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Have Fun

June 24, 2015 by Leave a Comment

fromthisday

From this Day Forward – Have Fun*
Sycamore Creek Church
June 14/15, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!  Today we’re going to have some fun in this message.  That means it’s rated PG.  So parents, be guided.  We’re in this series called From this Day Forward.  We’re looking at building a thriving marriage by making five commitments:

  1. Seek God
  2. Stay Pure
  3. Have Fun
  4. Fight Fair
  5. Never Give Up

I want to give a plug for next week.  Fighting fair is probably one of the most important things we can learn to do well to help our marriage thrive.  So don’t miss next week.  But before we get to the fighting, we’re going to have some fun.  What’s the best advice on marriage you’ve ever been given?  I’m not sure it’s the best advice, but here’s some advice from famous people and celebrities:

Will Ferrell: “Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow internet to see who they really are.”
LeAnn Rimes: “A good friend just told me that the key to a successful marriage was to argue naked!”
Phyllis Diller: “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”

What’s the best piece of marriage advice you’ve ever heard?  We asked people around our church what’s the best advice they were given about marriage.  Here’s what they said:

The best advice I was ever given was by my dad, who has been married three times.  I think he knows something about what doesn’t work.  He told me: “You either grow together or you grow apart.”  In other words, there’s no coasting in marriage.  You can’t just set your marriage off on a shelf to the side and hope it will stay thriving.  I was reminded of this the last time I was at my dad’s house.  I saw my trick bike from High School hanging in the garage.  I had so much fun on this bike growing up.  I took it everywhere.  It gave me hours and hours of fun.

My son has just learned to ride a bike and I thought it would be fun to bring my old bike home and ride it with Micah.  It was fun back then.  Surely it will be fun right now.  The next time we went to the skate park, I put it on the bike rack and took it with us.  When I hopped on it and began riding, I realized the truth that my dad had taught me.  The tires were so brittle from 20 years of disuse that they almost immediately shredded and disintegrated.  They literally fell apart.  (Not to mention that I’m no spry teenager hopping around on a trick bike anymore.)  You can’t ignore something for twenty years and imagine that you can just pick it back up and it will be just as fun as it was.  You either grow together, or you grow apart.  You either take the time to keep at something, or it falls apart.  You either work at it, or you lose it.  There’s no coasting when it comes to keeping up a bike, and there’s no coasting when it comes to marriage.  One of the key ways you pay attention to your marriage so it doesn’t fall apart is have some fun together.

The author of Ecclesiastes took a long and hard look at life and all that this world has to offer and wrote down what he saw.  Here’s one of his observations:

Relish life with the spouse you love
Each and every day of your precarious life.
~Ecclesiastes 9:9 (The Message)

Without some fun, adventure, romance, and physical intimacy, marriage is reduced to a business partnership.  What bills do we need to pay?  Who is picking up the kids after school?  What do we need to do in the yard this weekend?  People don’t fall in love having a bad time: “I went out with this guy and we had nothing in common and did nothing and it was such a turn on!”

When Sarah and I first got married we had a lot of fun keeping up dating one another.  We would each plan one surprise date a month.  We were super creative about these dates.  One time I took Sarah on a scavenger hunt around town.  We would sit down on a bench and taped underneath it was a love note.  We’d walk by a tree and clipped to a branch was another love note.  She had an awesome time walking around finding all these love notes hidden.  Then there was the time she created an “Eco Challenge” for me.  The Eco Challenge was this adventure race on TV.  She made a miniature version of it that included hiking, biking, swimming, and ended at the beach with a little boat she had just bought me.  Wow!  But here’s my favorite one I ever planned (or at least the favorite one I’m willing to talk about publicly).  I took her to a sushi place.  We have this little “tradition” of putting “in bed” on the end of the fortune cookies we get.  So to surprise her, I talked to the manager earlier in the day and gave him some custom fortune cookies I had made all ending with “in bed.”  When we were done with dinner, he delivered the fortune cookies to the table.  I’ll never forget Sarah’s surprise at opening one fortune after another of what life was going to look like in bed.

Let me provide one note of caution before we dive further into this idea of having fun in marriage.  The kind of fun we have in marriage changes over time.  Usually as a culture we idolize the puppy love and infatuation that romance begins with.  We spend a lot of time and energy trying to reclaim or rebuild that same puppy love even though we’ve been married for twenty years.  C.S. Lewis has this wisdom to share with us:

“It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.”
~C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

So be ready for the kind of fun you have in a relationship to change over time.  But remember fun is not a luxury in marriage.  You don’t have time not to have fun.  If you don’t have time to have fun in marriage, then one day you may not have a marriage.  So I want to share with you three ways every couple needs to have fun.

1.       Face to Face Fun

When you’re dating you talk and talk for hours on end. Run out of things to say and just listen to each other breathe.  (Not that kind of breathing!)  But when you get married there’s a temptation for the face to face time to become business time.  How are the finances doing?  How is school going for the kids?  Did you get the oil changed in the car?

The Song of Solomon is probably the steamiest book in the Bible.  It’s a love song between two people madly in love.  Sometimes the woman sings to the man and other times the man sings to the woman like here:

How beautiful are your sandaled feet,
O queenly maiden.
Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a skilled craftsman.
Your navel is perfectly formed
like a goblet filled with mixed wine.
Between your thighs lies a mound of wheat
bordered with lilies.
Your breasts are like two fawns,
twin fawns of a gazelle.
~Song of Solomon 7:1-3 NLT

Did you notice anything about how the man sings to the woman besides the fact that he talked about her breasts?  I know, a lot of you got stuck right there.  But here’s what I’m driving at: he talks about details.  Some of us like headlines but others like details.  This reminds me of an article I once read about writing a really good thank you note.  There were four parts:

  1. Be specific – “Thank you for the extra time you put into…on Friday.”
  2. State the cost – “You could have been relaxing, biking, etc.”
  3. Personal affect – “It made me feel great and helped me do what I needed to do.”
  4. Thank – “Thank you so much for…”

Be specific.  Give details.  Find the face to face time to have fun.

Sarah and I began having a weekly date night when we moved into the Isaiah House while we attended seminary.  The Isaiah House was a Christian intentional living community.  We lived with other Christians and offered a couple of rooms to woman and children in transition.  Every night we ate dinner together with twelve or so other people.  We realized after the first two weeks that we had barely talked to one another because we were no longer talking to one another at dinner.  We were talking to the other twelve people around the table.  We needed a time apart for just the two of us to talk about the details of what was going on in our lives.  Enter date night.

Do you have a time when you have face to face time with your spouse?  Let me be clear here.  Face to face time is NOT driving your kids to an activity.  It’s NOT talking while watching a show.  It’s NOT talking while messing with your cell phone.  Face to face time is focused time with your spouse.

Sarah and I have found after eighteen years of marriage that we need a little help moving from business conversations to personal conversations.  So we often use a conversation starter book.  Before we head out on a date, I look through a little book and rip out one of the pages to help us start conversations.  Sometimes our conversation flows just fine.  Other times we find the questions on the page helpful for having some fun conversation.  Last Friday, here’s the question we talked about: “If you could wear a magical pair of glasses that allowed you to read your partner’s MIND for 60 seconds in a 24-hour day, when would you want to wear them most?”  Wow!  That was an interesting conversation.

When do you have face to face time with your spouse?  (By the way, if you’re not married, we all need face to face time with our friends too!)

2.       Side to side Fun – Men generally crave

You might say that generally speaking, women crave face to face time while men crave this second kind of fun: side to side fun.  Side to side fun is enjoying time doing common activities.  Back to the Song of Solomon:

Come, my love, let us go out to the fields
and spend the night among the wildflowers
~Song of Solomon 7:11

In other words: Weekend getaway!  Campout!  Cabin!  This kind of fun has changed over time as Sarah and I have grown.  Before we had kids we liked to ski together, downhill and cross country.  We liked to bike together.  We would hike and camp together.  We’ve spent five nights on the trail together backpacking.  Now that we’ve got kids our side to side time is a little less exotic but still important and fun.  We go on walks together.  We go to a bookstore and pick out books to show one another.  Last time we did this Sarah suggested we each pick a book of somewhere we’d like to travel together some day and spend time looking through it together.  We go see plays (we particularly enjoy plays at Peppermint Creek Theater).  Sometimes we go shopping together.  Neither of us is big shoppers, but Sarah likes shopping with me.  She says I pick out better clothes for her than she picks out herself.  Here’s my secret: I just pick out clothes I like.  She likes that I like them and somehow they always seem to fit better and feel more comfortable.  This was not a skill I knew I had before I got married.  But we have fun doing it together.

Do you know what your spouse enjoys doing?  Does he enjoy golfing, hunting, classic cars, NASCAR?  Have you ever tried to do these things with him?  Does she enjoy Downton Abbey?  Shopping?  Running?  Have you ever tried doing these things with her?  And I mean really trying to do them?  To enjoy them?  Maybe they’re not your favorite thing to do, but you’ll be building bridges with your spouse when he or she sees you making the attempt.

Here’s a little tip, women.  I mentioned that men tend to crave side to side fun more while you crave face to face fun.  You’re more likely to get face to face time if you include it with some side to side time.  Your man is more likely to open up when he’s doing something he enjoys, or right after he’s done something with you he enjoys (if he doesn’t fall asleep first!).  Which brings us to the last kind of fun every couple needs.

3.       Belly Button to Belly Button

I know you think the Bible is just boring literature with nothing sexy in it.  But I’m about to blow your mind here.  Back to the Song of Solomon.  The woman sings to the man:

Let us get up early and go to the vineyards
to see if the grapevines have budded,
if the blossoms have opened,
and if the pomegranates have bloomed.
There I will give you my love.
~Song of Solomon 7:12 NLT

“There I will give you my love.”  What’s she talking about?  She’s saying, “Let’s go have sex in a park!”  Whoever said that men were the only ones with crazy sex ideas just didn’t know women very well.  Now I’m not telling you to go have sex in a park, unless…well, no.  But I am telling you that every marriage needs some good belly button to belly button fun.

