Holy Sex
Good Morning Friends,
There are some Bible story characters who only have one or two verses devoted to them, yet those few words speak volumes. Some stories are intertwined with other books and chapters and plot development but seem to never be taught in churches. Abishag, a Shunammite is one such character. She served as bed companion to David in the hope that her fresh beauty would induce some warmth in the old man. Perhaps it was part of tradition that if one was decrepit one could not be King. Perhaps David did not want to add more potential heirs to the throne.
Maybe David did not want to have more than the traditional maximum of 18 wives. We may never know his reason for not knowing her. What we do know is that when David dies, his son Adonijah wants to marry Abishag, but Solomon sees this move as a grab for the throne and has Adonijah killed. We never hear anything else about poor Abishag, though some scholars think she was the one written about in the Song of Songs. Pretty high praise considering Solomon had so many wives. Regardless it is pretty much taboo to preach about the Song of Songs. Still it is in the Bible as witness to Holy Sex.
Scripture: When King David was old and well advanced in years, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him. So his servants said to him, “Let us look for a young virgin to attend the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm.” Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful girl and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful; she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no intimate relations with her.
My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance.”
Song of Songs 2:10-13 (NRSV)
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27 (NIV)
An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Matthew 1:1 (NRSV)
One of the Pharisees asked him over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him.”
Luke 7:36-39 (Message)
Message: Science and religion both tell us a lot about sex. Unfortunately a false dualism has been created claiming that we must choose one or the other and not seek answers from both as to the profound question of who we are. That is kind of unfortunate for in doing so we deny that Jesus was fully man in a way. To say we are all human beingsis fine but ultimately this denies too much for those seeking the fullness as to who we really are as both spiritual and physical creatures. The basic norms for God’s will for us is clearly presented in scripture and teaches that sex is divinely created, ordained and commanded and in a certain sense holy. Capturing the fullness of one’s own personality requires an abiding consciousness of one’s own sexuality. So too with Jesus. Historical and scriptural records of Jesus’ sexuality do not provide a lot of information. But of this we can be sure… the goodness of the material world and the human body is affirmed in the Incarnation and once and for all the view of the body as evil has been laid to rest.
Pray we realize that Christianity affirms the human body as a means of celebrating the ultimate revelation of Jesus’ redeeming love. Pray we experience no discontinuity between mind and matter, spirit and body. Pray we not reject our essential nature but in the mystery of Christ rejoice in the Song of Songs and the Wedding of Christ with the church… as heirs of the Kingdom…. as it was always intended. Pray we experience Christ and the Church as a model for marriage.
Blessings,
John Lawson
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