Seventh Word of Community Design - Deuteronomy 5:1-5, 18

A fourth-grade Sunday school teacher once shared a concern with the pastor.  He had just completed a quarter’s lessons on the Ten Commandments.  The teacher had asked the kids, “What’s the hardest Commandment for you to keep?”  Most of the kids then responded, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

The pastor and the teacher, along with most of the adults in the church couldn’t understand why fourth graders would find that command a problem.  That is, until one of the mom’s quizzed her son on what he thought committing adultery meant.

The boy was quick to answer.  That’s easy mom, it means, “Thou shall not sass back to adults.”

If only that was what adultery meant.  That would make this sermon so much easier, because we would just refer back to “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.”  However, since it is not about sassing back to adults, or cutting down adult trees, as another young persons suggested, we must move forward.

In today’s world, you get one of two responses.  The first can be heard in the words of a statesman:  “Now, this matter is between me, the two people I love most—my wife and our daughter—and our God…it is private...It’s nobody’s business but ours.”  These are the folks who say, I may have been in an adulterous relationship, but it is none of your business, stay out of it. The other modern response to adultery is: “It’s no big deal.  Everybody’s doing it.  It’s just sex.”  There are even popular magazines on the market which suggest that extra-marital affairs are good for a marriage.

God’s Seventh Word of Community Design comes along and says that both of those responses are wrong.  Sex is something we do not talk about in church much.  It is almost as if we are afraid to mention the word within these walls, like there is something dirty and vulgar about the word.  In fact, the only time these days that the church seems to want to talk about the issue of sex is during the debate of homosexuality; however, from the Books of the Law through the Poetry of the Song of Songs to the words of Paul, the subject of sexual relationships comes up repeatedly. In other words, sexual relations are not a private matter for a community of faith, proper sexual relationships are a community matter.

Maybe the reason we have come to the place in our society where it is almost an “anything goes” kind of attitude about sex is because the church has failed to talk about the issue.  And my brothers and sisters, while there are many who want to say their sexual choices are a private matter, we have only to look out there to see that the world itself considers it a public matter.  Our media outlets of television, movies, and music are filled with sex, and much of it is outside the relationship of husband and wife.  Yet it is not only fiction that we are confronted with on a daily basis, it is found in the sexual and risqué jokes told by the water cooler, locker room, or parking lots.  It is in the postings of pictures on the internet, or one of the scariest things to confront our culture, sexting, in which not only adults, but also teenagers are picture texting images of their intimate regions to one another.  The problem is that while the church has taken a vow of silence in many ways in talking about sex, the world hasn’t…and with the barrage of sex without a connection to the One who gave us the gift of sexuality, we find ourselves in a world filled with pregnant teenagers, sexually transmitted diseases, and a segment of society that views sexual relationships like a round of miniature golf or a night at the movies.  Everybody’s doing it, and that’s not a good thing.

In giving us the Seventh Commandment or the Seventh Word of Community Design, God says you have to address this.  The term “adultery,” as was understood during the writing of these commandments, was sexual relations with a woman who was married to another man.  It was only later expanded in understanding to include having sexual relations with man who is married to another woman.  And while this commandment, or word, only addresses the issue of adultery, there are other places throughout God’s word, that address the issue of sexual relations outside the confines of marriage.

What is the big deal?  It revolves around the sacredness of sex.  Sex is a sacred gift given from God to husband and wife.  Maybe part of the issue at hand is the low view of marriage as well…we live in a culture where it some couples will say, even before they take their wedding vows, if this doesn’t work out, we’ll just get a divorce and try again.  That is what happens when marriage are viewed as nothing more than a contract bound by a piece of paper from the courthouse.  However, in the community of faith, with the idea of a Christian Marriage, there is something more.  It is not to be understood as a contract simply between a man and a woman, but it is to understood as a covenant that takes place between man, woman, and God.  It is a Trinitarian Relationship with our Trinitarian God.  God becomes part of the picture as He ordains the union.

And the word “union” is key here.  From the time of Creation, we have this understanding of the relationship between husband and wife: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.”  One flesh.  They are united together as one, and this act of intimacy between husband and wife is part of that giving of one’s self to the other.  In this thinking, it is understood that when you give yourself to a person physically, you are giving part of yourself to the other person, and they give themselves to you.  To engage in adultery is to rip at the fabric of the “one body” and offer part of what belongs to your spouse to someone else, and the part of us that is left behind with the person who is not our spouse cannot be regained, it has forever been given away.  This act of giving oneself away as part of the sexual act is why, often, folks that engage in prostitution or simply multiple sex partners tend to have such a low self-view of themselves, because they have given so much of themselves away.

