If only someone had asked Jesus a question about sex. Apparently the entities in charge of the rules at the time and place where Jesus was teaching confronted him about adultery and divorce, mostly to see if they could get away with it. But as for the commonplace human activity of having sex that has become wildly problematic in today’s world, we have no explicit teaching from Jesus.
Even so, what might we infer from what Jesus did say to help us behave, judge, legislate, and otherwise organize our everyday lives on this matter?
Well, first we can knock off judging. Even the Pope (Francis) declared, “Who am I to judge?” Jesus did not judge people. He looked around him with broken-hearted compassion, and loved them all, whoever they were, whatever they were doing. If he sometimes said, “Don’t do that anymore” or “Do the right thing now that you know what it is” he didn’t appear to check up later.
As for legislation, Jesus wasn’t fixed on rules set up by the powerful, either the religious kind or the political kind. That’s where he got into some trouble, ultimately fatal. He seemed to acknowledge the futility of making enough rules to cover all the possibilities for human conduct, and left some things open-ended. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?” Answer: “Whose image is on that coin?” Question: “Is divorce okay?” Answer: “What do your rules say?” Jesus meets questions with questions.
In our day and age, we have mostly determined that, for human beings, having sex is not exclusively about reproduction. Therefore, having sex occurs in a number of imaginative and legally undefined ways. Cultural or criminal? Forever or just for now? Freely shared or forcibly taken? Offered or bought? Life-giving or not? Is this Jesus who refuses to judge and fudges on the law indifferent to all this human stuff and making distinctions?
What Jesus says, and often shows us, about goodness, justice, and compassion is not about what to believe or think, but about what to DO. It would appear then, about having sex, the words of Jesus are perfectly clear: “This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.” Jesus, at that moment in time, actually embodied human evolution: he brought love into everything we do.
What is this “love”? Love is the spiritual energy that unites human beings with the mystery of creation, not only procreation, but also the unfolding of the universe itself. Love as Jesus spoke of it is the embodiment of human potential. “Having sex” fits into a much larger picture. People using other people’s bodies as objects or using their own bodies as weapons kicks the species back down the evolutionary ladder.
So let’s ask Jesus, the fully evolved human, “Is it right for this person to have sex with that person?” Jesus might reply with a question: “Do you (or they) love each other as I have loved you?”
Call me a crazy idealist. Could we teach children—and all people–how to inhabit and hold in awe our sacred, evolved bodies? Our answer could put a great many issues in perspective, including, and far beyond, having sex.
I haven’t written many (published) poems about sex. But here’s one from decades ago that suggests the sacredness inherent in a woman’s body and her self-giving role in the incarnation of…well, everybody.
A KIND OF CLOTHING
Folds, openings, mouths, a kind
of clothing is what
a woman is,
holding, gathering,
covering the intimate
appearances
of others. A man, a child
put on and take off her body
that belongs to them
before she discovers herself
alone.
Even God wanted to
enter into this garment
to be known.
Barbara Loots
Published in The Bride’s Mirror Speaks (1986)
As you know, Barbara, the real question with the having-sex issue is whether the two participants (well, in healthy sex two) are, in their heads and hearts, for the long haul, committed to a loving relationships with one another. If not, it’s simply exploitation or, worse, domination. Of course, sometimes “for the long haul” turns out not to be very long. Sigh.