SUNDAY OF SEX AND SEXUALITY

JESUS' VIEW OF SEX.

If you want to see the highest respect for human sexuality and marriage, read it in the words and actions of Jesus. He says, "What God joins together sexually, be careful not to rip apart". Jesus announces the warning in the face of easy divorce in His teaching  recorded in Matthew cap. 19. He restates the Genesis cap. 2 picture of one man and one woman forming one flesh unity, and suggests that the only alternative to the kind of beautiful sexual intimacy is holy celibacy: being single for the glory of God and the service of God's  purpose in the world. It is clear that to be single and sexually unattached is an expression of high human responsibility and high respect for humans everywhere.

Jesus teaches responsible "looking" in the famous "lust" teaching in Matthew cap. 5. We are to sanctify our sexual imagination and to be careful not to fantasize sexual intimacy with inappropriate people. This high target, which keeps all of us focused on our own lifelong intimacy covenant, means looking ahead toward marriage when we are young and looking back to reconstruct a lifelong fidelity for the rest of our lives. This sex-positive focusing of sexual imagination and energy is an invitation to clear and exclusive thinking as the highest respect we can show for everyone. No one has a higher, more positive view of sex than Jesus. ( Donald M. Joy)

Our human sexuality, our maleness and femaleness, is not just an accidental arrangement of the human species,  not just a convenient way to keep the human race going. No, it is at the centre of our true humanity. We exist as male and female in relationship. Our sexualness, our capacity to love and be loved is intimately related to our creation in the image of God. What a high view of human sexuality!

Notice too that the Biblical stress upon relationship helps to enlarge our understanding of human sexuality. The problem with the topless bars and the pornographic literature of our day is not that they emphasize sexuality too much but that they do not emphasize it enough. They totally eliminate relationship and restrain sexuality to the narrow confines of the genitals. They have made sex trivial.

How much richer and fuller is the Biblical perspective! To chat over coffee, to discuss a great book, to view a sunset together - this is sexuality at its best, for male and female are in intimate relationship. (Richard Foster).

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