Unpleasantville – Singles
Sycamore Creek Church
Genesis 14:17-20
Hebrews 5:5-10
Tom Arthur
February 14, 2010
Note to reader: This is a manuscript and not a transcript. While I prepare a manuscript, I don’t preach from it. All the major points are here, but there are bound to be some small differences from the sermon as it was preached live. Also, expect some “bonus” material that wasn’t in the live sermon.
Peace, Friends!
This is probably the hardest sermon I’ve had to put together for this Unpleasantville series. There’s something that seems even more difficult to me preaching about singleness as a married man than there was last week preaching about parenting without children. Whose idea was this anyway? And to preach about it on Valentine’s Day, the single person’s most despised Hallmark holiday? Oh yeah. It was my idea. It was my idea because I sense that single people often experience great tension being single in our culture and in the church. So I thought it was important to speak to that tension. So, however this sermon turns out, it is my hope that it would be encouraging to the single people in our midst.
I was surprised to find that many famous people have been single: Plato, Isaac Newton, Susan B. Anthony, Coco Chanel, Elizabeth I of England, St. Francis, Joan of Arc, Thomas Jefferson (Widower for 19 years when he became president), Andrew Jackson (Widower), and more recently Condoleezza Rice.
One of the problems with speaking to single people is that it’s difficult to determine exactly who you’re speaking to. The 2004 US census found that 43 percent of all U.S. residents age 15 and over are single, and a 2006 Gallup Poll found that of the 19% currently never married in the U.S. 66% (13%) intend to get married and 27% (5%) intend to remain single. So if we have on average one hundred people in worship and if those one hundred people are representative of our broader community, there would be forty-three of you who were single. Nineteen of you would have never been married. Five or six of you would be intending to remain single.
There are of course many reasons people are single. There are those who are not yet married because they haven’t found the right person and they’re not in a rush. There are those who have not yet married because they haven’t found the right person and they are in a rush. There are some of you who are single because of a recent breakup with a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Some of those past relationships might have included children. There are those (maybe not any here this morning) who are single because they’re a nun, monk, or Catholic priest. Then there are those who are single because they just want to be single. And that’s just those who haven’t been married yet.
There are those who have been married and are now single. They may be single because they have separated from a spouse but are not yet divorced. There are those who are single because they are divorced and not remarried. Some of those who are separated or divorced have children and some do not. Some who are divorced are still dating. Others are done with dating. Some were married but are now widows or widowers
With such a broad range of reasons for being single, who am I talking to in this sermon? I am primarily talking to those who are no longer in the dating scene whether pre-married or post-married. If you are still in the dating scene, then check out the sermon I preached recently on courting. The gist of that sermon was to help you determine if it’s time to take the next step in commitment. I suggested that it is time to say yes to the next step in commitment toward marriage when you realize you can keep the energy up in the relationship over the long-haul, the attraction is more than external, your community (friends, family, and church) supports you, you’re transparent with one another, and you know you can love the whole person (even the parts you don’t like).
Today I’m talking to those who are either “single by choice” or “single by circumstance” (as Susan Muto says in her book on singleness titled Celebrating the Single Life) and are not planning on dating any time soon. Muto suggests that singleness can be a calling and “like any other calling, must be compatible with one’s temperament and talents, with one’s personal and social gifts and limits” (35). I’d take what she says a step further. A calling can be for a season or for a lifetime.
Natasha Bedingfield sings about this kind of singleness for a season in her song, Single:
I’m single
(Right now)
That’s how I wanna be
I’m single
(Right now)
That’s how I wanna be
…
Don’t need to be on somebody’s arm to look good
(I like who I am)
I’m not saying I don’t wanna fall in love ‘cos I would
I’m not gonna get hooked up just ‘cos you say I should
(Can’t romance on demand)
I’m gonna wait so I’m sorry if you misunderstood
With all that said, let’s get to some scripture this morning. One of the difficulties of this sermon is that this series is focused on the book of Genesis, and Genesis doesn’t really have any single people in it. There may be one though. His name is Melchizedek. Genesis doesn’t tell us that he is single, but no reference is made to his family. Let’s read briefly about him:
Genesis 14:17-20
17 As Abram returned from his victory over Kedorlaomer and his allies, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). 18 Then Melchizedek, the king of Salem and a priest of God Most High, brought him bread and wine. 19 Melchizedek blessed Abram with this blessing:
“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth.
20 And blessed be God Most High,
who has helped you conquer your enemies.”
Then Abram gave Melchizedek a tenth of all the goods he had recovered.
This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God.
So why is Melchizedek important for single people? He’s important for many reasons, but one of the primary ways is that he is a pre-figure of Jesus. If we jump to the book of Hebrews in the New Testament we find the following.
