1 Corinthians 6:12-20
12 All things are permitted for me, but not all things are of benefit. All things are permitted for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, however God will do away with both of them. But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. 14 Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are parts of Christ? Shall I then take away the parts of Christ and make them parts of a prostitute? Far from it! 16 Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “The two shall become one flesh.” 17 But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 18 Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
2nd Sunday after the Epiphany Year B
Sometimes I read the passages assigned to a certain Sunday in the lectionary and I fail to see the connection. But this Sunday’s collection of passages have a clearer connection. At least for three of them. When we see something, a truth, that has been there all along but we never saw it and then something happens and now we see it, we call that an epiphany. The season of Epiphany is a marker set in place in order that we might recognize Christ manifestation or appearing in the world. In several places in the gospels we are told that Jesus told his hearers how the Jewish scriptures spoke about him, but it was on the road to Emmaus that their eyes were opened to his presence in the Old Testament scriptures. They had a sort of epiphany. They never saw how Christ was there all along until they saw it and then they saw it everywhere!
The season of Epiphany is there to remind us to see Christ in everything. He promised that he would be with us always till the end of the age. I don’t think that means that he is just this ghost hanging around. He is in everything. He is in me. He is in my neighbor. He is in those who seem opposed to Him! He is in nature. He is in my dog. He is in my drive to work. Epiphany reminds us to see Him not just in the bible or in church but in everything we do and everywhere we go.
Three out of four of the selected passages it seems obvious how they fit together. The first Samuel one is the calling of Samuel, The gospel one is the calling of Nathaniel. God is revealing to both of them that He knows them before they are aware of it. In Psalm 139 the psalmist becomes aware of God’s knowing him intimately. So the thread that ties them together is this idea of being known by God and God revealing to them his knowing them and their response is that they now know God in a way that is so much more intimate than they had before.
But then there is the passage in 1 Corinthians that seems to be an admonition against sexual immorality. How does that tie in with the other three and the idea of being known by God? Earlier this week I posted about this passage and how Paul uses language that seems to tie it back to first few chapters in Genesis. And I think that if I stay with that idea, then I am able to see the thread of knowing and being known in this passage as well.
In the creation story several several translations use the word “know” in place of “have sex with”. I never really appreciated that translation as I felt like the translators were trying to shroud and sanitize something that is essential human behavior. But as I tried to tease apart this passage in 1 Corinthians, I like it as choice of word.
To get to know someone is an intentional act. To want to get to know someone is to have the desire to see more than what is just presented to us on the surface. It carries the assumption that there is more to this person than just what is common knowledge. He is a lawyer. She is a surgeon. He is homeless. She is beautiful. How deceived are we if we think we know people just because we know 1 or 2 things about them and go to the same church, or work in the same building. Knowing someone involves a relationship. I read Eric Clapton’s autobiography and I know a lot about him but he doesn’t know me. We have no relationship. I can’t say I know him. But I can say I know him even if I didn’t read his autobiography if we were best friends. The deeper the relationship, the more intimately we know someone.
If we understand sex to be something that is sacred. That it is perhaps the final threshold we cross with someone that we already know intimately then it is hard to have any room for “casual sex”. Because the idea of casual sex is that sex is where we start with someone. We don’t hold it sacred. We view sex only as a biological need. A need that we can meet for someone and get ours met at the same time. And exchange of services. A reducing of what is sacred to being only transactional.
In the garden after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they realized they were naked and their response was to cover up and to hide. That is humanities MO. We show up, covering our most vulnerable areas and present a decorated version of ourselves to the world. We fear vulnerability and transparency. We are fine with others only seeing us as a lawyer or a surgeon. Covering our weaker features, showing only what glitters. Yet we long to be known intimately. We long to be naked with our lover and our lover naked with us. Fully accepting and fully loved. We cover and yet we long to be uncovered.
When we start the path of getting to know others by knowing who they present themselves to be and then continue getting to know them as they are willing to shed the layers that hide who they really are and build trust with one another as we show that they are safe to reveal their true self with us, we eventually end up naked with our lover. We hide nothing from one another. We are known and know each other. Holding sex as a sacrament from God means ending there, not starting there. It takes time to build the trust that we can reveal a more intimate layer of who we are to our lover. It takes time for our lover to trust that they can reveal who they are to us. No one can put a time-frame on that. If we try to start there, all we know about this person is their physical body. We are left to feel even more vulnerable and we move in the opposite direction and we cover ourselves even more because we do not know and trust this person yet.
Paul is addressing the bad idea that infected the thinking in the Corinthian church. The idea that they were free in Christ therefore there is no judgement or condemnation for their sin. What was the church in Corinth like?
