According to the first chapter of the Bible, there is nothing more God ...

“Sacré Bleu?”Sermon, February 15, 2009Texts: Genesis 1:26-28, I Corinthians 6:12-20Just about a month ago I was able to make a quick trip to my home town to attend the Friday evening wedding ofmy niece. It was a very enjoyable time to be with family … I tell you it brought tears to my eyes to see my parents onthe dance floor, after all their ordeals this past year. I was invited by my niece to give a prayer at the reception.Knowing she had been a high school French teacher (my brother and his family lived in Paris for three years back in the early 90’s,which engendered in Wendy her love of the language), I tried to incorporate a little French into the prayer. I thanked the Lord forthe privilege of being part of this celebration of love and life, paused, then repeated the phrase in French … “cettecélébration de l'amour et la vie” … after which I paused again. Now, I know my niece and my brother’s familyunderstood, but I suspect others were a bit mystified … I think the officiating pastor thought I had gone charismatic andwas praying in tongues ... and during the pause I could have sworn I heard someone behind me mutter, “Sacré Bleu!”“Sacré Bleu” is that archetypal French expression (which I’m told nobody in France really uses anymore), probably mostpopularized by Agatha Christie's Detective Poirot. Its meaning is somewhat ambiguous; it can be seen as either acurse or a blessing. Some sources say it is a 'polite' rendition of 'Sacre Dieu', which is a curse, a using of God’s namein vain. Other sources say no, “Sacré Bleu” literally means 'Holy Blue', the color of the heavens; in short, it isequivalent to our saying "Good Heavens!" Still others say it is an appeal to Mary, that 'holy blue' refers to the colorassociated with the Virgin Mary. Is “Sacré Bleu” a blessing, or a curse? Apparently, it depends on one’s point of view.Valentines’ Day is a célébration de l'amour, a time we tend to think of love, which some see as God’s sacred giftto humanity, while others … well, others do not. Is erotic love between a man and a woman a blessing, or a curse?Well, it depends. Statistically speaking, and several studies bear this out, as many as half the female population of thiscongregation have had a destructive or unwanted sexual experience forced on them. And we know this type of thing isnot limited to the female population. Some of you have been victimized directly or indirectly by those displaying theirdepravity by the abuse of sexuality; you have to deal with the pain, guilt, and unresolved feelings brought by theseepisodes. Perhaps some here have been victimizers, and you have to deal with the pain, guilt and unresolved feelingsyou have from causing so much hurt. For the church not to talk about sexuality would be to desert our post at one ofthe most active and destructive battle fronts in our culture. Marriages are struggling because of misleading informationabout this subject. Young people are making mistakes … sometimes even fatal mistakes … because they're gettingtheir behavioral cues from all the wrong sources. This is a subject begging for a clear Christian word.Six years ago the chaplains at the University of Nebraska took a survey of incoming freshman and asked themthe question: “How much influence did your church play on your views of sexuality?” Of the freshman who weresurveyed, two percent said that their church had anything to do with their views of sexuality. Two percent! Some of thecomments were also included in the survey; two are worth quoting: "People in my church don't believe in sex." "Our church isboring. They don't talk about sex or dating or marriage. It's probably just as well; they'd make that boring, as well." This is a tough subjectto speak about well, especially in the family-friendly context of a worship service. But it is a critically important subject.And if the church doesn't talk about it, then we are just about the only ones not talking about it today. Now, in someways, that's refreshing; it's nice to have a place of respite from the near-constant barrage we get in our culture today.You can’t make it through a half hour of television without being inundated with sexual innuendo, sexual imagery, andin-your-face sexual exhibitionism … or listen to a conversation at the office or at school without an off-color jokeeventually emerging … or read the newspaper without finding a scandal or a sexually explicit advertisement … or takea wrong turn on the internet highway and have filth flushed all over your screen. But we need to talk about it, aboutwhat is right and good about it, because there are too many warped messages from the culture.This may surprise you, but according to the first chapter of the Bible, there is nothing more God-like about us thanour created yearning for the opposite sex. In fact, the Bible claims sexuality was created to be one of the holiest thingsabout your life. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female hecreated them." To be made in the image, or the likeness, of God means to be created as male and female. Thewoman is made in the image of God, and the man is made in the image of God, and they reflect this image in theirrelationship to each other. This means that men were created to be men in the presence of women. Women werecreated to be women in the presence of men. They confuse each other, they unsettle each other, but they are createdto be drawn to each other, drawn to each other as a created complement. Thus all relationships between men andwomen have this dynamic of attraction. The sexuality is hopefully under control, but it is always there. And this is theimportant thing -- it is supposed to be there, because in their created relationship to each other, men and women bestreflect the image of a God. One implication of this is that our sexual yearning is actually a created means of yearningfor God’s wholeness. This is not being said enough. Our sexual yearning is a holy thing. It is, at root, a createdmeans of yearning for Godliness …yearning to be like Him, in His image. Now, we can profane this holy desire, infact, much of our society is inviting us to do that all the time. But according to the Bible that is the purpose of oursexuality, that's why it was created. Your yearning for the other is symptomatic of your deep yearning for God.

