Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Rippling creek at MSF

Saint Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians address a series of problems that developed in that enthusiastic community, problems that this former Pharisee never imagined might appear in his sanctified church.

One of them is a man who is “living with” his father’s wife, apparently in a sexual relationship. If some of the Corinthian Christians ignored the situation, he may have been hiding amid the sectarian strife that divided the church. Perhaps his friends looked the other way because “At least he’s on our side against them!”

But Paul was appalled! This Jewish apostle was trained in the holiness code from the Book of Leviticus, which insists:

Keep, then, my statutes and decrees, for the man (sic) who carries them out will find life through them. I am the Lord.

The eighteenth chapter of Leviticus has an extensive list of banned sexual relations, including:

You shall not have intercourse with your father's wife, for that would be a disgrace to your father.

Perhaps the Corinthian church had not yet studied the Jewish roots of Christianity. There may have been a strain of “free love” in their thinking which supposed,”Anything goes so long as you believe in Jesus.” Saint Paul’s expulsion of the miscreant would set them to thinking. They would have to study the Jewish tradition out of which Christianity was born.

Twenty centuries later, in a very different culture, we find ourselves pondering the nature of sexual relations and wondering how our Christian traditions should address these complex issues. It is easy to take a stand, defining what is acceptable and what is not. It is not so easy to address the real situations of people who are in unconventional relations and claim a place at our table.

Only rarely have gay or lesbian persons approached me for advice. Most suppose they know what I will say, and they’re probably right. Those few who approached me discussed their troubled relations, not the ones that were untroubled; and my advice was, “Listen to your heart. Pray for an obedient spirit. Follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit.”

I might suppose where that Spirit will lead them – back into the straight and narrow ways of our tradition -- but I cannot claim infallibility in such matters of the heart. If I knew the future at one time, I have lost the gift.

Nor can I judge others for their sexual impulses. Having unconventional impulses is not a sin. I read recently of one fellow who found a woman’s feet fascinating, so he married her and they lived happily ever after. If grace builds on nature it often begins its work in strange places.

My only real sticking point is the definition of marriage, which surely belongs to a man and woman. Homosexual marriage is an oxymoron, like bright darkness, noisy silence and square circles. If some people claim that human nature has been fundamentally altered in the past half-century, I hope they’ll forgive my skepticism.

But the underlying question that Saint Paul addresses is, “How shall we live as a holy people?” No one can expect to be holy while relegating his sexuality to a separate compartment. Holy integrity makes demands upon every facet of human life.

For further study on this important issue, I refer you to the American Bishops’ excellent pastoral letter on Marriage: http://www.usccb.org/laity/loveandlife/