My dad gave me another piece of advice when it comes to sex that has turned out to be just plain wrong.  He said that if you put a quarter in a jar every time you have sex the first two years of marriage and then take one quarter out every time you have sex after the second year, you’ll never run out of quarters.  That’s just not right.  Every piece of research I’ve read says that married people have more sex than unmarried people.  Here’s my own tip for you: calendar sex.  I know it doesn’t sound very romantic.  And I’m not saying you can’t have sex if it’s not on the calendar, but if you know sex is coming on Thursday night, then everyone will be ready for it.  The anticipation will build.  Who knows, the anticipating may be too much to wait for Thursday night!

My dad’s not the only dad who gave his son advice about marriage.  The book of Proverbs, an ancient wisdom book, records the advice a dad gave to his son about marriage.  Although it could as well be the advice given to a daughter by a mother:

Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you.
Rejoice in the wife of your youth.
She is a loving deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts satisfy you always.
May you always be captivated by her love.
~Proverbs 5:18-19

“This is the word of God for the people of God.  May God add blessing to the reading of his word!”  In other words, enjoy sex.  Enjoy the body of your spouse!  Enjoy sex.  Let it be intoxicating.  The word “captivated” is Shega in the original Hebrew.  Shega almost always is translated as “led astray” by strong drink.  Or the dad could say, “May you always be intoxicated by her love.”

Let’s talk a bit about sex here.  Yes, we’re going to talk about sex in church.  Yes, that’s because the Bible talks about sex in church.  Well, not sex in the church building, but giving the church counsel on sex.  Here’s two tips.  One of you, generally speaking the man, needs to work on your approach.  What worked when you first got married and were young lustful bunnies, probably isn’t working for you anymore.  I know that men can turn anything into a sexual innuendo.

Wife: “Honey, will you get me some cereal.”
Husband: “Yeah, I’ll get you some cereal.”

Wife: “Honey, will you get the oil changed in the car today?”
Husband: “You know I’ll change your oil, baby.”

Well, actually, in my house, we find this pretty funny.  But if that’s all you’re doing, men, then you’ve got to improve your approach.  Think of the whole day as foreplay.  Actually, think of the whole marriage as foreplay.  You can’t go from zero to sixty in the time it takes you to roll over onto her side of the bed.

So if men need to work on their approach, then generally speaking, women need to work on making an approach.  “But we’ve got kids, and I’m always exhausted because of them.”  Well, put the kids in front of the TV, pop in the Dora the Explorer DVD, run to the room, lock the door (very important!) and say: “We’ve got 30 minutes.  Go Diego!  Go!”

I know I’m speaking in a lot of stereotypes today.  The stereotypes aren’t meant to suggest that this is the way things are supposed to be, but rather to suggest that this is the way things generally are.  Generally speaking most men desire physical intimacy more often than women, and women desire more face to face fun or emotional bonding than men.  Here’s the hitch.  Women have legitimate and holy  opportunities for emotional bonding outside of their husbands.  But a husband has no other legitimate sexual outlet other than his wife.  Wives, when you turn off the physical intimacy faucet in your marriage, it’s the equivalent of an emotional crisis for yourself.  Men, when you turn off the emotional intimacy faucet in a marriage, it’s the equivalent of a sexual crisis for yourself.

But I don’t feel close to my spouse.  Remember, feelings follow actions.  You had fun once.  Learn to have fun again.  If the grass is looking greener somewhere else, then it’s time to water your own yard.  Take off the old brittle tires from the relationship bike, and put on some new ones.  Stop ignoring the fun in your marriage.  From this day forward…

God the Eternal keep you in love with each other,
so that the peace of Christ may abide in your home.
Bear witness to the love of God in this world
so that those to whom love is a stranger
will find in you generous friends.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with you all.  Amen.

 

*This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Craig Groeschel.

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Baggage Claim – Sexual Baggage

March 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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Baggage Claim – Sexual Baggage
Sycamore Creek Church
March 3 & 4, 2013
Tom Arthur

Peace Friends!

Today we wrap up a series looking at claiming our baggage and knowing what to do with it once we’ve claimed it.  We began with family baggage, spent two weeks on divorce baggage, and today we finish with sexual baggage.

It’s worth taking a moment and remembering what I’ve meant when I use the term baggage.  Baggage almost always has something to do with sin.  Sin is missing God’s will for our lives.  When we miss the mark God has set for us, we sin, and when we sin we feel guilty.  That guilt is baggage.  The way we deal with it is we confess it and then we do whatever we can to make things right.  But sometimes we confess our sin and guilt persists.  That persistent guilt is baggage.  Or perhaps someone has sinned against us and left in us scars and memories that won’t go away.  That’s baggage too.

We all accumulate baggage over time.   Think about the most saintly person you know.  They’ve got a past that includes some baggage.  Think about the worst sinner you know.  In Christ they have a future.  Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.  You can’t do anything to change your past, but Christ can change your future.  Jesus can take your baggage and create something new from it.

This isn’t a series of judgment and condemnation.  But it is a series of truth telling.  We’re telling the truth about ourselves.  And when we tell the truth about ourselves, then we have the opportunity for real and true compassion and mercy.  Truth telling and mercy aren’t mutually exclusive.  They actually walk hand in hand.

Throughout this series we’ve tried to follow the example of Jesus who was presented with a woman caught in adultery.  The crowd wanted to know what Jesus would do to her.  Would he stone her as the law required?  Jesus bent down and began writing in the dirt.  As he wrote, each person in the crowd began to leave one by one.  Then we read:

Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one sir,” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
John 8:10-11 NRSV

Jesus tells the truth about the woman when he says, “Go and do not sin again.”  But he shows her compassion and mercy in the midst of it when he says, “I don’t condemn you.”  So we take that same attitude today and we turn it toward the sexual baggage that we all claim.

I know you all think that because I’m a pastor that I’ve got no sexual baggage.  Well, you would be wrong.  In my premarried days I didn’t always save sexual intimacy for marriage.  That guilt persists at times with me today.  I grew up in a church that at times seemed to think that the only sin a teenager could commit was to not save sex for marriage.  I internalized that and so I carry around some persistent guilt even today from decisions I made before I was married.

One area that I particularly struggled with was pornography.  I’m not sure it was “clinical” but I struggled mightily with a split personality between my private viewing of pornography and my public persona of being a leader in my youth group at church.  One day I felt so guilty about this that I felt compelled to go talk to my youth pastor and resign from my leadership roles because of my sin and hypocrisy.  So I met him in his office and confessed and “resigned” from my leadership positions.  Amazingly, he wouldn’t let me resign!  He told me that I was finally being honest about myself, something that a lot of teenage guys weren’t doing.  In that moment I met the joining together of telling the truth about myself and having mercy and compassion extended to me.

So what sexual baggage do you carry around with you?  Here’s some questions to get you thinking:

  1. Were you sexually active before marriage?
  2. Are you currently sexually active outside of marriage?
  3. Have you looked at porn in the last month?
  4. Have you been sexually abused?
  5. Are you satisfied with your current marital sexual intimacy?

All of these, and probably many more, can be ways we accumulate sexual baggage.  I can’t possibly hit on all of these in one message.  So here’s the problem I want to deal with today: We think that casual sex has no consequences.  We live in a sex-saturated culture that continually tells us we will only be satisfied when we have as many non-committal sexual encounters as possible.

I was recently listening to the NPR (National Public Radio) show, This American Life.  The host of the show, Ira Glass, was interviewing a guy about a decision he and his girlfriend made about their relationship to have a month-long “rumspringen” where they could have sex with as many people as they wanted.  “Rumspringen” is the time in the Amish culture when a teenager is given the opportunity to “sow their wild oats” before deciding whether to become Amish or not.  So the guy Ira Glass is interviewing tells the story of how he goes out and tries to sleep with as many women as possible in this month-long period.  The only problem is that he becomes emotionally attached to the women he’s sleeping with.  He can’t just have casual sex.  He bonds physically and emotionally with each woman he has sex with.  Then it’s over.

Of course, over time he learns how to not become emotionally attached, but this is something like taking a piece of tape and sticking it to one thing after another.  Over time, it won’t be sticky anymore because it’s being used in a way that it was not intended to be used.  After the 30-day period, he gets back together with his girlfriend and they decide they need ninety more days for their Rumspringen.  After the ninety days, they decide it’s over.  Did you see that coming?  Of course you did.  Because even if you’ve bought into the culture’s idea that casual sex has no consequences, when confronted with this situation, you know that the culture is lying.  Casual sex does have consequences.  You either bond with those you have sex with or you have so much bonding and breaking that you become emotionally numb to bonding and have to relearn how to bond with someone.

Let’s take a moment and look at what God’s plan is for sex.  We can find this laid out pretty clearly in the first book of the Bible, Genesis.  I find in the story of creation four purposes for sex.

Multiplying
When God creates humans, God blessed them and told them, “Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28 NLT).  Sex is about creating life.  We are made in the image of God and some of what that means is that we too can create living breathing intelligent life that is able to love and communicate and have a relationship with its creator.  That’s amazing!  Sex is in part for multiplying.

Companionship
When God made Adam he realized his creation was incomplete.  We read, And the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a companion who will help him” (Genesis 2:18 NLT).  Adam and Eve were created as companions to one another in a way that was mutually compatible.

Pleasure
Some Christians throughout history have seemed to make sex into some kind of obligation and duty you have to perform and along the way you’re supposed to try to ignore or even suppress the pleasure that it brings.  But that’s not the way that we read it in Genesis and many other parts of the Bible.  After God creates Eve for Adam, we read, “At Last!” Adam exclaimed, “She is part of my own flesh and bone!  She will be called ‘woman’ because she was taken out of a man” (Genesis 2:23 NLT).  My Hebrew professor at Duke liked to say that “At last!” was way too tame of a translation.  She liked to translate “At last!” as “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”  Adam is pleased with what he sees.  And of course both of them were.  They were both looking at one another butt naked in all their original human bodily perfection!

Unity
The author of Genesis sums this story up saying, This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one (Genesis 2:24 NLT).  Sex creates a bond of unity that goes so deep that the author of Genesis says they become one flesh.  That deep spiritual and physical unity is why Jesus says that if you divorce and remarry you may have dissolved the legal bond, but you can’t dissolve the unity bond that came through marriage and sex.  Thus, if you remarry, according to Jesus, you’re committing adultery because you can’t un-flesh the one flesh that comes through marriage and sex.  You’ll carry that other person around with you for the rest of your life.

