relationship with us (Isaiah 62:5, Ephesians 5:21–33).”⁸ The theme of covenant is laced throughout the Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage,⁹ the Witnessing and Blessing of a Lifelong Covenant,¹⁰ and the Witnessing and Blessing of a Marriage.¹¹

In the New Covenant, Jesus Christ further reveals our sexuality as good, refocusing relationships to mutuality, respect, compassion, and hospitality. In the words of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, “Baptism and Eucharist, as sacraments of God’s covenant of creating, redeeming, and sustaining love, shapes our lives as Christians in relation to God and to God’s creation; this calls us to live with love, compassion, justice, and peace toward all creatures, friend or foe, neighbor or stranger.”¹²

LOVE AND RELATIONSHIP

Life is communal. We live in, are shaped by, and are created for relationship. As an inseparable part of us, our sexuality is part of relationships. Sexuality is powerful and we can deploy our bodies in the world in both healthy and unhealthy ways. We experience sexuality as light and shadow, as complementary opposites. Healthy sexuality is about loving and being loved, desiring and being desired, and mutual recognition of another. For many, this concept that we are created to desire and to be desired is novel.

Jesus frequently taught the concept of agape, or brotherly love. Agape is an unselfish love without sexual implications; it is the love of Christians for other persons that corresponds to the love of God for humankind––love that serves the other, embraces the other, and cares for the other. Agape is about relationship. This is the kind of love we see demonstrated by the Samaritan in the story of The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37).

A Samaritan, who was on a journey, came to where the man was. But when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. The Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took two full days’ worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper. He said, “Take care of him, and when I return, I will pay you back for any additional costs.” What do you think? Which one of these three was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves?¹³

Unlike the priest and the Levite, the Samaritan went to the man who encountered the thieves. The Samaritan cared for the man’s wounded body and gave unselfishly to show love and compassion, agape, for another person, someone he did not know. “Love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable and come alive in our lives of faith when we are able to explore and explain those commands in community.”¹⁴

As people are created to be in relationship, scripture witnesses to this. The Gospels are filled with story after story about relationships–– good and bad. Faith is about our relationship with God. Christianity is about our life and faith in relationship with God made flesh in the form of Jesus Christ. Jesus, fully divine and fully human, means that Jesus experienced life as we do––as a human with a full range of emotions, desires, and influences.

“. . . Loving our neighbors means recognizing the body by the side of the road as a dignified human being, in need of mercy. . . . The fellow on the road to Jericho was also treated in an appalling way–– as an exploitable substance, rather than a dignified human being. . . .” Katharine Jefferts Schori¹⁵

What we see in the whole of the scripture across time is the shift from a focus on procreation and survival to that of hospitality and mutuality. Our sexuality moves away from idolatry¹⁶ to embracing one another in mutual recognition. God calls us into relationship with God. Adam and Eve turned away from God as they hid in the garden, yet God called out to them. The prophets, the truth-tellers, called people back to God. Even the prophets struggled with turning away and toward God. Jonah was reluctant and tried to flee from God. Jesus calls us back to God, to live in the Kingdom of God now. Jesus calls us to live in unity not through procreation, but through care and hospitality.

THE MYSTERY OF BEING HUMAN

Part of the mystery of sexuality is the mystery of humanity. Humans are capable of great and wondrous feats of valor, kindness, compassion, and caretaking as well as acts of violence and atrocities against each other. As followers of Jesus Christ we are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our being, with all our strength, with all our mind, and love our neighbor as ourselves.¹⁷

“Although we sometimes identify sexuality with sexual activity and thus see sexuality as occupying a small isolated portion of our total living and being, we are foolish to deny our functioning as sexual beings. Through an understanding of the full range of love as described by C. S. Lewis (agape, eros, storge, philia––divine love, passion, affection, and friendship, respectively), we understand the healthy place of sexual activity and the source of sexual energy, which permeates our entire life.”¹⁸ Agape, that unconditional love of the other is tied to eros, physical love and sexual desire. To have a truly equal, vulnerable, and mutual sexual/romantic relationship one needs both. Agape is required for accepting people for who they are, warts and all, in all aspects. To fully recognize another person is to recognize and honor their sexuality.

At the heart of the Christian life is holiness, a call to seek and serve Christ in all persons. How can we embody the love of God, to live a life filled with faith, hope, and love? As Christians, how are we called to respond to the needs of others? Christianity is not about being right; it is about being in relationship together in Christ, striving to fulfill the gospel mandate to be one body in Christ. Faith is about a way of life. We do not all have to agree to be in relationship with each other; there is plenty of room at the table for everyone.

When the Church is divided “it weakens faith and witness to the gospel. Faith is weakened as attention is turned to who is right and away from the practice of faith in the love of God and neighbor.”¹⁹ In the words of the General Thanksgiving, we pray “. . . and that we show forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days.”²⁰ Holiness is “living in and deepening the experience of God’s presence in our lives together.”²¹

As a people yearning to live a holy and righteous life, we are called to embrace all people with love, grace, and acceptance. All people are the children of God.

As will be discussed in Chapter 6, A New Way of Understanding Our Sexuality, sexuality is incredibly complex. Our sense of self is connected to how we feel about our bodies: physically, spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. Our sexuality forms biologically and culturally. Much of life is complicated, multilayered, and not easily understood. Thus we need to pay particular attention to how we speak and think in terms of human sexuality. In many ways, it is a mystery that is ever unfolding before us.

Discussion Questions:

1.What does having a covenant mean to you? When have you made a promise to another person? What made it difficult (or easy) to keep?

2.What have been your most treasured relationships? What has made them special to you?

3.How can sexuality become idolatrous? Which term most describes the purpose of sexuality to you and why: procreation, survival, hospitality, mutuality, or relationship?

4.How do you care for and honor others, including their bodies?

5.Timothy Sedgwick states, holiness is “living in and deepening the experience of God’s presence in our lives together.” What does this mean to you?

CHAPTER 2

SEXUALITY AND OUR BAPTISMAL COVENANT

The Baptismal Covenant provides a foundation for educating all those who are a part of the Episcopal community as we strive to live as disciples of Christ through our baptismal promises and affirmations. We promise to guide and teach the newly baptized. We do not know all we need to know when we are baptized; we must continue to reexamine these promises in all aspects of our lives. Paul reminds us, “Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and perfect.”²²

Created in the image of God by God, as Christians we are called to follow Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.²³ God came in the form of a human to live on earth as a human. We read, hear, discuss, and use scripture as a guide to our life. Scripture is filled with sexual metaphors, sexual misconduct, sexual desire, sexuality issues such as gender inequality, and what it might mean to intentionally live life as a single person. Following Jesus’s example requires a full recognition of our embodiment...