The Bears and the Colts. Last summer when I planned this first Sunday in February, what is known in the Secular Liturgical Calendar as “Super Bowl Sunday,” I hoped against hope that I would be able to start this sermon with a different tag line such as, “The Bears and the Chargers.” Oh well. On the theory that at least a majority of us would have our minds today on the annual national party that has a football game for an excuse, I began to wonder, “What can I preach about that will have any chance of drawing your attention away from football?” And then, it hit me. Not long ago there was a Super Bowl whose claim to fame had nothing to do with the game—in fact, I can’t even remember who played that year—and had everything to do with an event at halftime whose description has now become part of the national lexicon: wardrobe malfunction. When I say those two words we immediately enter into one of the most debated, most vexing, and most important issues in modern American society: sexuality.

Sexuality is a fact of human life. But in recent decades pretty much everything having to do with this most basic reality of life has been revamped, rethought, and revealed, with highly debatable consequences. On the plus side, I suppose, is that, as a society, we are perhaps doing a better job of talking at an adult level about adult issues of great importance to us all. And of course, there is still some discomfort involved in talking about sexuality in a very public way. How many of you are uncomfortable admitting in public that you are uncomfortable talking in public about sex? On the negative side, we have become greatly confused about what is and what is not a healthy understanding and practice regarding sexuality. But, because God created our sexuality, and because you and I are deeply interested in shaping our lives according to how our Creator meant them to be, it is vital that we return again and again to this topic from the perspective of our faith.

We could spend many Sundays together talking about this topic and someday we may, but for today it seems vital that we focus on the most fundamental truths that our faith teaches, because it is from these that all the other truths arise. Early on, the Christian church adopted the essential teaching of Paul regarding these matters. Paul himself had taken basic Jewish understanding, reevaluated it through the lens of Christ, and then taught about it to local congregations that struggled with confusion and cultural pressure that was certainly no less than what we experience today. No more sexually confused city could be found in the ancient world than Corinth. Corinth was famous for its temple filled with 1000 “sacred” prostitutes. As a crossroads and major city it was filled with every sort of philosophy and lifestyle imaginable. So corrupt was the city’s populace in its sexuality that in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, to call someone a “Corinthian” was to brand them as a very loose sort of person.

In Corinth and much of the ancient world there were two popular streams of thought about human sexuality. One was represented by the Stoic and Cynic philosophies, both of which held that anything related to the world of physicality of human life was corrupt and less-than-spiritual, and therefore, to be shunned. In the Christian churches, these ideas developed into an asceticism which held that sexual expression—even sometimes in marriage—was beneath true believers. The other stream of thought was the polar opposite. Based in the popular Gnostic religion of the day, the idea was that all that mattered in your relationship with God was what you believed and what you knew in your mind, and therefore, what you did in the physical world—including the world of sexuality—was of no consequence, spiritually speaking. This thinking led to hedonism and libertinism, and the totally free exercise of sexuality in whatever form imaginable. In the Christian churches, these ideas swayed some believers in Jesus, who held that their freedom in Christ set them free from any form of traditional morality in physical human life.

The Corinthian church had significant groups that subscribed to each of these two extremes regarding sexuality, either total abstinence or free indulgence. One group apparently was preaching that it was a good thing for a man not to touch a woman, the ascetic approach. To this pastoral situation, Paul wrote a truly Christian message. Following in the tradition of Genesis, a tradition affirmed by Jesus, he discusses Christian marriage as something created by God for Adam, because being alone was not a good thing. He affirms that part of the unity and fellowship desired in marriage has to do with full sexual expression. He affirms that God created not just the world of the spirit but also the world of the physical, and as such, physical sexual expression is a good thing. But God has placed boundaries around that expression. That boundary is established between one man and one woman in the commitment of marriage. Within marriage, full sexual expression is godly and necessary and good. Outside of marriage, it becomes filled with pitfalls and problems.

Now, we all know that marriage itself is not automatically an easy street to the perfect relationship. Two women were having a conversation about relationships, and one said to the other, “Relationships are so difficult.” The older woman said, “Two tips…firstly, tell him how important he is to you and how much you respect him.” “And second,” the other said. “Try not to laugh when you’re saying it.” And then there was the doctor having a heart-to-heart talk with his patient. The doctor said, “It’s important to avoid food that has long-term, harmful effects.” And the patient said, “You mean like wedding cake?” The intimacy, the vulnerability, the transparency that God desires between man and woman as husband and wife that is signified, in Genesis’ terms, by the comment that both are “naked and not ashamed,” is a nakedness at least as much of the soul and personality as of the body. But bodily intimacy is part of that overall unity that God has designed to overcome our aloneness, and in the fallen world, it is safely and rightly exercised only within the covenant of marriage. For as hard as marriage is, it is the God-given relationship where a man and a woman can be safe to reveal themselves for who they really are.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Paul’s discussion of sexuality here in his letter to the Corinthians is his vision of the mutual responsibility and ownership each has for the other. It is significant that God created Eve from out of the side of Adam, an early indication of the equality between the two human beings. Paul sees that, in the sexual relationship between a husband and wife, such equality is paramount. Each partner ideally gives himself or herself to the other, in both emotional and physical ways. The emotional aspect is not superior to the physical, nor the physical to the emotional: both are part of the human creature and both are necessary components of the marriage relationship. Historically, the Christian church has sometimes gone astray, teaching that the physical is inferior to the emotional, or that somehow the female is inferior to the male. Neither position can find support in scripture. What scripture teaches is mutual respect, mutual honor, mutual support, mutual openness, mutual self-giving, on the part of and for the benefit of both female and male.

One of the Bible’s most beautiful expressions of God’s design for human sexuality is the love poem that we call the Song of Solomon. From this poem comes a simple phrase that captures both the spiritual and physical union that is designed for our health and for our joy: “My beloved is mine and I am his.” The Bible celebrates the union of man and woman as a gift from God, as part of the design of creation, as something that is good. It is such a powerful and fundamental relationship, that the early Christians also understood the marriage rite as standing for an even more important relationship, that between Christ and his Church. Just as a man and a woman share in full and complete spiritual and physical union in marriage, and so create a relationship capable of great love, so does Christ and his disciples share in a complete union, as signified by the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, where Christ shares his body and blood with his beloved, that they may have all the joy heaven can provide. Jesus’ disciples—his church—have been called “the Bride of Christ.” Just as a man and a woman give themselves fully to each other, so do Christ and his Followers give themselves fully to each other, in a fellowship that brings to life the love that God intends and desires for each of us.

So let us know and remember at least this: God has made us to be sexual creatures who find our highest sexual good within the total fellowship that marriage of men and women is created to be. All forms of sexuality that the world presents to us in real life must be held up to this divine standard. If we begin from the place where God started, then you and I can find the joy and fulfillment of total intimacy, and know that we are not alone.

Amen.