So here’s the whole point of this message: sexual purity is intended for intimacy.  Multiplying, companionship, pleasure, and unity create an intimate bond that is nearly impossible to break.  We were built for intimacy, a bond between two people that excludes all others, and sex ultimately bonds us with another person.

When you have a life-long committed marriage that has experienced the birth of children, companionship, the pleasure of one another’s bodies, and the unity of becoming one flesh, you’ve got an exclusive bond of intimacy unlike any other.  But if you’ve slept around and moved from one relationship to another delighting in many bodies and birthing children with many partners and sought companionship with many, then you don’t have a unity that leads to intimacy because you’ve got a bond that has been shared with many people.

The writer who compiled the book of wisdom called Proverbs, expresses this truth about sex in this way:

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.  Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?  Let them be for yourself alone, and not for sharing with strangers.  Let your fountains be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe.  May her breasts satisfy you at all times; may you be intoxicated always by her love.

So God’s plan for sex is that it be saved for one person in a life-long commitment of marriage that creates an intimacy unlike any other.  Sexual purity is intended for intimacy.

So about this time now, if you’re like me, you’re looking at some sexual baggage that you’re carrying around with you.  It may be sexual baggage that is accumulated because you didn’t save sexual intimacy for marriage.  Or it could be sexual baggage you accumulated because someone stole that sexual intimacy from you.  I want to recognize the latter, but speak mostly of the former.  Here’s what I want you to do today:

  1. Stop ignoring sexual sin.
  2. Stop idolizing sexual sin.

Some of us have bought into the culture’s claim that casual sex has no consequences or that God’s plan for sexual purity being saved for the intimacy of marriage doesn’t apply to us.  We just ignore the sexual sin in our lives.  If you err in this direction,  then today I want you to stop ignoring the sexual sin in your life and recommit today to save sex for marriage.  It may take a massive reordering of your life to make that happen but I think in the long-run God will bless you for making that commitment to sexual purity.  Today receive God’s grace to live a transformed life.

Some of you err in the other direction.  You idolize sexual sin.  I fall in this category.  Because I grew up in a church that seemed to take sexual sin more seriously than just about every other sin, I really tend to beat myself up about this one area of sin.  I “idolize” it by making it worse than others.  But sin is sin, and we’re all sinners.  Today, receive God’s mercy and forgiveness and know that God can take that baggage of guilt from you.

In the book of Luke, we read about Jesus encountering a prostitute amidst a religious leader, Simon’s home-party.  Simon isn’t very happy about this woman showing up at his party and is even less thrilled about how Jesus is treating her.  We read:

Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?  I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I cam in she has not stopped kissing my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.  Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.  But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.
Luke 7:44-47

Jesus shows compassion to the woman who had sexual baggage, while he seems more than a little put off by the self-righteous religious leader.  Baggage of any kind, including sexual baggage, draws us to the feet of Jesus where we meet both truth and mercy.  We then lay the baggage at the foot of the cross.

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RPMs – Relational Wellbeing

February 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

RPMsRPMs – Relational Wellbeing
Sycamore Creek Church
February 12, 2012
Tom Arthur
Luke 6:27-36
 

Peace Friends!

You may not know much about cars, but I suspect most of us know what RPMs stands for: Revolutions Per Minute.  If you run the engine too high, you’ll red line it.  Have you ever floored your car and had the RPMs gauge get up into that red area?  That’s redlining.  If the engine is running too low, then you deadline it.  My first car was a ‘79 Plymouth Horizon.  When I would sit at a stop, the engine ran too low so I had to keep one foot on the brake and one on the accelerator so it didn’t stall, and when I would floor the accelerator, the car would stall, then take off.  That’s deadlining.  If the engine is running within a good range it’s called baseline.  My current car idles somewhere around the “2” on the RPM gauge and usually doesn’t get much higher than a “4” when I’m out and about.  There’s a healthy range of RPMs for the engine to run.

The same thing is true about our relational, physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing, our RPMs.  This series we’re beginning is about finding that healthy range of well-being in all areas of living.  We’re starting today with relationships.

When it comes to relationships some of us are deadlining it.  Our relationships are cold and dead.  They’re like my grandma’s car.  She drove it so rarely that it just sat there and deteriorated faster than if she was driving it regularly.  It broke down just sitting in the garage. Her mechanic told her she had to drive it at least several times a week.  So that’s what she did.  She’d go out for no reason just to keep her car healthy.  Some of us need to pay more attention to driving our relationships.

Others of us are redlining our relationships.  Our expectations are so high that no healthy relationship or long-term commitment could ever meet those expectations.  Consider romantic relationships.  That redline period of a relationship is usually called the honeymoon stage.  It includes loots of oogling, and cuddling, and saying silly lovey dovey things to one another.  On average, high romantic feelings in a relationship last two years.  This is actually a good thing, because if it were any other way, we would never get anything done.  When we’re redlining a relationship, it takes all our time and energy.  C.S. Lewis says about relationships, “It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy” (Mere Christianity).  Some of us are always wanting to get back to that initial romantic “falling in love” feeling we had in the first two years of our relationship.  It is unlikely to happen, although research has shown that those with the expectation for passion in their relationship will have more passion (more on that later), but too much of a good thing is not a good thing.

Then there’s the baseline when it comes to relationships.  There is a healthy range of feelings and actions within a healthy relationship.  It is normal to have seasons of moderate ups and downs.  There are times in a marriage when it’s good to have drag racing sex (it’s all over in ten seconds), and there are times when it is good to have Indy 500 sex (in it for the long haul, pit stops and everything!).

Living in the Healthy RPMs range – Serve One Another

Here’s the basic idea for what it means to live within a healthy range of emotions and actions within a relationship: “Do for others as you would like them to do for you” (Luke 6:31 NLT).  Serve one another and you will have healthy relationships.

It’s tempting to think that relationships are a 50/50 commitment.  But at their best, they’re not.  At their best, relationships are a 100/100 commitment.  You bring everything to the table, and I bring everything to the table.  My marriage works the best when both Sarah and I have an attitude of serving one another 100% of the time.  This doesn’t mean that we end up serving one another 100% of the time, but we’re willing to do so if need be.  Sarah and I do to each other as we would want each other to do to us.  Example: recently I’ve decided that if Sarah is working to take care of Micah, then I don’t rest until she does.  I keep working around the house until one of two things happens: she’s done taking care of Micah or everything that needs to get done around the house is done (she is the judge of when that happens).  So when she nurses Micah, puts him to bed, and comes out of the room, she either finds me working to clean up the house or she comes out to a clean house.  Men, this simple rule gets me lots of brownie points.  I’m serving my wife regularly, and what this means is that she rarely if ever is bitter about serving me.  100/100 service.

Love Languages

I’d like to go back to an old standard when it comes to talking about serving your loved ones.  It’s called “love languages.”  The basic idea is that each of us has a primary love language.  We hear love communicated to us when someone speaks that love language.  When love is spoken in another language, it is hard for us to hear it.  So here’s the trick, if you want to serve the ones you love, learn their love language and speak it.

There are five love languages according to Gary Chapman: physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, and receiving gifts.  How do you know what the primary love language is that your loved one speaks?  Simply look at what they do for you (they speak in their primary language) or listen for what they request (nag?) you about.  I’d like to explore each of these love languages and while I am going to be talking mostly about romantic relationships today, almost everything I say can also be applied to any relationship.  In fact Chapman has written a love language book for almost every situation (children, teenagers, singles, and the work place).

Physical Touch

1 Corinthians 7:5 NLT – Do not deprive each other [of sexual relations…except by mutual agreement].

Paul is giving advice to couples where one has decided to abstain from sex for spiritual reasons.  He isn’t particularly sympathetic to this spiritual position.  Interestingly enough, “sexual relations” is not in the Greek but is implied.  So what exactly are we not to deprive one another of?  I’d suggest it is a deep kind of physical connection.  That takes place in sex, but it also takes place in all kinds of physical ways.

Gary Chapman says:

This language isn’t all about the bedroom. A person whose primary language is Physical Touch is, not surprisingly, very touchy. Hugs, pats on the back, holding hands, and thoughtful touches on the arm, shoulder, or face—they can all be ways to show excitement, concern, care, and love. Physical presence and accessibility are crucial, while neglect or abuse can be unforgivable and destructive.

For the person who speaks the love language of physical touch, give them a hug when you return home or a kiss before you leave.  Hold hands while standing beside one another or walk arm in arm.  Rest a hand on the thigh while watching a movie, or cuddle on the couch while watching TV.  Play footsie while eating out, and give a back rub when you get home.  Spoon before you fall asleep.

A book that Sarah and I read some years ago that I’d recommend is called the Art of Spooning: A Cuddler’s Handbook.  There’s the full body spoon, but there’s also the pinky spoon when it’s too hot.

Words of Affirmation

Song of Songs 1:2 NRSV – Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!

Why not just say, “Let him kiss me”?  Because “kisses of the mouth” are different kinds of kisses.  The person who speaks the love language of words of appreciation understands that words that come from the mouth can be as powerful as kisses.  They are “kisses of the mouth.”

Gary Chapman says:

Actions don’t always speak louder than words. If this is your love language, unsolicited compliments mean the world to you. Hearing the words, “I love you,” are important—hearing the reasons behind that love sends your spirits skyward. Insults can leave you shattered and are not easily forgotten.

For the person who has the love language of words of affirmation, serve them by writing them notes, poems, and letters.  Praise them especially in front of friends and family.  If you’re thankful simply say it out loud.

I recently came across a line of sticky notes labeled “Sweet Nothings.”  These are great for communicating love with words of affirmation.  Write all kinds of sweet nothings and put them around the house for your loved one to find.  Or write one a day and put it on the bathroom mirror.

Quality Time

Genesis 2:24-25 NLT – A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.

This may seem like an odd verse to talk about quality time, but the important thing here for the person who speaks the language of quality time is that their loved one has left other things to spend time with them.  He has left his family.  She has left her work.  He has left his cell phone.  She has left the children.  He has left his buddies.  She has left her books.  They are together united for one purpose: to spend quality time together.

