PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Matthew 5:27-30           You Shall Not Commit Adultery
Sermon March 7, 2010:  People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

            Giovanni Francesco Caroto was a sixteenth century Italian painter, working mainly in Verona.  This was the period of the Renaissance, and art was recapturing the classical form of the nude.  One day as Caroto was working on a fresco in a Veronese church, the priest objected that he was making the figures too lascivious.  Caroto answered, “Father, if painted figures move you so, how are you to be trusted with living flesh and blood?”[1]  How, indeed, are we all?

            Today is the Third Sunday in Lent.  My Lenten sermons this year are about the Ten Commandments, and today we are up to number seven:  “You shall not commit adultery.”  In the Gospel Lesson Jesus radicalizes these words about adultery by teaching that even a lustful look amounts to rape.[2]   Now already I’ve used two words that we don’t hear very much anymore—“lascivious” and “adultery.”  Adultery is not exactly the same thing as “fornication”—there’s another one of those words.  Adultery is about breaking your marriage vows.  A person can commit “fornication” whether they’re married or not.  And “lascivious” means “pornographic.”  Jesus addresses “adultery,” breaking marriage vows. 

            I take my theme today from the Statement of Intention in the marriage ceremony:  Forsaking all others, will you be faithful to her/him alone as long as you both shall live? 

            Let’s begin with Jesus’ statement:

Jesus lived in a male-dominated culture, so he only talked about a man’s deed.  Women in most ancient and many modern cultures were second class citizens at best, more often property.  Jesus clearly treated women as equals with men, fellow human beings:  there were both men and women who followed him on the road from Galilee to Jerusalem; and the first one to carry the message of his resurrection, the first “apostle,” was Mary Magdalene.  So when Jesus comes to the Seventh Commandment, he may use the language of his culture, but he uses it to give women respect in the relationship of marriage. 

            Every case of “lust,” in a man or a women, de-personalizes the other person, turns them into a thing rather than seeing them as valued souls.  That’s what’s going on in peep shows, in erotic films, in prostitution, and even in affairs—depersonalization.  “Lust” is about the lust-er, not the lust-ee.  But who are these people after whom others lust?  Studies have shown that most of the women engaged in the businesses related to lust are poor, powerless victims.  There is more slavery in the world today than there ever has been before, and most of it is sexual.  The women don’t get the money—the pimps, managers, transporters and owners get the money.  The women are depersonalized.  One of the worst examples is Thailand:  many poor farm families survive by selling a daughter to a Bangkok pimp. Depersonalization.

            Lust disappears when you meet the person.  You are changed by the fact that here is a real human being with a childhood, with fears and hopes, needs and a spiritual life.  Unless you see the person you can depersonalize them—him or her—and make selfish choices. 

            So Jesus emphasized the need to pay attention with an over-statement:

Through the exaggeration his point is unmistakable:  he talking about how urgent it is for his follower to live a life that is spiritually disciplined.[3]  The “pure in heart” are those whose passions are appropriately managed. 

Forsaking all others, will you be faithful to her/him alone as long as you both shall live? 

            A question occurs to me:  What gets “adulterated” in adultery?  If you go far back into ancient society, just about the most important thing in marriage and family life was the question, “Who gets the farm?”  A farmer, or a king for that matter, wanted to make certain that the person who inherited his stuff was actually his own child—a very patriarchic issue, but that’s what they were concerned about.  In order to guarantee that his son was really his son, they made his wife a kind of “property.”  Adultery in that world called the legitimacy of the heir into question; so adultery was about property.  It was this kind of thinking that originally gave rise to the Seventh Commandment:  to guarantee purity of inheritance.  The moral issue came later.  And when the subject got to Jesus, he transformed it spiritually.  First, the woman ceases to be property and becomes a full partner with her husband.  Second, for Jesus, the issue is not inheritance but the content of your soul and your relationship.  So when Jesus talked about “adultery” he was talking about mud in your soul, about something broken, about a tragedy of the human spirit.  Your life is what gets adulterated in adultery.  And this is true for both partners.  So in the wedding ceremony I ask both, Forsaking all others, will you be faithful to her/him alone as long as you both shall live?  Why?  Because marriage has transformative value:  but only if you work at it. 

            So in the marriage ceremony that I perform, after a brief meditation on the meaning of marriage and a prayer, we come to the part I call the “statement of intention.”  Back in merry old England this was called “plighting thy troth”:  a troth was property given by the king to a lord or a lady; and if they didn’t legally plight it to their spouse, when they died it went back to the king.  Now, in America, we state our intention—yes, I willingly enter into marriage with this person.  So I ask the groom:

And I ask the bride the same question.  The answer each gives is, “I will.”  This is a promise they are making to God and to each other:  it’s not just ceremony, it’s a moral commitment.  And then they each say their vows:

            Young people come to marriage with bright dreams, starry eyes; but soon enough in their daily responsibilities they discover that their commitment requires of them maturity as well.  They have made promises to God and each other.  If life is to sustain meaning, they will keep their promises, and their blessings will grow.  Our culture, however, no longer believes that these promises are serious.  America is experiencing a pandemic of eye disease—the wandering eye.  Christian, you have promised God something.  Only by staying with it, working through the difficult times, learning to communicate from the heart—only in this way can your marriage deepen.  And as it deepens you discover that the EROS, the attraction, grows into PHILIA, best friend.  A couple who stay together through it all are winners, Jesus says.

            I’d like to talk about a lot more aspects of marriage and lust.  I’d like to explore with you the New Testament idea of marriage as an equal partnership.  I’d like to probe the spiritual implications of divorce.  I’d like to talk about why our church doesn’t judge people as strictly in these matters as the conservative churches.  I don’t have time for all that.  My point today is the essential question in the ceremony:  Forsaking all others, will you be faithful to her/him alone as long as you both shall live? 

            There’s a story about the French romantic actor Maurice Chevalier chatting with Phil Silvers backstage one night.  Chevalier was seventy-three years old.  A group of pretty, scantily dressed show girls trooped past on the way to the stage, and Chevalier heaved a deep sight and said, “Ah, if only I were twenty years older.”  Phil Silvers didn’t get it, “Don’t you mean twenty years younger?”  Chevalier smiled, “No.  If I were twenty years older, then these girls would not bother me the way they do.”[4]  To that I think we have to say, “Well, maybe!” 

            But even this little story reveals just how confused our society is about what is “lust.”  Lust is changing in your mind a person created in the image of God, into a sex object for your own gratification.  Will you see the person, or turn them into an object of selfish pleasure?  Jesus asks, “What is in your heart?”

            Forsaking all others, will you be faithful to her alone as long as you both shall live?  Such a promise comes from the deepest part of a woman’s soul, or a man’s soul, and after more than forty years of marriage I think I can say, it’s worth it.

AMEN