Sex in Church

Author Glennon Melton was walking through the mall with her daughters. She noticed as they passed the Victoria’s Secret store how her girls responded. They shrank. Glennon, who has struggled with her own body issues, recognized what was happening.

Glennon stopped them and asked a familiar question, “What are women’s bodies for?”

Her girls brightened. “For playing and jumping and running!” they said.

“And are women’s bodies for selling things?” she asked.

“No,” they said.

King David is playing hooky. He should be out like any good king on the battlefield. It’d be like if LeBron James took off the month January. Like The Tribe decided to hangout on Edgewater Beach instead of in the dugout. It’s sort of like how the Browns couldn’t be found last season. David SHOULD be out, but he’s at home.

And he sees a woman bathing. He uses his power and influence to sleep with Bathsheba.

The moral of this story with this is one many men, including myself, need to learn. David only sees one dimension of Bathsheba. He just sees her body, her beauty. He does not see that she has more dimensions; that she’s married. She has her own emotions and web of relationships. She was the child of loving parents, she has a history.

I’m a feminist, which is the radical notion that women are people and not property. Yet David forgets this and abuses his power and sleeps with Bathsheba, and this decision snowballs into violence, conspiracy, and murder.

David sleeps with Bathsheba, and she becomes pregnant. When her husband Uriah comes home from war, David tells him to “Go home and wash your feet.” This is a euphemism for something else. David wants Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba so the child theoretically could be Uriah’s, and David would never have to own up to what he had done. But Uriah says that since his fellow soldiers aren’t sleeping in comfort, why should he? And Uriah doesn’t go home and David arranges to have him killed.

The Bible is the worst propaganda. It is remarkable that a story so negative to David was preserved and passed on in the tradition. David is the best king Israel ever knew and yet he’s not immune to corruption. Power corrupts even the best of us. David marries Bathsheba. She gives birth to Solomon, known as the wisest king of Israel. Matthew 1:6 is the genealogy of Jesus and it states, “And Jesse was the father of King David. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.”

This gives us all hope. Every family has skeletons in the closet. Human life is messy and complicated. We sweep all sorts of stuff under the rug. A generation or two ago, children with disabilities or limited cognitive abilities were kept secret. Children born out of wedlock were shunned or mistreated. Yet even God has similar skeletons and family secrets. Jesus knows what it’s like to have those.

David only sees one dimension of Bathsheba and then has to arrange things because of the other dimensions he wasn’t thinking about. I always make sure to ask the couples I’m preparing for marriage if they get along with their in-laws. When we enter into marriage, we aren’t marrying just a person; we marry all the dimensions of someone. We are marrying their history, their family, their joys and concerns, the skeletons in their closet. Most want to talk about the wedding, which is a day. I want to talk about a marriage which ideally is a lifetime.

People are messy. They are more than an image on the TV or social media or a poster at the mall. Yet we can forget that and stay on the surface of things. David forgets this and breaks two of the 10 Commandments: “Thou Shalt not commit adultery.” and “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Like Glennon telling her girls that women’s bodies are not for selling things. To make a product more desirable, just put whatever you’re selling in the hands of a model in a bikini. Why? Why would we put a socket wrench or a hamburger into a model’s hands? Because it works.

I want a better and safer world for women. For my mom, my sister, my wife, and daughter and all women. I want a world where they get equal pay for equal work. I want them judged on their accomplishments, not their dress or make up. I want women to reach their full potential with no glass ceilings to stop them from achieving as high as they want to go. When they say something is sexist or they feel unsafe, I want people to listen. I don’t want any more Harvey Weinstein’s in the world. I want to see everyone, especially women, as multi-dimensional children of God.

David misses this and learns it only too late. Yet his descendant Jesus touches off a movement that women are a full part of. Women sponsor Jesus’ movement, become deacons and leaders of this movement, and become saints. The early church was radically egalitarian, shockingly so. Jesus talks with, heals, and ministers with women. Many churches forget this stance and block women’s ordination and leadership, but not so in the United Church of Christ. Many Christians forget that if it weren’t for women preachers, word of the resurrection wouldn’t have gotten out! Because women were the ones who went to the tomb!

We have forgotten this in our own way. I have combed through my own sermons, and I found what UCC pastor and vitality coach Mike Piazza calls a “deadly conspiracy of silence around the issues of death, sex, and money.” The Bible has a lot to say about these issues, yet I haven’t preached much on them. I’m uncomfortable with these topics in our culture, especially on Sunday morning. Maybe some of you are taking issue with the title of this sermon. Yet we must discuss these things. Jesus didn’t shy away from them, nor should his church.

Men: We cannot be on the sidelines in the battle of the sexes. We can’t be like David and stay home and only see one dimension of women. We must get on the battlefield on the side of women. Let us treat each woman with respect and dignity. Let’s listen to and come alongside our sisters. Let us strive to stand against one dimensional displays of women and the commercialization of the feminine form. If a place has to sell food with bikinis, don’t eat there. It’s that simple. Women’s bodies aren’t for selling things. They do not belong to anyone but the person that inhabits it.

For in God’s beloved community; in the Kingdom we pray about each and every Sunday in the Lord’s Prayer, and as Paul writes in Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Let us live into this reality.

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