Gary Chapman says:

In the vernacular of Quality Time, nothing says, “I love you,” like full, undivided attention. Being there for this type of person is critical, but really being there—with the TV off, fork and knife down, and all chores and tasks on standby—makes your significant other feel truly special and loved. Distractions, postponed dates, or the failure to listen can be especially hurtful.

I tend to get easily distracted.  If I’m on a date with Sarah, and there is a TV in the room, I find myself watching the TV rather than paying attention to Sarah.  So over time I have developed a habit: I try to sit on the side of the table where the TV will be at my back.  This way I will be fully present to Sarah.

Something else Sarah and I have noticed is that after almost fifteen years of marriage, while we both deeply appreciate quality time, it is sometimes hard to find things to talk about.  I mean, we’ve had fifteen years to talk to each other.  So what do we talk about tonight?  Some time ago we came across a book (actually I think my Mom gave it to me) called Love Talk Starters by Les Parrott.  It’s 280 pages of questions to talk about.  I often bring this book with us on date night so that if conversation gets thin, I have a backup.  I ask Sarah to pick a number, and we turn to that page.  We almost always learn something new about one another this way.

Acts of Service

Ephesians 5:21 NLT – Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Next time you come across one of those sticky passages where Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands, remember this verse: submit to one another!  Submission to one another means looking for one another’s needs and doing your best to meet them.

Gary Chapman says:

Can vacuuming the floors really be an expression of love? Absolutely! Anything you do to ease the burden of responsibilities weighing on an “Acts of Service” person will speak volumes. The words he or she most want to hear: “Let me do that for you.” Laziness, broken commitments, and making more work for them tell speakers of this language their feelings don’t matter.      

To speak love to the person who hears it in acts of service, try picking up the house, cleaning the house (dust, vacuum, bathrooms), grocery shopping, cooking dinner (or making lunch the night before!), doing the dishes, changing the diapers, doing yard work or gardening, taking care of the budget and bills.

I have a secret weapon when it comes to romance and acts of service.  I have used for many years now a book by Gregory Godek called 1001 Ways to be Romantic.  I don’t agree with every suggestion he makes in the book, but overall it is a huge treasure trove of ideas for how to serve your loved one.

Receiving Gifts

Proverbs 25:14 NLT – A person who doesn’t give a promised gift is like clouds and wind that don’t bring rain.

Don’t be clouds and wind but no rain.  There are certain expected days to give gifts, and the person who speaks the love language of receiving gifts takes those days as a promise whether you personally made the promise or not.  Then take it a step further and give gifts on other days!

Gary Chapman says:

Don’t mistake this love language for materialism; the receiver of gifts thrives on the love, thoughtfulness, and effort behind the gift. If you speak this language, the perfect gift or gesture shows that you are known, you are cared for, and you are prized above whatever was sacrificed to bring the gift to you. A missed birthday, anniversary, or a hasty, thoughtless gift would be disastrous—so would the absence of everyday gestures.

The key here is that thoughtfulness and meaningfulness are what counts. I think the best gifts always celebrate the relationship.  One of the best gifts Sarah has given me is an apron that matches one for Micah. They were custom made by a local artisan she met at the farmers market.  I cried when I got the gift.  I have never cried at getting a gift before.

Perhaps one of the best gifts you can give is your presence.  You give a gift when you show up for a sporting event, recital, or arts stuff that you don’t like!  Or what about sitting through that TV show that your loved one likes but you don’t (don’t cancel out the gift by having a bad attitude!).

I’m not much of a gift giver, but recently I came across a website that would help considerably with giving gifts.  It’s called www.incrediblethings.com.  Now most of the stuff on this website is G or PG, be warned, sometimes the humor is PG-13 or R.  But more often than not, I immediately think of someone I could give that unique thing to as a gift.

Love Bank – Serve the Other

So what is your love language?  More important, what is the love language of your loved one?  Here’s the deal, serve your loved one by speaking their love language.  When you do you will fill up their love bank.  Filling up their love bank is important because all of us make withdrawals.  We all do negative things to the ones we love.  It takes five deposits to make up for every withdrawal.  If you fill up your loved one’s love bank, then they will more likely fill up yours.  You don’t serve them to get something back.  You serve them because you love them.  But it doesn’t hurt to know that you’re likely to get something back in return.

But what should you do if your loved one doesn’t reciprocate?  What If you give 100%, and your loved one gives 0%?  Let’s go back to what Jesus says, “Do for others as you would like them to do for you.”  Have you ever noticed the larger context of this one verse?  Let’s take a look.  I think it is instructive for the question: What should I do if my loved one isn’t showing me love back?

Luke 6:27-36 NLT

“But if you are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.  Pray for the happiness of those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you.  If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. If someone demands your coat, offer your shirt also.  Give what you have to anyone who asks you for it; and when things are taken away from you, don’t try to get them back.  Do for others as you would like them to do for you. 

“Do you think you deserve credit merely for loving those who love you? Even the sinners do that!  And if you do good only to those who do good to you, is that so wonderful? Even sinners do that much!   And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, what good is that? Even sinners will lend to their own kind for a full return. 

“Love your enemies! Do good to them! Lend to them! And don’t be concerned that they might not repay. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to the unthankful and to those who are wicked.  You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.

Wow!  If we’re commanded to love our enemies, then shouldn’t we love our loved ones even if they’re not loving us back?  Absolutely!  I’m not talking here about what to do if your “loved one” is hitting you.  You can remove yourself from a situation and still love someone.  Rather, I’m talking about the every day ins and outs, ups and downs, highs and lows of a relationship.  If you feel like your loved one isn’t loving you, then love them as you would want to be loved.  Speak their love language.  Give it six months.  Figure out their love language, and speak it daily.  Don’t do it expecting anything back.  Just love them with their language.  When they begin to notice (and trust me, they will), and they ask what’s going on, just say, “I’m trying to be a more loving husband/wife.  Is there anything I can do to love you better?”  Over time it is likely that they will ask you the same thing back, “Is there something I can do for you?”  When they ask you this, give them a very specific request: I’d like you to give me a hug when you leave for work,

I’d like to go out for dinner sometime this week, I’d like the kitchen table cleaned up, etc.

When they do this very specific thing, then you will know that they are communicating their love to you.

If you communicate love in the language that your loved one speaks, you will still have ups and downs.  These are natural.  There is a healthy running range of RPMs in any relationship.  But you will assuredly stay out of the redlining and deadlining.

Can I pray for you?

Loving God, you spoke your love to us in a way that we could hear by sending your son Jesus Christ to serve and love us.  Help each of us to serve and love our loved ones by speaking love to them in a way that they can hear it.  May it be true in all our relationships.  Amen.

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The Downfall of Kings – Passion

January 16, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Downfall of Kings

The Downfall of Kings – Passion
Sycamore Creek Church
January 15, 2012
Tom Arthur
2 Samuel 11 & 12 (Selections)

I have a covenant with my pants. I will never leave them nor forsake them. So when they get too tight, it’s time to lose weight. I’m currently trying to lose about twelve pounds. I’m not overweight; I was just getting to the top of my healthy weight range. And because most of the men in my family are overweight and struggling with various forms of diabetes, I pay a lot of attention to my own weight. My body often wants to eat all kinds of junk food, but I don’t always give my body what it wants. The body’s senses are a beautiful gift, but if continually fed, they will also undo us.

Today we continue in a series called The Downfall of Kings. We’re looking at the ancient kings of Israel and moments when they fell. It’s my hope that we can learn something from these kings so that we won’t repeat their mistakes. Last week we looked at Israel’s first king, King Saul, and his struggle with power. Today we look at Saul’s successor, King David, and his struggle with passion. Let’s dive right into the story.

2 Samuel 11:1-2 NLT
The following spring, the time of year when kings go to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to destroy the Ammonites. In the process they laid siege to the city of Rabbah. But David stayed behind in Jerusalem. Late one afternoon David got out of bed after taking a nap and went for a stroll on the roof of the palace. As he looked out over the city, he noticed a woman of unusual beauty taking a bath.

How We Spend Our Time
Here we see that David wasn’t doing what he probably should have been doing, leading his army. Rather, he was lounging on his couch. It is not clear whether his seeing Bathsheba was intentional or unintentional, but it doesn’t matter. If he had been doing something besides lounging around, his mind might have been preoccupied with worthwhile action, thoughts, and ideas and might have been able to resist an unintentional and unexpected temptation.

When do we do the same thing today? When are we lounging on our couches when we should be out joining the mission of our community? Do you realize that today most of us live at a standard of living way beyond what any king of old ever lived. Air conditioning alone is a luxury beyond comparison. And what do we do with that luxury? We watch TV and we surf the internet. How much time do you spend lounging on your couch or in your LazyBoy watching TV or surfing the internet at your desk? I’m not suggesting that TV or the internet are all bad. But most of us probably could do with a little less of each. What we feed our minds by what we choose to watch sets us up either to live for God or to fall like David.

What about your reading habits? When was the last time you read a book? I suspect that most of us when we do read, read magazines. And what kind of magazines are we reading? I admit, that I am tempted to read pretty low-grade magazines, or at least focus on the more banal stuff in the good magazines that I do read. A year ago I tried a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. I thought it might be a good way for me to stay on top of current pop culture. The only problem was that I regularly found myself turning first to the section of the magazine where they grade the fashion choices of various celebrities. Reese Witherspoon – A. Melissa Joan Hart – D+. I don’t even know who Melissa Joan Hart is, but know that she can’t choose a fashionable dress to wear. Is this really what I want to be spending my time doing? Or is this setting me up in some way to have my own personal downfall with passion?

2 Samuel 11:2-4 NLT
He sent someone to find out who she was, and he was told, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David [took] sent for her; and when she came to the palace, he slept with her. (She had just completed the purification rites after having her menstrual period.) Then she returned home.

Giving in to Your Passions
David sees Bathsheba and wants her. So far there isn’t much he’s done wrong. What happens next is where it spirals downward. His body wants what he isn’t supposed to have, and he gives it to his body anyway. Here we see the anatomy of an affair (no pun intended).

