Once we decide to take our baptism seriously, we soon encounter a challenge to the worldly views on sex that may have underwritten our sexual past.
We’ve been working through the Ten Commandments in youth formation, and most recently discussed the sixth commandment, “thou shall not commit adultery.“ That command is so familiar to us that it is easy to assume that we know what it means. But if we reflect just a bit, we should be able to see that the only way we know the boundaries of the adultery we are to avoid is through our participation in a community that practices faithfulness.
A discussion of adultery leads quickly to a discussion of sex. What is it? That is, what constitutes sex and what does not? This question is not as easy as it appears at first glance, as our teens quickly discovered. If we are to avoid adultery, and adultery has something to do with sex, how do we know when we are crossing the line that distinguishes tactile gestures of fellowship with our neighbor from sex? And why in the world does God care about sex?
Sexual expression is now spoken of in our society as one of our most important identity markers, so much so that to set certain forms of sexual expression out of bounds is to deny another’s identity. And so we’ve developed a vocabulary - heterosexual, homosexual, gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual - that reinforces this notion that sex is among the most important, most defining things about us.
In a culture so obsessed with sex that it claims our identity is associated with sex, we Christians should remember our counterclaim that we don’t need to create an identity for ourselves to become worthy; our identity is received as gift in our baptism. But rightly understood, baptism in Christ turns our world upside down. It often causes us Christians to deny the claims of the world about what it means to be human.
So it is with sex, singleness, and marriage. Once we decide to take our baptism seriously, we soon encounter a challenge to the worldly views on sex that may have underwritten our sexual past. The Christian claim is that sex is not determinative of our identity (our relationship to Christ is), and sex is not even the most intriguing thing about us. Indeed, I doubt sex ranks in the Top Twenty of things that make people interesting and important. As theologian Stanley Hauerwas notes, “even dogs do it with no instruction.“ In contrast to the claims of our culture, “hooking up,“ marriage, and having children should not be a pressing priority for Christians; indeed the Christian claim is that all of us are first called to a life of singleness, and some among us are called to a life of celibacy.
This may seem counterintuitive to some; the first response of many to this claim is to think of the Shakers and other celibate groups who eventually faded away. The point, however, is that the Church’s vocation is not dependent upon the creation of families. The Church is by definition a people called out of the world and sent into the world, and so one of the important distinctions between the ancient Jews and Christians is that our sustenance is properly through outward bound witnessing to the world that draws the world into life with God; unlike the Jews, Christians fulfill our purpose through witness that leads to new life in Christ, rather than through procreation that leads to new life in Adam. Marriage is non-essential to our purpose.
Baptism thus turns upside down the way we Christians rightly understand marriage and sex. Our culture claims that a couple who loves and needs each other should get married, and, indeed, have a right to get married. But this is not the Christian view of marriage. The Christian view is that couples ought to marry only when they and the community in Christ of which they are a part jointly discern that they are better able to fulfill their baptismal vows through marriage than through singleness. Happiness is not the desiderata of Christian marriage, though it may well be a fruit.
This means that Christian sex is always trinitarian sex, for God is both the creator, sustainer, and rightful aim of Christian couples: our “hooking up” is indissolubly connected with and subordinated to God’s purpose of reconciling the world. Sure there’s pleasure, but there is a distinction between the fleeting pleasure that leaves us feeling empty the morning after and the enduring kind that testifies to a fulness and flourishing that is possible only when the Spirit acts on us so that we are able to transcend ourselves. And that distinction makes all the difference. That’s why Christian sex is a means of grace.
Christian marriage therefore makes sex public; that is, the mere sex to which we are biologically driven - like all animals - is transformed into joyful, ecstatic union through the spiritual gifts of faithfulness, hope, and love that are given only in the context of enduring, accountable public commitments centered on our shared desire to serve Jesus as Lord of our lives. And precisely because it intentionally points to the God who creates and sustains us, Christian sex is good!
The sixth commandment, then, is not some unwelcome demand we have no hope of meeting, but rather God’s gracious offer for us to live lives that witness to God’s fidelity that liberates us from our bondage to mere desire. We are faithful to each other in joyful celebration of our experience of God’s faithfulness to us.
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