Dr. Kalas, who has written a good deal on the Ten Commandments, of all places, points to Geoffrey Chaucer to gain a good understanding of the seriousness of the issue of adultery.  In Chaucer’s book, The Canterbury Tales¸ while light is made of many moral issues within Chaucer’s work, Kalas points out that Chaucer gets serious when he comes to “The Parson’s Tale,” and addresses the issue of adultery.  Chaucer lifts up something I had never thought of before, and that is for us to consider the placement of this particular commandment.  Chaucer points out through the parson, that it is no accident that “neither shall you commit adultery” is placed where it is, between murder and stealing.  For, he suggests, adultery is both…it is the murder of the one flesh union of husband and wife, and it is the theft of the unified body from the other spouse.

“But preacher, it’s my body and I can do with it what I want to.”  True, we have been given the gift of free will.  God loved us enough to not only give us the gift of intimate relationship, but He also gave us the gift of being able to decide what we are going to do with it.  However, before we, as members of a community of faith, think that it is my body, and I can do what I want with it, we must remember the words of the apostle Paul:

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial.  “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.  Food is meant for the stomach and stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other.  The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.  And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.  Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?  Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? [Remember the act of joining with another sexually is understood to be the giving of part of yourself to that person.]  Never!  Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body [one flesh] with her?  For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.”  But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.  Shun fornication!  Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself.  Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, why you have from God, and that you are not your own?  For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1^st Corintihians 6:12-20)

If we have surrendered our lives to Christ, then our lives are no longer our own, our bodies are no longer our own, they belong to Christ and the Holy Spirit dwells within us.  To take our bodies and do whatever we want to do, is to deny Christ’s Lordship of our lives.  It is not only giving what belongs to our spouse to someone else, it is giving what belongs to Christ to someone else.  It is no wonder that God compared the worshipping of pagan gods and idols as infidelity.

“But preacher, you don’t understand, it just happened, I couldn’t help it.”  “But preacher, the urges were there, I had to respond.”  Others will point to other members of the animal kingdom and the fact that they don’t limit themselves in their sexual activity to simply one member of the opposite sex…multiple partners are a natural thing.  There is a major difference.  Non-human animals engage in sexual activity on the basis of instinct and impulse.  They are responding to physical urges that they do not have the ability to comprehend.  They engage in these acts for pro-creative purposes.  We, on the other hand, have been given a gift alongside our desire for intimacy, that they have not.  We have been given the gift of intellect to see beyond the urges of our physical bodies and the ability to exercise self-control, as Paul lifts up in Ephesians as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  To use the excuse of it just happened or it was only natural, and I had to give into the urges, is to deny both of these gifts that God has given to us…and place ourselves on the same level as cats, dogs, hamsters, and rabbits.

How does this affect the community?  What does this have to do with living successfully as God’s community?  It is because disregarding the sacredness of sex, and its place between husband and wife can rip at the very fabric of community.  I know a pastor who years ago was confronted by the adulterous relationship between two members of the congregation they were serving…when that relationship was brought to light, anger flared from the wronged spouses, threats were made, members left the church.  How many times have we heard stories of congregations ripped apart when the pastor or another staff member runs off with a member of the congregation?  In the cases that remain hidden and quiet, and there are those places of darkness that light has not yet shined on, those who have committed the acts, live in fear of exposure or simply filled with guilt and shame, and either withdraw from fellowship or withhold offering themselves fully to the community.  It is a community matter, not a private matter.

My brothers and sisters, we have been given a gift, a wonderful gift, a sacred gift from God…and how we use it, reflects our graciousness to God…it is a gift that when honored between husband and wife, can actually build community as in their relationship they complement one another and as they reflect to those around them the closeness of the love between God and His people…

And my brothers and sisters, let me share this with you, for this is very important when it comes to this gift, and all other gifts that God has given us…we worship a God who is a just God, and there are consequences to decisions we have made, actions we have taken…but we also worship a God who specializes in mercy, grace, and forgiveness.  My friends, we cannot undo what we have done, or what has been done to us, but we can come before God and ask for His restorative power to work in our lives and in our relationships.  He can bring to our marriages, our families, our communities a healing that the world and its, “if it feels good it’s okay” cannot…so I encourage any of us to bring to God the guilt and the shame, the hurt and the pain…and let Him create us anew.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.