Sexuality: A More Excellent Way

The articles in this issue were originally lectures delivered at the Leadership Conference at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in February, 2002. That conference, arranged by Pr. Julie Ryan, invited speakers and their listeners to consider a myriad of questions dealing with sexuality "in a more excellent way." That way included examining sexuality in its wholeness, as gift and challenge, as well as problem, and in a way that included us all. Hence issues involving homosexuality, for example, are only tangentially treated here. Sex is part of everyone’s vocation.

Luther, as I recall, lauded changing of diapers and common labor as locations for vocation. Sexuality too is our calling which we fulfill simultaneously as saints and sinners, in private but with communal dimensions, and in a society saturated with sex, at once understanding everything and nothing about it. Sexuality is something we share with all humankind, but a more excellent way explores what sexuality might mean for the baptized. As our essayists unanimously insist, sexuality is both a spiritual and a physical experience…and then some.

Christina L. H. Traina explores the dimensions of sexuality in the city of God, weaving Augustine frequently into the picture. She notes that for a huge proportion of ordinary Christians, some significant dimension of their history or present life departs in an important way from the church’s traditional teaching on sexuality. Christianity at its best—in the cross and resurrection for example—has affirmed the body, including its sexuality, and what might be called the theoerotic tradition has used sexual union as a metaphor for union with God. Sex can be sacramental, in which we experience the power and goodness of God, but it is not always an occasion for grace. The desires tied up with sexuality—pleasure, comfort, companionship—are real goods, but only God fulfills these needs perfectly. Sexuality has a vocational aspect: with whom, if anyone, is God calling me into a sexual relationship? Sin, too, permeates our sexuality as it does all human doings. We know that we will fall short, but we also know that God forgives all our weaknesses and mistakes.

Elaine J. Ramshaw provides a broad sketch of sexuality in Western civilization and notes that sexuality is problematic because it is multi-layered, involves our imaginations, deals with the boundaries of the self, and exposes us to a high degree of vulnerability. But sexuality in all its complexity is also God’s gift. She also urges us not to take sexuality with somber seriousness, but to indulge in healthy humor about it, with playfulness and imagination. What would you say if you were asked whether sex was problematic, God’s gift, or a hoot?

Lee H. Butler, Jr. laments the dualism that splits off spirituality from sexuality in large parts of the Christian tradition. African spirituality at its best, on the other hand, finds no separation between the sacred and the secular. The Western splitting of spirituality and sexuality has had a devastating impact upon African American relationships, not just within their own community, but also in their relationship to other communities. Our spiritual existence affects our physical existence—and vice versa. It is imperative that the fracture between our spirituality and our sexuality be mended, and such healing will help to restore our humanity.

Esther Menn notes that we share with our biblical ancestors a common capacity for love with a physical dimension. Both of the creation narratives introduce human beings as sexual creatures. Love and hate, manipulation and competition—even these may be part of marriage, as the Old Testament realistically notes. But the Old Testament also discloses the uglier aspects of sexuality, involving specifically male violence and human deception. To "know" one (in the biblical sense) is not always to love one. The influence of royal wives on their husbands’ religious observances suggests the power that women exercised, even within the context of arranged political marriages. In general, the social and political significance of sexual relations is much more pronounced in the Bible than in our contemporary culture. The laws on sexuality are culturally specific to a time more than two thousand years ago, and they often demonstrate the enormous difference between the biblical world and our own with regard to sexual mores and legal prohibitions. At its core, our sexuality remains "strong as death, unquenchable as fire." (Song of Songs 8:6).

Robert L. Brawley observes that human sexuality can be either bane or blessing. This double potential makes all postmodern notions that we can simply replace repression with freedom-and-joyful-innocence astoundingly deceptive. Paul called the Corinthians to live out their sexuality in a christological and pneumatological relationship with God and in a relationship with the Christian community. The way we live out our sexuality is not just a private matter, but a concern of the entire community. A relationship with a Christian community that is consecrated to God limits our sexuality, but this relationship also sanctifies our sexuality.

A poem by Kay N. Sanders offers us an invitation to Lent. In her congregation, the palms from the previous year are burned in a fireplace on Ash Wednesday, gathered into a bowl, and then passed from person to person throughout the entire assembly. Each person is invited to dip a finger in the ashes and mark the cross on head or hand. The poem reflects on these solemn rituals.

St. Paul urges us to strive for the greater gifts and promises to show us a still more excellent way as he introduces his classic discussion of love in 1 Corinthians 13. For the last six decades or so I have been trying to understand sexuality—in general and my own variety. I have learned much, grown much, and still see only dimly. I would hope that our essays will push us all a little closer toward that graduate program where we will fully understand our sexuality "face to face."

Ralph W. Klein, Editor