Sometimes I tend to think that affairs happen in an instant. But they don’t. Affairs are built upon subtle but cumulative actions. Here’s what David did to build his affair:

He looked Bathsheba up on Facebook.
He was told her relationship status was “married” to one of his “close friends.”
He “messaged” her and used his power and privilege to bring her to his palace.
He waited while she came to the palace.
He “slept” with her.
She went home.

This is all David’s work. It is slow and deliberate. There is plenty of time throughout the whole thing for David to change his mind, to decide not to give his body what it wants. We’re going to come back to the steps of this affair more at the end of the message, but for now let’s notice that Bathsheba is the victim here. Many commentators in the past have accused Bathsheba of some plot to tempt David. I’m not buying it. She is trapped by the power of the king. The only time she is the subject of the sentence is the last one: she went home. Otherwise David is the one acting throughout the entire passage.

Restraining the Passions
While David attempts to take from Bathsheba’s body to fulfill his passions, her body cannot be fully controlled, and bites back. She conceives. She sends word to David. David figures that there is a simple solution to his problem. Bring home her husband, Uriah. Surely a sex-starved warrior from the battlefield will sleep with his “hot” wife when give the opportunity. But things don’t go as David expects. Uriah sleeps outside and does not sleep with his wife. David calls him and asks why.

2 Samuel 11:11 NLT
Uriah replied, “The Ark and the armies of Israel and Judah are living in tents, and Joab and his officers are camping in the open fields. How could I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? I swear that I will never be guilty of acting like that.”

In contrast to David, Uriah is principled and restrains his own passions for higher ideals. Uriah fasts from giving his body what he wants. He recognizes that sometimes you must give up something good (there is nothing wrong with sex in marriage) for something better (focus and community commitment to a mission).

What a contrast Uriah is with our behavior today! We eat whatever we want when we want it. We consume entertainment without considering its effect on us. We indulge our sexual appetites as much as possible.

Jesus’ Passion
Uriah is a kind of Christ-figure. In this moment, he is like Jesus in many ways. When Jesus was tempted by Satan to indulge his own bodily appetites, he resisted.

Luke 4:1-4 NLT
Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit to go out into the wilderness, where the Devil tempted him for forty days. He ate nothing all that time and was very hungry. Then the Devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, change this stone into a loaf of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People need more than bread for their life.'”

Jesus is on a spiritual retreat rather than lounging around. Because of this spiritual retreat, he is “full of the Holy Spirit.” In some ways a spiritual retreat in the wilderness is a kind of lounging, but it is a different kind of lounging. It is a purposeful resting, Sabbath keeping. When was the last time you took a spiritual retreat?

Not only was Jesus on a spiritual retreat in the wilderness, but he was also fasting. He was giving up something good (food) for something better (spiritual strength). When was the last time you fasted intentionally for spiritual reasons. I’m not talking about fasting to make weight for your wrestling tournament or fasting in the morning before having a procedure done at the hospital. I’m talking about giving up food or some luxury for a set period of time so that you could focus more fully on communion with God.

Jesus also is focused on the well being of others rather than just his own well being. While Satan thinks he can tempt Jesus with the passion of his stomach, Jesus has his own end in mind, the salvation of the world.

Let’s get back to David…

2 Samuel 11:14-17 NLT
So the next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and gave it to Uriah to deliver. The letter instructed Joab, “Station Uriah on the front lines where the battle is fiercest. Then pull back so that he will be killed.” So Joab assigned Uriah to a spot close to the city wall where he knew the enemy’s strongest men were fighting. And Uriah was killed along with several other Israelite soldiers.

When David realizes that his plan to pass his own child off as the child of Uriah won’t work, he makes another plan – kill Uriah. David is in deep here. I know that all sin is simply sin in God’s eyes, but there is something quantitatively different about murder as compared to adultery: someone dies. David tramples others to “feed” his body’s passions.

I think it is very tempting at this point to excuse yourself from the story. Most of us have never killed anyone or even come close. But let’s not neglect the times when our actions trample on the well being of others. We ignore the people who serve us at the grocery store, gas station, coffee house, restaurant, drive through and the like. We eat food without paying attention to way it was grown/raised and the impact that has had on others, especially low-wage immigrants and migrant workers.

This past week I was talking to Jeremy about this point in the sermon. He told me a story about his Freshman year at MSU. He was not yet fully sold out to following Jesus, but he had never been to a strip joint. His friends decided that he needed to go, so they took him to Omars. When he walked in, he immediately recognized one of the strippers as a “friend” of his from high school in Traverse City. He went up to her and called her by her first name. She immediately told him not to do that. She didn’t want people to know her first name, and the culture of strip joint is that you don’t go by your real name. The stripper has a stage name that helps keep the fantasy going. What it does is depersonalize the whole experience and objectify the women who are paid to fulfill the passions of the men in the room. But Jeremy wasn’t able to make that leap. Once he realized that it was a friend of his who was the stripper, he could no longer enjoy it. He couldn’t depersonalize and objectify her to feed his body’s passion for lust. His “friend” ruined the whole night for him. This is what theologians call “prevenient grace.” It’s God’s grace at work in Jeremy before he even recognizes that it is God at work. Thank you, God!

The Anatomy of an Affair
David gave his body what it wanted, an adulterous tryst with Bathsheba. I mentioned earlier that there were several progressive and slow steps into this affair. I’d like to look at a modern day example of this kind of slow progression.

In the movie, He’s Just Not That Into You, we see the slow progression of an affair unfold between two people, Ben (played by Bradley Cooper), a married man, and Anna (played by Scarlett Johansson), a single woman. They bump into each other at the grocery store and begin flirting, but as she’s getting ready to give him her number, Ben confesses that he’s married. She is an aspiring singer and he works in an office that can help her, so he decides that it’s OK to exchange cards so that he can offer her advice on her singing career. Eventually he calls her to offer advice on her career, and when she comes to his office, he can’t find the “advice” he wanted to give her. He goes to a yoga class that she’s leading, and they go swimming afterward. She says she just wants to be friends but then jumps in naked. It’s all downhill from there…

Throughout this movie, Ben as a married man crosses a lot of boundaries. I asked on Facebook what people thought were appropriate boundaries for married people with friends of the opposite sex. I’ve never had so many comments on a sermon question on Facebook before! And what you all didn’t get to see if you were following the conversation was how many private messages I got from people who have been burned in the past by spouses or boy/girlfriends who walked all over boundaries. Here are some of the boundaries that people suggested:

• Always behave with them as if their spouse was sitting next to them.
• If you wouldn’t feel comfortable telling your partner about it, then it is probably a bad idea.
• Anything my grandmother would raise an eyebrow at is probably not OK.
• If you are married and on Facebook, have more friends of the same sex than the opposite sex.
• If you are being nicer than you need to be, you are flirting.
• Keep no private email addresses or Facebook accounts.
• No opposite sex friends that your spouse does not know about.
• We agree to have full access to each others Facebook accounts and cell phones.
• Talking negatively about your spouse to the other person or problems you may be having in your marriage.
• If we want to hang out with a good friend of the opposite sex, we invite each other and the friend’s spouse/significant other.

Modern life has made this more complicated, hasn’t it? Did you hear how many times Facebook was mentioned in this list? And these are only a selection of the comments left to my question.

I originally asked this question on Facebook because I was intending to write a set of guidelines for this message, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make a list that I thought was appropriate for everyone. So what I’ve decided to do is make a list of what my boundaries are. As a pastor, I have to pay extra special attention to this issue because the appearance of an affair can be just as damaging to our community as an actual affair. And yet, as I wrote this list, I also realized that these are all things I would do whether I was a pastor or not. They are also boundaries that for the most part, I expect the leaders of our church to be living into as well. So if you are a leader, pay close attention! But if you are not a leader, then I offer these to you for your own consideration.

First, a couple of preliminary thoughts. These boundaries are not always completely solid. They are tendencies. They are things I do most of the time. There are exceptions to all of them, but it would take too long and be too cumbersome to write out all the exceptions. And yet, they are very firm boundaries. I pay special attention to these boundaries when Sarah is out of town and/or when I am with someone close to my age or younger. I also pay close attention when I begin to notice patterns rather than exceptions. Am I spending a lot of time with one person over and over again? I also follow these boundaries when Sarah and I offer hospitality in our home by inviting someone to live with us. Enough with preliminaries. Here’s the boundaries:

• I don’t meet one-on-one in private spaces (I always meet in public spaces), and I try not to ride one-on-one in a car with someone of the opposite sex (but this is not always possible).
• When I have met one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex even in a public space, I tell Sarah about it (so she’s not surprised should someone mention to her that they saw me and so-and-so at such-and-such), and if she isn’t happy about it, I DON’T DO IT AGAIN!
• I tend not to do dinner or after-dinner events (even in public places) one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
• I don’t drink alcohol one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
• I do have male accountability partners that I share openly (give a true account of myself) about crushes I might be experiencing (those didn’t go away when I got married), and I seek their wisdom about appropriate boundaries with this person.
• I don’t share sides of myself or emotions that I’m not sharing with Sarah.
• I don’t discuss my sex life one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
• I do have open conversations with others about these boundaries.

Now that’s a lot of “don’ts” but all those don’ts are really built around the “I do” that I said at my wedding. I don’t do some things so that I do do other things. Saying “no” to some things is all about saying “yes” to other things.

Repentance
David’s downfall isn’t the end of the story. In fact, it’s what happens next that makes him such an amazing king. He has an issue with the passions of his body, but he also is passionate for the LORD. God sends a prophet, Nathan, to confront David about his affair and murder. David has the power to execute Nathan, but he doesn’t. Here’s what he does do:

2 Samuel 12:13-17 NLT
Then David confessed to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Nathan replied, “Yes, but the LORD has forgiven you, and you won’t die for this sin. But you have given the enemies of the LORD great opportunity to despise and blaspheme him, so your child will die.” After Nathan returned to his home, the LORD made Bathsheba’s baby deathly ill. David begged God to spare the child. He went without food and lay all night on the bare ground.

Notice how David is no longer lounging on his “bed/couch” – he’s laying on the ground. He is no longer giving his body what it wants – he’s fasting. He is no longer trampling other people – he’s focused on the well being of others rather than his own body’s desires.