C. S. Lewis writes that all of creation has this design to yearn for the other; that there is an implicit sexuality in allcreated things. Those of you who have studied languages have seen this reflected linguistically … in most languages(except English), all nouns have gender. Lewis uses as an example the mountain, which is usually a masculine noun,and how it yearns for the trees, the flowers, the rain, and the snow, which are all feminine nouns. "House" is usually afeminine noun in other languages. "Automobile," of course, is usually a masculine noun. I've learned that in French"remote control" is actually a feminine noun! That's probably why men like to hold it so much (and the more neurotic men tryto control it). Lewis' point is that what God has done in making humans in His image is to give men and women thecapacity to represent the masculinity and femininity of all creation. Their sexual yearning is an embodiment of thewhole world's yearning for something other than itself, which is symptomatic of all creation's yearning for its Creator.That's the way we're created, with a yearning that is both spiritual and physical, intertwined together. God did notcreate you as a soul and then just wrap around that soul an unimportant and disposable body. The body and soul areintricately related to each other, inextricably intertwined. Whatever you do to the body has implications for the soul,and the soul will express its yearning through the body. When Adam first laid eyes on Eve he didn't say. "Oh, wonderful,now I have someone to help me keep the house clean!" No, the yearning was so much deeper than yearning for companionshipand/or division of labor. He said, "This at last is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!" And the two came together, "naked andunashamed," and in that they found soul mates, the physical and the spiritual combined. That's what sexuality isdesigned to be, according to the Bible: the melding of the physical and spiritual, the body and the soul.This means that the sexual act of becoming one flesh is designed to be something of a sacrament. A sacramentis a visible sign of an invisible reality; the uniting of male and female is a visible sign of the eternal reality of God'simage. We should never reduce this holy act with careless or coarse or profane language. Words like "hooking up" or"doing it" … this is bad language, profane language, cheap language for something designed to be so wonderfully highand holy. And as Paul intimates in I Corinthians, when you touch someone sexually, it isn't just biology; you aretouching that person's soul. This is why there is so much hurt and guilt wrapped up with sexuality outside of thebounds of marriage. You're letting people get their hands on your soul, and it rips you apart. Sexuality is a holy thing.Every religious system has some means of veiling holy things, setting them apart, protecting them from beingprofaned, i.e., treated as common or cheap. Holy things are not to be profaned. Part of my training and my avowedduty as an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament is to handle holy things properly. It was so much more so in thedays of the Bible. In the Old Testament, the Jews hung a curtain around the altar in the Holy of Holies in the temple. Itwas meant to protect, to cover, this central holy meeting place with God. Only the faithful and devoted high priest, theone who fully appreciated the sense of holiness of that place … one who had made great preparations and had takenpriestly vows to handle the holy things appropriately … only he would be allowed to part the curtain and enter, andkeep that place from being profaned. The apostle Paul says your body is a temple that contains holiness, a meetingplace with God. And that means you have to be careful about who you give access to this holy place. You have to veiland protect the holiness. You can and you must control access to the holy place of your heart of hearts, or theholiness will be profaned; YOU will be profaned. This is one big reason why the Bible unambiguously confines sexualintimacy to the bonds of marriage. In marriage you have hopefully found the faithful priest who vows to be one fleshwith you, not just sexually, but in all of life for the rest of your life. For better or worse, for richer for poorer, till death doyou part. He or she vows to handle the holy place of your heart and soul with loving, conscientious, life-long, tendercare. If you share sexual intimacy with someone with whom you don't share a vow, take a hard look in the mirror in themorning and ask yourself why you feel so empty. It's because your soul has been robbed, taken from someone whohas not made the high priestly vow of handling holy things carefully for the rest of his or her life with you. Sexualitydoes not create intimacy. It does not dispel loneliness. In fact, out of the bonds of marriage it often exacerbatesloneliness. You actually begin to resent this one who is wittingly or unwittingly robbing you, mauling your soul.Two more things …and I know I’m a bit long, but I don’t address these issues often, so I ask you forbearance.First, though sexuality is essential to your created nature, sexual activity is not. We believe the best lived life on thisearth was conducted by Jesus of Nazareth, who was a man in every physical sense of that word. But Jesus nevermarried, never had children, and remained chaste his whole life. Yet He lived a fulfilled life because He knew hisyearning was for God. So clearly, while sexuality is crucial to our identity, sexual activity is not. It is not necessary fora good life. In fact, if it is conducted outside the context God designed, it is going to lead to a painful life.Second, the Bible also talks about redemption and restoration. The grace of God can and will take the things thathave been profaned in your life and make them holy again. This is what the grace of God in Jesus Christ is all about:to find us, forgive us, and restore the divine image that has been so corrupted in our lives. In Jesus Christ the holinesscan be returned. He can heal the hurts of what others have done to you, He can heal the hurts of what you have doneto others, and He can heal the hurts of what you have done to yourself. All you have to do is turn the yearning back tothe Creator and the God-like image of holiness can be restored.Again, sexuality, as God designed it, is one of the holiest of our created desires. It is a sacred blessing. “SacréBleu”… Good heavens, let us treat it accordingly!