I Corinthians 6:12-20 "You Are Precious" Scott Hoezee

A high school boyfriend and girlfriend share the spine-tingling thrill of their first kiss. A newly married couple closes the hotel room door and nervously yet excitedly prepares for their first night together on the honeymoon. A husband and wife who have been married for a number of years manage to escape their children and busy lives long enough to show their love for each other through a sexual tryst. Romantic and erotic encounters like these happen all the time. But I would feel quite secure in wagering that very, very seldom do such star-crossed lovers say to each other, "You know, kissing you and being with you like this just reminds me of Easter!" Conversely, I doubt that very many people assemble in churches on Easter Sunday morning hoping that the preacher's sermon will at long last provide some clarity on the connection between Jesus' victory over death and sex.

No, that's not typically the way our minds work. It maybe reminds us of that song they sing on Sesame Street: "One of these things is not like the others." Children are shown a picture of a dog, a cat, a horse, a pig, and a lawn mower and then have to pick which of those items don't fit with the rest. "One of these things is not like the others," and so the lawn mower gets removed from the set of four-legged animals. And so also with something as spiritual as Easter and something as physical as human sexuality: one of these things is not like the other, and so we find combining these ideas to be merely odd.

Probably the people in Corinth thought the same way initially when the apostle Paul made exactly this theological move. As most of us know, I Corinthians is the longest letter of Paul that we have in the New Testament. In this lengthy piece of correspondence, Paul ticks off a list of questions that the Corinthians had already sent him. This congregation had sent their pastor, Paul, their own letter in which they asked questions like, "Pastor Paul, how should we celebrate the Lord's Supper? Pastor Paul, what do you think about speaking in tongues--is it really the most powerful of all gifts as some of our members are claiming? What do you think about people in the church filing lawsuits against each other?"

On and on the questions went. This morning's passage is Paul's response to a question that must have gone something like, "Pastor Paul, some people around here are adopting the slogan 'Everything is permissible for me' and they are using that as an excuse to sleep with prostitutes, to eat and drink too much, and just generally to do whatever they want. So Pastor, do you have any thoughts on sexuality and the like?" Paul certainly did, but the principal idea he shared was that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead provides very useful sexual advice. This morning we will wonder how that might be.

And this is an exceedingly important matter for us to wonder about, not just because this is a Youth Service but because all of us are part of a culture that seems highly confused on matters related to sexuality. In the city of Corinth 2,000 years ago, a catch-phrase of the day was "Everything is permissible for me!" That particular slogan isn't one we hear today, not in so many words anyway. But how about the slogan, "Just Do It!" How about "You Only Live Once!" How about "You Deserve a Break Today!" How about "Different Strokes for Different Folks!" Today we hear slogans to the effect that we should not live lives that are hemmed in by an undue amount of moral scruples. We need to "think outside the box," "dare to be different." We don't want our father's Oldsmobile, or his morality, either.

Of course, it's not as though even so anything goes. Date rape, incest, child pornography, and the actions that fueled the recent sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church all indicate that people still recognize the potential harm that can result from unchecked sexual practices. Anytime one party is coerced into a sexual encounter, then the moral flags go up. However, so long as you are able to take charge of your own body, make your own decisions, then that remains private and no one may say much more about it.

The phrase "consenting adults" is the moral bottom line. Who else, after all, could put a claim on the body of a grown-up person? Paul has an answer for that: our God in Christ. But here is a thought that flies in the face of so much of what people prize today. Here is an idea that runs contrary to the way many young people think as they grow up. Psychologists even use the word "emancipation" as a shorthand way to refer to the goal of adolescents as they mature into adulthood. It's a positive thing if a counselor can say of a given young person, "He has successfully emancipated from his parents." The goal is to grow up into a mature individual. The goal is to be self-sufficient. The goal is to be as independent as possible. In a cultural climate like this, even good parents may find themselves saying something to the effect, "Well, she's 21 years old now, so I can't say a whole lot to her about her lifestyle anymore. She's an adult after all! She's on her own."

