Celebrations, love and sex

1 John 3:13-16

         This weekend there will be a massive Pride Parade in New York City. It will be filled with celebrations for rights won, celebrations of newlyweds, there will be celebrations of simply who we are, there will be dancing in the streets and singing and suggestive movements and actions of all sorts. If anyone knows how to throw a party and embrace life, it's the gay community. That may be a stereotype  but amazingly, it's pretty on target. Let's face it, we have lots to celebrate and we do know how to love. We are perhaps too free at that but then in some ways we represent a freedom to enjoy the sexuality that God graced us with. Too many religions vilify sex, shroud it in guilt, park it behind closed, lock doors in the dark. Better you should abstain from sex altogether they say. Sadly, that's exactly what some religions say we are  'called to'. I think one of our finest points is our ability to love.  This may be because being kicked to the curb by so many means we have fewer rules to obey or be hindered by.

           The fact that so many have strict rules and inhibitions with regard to sex and their own sexuality makes us targets. Some are jealous, masked in religious fervor. Others simply get mad because they themselves cannot come to terms with their own sexuality. 

          When this passage says the world hates you and that we have passed from death to life because we love one another, I cannot help but think of the duality of the statement that applies equally to my sexuality as well as my spirituality.  As much as sex is a gift from God, not all love is sex and not all sex is love.  The Bible abounds in examples of sex that is immoral and totally devoid of any respect or love. Case in point, Lot who in one passage offers his daughters for the townsmen to rape in place of Lot's house guests. In a later passage we are subjected to the story of the same daughters who get their father (Lot) drunk so that they will not go childless. What kind of crazy crap is that? The Bible is certainly not the go to book on healthy sexuality and many religions in their misguided attempts to achieve some kind of ethereal purity deny this God given aspect of our being.

           Sexuality, sex and spirituality are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there are tightly bound together. It is our lifelong mission to integrate (discover, discern) who we are into God's design for us with the tools given to us by him. Love of self, self respect and knowing you are loved are our first steps. Sharing are love is a natural, yes really natural, extension of that.

          

Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another