Perhaps the most significant of the factors which comprised the atmosphere of Corinth was gross, unashamed immorality. Both the old city and the Roman colony were known far and wide for their sexual looseness. The most prominent site was the Acrocorinth, a sharp projection which rose to a height of 1,800 feet. On the summit of this steep mountain stood the temple of Aphrodite, a symbol of the lust which pervaded the mind of the city. The worship of this goddess was not Greek in origin but [Asian]; it had been imported from the Phoenician cult of Astarte. In old Corinth the temple maintained a thousand priestesses who amounted to no more than common prostitutes. It is not certain that the thousand priestesses were maintained in the temple of rebuilt Corinth; nevertheless, the gross immorality continued as before. The attitude of the city toward immorality involved no condemnation whatever; on the contrary, it was considered to be a normal part of life. The same loose attitude was often reflected in the church. The case of incest and the question about the Christian view of marriage had their roots in the immoral mind of the city. Most of the members of the church were Gentiles, and the strict morality characteristic of the Jews was foreign to them. They found it difficult to understand that what they once considered virtue was now sin. [1]
So the idea of sexual immorality being commonplace and so much a part of the lifestyle of those living in Corinth is easy for us in our modern day American culture to understand. Most of us do not make any attempt to live lives of sexual purity. It is hardly talked about, even in the church. We accept that sexual activity is a normal part of adult lives and essential to finding a partner. But what if we viewed and held our lust to the same standard as other sinful desires: greed, racism, lying, murder etc. For most adults, we don’t consider having sex withing the bounds of a time tested monogamous relationship as being sexually immoral. We tend to see sexual immorality as having one night stands and multiple partners. And we view abstinence till marriage as extreme, weird and even risky!
Sacred prostitution, also known as temple or cult prostitution, involved various activities in ancient times, many of which that occurred in Greece were in some way related to the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Greek city of Corinth. The reason for the fascination with prostitution in general was because in ancient times, women’s bodies were viewed as more sexually desirable than men’s because of their potential fertility, and sexuality and fertility were celebrated for these aspects of them.[1] In terms of their bodily functions and their purpose, women’s bodies were more valued than men’s because of their potential fertility, and therefore were viewed as more sexually desirable than men’s. This led to an interest in prostitution, and sacred prostitution was a form of prostitution in which people dedicated either themselves or their children to their deity as a form of religious worship.[2]
The idea that sex outside of marriage can be pure and even honor God has been around for quite a while. We are willing to deny ourselves almost all other desires but sex. If someone tells us that they are going to give up alcohol or lose weight or quit social media or stop cursing we see that as virtuous and encourage them. But if someone says they are going to give up sex, we look at that as weird and impossible. We might even want them to fail so that we can feel better about ourselves. It is such a strong drive and it is a drive that is healthy to indulge in as long as it is in the right context. For most cultures that context is marriage. Every culture sees sex with another person’s partner as wrong and some even see it as deserving of death.
Perhaps Paul is making the point in our baptism into Christ, we have become one with Christ. Christ lives in us. We are now a temple, a living temple of the Holy Spirit. To the Jews in Corinth, the word temple may bring to mind the temple in Jerusalem. A place considered to be sacred. To the Gentiles in Corinth, the word temple may bring to mind the temple of Aphrodite. A place to be considered as an icon of immorality. Paul is creating one new idea from both ideas. They themselves, their own bodies, are now a temple! A temple where God’s spirit lives. The intimacy experienced through sex is the intimacy we hold with Christ who lives in us. The idea idea being a temple in which God’s Spirit lives and then being sexually immoral can be compared to the temple of Aphrodite. It is the idea of turning a temple into a place of prostitution and immorality.
The problem for me is that I don’t experience God as living in me. Not that it is not true, but I tend to divide my world into spiritual and secular. But the reality is, that is a lie. It is all spiritual and always has been. On the day of Pentecost, God poured out His Spirit upon us all. The true reality is that God’s Spirit lives in us all and we have to live into that reality. Live life from the orientation that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And just like the temple in Corinth was turned into a house of prostitution, my body can be turned into that. God has always left it up to us to seek the truth and live by that truth.
God knows us intimately and reveals that to us. From that revealing, we are called to live our lives differently. We can ignore God’s revealing himself to us and end up as the temple of Aphrodite, prostituting ourselves to the world and feeding our worldly desires or we can embrace God’s knowing us and us now knowing God more intimately and live as the temple of the Lord. We ourselves are called to live as the incarnation of Christ.