But Paul reminds us that whatever our status may be in terms of relating to other people; whatever independence we have achieved and whatever rights and privileges may be accorded to us when we hit that magic age of 21, this much remains ultimately true: we are flat out not our own. We belong to God because Jesus bought us. Jesus purchased us. We rightly abhor the idea of slavery. We are right to shudder when we see films that depict slaveowners inspecting the teeth and thumping the back of a black man on the auction block in a way similar to how today you might kick the tires or peer under the hood of a used car you're thinking of buying. The idea of any person being bought, sold, or owned like a piece of property is something we have rightly been taught to despise.

But that doesn't mean that ultimately, in the grander scheme of the universe, there is now no such thing as a person being owned. The gospel claims that God owns us because Jesus purchased us with his blood shed on the cross. The good news of that is that we are not cheap goods. None of us was sold for the spiritual equivalent of fifty bucks. If you've ever donated something to an auction, perhaps something you yourself worked hard on creating, only to see it get auctioned off for a pathetically small amount of money, you know that that stings a little. "It was worth more than that!" we want to cry.

We often assess the value of something by what it is worth in dollars and cents. The good news of the gospel is that we are so precious, so valuable, that only the blood of God's own Son could seal the deal. Of course, even that is finally unimaginable. What does it mean to be worth so much that only the precious blood of the Lamb could buy you? I don't know that I can comprehend that, but maybe something of the essence of this idea can be detected in a conversation like this one (and maybe this is a conversation some of us actually had with our parents back when we were very young): "Daddy, would you ever sell me?" "No, dear, of course not!" "Not even for a million dollars?" "No, honey, not for a million." "What about a billion dollars?" "Honey, not for all the money in the world!"

There is a level of preciousness that defies the crudeness of dollars and cents. There are values we place on people in this life that cannot be quantified or measured. You can't even put it into words. And I think that maybe this is what Paul is getting at in I Corinthians 6 when he uses that cosmic expression about our being bought at a price.

"Daddy, who do you love more: me or my sister?" "I love you both the same. I couldn't love either of you more than I already do." That's the kind of thing Paul is getting at. God the Father loves us right along with God the Son. It seems that God could not love either Jesus or those of us adopted into the divine family through Jesus any more than he already does. We are not our own. We belong. No matter how independent and emancipated and free and wise and mature we may become as we grow up in life, there will for Christian people always be someone with a prior claim on us--a claim of deepest love.

But that doesn't quite bring us to the end of the matter. Because in Corinth the idea behind the "Everything is permissible for me" slogan seems to have been fueled in part by the idea that Christianity was about just the salvation of souls. We are spiritual people and so the physical part of us doesn't matter. I once heard a liberal theologian ask, "Why in the world should God or the church be interested in what people do with their sexual parts?!"

But this is where Easter enters the picture. If there is one thing that the Christian religion emphasizes, it is the value of the body, of the physical creation. Salvation came when the Son of God became a real human being who was carried in the real uterus of a real woman. And salvation was sealed when that same body was raised from the dead on Easter morning. God did not want to save just a piece of you, just your mind or your spirit or your soul. God has saved the entire person, body and soul, and he is somehow going to preserve us as people with bodies even when the kingdom of God fully arrives.

Our bodies and what we do with them matter! And Paul goes to some pretty great lengths in this passage to make that clear. He says that when we are baptized, we become one with Christ. We are united with Jesus. We are united not just with the idea of Jesus or with some misty "spirit" of Jesus, but we are united in the whole of our being with the whole of his being. This link is so close, Paul says, that if a Christian person has sexual relations with a prostitute, you are forcing Jesus to be united as one flesh with that woman, too.

Clearly we are in the area of mystery here. In fact, it almost seems so far-fetched that you are tempted to chalk this up to a really big exaggeration. But there is no hint in I Corinthians 6 that Paul believed he was getting kind of wild and crazy with his imagery in order to make a point. In fact, Paul lays all this out with the cool rationality of simple logic. We are, body and soul, united with Jesus Christ. We belong to him and he, by his Spirit, fills us up totally and completely. No part of our lives is exempt. You can no more be just a little bit "in Christ" than you can be a little pregnant. The reality of Jesus dwelling in us and we in Christ through the Spirit is total, and that fact won't cease to be true just because you've checked into a motel with a prostitute.