David has turned his life around, repented, and is now following in the ways of the LORD, the same ways that Jesus was following in when he was tempted in the dessert. And God forgave him. There were still consequences. Bathsheba’s baby still died. God rarely takes away the consequences of our sin, but God is in the business of reconciling with us and reconciling us with others.

Maybe you’ve had an affair in the past. Maybe right now you’re on the slow path to an affair. Maybe you’re in the middle of one. Confess it and repent. Stop giving in to your body’s passions. Join the mission of God in the community of this church. There is forgiveness. There is new life. Thank you, God!

Next Steps Discussion
1. When do you not give your body what it wants?
2. What do you think are good boundaries in marriage for opposite-sex friends?

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Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch

March 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Ultimate Prizes
By Susan Howatch
Rating: 5 of 10

I’m afraid that Susan Howatch’s ultimate prize is accurate knowledge about one’s past.  Meanwhile, this Church of England series is getting to be a little formulaic.  The formula goes something like this:

Anglican clergy + life crisis + big sexual sin + denial of sin + emotional breakdown + spiritual director + confession/psychoanalysis of one’s past family history (especially the skeletons in the closet) = happy, healthy, and effective Anglican clergy.

This is the third in the Church of England series.  The first two, Glittering Images and Glamorous Powers, were gripping, and I couldn’t put them down.  This one sat unread for several weeks at a time.  I found the characters less compelling and the formula just a little too heavy handed.

Ultimate Prizes tells the story of Archdeacon Neville Aysgarth’s search for the ultimate prizes of life: climbing the ecclesial ladder, marrying the right woman, having the right children, and so on.  The only problem is that once Aysgarth has won the prize, he seems to no longer really value it.  Thus, when his first “perfect” wife dies, he courts and marries an eccentric socialite only to end up having an affair while she is recovering in the hospital from a disastrous labor where the child was killed in order to save the mother.  This behavior along with his increasing habit of turning to alcohol leads him to seek help from the spiritual director, Jonathan Darrow, who is the spiritual director in the first book in the series, Glittering Images, and the subject of the second book, Glamorous Powers, and who Aysgarth has had run-ins with as Darrow’s church superior.  The plot thickens.

Darrow, along with some help from his other Fordite Monk friends, help get Aysgarth back on the straight and narrow.  They do so by exploring his past.  What we come to find out is that Aysgarth has had an extremely rocky relationship with his mother, father, and uncle.  Over time his denial has grown about what exactly happened between these three key figures in his upbringing.  Darrow helps Aysgarth explore the landscape of his childhood and young adulthood so that he can give up chasing the ultimate prizes and instead have healthy relationships with less-than-perfect people.

At the very beginning of the book Aysgarth says, “I did not understand why I had wound up in such a mess, and without understanding, how could I promise that my appalling behavior would never be repeated.”  At the end of the book after Aysgarth has “confessed” the truth about his past without denial of the skeletons in the closet, Darrow exclaims, “You’ve grasped the truth.  You’ve demonstrated with every syllable you utter that you repent.  Can’t you see your demon’s vanquished, cowering with terror in his pit?”  Notice the lowercase “t” for truth.

Here’s the problem: understanding and knowledge alone can’t save us.  Yes, they can help us grow in maturity, but it was knowledge that got humanity in the pit in the first place.  It’s not knowledge alone that will get us out of it.  Rather it is only when we grasp firmly on to the Truth, capital “T”, of Jesus Christ that we will be saved.  I do not necessarily think that truth and Truth are incompatible.  It is more a question of priority.  Howatch’s books major in truth rather than Truth.  This kind of truth can only be helpful when it is in service of Truth.

There was one particularly poignant moment that I found especially compelling.  When Asygarth is meeting Darrow’s old Abbot-General, Father Lucas, for spiritual direction, Lucas says, “I presume that most of your private prayers are ex tempore?  Well, there’s nothing wrong with ex tempore prayers, of course, but at present you want to be very careful that your prayers aren’t merely a flurry of words which will mar the inner stillness you must cultivate in order not only to maintain your equilibrium but to receive the word from God which will undoubtedly come.”   “Ex tempore” is Latin for “out of the moment,” and ex tempore prayers are spontaneous prayers.  Lucas goes on to suggest mixing in some written prayers from the Daily Office, the set pattern of prayers prayed several times a day.  I have found this suggestion exceedingly helpful in my own spiritual journey.  I grew up Pentecostal where written prayers were frowned upon.  Over time I have come to appreciate both types of prayer.  I think a mix of both would help most Christians grow in the spiritual maturity.

I would likely give up on this series at this point if it wasn’t for one interesting twist Howatch makes in the next book.  She picks up the story from the perspective of someone outside the church.  I am intrigued to see what she will do with this outsider’s perspective.  I hope there will be a new formula for this outsider’s spiritual journey.

Currently Reading/Listening:
Generation to Generation by Edwin H. Friedman
Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas
Scandalous Risks by Susan Howatch
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Jesus’ Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman

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Exposure in Creation

February 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Exposure in Creation
Sycamore Creek Church
Song of Songs 4:1-7
Tom Arthur
February 20, 2011

Peace, Friends!

Exposure.  That simple word has several different meanings.  Exposure can be a disclosure of something secret.  It can also mean vulnerability to the elements or being in a general state of vulnerability.  Today we continue our series on the Song of Songs called Exposure, and we’ll be exposing the Song of Songs through the lens of its second meaning: vulnerability to the elements.

Over the centuries Christians have tended to debate about the Song of Songs.  Early in history, before the sexual revolution of the 60s, Christians tended to be very uncomfortable with the eroticism of the Song of Songs.  Why is that in the Bible?  So they allegorized everything and made the book all about God’s love for God’s people.  They exposed Song of Songs through a spiritual lens.  So then came the 60s, and today commentators want to say that the Song of Songs is all about sex.  They expose the Song of Songs through a literal lens.  Which one is right?  I’m not sure this is a helpful question.

I love photography.  I studied it extensively while in college, and one of the things I came to realize is that you can take a picture and expose it three or more different ways and get multiple different images.  Which one is right?  That’s probably not the right question to be asking.  Rather, what do we see more clearly in one that we don’t see in another?  What comes to the foreground and what recedes to the background?

In the same way, Song of Songs can be exposed at least three different ways: literally, morally, and spiritually.  Through the literal lens, we learn something about sex.  That’s what we did last week.  We learned that sex is faithful, equal, emotional, physical, and spiritual.  Through the spiritual lens, which we’ll be looking through next week, we learn something about God’s love.  Today we’re going to be exposing the Song of Songs through a moral lens, and we’ll learn something about creation.  Song of Songs is definitely about sex, but it’s also about a whole lot more.

Peace with Creation

Let’s go back to the beginning of the Bible for a moment.  In Genesis we run into what is usually called The Fall.  Adam and Eve disobey God and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  There are three consequences of The Fall.  The first is that there is a brokenness between Adam and Eve and all lovers and spouses who follow them.  Then there is a brokenness in creation.  Lastly, there is a distance that forms between humanity and God.

Through each of these exposures of the Song of Songs, we find a correction and healing to the brokenness and sin of The Fall.  Through the literal exposure of Song of Songs, we see a healing in the exposure between husband and wife.  In the spiritual reading we see an intimacy and vulnerability between God and humanity.  And in the moral reading we see a delight and peace with creation.

We can see the effects of The Fall all around us in creation.  I asked Lori Miller, a member of our church who works for the City of Lansing’s Capital Area Recycling and Trash what were some of the ways that we are vulnerable to the elements of pollution in creation right here in Lansing?  She pointed out several to me.  For those who live along heavy traveled corridors like Pennsylvania and Cedar, there’s exposure to exhaust and the pollutants that get into the soil along those streets.  There’s the greenhouse gas emissions that BWL’s coal power plants create.  If you live in an older home there’s the potential for exposure to asbestos, lead paint, and radon.  Then there’s the landfills.  She told me that while landfills have improved significantly over the years, there is no 100% safe  landfill.  When we throw especially tech trash into the landfill the contaminants in our electronics and computers will eventually make their way into the environment.  Getting more specific, she pointed me to the Motor Wheel Landfill on the north side of Lansing on High Street.  This was a pre-regulated landfill that has contaminated the ground water.  She also pointed me to the Adams Plating sight on the west side on Rosemary Street which has contaminated the soil with chromium.  Chromium causes all kinds of problems with health including skin, lung, immune system, kidney, and liver problems.  It also causes cancer.  She did say that this site has been stabilized and that there are no immediate risks because the soil has been cleaned up.  But still, you walk outside your house (or stay in it), and you’re exposed to the broken and polluted elements of creation.

In contrast to this experience of creation, Song of Songs presents an image of delight and peace with creation:

Song of Songs 4:1-7 (NLT)

Young Man: “How beautiful you are, my beloved, how beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are like doves. Your hair falls in waves, like a flock of goats frisking down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are as white as sheep, newly shorn and washed. They are perfectly matched; not one is missing. Your lips are like a ribbon of scarlet. Oh, how beautiful your mouth! Your cheeks behind your veil are like pomegranate halves — lovely and delicious. Your neck is as stately as the tower of David, jeweled with the shields of a thousand heroes. Your breasts are like twin fawns of a gazelle, feeding among the lilies. Before the dawn comes and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense. You are so beautiful, my beloved, so perfect in every part.

This is God’s story for us today.  Thank you, God!

Peace with the Land

So what is this?  Isn’t it just an erotic poem?  Yes it is that.  It’s actually a very specific kind of poem.  It’s called a “wasf” and was used by many different kinds of poets in the culture of its day.  The poet attempts to connect the emotional experience of different body parts with the emotional experience of different moments in creation.  Does it sound a little strange?  It shouldn’t.  Our modern day poets do the same thing.  Consider John Denver’s song, Annie’s Song.  He sings:

You fill up my senses
like a night in the forest
like the mountains in springtime,
like a walk in the rain
like a storm in the desert,
like a sleepy blue ocean
you fill up my senses,
come fill me again.

This isn’t intended to be a literal description.  You can’t go in a room and pick out the woman that this describes.  Um…Yeah…go find the woman whose hair is like a frisky flock of goats, who fills up your senses like a night in the forest.  Doesn’t work.  Because that’s not what it was intended to do.  This kind of poem is intended to connect emotional experiences.

