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Guidelines for Safe Sex |
by Rev. John Oakes, Holy Trinity Church, Vancouver, B.C., January 19, 2003 (RCL - Yr. B, Epiphany 2). There is an old story about a minister who was preaching to his congregation about the difference between heaven and hell. To emphasize his point, he asked all who wanted to go to heaven to stand up, which virtually the whole congregation did. So when he requested a similar response from anyone who preferred to go to hell, he got nothing. For full dramatic impact he then waited several seconds before continuing. But during the pause a small boy slowly rose to his feet. The priest was obviously astonished at this and so he asked the child what was going on. "Surely a fine young man like yourself doesn't want to go to hell?" But the boy did not miss a beat. "Well of course not," he said. "I just couldn't bear the sight of you standing there all alone." On another occasion, a new pastor was due to speak on a particularly challenging topic and he spent weeks preparing the message so that he could preach without notes. When the big day arrived, he was confident that he had adequately prepared. But he became so nervous that panic set in when he approached the pulpit, and he forgot everything that he had hoped to say. Eventually, after several moments of awkward silence, his quivering voice came over the sound system. "This morning only God and I knew what I was going to say," he ventured. "Now only God knows" (Adapted from Herb Walker, The Happy Clergy [1977], p. 16). Well, I must admit that I feel a bit the same way as I approach today's topic, although I do have a full text in front of me. In our current climate I would not normally have chosen to address issues of sexual ethics in only my second month at a new parish. But I cannot escape the fact that our reading from 1 Corinthians is scheduled in the lectionary for this Sunday and that it is obviously of crucial relevance to where we are now. So I have decided to ignore my better judgement and respond. It is no news to anyone, I think, that we live in a very sex-conscious age. And social standards have changed quite dramatically in a relatively short period of time. Certainly if we go back to Britain in the late 1950s or early 1960s, when I was growing up, many things were then taboo that we simply take for granted nowadays. To mention just a few examples, homosexual practice was still a criminal offence and divorce was very difficult to obtain. Adultery and sex before marriage were generally considered morally wrong and socially undesirable. And of course, the media, both print and celluloid, even radio, were much more strictly controlled. I do not want to sound like I see nothing positive in recent changes, because I find much of value, especially in the area of legal and civil reforms. But we need only look around us to see that the sexual revolution of the late 1960s onwards has revolutionized many western societies. And a lot of what now passes as acceptable conduct has gone way beyond the biblical norms that Christians have tried to observe over the centuries. One of the main problems for those who take a more conservative position on such issues is that biblical principles like celibacy outside of marriage and fidelity within it seem to be increasingly rejected, even irrelevant in mainstream society. Many have grown tired of the kind of list of sexual "do's" and mostly "don't's" that we have traditionally taught. So what's the answer? How can we defend scriptural norms to ourselves and others in ways that really speak to our modern world? Even more fundamentally, how can we justify holding to morals which many have simply discarded? Our passage from 1 Corinthians 6 offers two very important reasons why we should continue to take the Bible's teachings seriously, or two "guidelines for safe sex," to quote my rather provicative sermon title. And politically at least, I'm going to take my life in my hands by exploring them with you in some detail. Safe Sex - pg. 2 | |
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(This page is maintained by Rev. Dr. John Oakes and Kirsten Oakes .) |
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