What you do to your body and what you do with your body matters, Paul says, because it is a temple of God himself! When you young people were younger yet, your parents did not love just the idea of you, they enjoyed more than just the kind of personality you had. Everything about you matters to your parents, and that's why they would not shrug if they saw you sticking your hands underneath a running lawn mower or trying to poke a pencil into your ear. No parent would ever say, "Well, I won't worry about that. Jimmy will still be Jimmy even without his right hand!" When you are worth more than all the money in the world to someone, that person's care for you tends to be pretty all-encompassing!

It is no different for God. How we treat our bodies, and how we exercise the wonderful gift of sexuality all matter to God very much. God has never felt bad that he created a physical world. He has never regretted making oceans and mountains, bobcats and oak trees. And he has never regretted giving us hands and arms, hearts and spleens, brains and genitals. God has never said to himself, "I wish I had just made more angels! I wish I had just made human beings as vapors to float in the confines of my own divine mind."

In fact, the Christian vision is that when Jesus returns and makes the world new again, even then God will not say, "Well, the universe has had a pretty good run of it with dirt and bird's nests, coral reefs, and bodies of flesh and bone. But now I'm starting over with just clouds, mist, and free-floating souls." No, the Christian vision is that we will remain in new bodies even as the creation itself will remain physical and earthy and full of delightful things we can explore and praise God for through all eternity.

Paul tells us to "Honor God with our bodies" not because this is some silly hoop God enjoys watching us jump through and not because we are supposed to be such up-tight, Puritanical prigs that we would never dare enjoy a moment of physical pleasure. No, Paul tells us to use our bodies as vessels of honor precisely because our bodies, as surely as our souls, mean the world to God.

You know, if you are cleaning out your grandmother's house sometime after she has died, you may run across a lot of stuff. And if you are in the attic and you run across a lampshade or some such thing, maybe you'll ask your Mom, "What should I do with this?" And maybe she'll say, "I don't care, just toss it over there," and then you'll know that that particular object is just maybe junk and will likely get thrown out or, at best, affixed with a little 50-cent sticker for next week's garage sale. But suppose you pick up a different object and say, "Mom, what should I do with this?" only to have your Mom say, "Oh my! Please be careful with that. Just give it to me because this I just have to keep." Well, in that case you know you've stumbled across a treasure, a memento of great significance.

When we present ourselves before God, we may well ask, "What do you want me to do with this body?" God's answer will most assuredly not be, "Whatever you want, I don't care. Just put it anywhere." God will not say that because you are too precious! Your body is too precious. Instead, with a catch in the divine breath, God through his Spirit will say to you, "Oh my! Please be careful with that, because you are such a treasure to me! You're worth more than the whole world to me!"

Young people of Calvin Church, the Lord God loves you and cares about every part of you. There's a lot of comfort in that thought. Of course, that's a scary thought, too, because who here today could claim that every single part of our lives is in good shape!? God cares about every part of our lives and every part of our bodies, and sometimes maybe we wish he didn't because we make mistakes: sometimes we do things to or with our bodies that we regret instantly. But remember: God understands our weaknesses, too.

This past week I watched a TV show on The Weather Channel about hurricanes. It showed reporters trying to stand up in winds of over 80-90 or more miles per hour. But if you think about it, who is in the best position to appreciate just how strong a hurricane's winds really are: the person who topples over and rolls away as soon as the wind tops out at 50 mph or the one so strong that even the gusts of 130 mph cannot knock him off his feet?

Isn't it true that only the person strong enough not to get knocked over by the wind can really understand just how much strength the wind really has? The Bible tells us that Jesus faced every temptation there is. But he didn't fall. He didn't yield. Usually when we think of that idea, we proceed immediately to talk about Jesus' moral perfection or his strength. What we may forget, though, is that the experience of standing up to a lifetime of the devil's hurricane-force winds of temptation also makes Jesus compassionate. No one knows better than he does how strong those winds are, and so no one is more merciful when dealing with people who, lacking Jesus' divine power, get blown over once in a while.

Jesus understands our weaknesses and our failures and so is always standing by with his grace. I mention this in conclusion this morning not to give anyone permission to go ahead and "just do it" after all since Jesus will forgive you anyway. Rather, I mention this to remind those who already feel guilty that the same God who loves you enough to care about every part of you also loves you enough not to let you go.

But in all situations the call remains: we are to honor God with our bodies because the God who made us, body and soul, loves us body and soul. You are precious. Don't forget that! You are precious! Don't forget that, because God never will forget his love for you. Amen.