Hebrews 5:5-10
5 That is why Christ did not exalt himself to become High Priest. No, he was chosen by God, who said to him,
“You are my Son.
Today I have become your Father.”
6 And in another passage God said to him,
“You are a priest forever
in the line of Melchizedek .”
7 While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could deliver him out of death. And God heard his prayers because of his reverence for God. 8 So even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. 9 In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him. 10 And God designated him to be a High Priest in the line of Melchizedek.
This too is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!
There’s a lot in this passage from Hebrews, but the part I want to focus on is how Jesus is referred to as a priest in the order of Melchizedek. In other words, Jesus is like Melchizedek and Melchizedek is like Jesus. For this sermon, what’s important is that while Melchizedek isn’t said explicitly to be single, Jesus is most definitely single. Jesus’ singleness is important because it shows us that marriage is not necessarily the standard for Christian relationships. It does seem in the Old Testament that marriage is the standard, but by the time we get to the New Testament, marriage is no longer the standard. Singleness is a completely acceptable and full way of living the Christian life.
Paul makes this very explicit when he says to the Corinthians, “I wish everyone could get along without marrying, just as I do” (7:7). He says this is a concession and not a command in the verse that comes before this one, but it is clear in Paul’s mind that the preferable state is to be single. This is probably because Paul thinks that Jesus’ return is imminent, right around the corner, and so he wonders why you’d want to get married when you know that Jesus is about to return. Paul later comes to see that Jesus’ return might not be as imminent as he had originally thought.
This verse and others like it have certainly been quoted in ways to singles that have been hurtful to them. Single people are often told that you should like being single because Paul prefers people to be single. That’s not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is that marriage is not the standard. Marriage need not be the standard against which you judge whether you’re a faithful Christian or not. You are not a half-Christian or half-person because you are single. You can be a full person and follow Jesus fully while being single.
While being single is a perfectly acceptable way to live out one’s Christian commitments, it does not erase some of the basic needs that we as humans have. The first of those needs is that we were all created for community. There is a difference between being single and alone and being single and lonely. Being lonely has more to do with the lack of community in one’s life. Ideally the church would be the place where a single Christian would find that kind of community that would make the difference between being alone and being lonely.
In this sense, the single person, like every Christian, is married to Christ. The church is even often called the “bride of Christ.” We see this in Revelation when John says, “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb [Jesus] has come, and his bride [the church] has made herself ready” (19:7, NRSV). Ambrose, the fourth century bishop of Milan, says, “It is certain that as Eve was bone of the bones of her husband and flesh of his flesh, we also are members of Christ’s body, bones of his bones and flesh of his flesh” (Ancient Christian Commentary, 71). There is a unity of one-flesh between the members of the church and the bridegroom, Christ.
The reality of the church in America is that we rarely provide this kind of community for single people. We have bought more into the cultural standard of the nuclear family of two parents with children living together in a single-family household, but this does not need to be the case. We could live differently. Sarah and I have had a small taste of this when in seminary we lived with other Christians in a hospitality house, the Isaiah House. Married people lived right alongside single people. This did not always solve every problem (sometimes it even increased the problems!), but it was a step in the right direction.
One small example of this from my own experience is that Sarah often travels for her job. When she is gone I am like a lost puppy dog. I wander around the house aimlessly. I feel like a boat that has been unanchored and is adrift. When we lived in the Isaiah House things were different. When Sarah was gone, I still had the community of other Christians. I was alone but not lonely. We ate together. We prayed together. If I wanted to go on a walk with someone, there were people around to ask. This was a very different way of being church. It was not perfect, but it opens up our imaginations to what could be. We were created for community. Singles may be alone, but they need not be lonely when the church is truly being the church.
We were all also created for service. There is a common economic term used to describe a particular group of people: DINKs. This stands for “Double Income No Kids.” Sarah and I are DINKs. In the life of the DINK there is a great temptation to take all that time and money that one would focus on kids and serve ourselves rather than serving others. I wonder if the same is not true of SINKs. Single Income No Kids. SINKs have a kind of flexibility in time and flexibility in commitments that others might not have. This flexibility has the potential to do great good. I wonder if SINKs at times don’t end up being married to the jobs. This is not what I’m talking about in terms of service. I’m not talking about serving your boss. Although some of you may be at a job which is also your vocation or calling. If so, perhaps you do have the great blessing of being able to put more time into your calling. Rather, what I’m talking about is being free to serve your church, your community, and your world. This is what I think was at the foundation of Paul’s preference that people remain single: they are freer to serve. Sarah has a friend who is single who is a Wycliffe missionary. Wycliffe is a Bible translation mission. Her freedom as a single person is some of what allows her to be strong in missions. The Methodist revival in America was mostly due to single Methodist preachers who remained extremely flexible as they traveled the countryside on their horses preaching from town to town.