When we look closely at those emotional experiences in the Song of Songs we see that there is a deep delight in creation rather than creation being something that we are exposed to in a vulnerable fashion where there is no peace with the land.

Back to Genesis for a moment.  In The Fall we see no peace with the land.  God says to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I have placed a curse on the ground…” (Genesis 3:17, NLT).  I said this last week, but it is worth repeating again.  I don’t think this “curse” is that God is saying this is how it should be.  I think it is God saying this is how it is now that sin has entered into the story.  If we thought that this is how it should now be, then we wouldn’t allow men to use tractors.  That would be cheating them of the “benefits of the curse” on the ground.

Continuing on, we see that Adam and Eve are separated from this idyllic garden of paradise.  We read, “So the LORD God banished Adam and his wife from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made” (Genesis 3:23, NLT).  Here there is no peace with creation.

The Song of Songs exposes a different image than that of The Fall.  We read:

Song 2:10-13 (NRSV)
Now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

The winter is past.  It reminds me of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe where because of the White Witch, Narnia is stuck always in winter and never Christmas.  There is no spring.  But then one day the snow starts to melt and spring starts to come.  The Narnias know that something has happened.  Aslan, the Lion King, has come back to remake Narnia.  So too in the Song of Songs.  Winter is past.  The Fall is coming to an end and creation is remade.  We partake in this remaking through the care and service of the land.

This image of peace with the land goes quite far in the Song of Songs.  At the end of chapter one, we read about a bedroom where the ceiling is made of timbers.  It is as though the couple is so at peace with creation that they are like God’s making love on the tops of mountains.  What a beautiful image of being at peace with creation.

Peace with People

Of course creation isn’t just made up of animals and trees and flowers and mountains.  Part of creation is you and me and all the people that are creatures too.  Going back again to Genesis and The Fall we see right off the bat after being banished from the garden that peace between people disappears.  Adam and Eve’s sons have a run in with one another.  We read, “Later Cain suggested to his brother, Abel, ‘Let’s go out into the fields.’ And while they were there, Cain attacked and killed his brother” (Genesis 4:8, NLT).  Yikes!  The first murder.  It didn’t take long for humanity to lose the peace of the Garden of Eden.

Song of Songs exposes us to a different image of being at peace with people.  The groom says to his bride, “O my beloved, you are as beautiful as the lovely town of Tirzah. Yes, as beautiful as Jerusalem! You are as majestic as an army with banners!” (Song 6:4, NLT).  Unless you’re up on ancient geography, what just happened here probably passed you by.  The groom compares his bride to two cities: Tirzah and Jerusalem.  So what?  Well, he’s comparing his bride to two capitals that have been in civil war with one another.  Tirzah is the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Washington D.C., if you will, of Israel.  Jerusalem is the capital of the Southern Kingdom of Israel, the Richmond, if you will, of Israel.

Let’s make this whole thing a little more understandable.  We’re talking about the Sue Sylvesters and Will Shusters getting together (the geeks, or gleeks, and the jocks/cheerleaders).  Batman and Joker.  The USSR and the US.  North Korea and South Korea.  East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem.  The Israelis and the Palestinians.

What a comparison!  Who compares their beautiful bride to two warring cities and people groups?  Only one who thinks that peace between them is more beautiful than the current hostilities.  We keep reading and the groom takes this a step further comparing the bride to a dance between two armies: “Return, return, O Shulammite! Return, return, that we may look upon you. Why should you look upon the Shulammite, as upon a dance before two armies?” (Song 6:13, NRSV).  Whew!  How do two armies dance together?  They do so by bringing both peace and justice.

Did you notice that the bride is given another name here?  She’s called the “Shulammite.”  Umm…What’s that mean?  Well, “Shulammite” comes from the same root as the word “shalom” which means peace.  Shalom means peace, but it also means a whole lot more.

We read in Psalm 34:14, “Turn away from evil and do good. Work hard at living in peace [shalom] with others.”  Friendship.  Contentment.  Tranquility.  And of course, no war!  Shalom is all these things, and more.  We read in Psalm 72:3, “May the mountains yield prosperity [shalom] for all, and may the hills be fruitful, because the king does what is right.”  Justice.  Wellbeing.  Welfare.  Ethical living.  The word “shalom” has a kind of grand vision for the whole person—mind, body, spirit.  Care for the whole person and you’re participating in shalom.

Yes, the Song of Songs is about sex, but when you expose it a little more, you realize that it’s not just about sex.  It’s also about creation. Song of Songs exposes us to the best of the best: an image, vision, imagination of peace or shalom with all of creation—both the land and other people.  So…

Shalom, friends!

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unchristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons

February 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

unchristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
Audio Book
Rating: 8 of 10

David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons give the church a much needed kick in the gut.  OK, maybe that’s a little aggressive, but their book unchristian is hard to ignore.  The book is based on representative polling and interviews done with 16-29 years-olds (referred to by demographers as “older Mosaics” and “younger Busters”) who are outside the church (“outsiders”) on how they view Christians.  The results are startling.  These outsiders view Christians as, well, unchristian.

Kinnaman and Lyons are clear throughout the whole book that the point of this research is not to figure out what 16-29 year-olds want and give it to them, but rather to listen to their perspective and learn from it.  To that end they present six perceptions these young adults have of Christians gained not so much from the media but from personal relationships and experience with Christians and six corresponding new perceptions that Christians should work to foster.  These six perceptions are:

  1. Hypocritical
  2. Insincere in converting
  3. Antihomosexual
  4. Sheltered
  5. Too political
  6. Judgmental.

To give you a taste of the new perceptions that Kinnaman and Lyons argue for, let’s look at the perception that Christians are hypocritical or “say one thing but live something entirely different.”  A new perception the authors offer for Christians to cultivate is that “Christians are transparent about their flaws and act first, talk second.”  They believe that in many ways the outsiders are accurate in their observations and that this new perception is really more Christian.

Perhaps the most difficult section of the book for the church is the section on outsiders’ perception that Christians are antihomosexual, that “Christians show contempt for gays and lesbians.”  Kinnaman and Lyons’ research shows that “the gay issue has become the ‘big one,’ the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity’s reputation” (92).  91% of 16-29 year-old outsiders said “‘antihomosexual’ accurately describes present-day Christianity” (93).  In other words, “when you introduce yourself as a Christian to a friend, neighbor, or business associate who is an outsider, you might as well have it tattooed on your arm: anithomosexual, gay-hater, homophobic” (93).  Yikes!

Kinnaman and Lyons point out that this is more than just a mere disagreement.  The antihomosexual perception includes a kind of contempt and hatred for gay people that includes coarse jokes, offensive language, “God hates gays” websites, berating language, suggestions that natural disasters are God’s judgment on gay people, and so on.  They lament that we have become known more for what we are against than what we are for: Jesus.

Wherever one stands on this issue of homosexuality, I think we would all do well to help change the experience that outsiders have of Christians to something more in line with what Kinnaman and Lyons suggest as a new perception: that “Christians show compassion and love to all people, regardless of their lifestyle.”  This isn’t because we’re only interested in perceptions, but because that’s the Christian thing to do.  The outsider perception of Christians is right.  If we truly do “show contempt for gays and lesbians” through such hateful actions as described above, then we are not acting in a Christian way.  We are being unchristian.  Thank God for the outsiders who God uses to reform the church.

Currently Reading/Listening:
The Shack by William P. Young
Generation to Generation by Edwin H. Friedman
Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas
Death by Suburb by Dave Goetz
The Angry Book by Theodore I. Rubin
Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: , ,

Exposure in Marriage

February 14, 2011 by 1 Comment

Exposure in Marriage
Sycamore Creek Church
February 13, 2011
Song of Songs
Tom Arthur

Peace, Friends!

I used to be a photography buff.  I minored in photography in college.  I spent countless hours in the dark room, something that photographers don’t do so much anymore.  But whether you use a computer or light and trays of chemicals, there’s something amazing about photography.  You can take one image and expose it several different ways and see different things in the image.  It’s the same basic image, but many different pictures.

The Bible is a kind of image that can be exposed several different ways.  Three different ways to expose any text in the Bible is to read it literally, morally, and spiritually.  When you expose a text in this way, you start to see all kinds of things that you didn’t see before.

Today we begin a three-part series on the Song of Songs, the steamy side of the Bible.  At least that’s the literal exposure of the Song of Songs.  There’s also the moral and spiritual exposure of the Song of Songs.

The right way to expose the Song of Songs has been an argument that Christians have had for some time.  On one of the spectrum are those who say the Song of Songs is all about sex.  This is the literal reading.  Then there are those who say that the Song of Songs is really all about God’s love of God’s people.  That’s the spiritual reading of the Song of Songs.  I rarely like either/or’s, and so I tend to think that the Song of Songs is about both, and then some.  The Song of Songs is about sex most definitely and about God’s love for God’s people.  And in between I’d like to throw in that the Song of Songs is also about our and God’s love of creation.

To get a better sense of what I’m talking about, let’s go back to Genesis and take a look for a moment at what is usually called The Fall.  This takes place in Genesis chapter three.  We read in chapter three about how Adam and Eve disobey God’s commandment to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they are banned from the garden.  The results of this disobedience are three-fold.  We end up with inequality between the husband and wife, creation itself is broken, and a distance forms between humanity and God.  In the fall, exposure (not the photographic kind but the revealing kind), leads to death.  Song of Songs is an image of the recreation of all three of these broken loves where exposure leads to life, love, intimacy, and peace.  In the Song of Songs, we see a mutual equality of love between husband and wife (literal exposure), a delight in creation (moral exposure), and an intimacy with God (spiritual exposure).

We’ll be dealing with one of these exposures each week.  Today we begin with the Song of Song’s image or recreation of the love that is shared within a life-long commitment, an exposure of marriage.  Let’s dive in and see what the Song of Songs exposes for us about sex and marriage.

“Exposure” can mean the disclosure of something secret.  If sex isn’t this kind of exposure, then I don’t know what is.  When you take all your clothes off and you’re standing in front of your spouse you’re about exposed as you can get.  All the secrets that you hide beneath your clothing are out for this one person to see.

