Do I have your attention? On the subject of sex and sexuality, the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth would make a fascinating study, don’t you think? Alas, we have no text to refer to. The reports of the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, include no comment at all from Jesus about appropriate practices of human sexuality, with a couple of exceptions. One exception is that thing in the gospel of Matthew about a man looking at a woman with a lustful eye being the same as committing adultery. Elsewhere, in the account from Mark (said to be the earliest of the gospels) Jesus is asked, in a question intended as a form of entrapment, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” As he often did, Jesus answers the question with a question: “What did Moses command you?”

Great—a Moses reference! So, we might expect to find, in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament to some), a thorough teaching about the laws of marriage and divorce. We might look there also for some practical wisdom that Jesus might have known concerning the fundamental conditions and practices, not only of marriage, but also of having sex. (In my humble opinion, Adam and Eve aren’t much help. Their options were extremely limited, and Sex in the City was a long ways off.)

Unfortunately, the words “sex” and “sexuality” do not appear in my copy of Cruden’s Complete Concordance (although later concordances for the many translations of the Bible appearing since 1968 might have them.) So once again I’m out of luck on text references for our study. Whatever Hebrew scriptures Jesus knew at the time, he wasn’t bringing forth from those scriptures any advice about having sex.

So, except for the lusty descriptions of love between a man and a woman described in the Song of Solomon or Song of Songs—often reinterpreted by some religious traditions in metaphorical rather than physical ways—there’s nothing in the entire Holy Bible (Christian version) that helps me find out what Jesus might have known or said or thought about having sex.

In fact, most stories dealing with sex in both parts of the Bible involve lust, adultery, incest, rape, multiple wives, wives and sex slaves captured in battle, pagan temple practices, prostitution, and the isolation of women during their menstrual periods. I find nothing encouraging in all that. For women in the Bible, having children reinforces their standing with their husbands and the community. But we get no information about the spiritual connection between a husband and wife in the act of begetting. There are a few rules in the Old Testament about “forbidden” ways of having sex, which Jesus never cites.

But never mind. Many rules in Old Testament Law are freely flouted anyway, especially the one about divorce that Jesus was so adamant about. Most of us aren’t worried about eating pork, or wearing a cotton/wool blend sweater, or shopping on the Sabbath (whichever day you choose). So how did we end up in today’s Christianity making such a Big Freaking Deal about having sex?

Why was guidance about such a powerful drive, shared by all species, overlooked by the man many consider to be the full human expression of God’s Own Self? How can we know what Jesus might have told us? If only someone had asked him a question about this!

TO BE CONTINUED…comments welcome so far