One last area I want to hit on is singles and sex. On March 21st I’m going to be preaching a full sermon on sex, so this is not intended to be that sermon. In a nutshell, Christians are called to the discipline of celibacy. That means no marriage, no sex. No ring, no fling. Within marriage, fidelity. But this leaves open the question of masturbation.
What I am about to say about masturbation is an area that I think there is room to disagree about and remain in community together, but my own personal reading of scripture leads me to believe that there is nothing wrong with masturbation given several caveats.
Let’s look at scripture. There is no explicit command in scripture against masturbation. The one that has been used is from Genesis. It is about Onan who was the second son of Judah, one of the twelve sons of Israel. Judah married his first son to Tamar and he died. He then gave his second son, Onan to Tamar who was according to cultural custom supposed to have sex with Tamar so that she would not be without children. Here’s where we pick up the story. We read, “But Onan was not willing to have a child who would not be his own heir. So whenever he had intercourse with Tamar, he spilled the semen on the ground to keep her from having a baby who would belong to his brother” (Genesis 38:9, NLT). This did not make God happy and so Onan dies. The issue at hand here has more to do with questions of birth control than it does with questions of masturbation.
Let’s look at my caveats. First, I’m talking about single people, not married people. If you’re married, your sexual duty is to your spouse, not yourself. Paul talking to the Corinthians again says, “The husband should not deprive his wife of sexual intimacy, which is her right as a married woman, nor should the wife deprive her husband. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband also gives authority over his body to his wife” (1 Corinthians 7:3-4, NLT). Husbands and wives bodies belong to one another. Your body is not your own. In the case of men, most men have lost their mojo once they masturbate so it’s pretty hard to provide your wife sexual intimacy once you’ve masturbated. So my first caveat about masturbation: it is for single people, not married people. There does, of course, need to be a transition away from masturbation when one gets married.
Second, while the Bible does not explicitly speak about masturbation, it does speak very clearly about lust. Perhaps the most well known verse is Jesus’ teaching that looking on a woman with lust is the equivalent of committing adultery (Matthew 5:27-30). Therefore, if masturbation is acceptable, it is only acceptable without lust being involved. For most men, this is almost impossible to imagine. Most men treat masturbation the way that Doug Roberts talks about masturbation in an article in Glamour magazine. He says, “[O]ne of the things I love about masturbation is that it’s sex with anybody I want: Halle Berry, the weather-woman, the blond who brushed against me on the subway” (as quoted in Real Sex by Lauren Winner, 116). Perhaps a way of imagining masturbation as not involving lust is to consider the desire of hunger and eating. Most of us don’t think about what the food looks like when we’re fulfilling our hunger by eating. We focus on how it tastes.
My third caveat: fulfilling the desire of masturbation should be done in moderation. Perhaps the analogy of eating is also appropriate here. The desire to eat is a natural desire. It can also be taken too far to the point that food runs our lives. The question here about masturbation is: what controls you? Do your desires control you or are your desires submitted to Christ? The question immediately comes up: well, how often can I masturbate? The answer to that question is: I don’t know. If you’re asking whether you masturbate too often, I wonder if you may have already crossed the line. I think the answer to this question is probably different for each individual. If you want to talk about it more, I’m happy to consider it (although if you are a woman who is wrestling with this issue, it might be more comfortable for you to talk to another woman).
My last caveat is that it is OK also to completely abstain from masturbation. The Bible does speak positively about taking certain vows of abstaining from things that are otherwise good. The Nazarite Vow is one example where someone agrees not to cut their hair or drink any alcohol. This is not a condemnation of hair cutting or drinking. It is a special discipline of abstaining from the good to dedicate oneself for the great. This too is good.
Now that I’ve spoken about masturbation, I suspect this will become known as the masturbation sermon and by now you’ve forgotten all about what I said at the beginning of the sermon. Sex and masturbation are not the only things single people struggle with. So let’s go back and review the other points of the sermon. First, singleness can be a calling for a season. It need not be for a lifetime. Second, marriage is not the Christian standard. Single people can be full Christians. Third, singles like everyone else are created for community and service. Fourth, a Christian ethic of sexuality is: no ring, no fling. And yet, masturbation without lust or excess can be OK for single Christians but not for married Christians.
That’s a lot about being single and being Christian. I’m sure there’s even more that could be said. The good news is that a single savior has already walked these roads before us and continues to walk this journey with us. For this we give thanks to God through the Spirit. Amen.
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