This kind of exposure can be a very scary moment, or it can be a very freeing moment.  I’m reminded of the scene in Bridget Jones Diary where Bridget is trying to decide which kind of underwear to wear out on a date.  First she holds up a lacy thong.  She then reflects that this kind of underwear is less likely to get her into bed with someone but more likely to look good if she does actually get in bed with someone.  Then she holds up a pair of those shaping underwear that look like something your grandma would wear, and she reflects that this kind of underwear is more likely to get her into bed with someone, but once she’s there they’re more likely to put out all the fires of passion.  While I’m not hip on the casual sex value in Bridget Jones Diary, we can see in this moment how sex exposes our secrets.  The Song of Songs presents an image of sex where this kind of exposure is freeing rather than demeaning.  It is freeing because in the Song of Songs sex is faithful, equal, emotional, physical and spiritual.

Faithful

When we think of sex as it is portrayed in our culture these days, we think of the playmate of the month (sex as an object for men to consume that changes every month), the hookup culture (sex is a one night stand), Sex in the City (women are “liberated” just like men to sleep around), or Desperate Housewives (wives are stuck at home wishing they had someone besides their husband).  In some sense each of these images is a reflection, and exposure, of our culture’s infatuation with constant newness, youth, novelty.  We don’t know what to do with commitment, maturity, and extended love.

In the Song of Songs we get a different image of sex.  Sex is faithful.  By faithful I mean that it is reserved for one person and one person alone.  We read in the Song, “My dove, my perfect one, is the only one…” (6:9).  Or in chapter four we read about sex and love as a locked garden, that is unlocked for one person and one person alone (4:16).

You may be wondering right now why I’m calling this the Song of Songs and not the Song of Solomon.  Well, the book itself never gives itself a title.  The first line of the Song says that it is the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s.  The title “Song of Songs” will come to make more sense on the last Sunday, but for now suffice it to say that scholars disagree on who wrote the Song.  Some think it was perhaps a woman who wrote it because it reads like a play and the woman gets more lines than the man.  Whatever the case may be for authorship, we read later in chapter eight that the man pities Solomon his many wives and is happy and content with just one.  Thus, the man in the Song can’t be Solomon.  He looks at Solomon and doesn’t like what he sees, because Solomon’s 700 political wives and 1000 concubines aren’t the faithful-to-one image of the Song of Songs.  The Song of Songs exposes sex as faithful, faithful between two people committed for a lifetime.

Equal

In Genesis we read about the effects or the curse of The Fall.  When I say “curse” I don’t mean that God cursed Adam and Eve in such a way that this had to always be this way, but rather that the curse is a description of the effects or consequences of The Fall.  And what were some of those consequences?  One was a hierarchy between the sexes.  We read in Genesis 3:16 that God said to the woman, “You will bear children with intense pain and suffering. And though your desire will be for your husband, he will be your master” (NLT).

When Adam and Eve disobey God the equality of creation is disrupted and in its place we find a hierarchy of inequality.  The husband is the “master” and the wife has desire for him.  Not coincidentally, we see something new exposed in the Song of Songs.  We read in chapter seven that “his [the man’s] desire is for me [the woman]” (7:10, NRSV).  Here we see the exact opposite of Genesis 3:16 which balances out the inequality of the consequences of The Fall and replaces it with an image of equality in sexual relationship between a husband and wife.  Sex is not just for the man (a consumer of images and pleasures) but it is for both the man and the woman.  They both enjoy the sexual relationship and all that it has to give in terms of desire.  In the Song of Songs, sex is equal.

Emotional

Our culture has been attempting for many years to divorce the emotional bonding from sex.  We are told that sex supposedly can be emotion-free.  But anyone who has had sex for the first time knows that this is a bonding experience.  Sure, you can probably have sex with so many people that you become numb to the bond/break/bond/break/bond/break of casual sex, but this is not what sex was created for.

Sex in the Song of Songs is emotional, emotional bonding.  We read in the second verse of the book, that the woman wants the man to “Kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (1:2, NRSV).  What are “the kisses of his mouth”?  Is this some kind of new French Kiss?  No.  She’s talking about words of affection and not just physical kisses.  The woman wants to hear how much he loves her, and men, if we’re honest, we too love to hear from our wives how much they love us.  We both, men and women, want to be kissed with the kisses of the mouths of our lovers.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning describes this kind of love making in her classic poem, How Do I Love Thee:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

My sense is that this kind of emotional kissing is easier at times for women than for men.  So let me ask you, men, how often do you count the ways that you love your wife?  How often do you offer touch without the expectation of sex?  How often do you tell your wife that you love her, not because she’s done anything, but just because?  Men, kiss your wives with the kisses of your mouth.  You might find that if you do this regularly without strings attached, that you will get to enjoy the next image of sex in the Song of Songs.

Physical

Sex is physical.  Sex is sensual.  Sex is pleasurable.  Yes, the Bible teaches that sex is all these things.  We read right off the bat that the woman says, “Your lovemaking is better than wine” (1:2).  What I’ve translated here “lovemaking” is usually just translated “love” but the Hebrew word is much more active than that.  It is interesting to note that lovemaking and the pleasure it brings here is exposed by the woman!  The woman gets to enjoy the lovemaking and not just the man.  This is, or course, because in the Song of Songs, sex is equal.

Not to be outdone, the man exclaims back to the woman, that she is “a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots” (1:9).  The cultural image here is lost on us moderns.  Let me fill you in.  The story is told of how a general who won a battle against Pharaoh by sending a mare in heat among the stallions of Pharoah’s charioteers.  What a brilliant move!  The stallions all went crazy after the mare and the charioteers were helpless.  So what’s the man saying here?  He’s saying, “You drive men wild!”  Wild with passion.  Wild with desire.  Wild with physical pleasure.

The physical side of sex gets a little, or a lot, explicit at times in the Song of Songs.  We read in chapter five, “I come to my garden, my sister, my bride; I gather my myrrh with my spice, I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk. Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love” (5:1, NRSV).  I’m reminded of John Mayer’s song, Your Body is a Wonderland:

And if you want love

We’ll make it

Swim in a deep sea

Of blankets

Take all your big plans

And break ’em
This is bound to be awhile.

Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with lovemaking!  One scholar says, “This is the only place in the Bible where the love between a man and a woman is treated without concern for childbearing or the social and political benefits of marriage” (Ellen Davis, Song of Songs, 236).  This is sexual pleasure for sexual pleasure’s sake.  It’s not sex to keep men’s lust in check.  It’s not sex to create children.  It’s simply the joy of sex.

And yet, while the image we get of sex in the Song of Songs isn’t 1800s Victorian, it’s also not 60s liberated.  There are some cautions presented.    We read in chapter two about being careful with sensuality.  Don’t wake it up until the time is right (2:7)!  Wait until it is faithful before it is physical.

Let me speak for a moment to the single people, both youth and adults, of our community.  I read recently that “in a nationally representative study of young adults, just under 80 percent of unmarried, church-going, conservative Protestants who are currently dating someone are having sex of some sort” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/august/16.22.html).  I don’t want to pretend that the image of sex in the Song of Songs is easy, especially in our culture that is luring you toward premarital sex everywhere you turn.  Waiting until marriage for sex is VERY HARD!  It is very hard especially as we keep pushing marriage back and back.  The average age of marriage these days is 27.  Given that puberty hits in the early or even pre-teens, you will have to wait and wrestle with your body for 13 or 14 years to not awaken sex before the time is right.

Now before all the rest of us get judgmental about the situation that our young people are in or their actions, let’s also remember our own experience.  Another survey I read said that “three surveys of single Christians conducted in the 1990s turned up a lot of premarital sex: Approximately one-third of the respondents were virgins—that means, of course, that two-thirds were not” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/may/34.28.html).  Most likely many if not most of us did not wait until marriage to have sex.  Does this mean we can ignore that God has created sex to be faithful?  No way.  So why wait?  Why wait if everyone (80 or 90% of us!) are not waiting.  Because sex is spiritual.

Spiritual

In chapter three we read that the woman calls the man the one “whom my soul loves” (3:2, NRSV).  Sex is soul work.  Sex affects your soul.  Sex isn’t something we can separate from the rest of our being.  It is foundational stuff to the rest of our life.  Sex has to do with making your soul ready for love.  Sex has to do with becoming the kind of person you would want to love.  Sex has to do with forming and reforming your deepest and truest self and being.  What you do with sex doesn’t just stay in your body, it gets into your spirit too.  It gets into your character.  Sex, either in marriage or waiting for it until marriage, forms and reforms who you are as a Child of God.  It has to do with how you love God with everything you’ve got and how you love your neighbor as yourself.  Waiting is a kind of spiritual practice, and sex in marriage is a kind of spiritual practice that transforms your life.

So when it comes to waiting until marriage, there are of course then two traps we can fall into.  One is being proud of our ability to wait.  The other is being dejected at our inability to wait.  Neither is a Christian response.  Christ can and does form and reform you in all kinds of spiritual ways.  The question is, will sex be one of those?  Sex is spiritual.  It exposes who we are.  When sex is faithful, equal, emotional, physical, and spiritual, that exposure rather than being scary is freeing.  It becomes part of God’s work in our lives.

Thank you, God!

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Exposure

February 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Exposure:
1. The disclosure of something secret…
2. Vulnerability to the elements…
3. The state of being vulnerable…

Sex exposes.  Creation exposes.  God exposes.  The Song of Songs, the steamy side of the Bible, exposes the connection between sex, creation, and God.  Sound scary?  Sound freeing?  What would it be like to be truly known and truly loved?  Come join us as we expose the best of intimacy, vulnerability, love and sex through the lens of The Song of Songs.

February 13th – Exposure in marriage
February 20th – Exposure in creation
February 27th – Exposure with God

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Is Chastity Really Possible?

April 22, 2010 by

Father James Martin keeps popping up everywhere I look!  I first heard this guy on an NPR interview.  I wrote him an open letter and he responded.  Now he’s on a website I subscribe to calling Big Think (a great website and well worth getting their weekly email).  This video highlights some great ideas about how Jesuits can teach us something about mature spirituality.  I wonder how married people can live into these same kinds of vows: poverty, celibacy (fidelity?), and obedience.  What do you think?  Share some thoughts in the comments.

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