Text:  1 Corinthians 6:12-20 (1 Sam 3:1-10, John 1:43-51)                               W 2^nd Sunday in Epiphany

Private Property

            In the name of him who calls us to be his own, to live under him in his kingdom, and to serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, dear friends in Christ:  If I were to ask you, “Which of today’s three Scripture readings just doesn’t seem to fit in with the others?” I’m pretty sure that most of you would say it’s the Epistle reading from 1 Corinthians.  The other two match very nicely and they highlight a major Epiphany theme:  the idea of being called by the Lord out of the dark world of ignorance and sin and into his glorious light and life.

            In the Old Testament, it’s the boy Samuel.  You may remember that his mother, Hannah, dedicated him to the Lord’s service even from before birth.  When he was only three or four years old, she brought him to the Tabernacle and turned him over to be raised by the priests.  It was there, some years later, that the Lord spoke to him directly (as we heard in the lesson) and called him to be his special spokesman. Thus Samuel was called by God and became his chosen vessel to declare his Word to a people and nation that had, for the most part, turned away from the Lord.  We see the same idea again in the Gospel reading, where we’ve got an account of Jesus gathering some of the first of his twelve disciples, namely Philip and Nathanael.  We note that they don’t come to Jesus; but rather Jesus chooses them – despite Nathanael’s sarcastic insult about Nazareth. Jesus calls them to follow and learn from him, promising them that they will be so spiritually illumined under his tutelage that they will see the very heavens opened and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.  As it turns out, they did follow.  And we know that after the Lord’s resurrection, when their training was complete, they too went forth as his spokesmen, proclaiming God’s saving Word among the Gentiles, and eventually suffering martyrdom before being received into glory with their Lord.

Now, as we ponder this great Epiphany theme of being called by the Lord into his Light, it’s not too hard to see how it relates to us, for we too have been chosen by God.  We’ve been called out of the darkness by him, called away from sin and death, and made his children and partakers of his heavenly mysteries.  This all happened to us in the waters of Holy Baptism by which Christ washed us and gave us rebirth into his holy family.  And the Scriptures make it plain that we are called according to his purpose. That means that now that we’re in the family, he has a job for us, things for us to do.  And though we are not all called to be his spokesmen in the same sense as the prophets and apostles, still, as we do the things he that he has assigned to us in our respective vocations, whatever they happen to be, and as we do them in faith in the Lord Jesus who saved us, we do indeed share the message of his love through our words and actions – and by them, we are enabled to help bring other people into his glorious light.

So again, it all seems to fit together so nicely ...  all of it, that is, except for this Epistle reading that sort of stands out like a sore thumb for its apparent lack of congruity.  At least, that’s what I thought at first.  But upon further reflection, I saw that it actually does fit in quite nicely with the others.  The two passages we’ve discussed so far are about being called by God to accomplish his purposes.  This text from Corinthians highlights the truth that being called by God is not just some spiritual abstraction or simply a matter of what we believe in our hearts; but that it plays itself out in all the mundane details of day to day life. Though as God’s children we are not of the world, we are very much in it; and while we are here we are called to be God’s chosen vessels in all aspects of our lives – even the most personal and private aspects – and that includes what we do with our bodies with respect to sex.

            And at this point I can almost hear some of you thinking, “Oh here we go again: another lecture about repressed Christian sexuality.  Doesn’t he know this is the 21^st century and that times have changed? Doesn’t he know that the sexual revolution freed us from the restrictive bonds of the past?”  Well, I’ll admit that from our perspective it’s true that things have changed from what they were, say, twenty-five or fifty years ago; but in the grand scheme of things, they really haven’t changed that much. Views about sex and sexuality tend to be cyclic over time, bouncing from one extreme to the other.  And right now it’s safe to say that our culture is in a downward part of the cycle.  But it may surprise you to know that in many ways the so-called “new sexuality” we hear so much about today still has a way to go before it develops (or rather “degenerates”) into what was pretty much commonly accepted in the Roman world at the time of St. Paul and the Apostles.  And even then, it was worse in some places than in others.  

I can remember that some years ago, the actor Ricardo Montalban did a television commercial for a certain luxury car.  Speaking of its interior he mentioned how it had been upholstered in “rich Corinthian leather”.  And I suppose people were supposed to think, “Wow.  Corinthian leather.  That must be good, huh?”  Sometime later, when doing an interview, someone asked him, “So what is Corinthian leather, anyway?  What makes it so special?”  The actor replied that there’s no such thing.  He made it up on the spot and they kept it in the ad because it sounded so good when he said it with his smooth Latin accent:  “R-r-rich, Cor-r-rinthian leathehr.”  And maybe it does sound impressive in English; but to the ancients, the people who lived in Paul’s day, it wouldn’t have sounded nearly so good.  The city of Corinth was well known throughout the Mediterranean world as a veritable cesspool of sexual excess and vice.  It represented the worse of the worst.  To say that something was “Corinthian” meant that it was pornographic or that it involved the vilest sort of unnatural passions.

            There were a couple of reasons for this.  First, one of the main attractions of the city of Corinth was the Temple of Aphrodite, who was the Greek goddess of erotic love.  The temple was said to have employed as many as a thousand prostitutes. And if you were a man living in Corinth (or just visiting there), worshipping Aphrodite at her temple – or anywhere else in the city, for that matter – basically meant having sex with one of these priestess/prostitutes, or, for those so inclined, with one of the men or children the temple also employed for such purposes.  Now, add to that the fact that Corinth was a bustling seaport and a major hub on the trade routes that connected Rome with pretty much the entire eastern end of their empire.  This means that the city was almost always filled with sailors and traders who were passing through – which means lots of at least temporarily unattached and relatively anonymous men who were looking for a good time wherever and however they could find it.  So, in addition to the business in Aphrodite’s temple, there were an extraordinarily large number of private businesses and freelancers who also plied the sex trade.  You might think of Corinth as the ancients’ version of “Sin City” – except that in Vegas they say, “Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”; but they couldn’t say that about Corinth, because a lot of what happened there traveled away with those who visited in the form of various venereal diseases. 

            And mind you, all of this was condoned and considered perfectly natural. If you had grown up in Corinth, you wouldn’t have thought it a problem at all.  Like anyone else, you’d be more likely to proud of the history and traditions of the place you were born.  So then along comes St. Paul, sometime around the middle of the first century, and he plants a Christian church right in the middle of all this. And with the Christian faith came a radically different view of morality – it was countercultural, just as it is today. But the new Christian converts in Corinth renounced their old ways.  They gave up the indulgent practices they were accustomed to and committed themselves to sexual purity:  to God pleasing, monogamous, heterosexual relationships.  That is, at least most of them did.  Others found it a bit more difficult to make the transition.  And instead of struggling with temptation and trying to overcome it, they tried to justify their behavior.  They said they could be Christians and continue to engage in all the vices for which Corinth was so famous.

            And to support their arguments, they tried to draw an analogy with the food they ate.  Let me explain:  Greek cities like Corinth were usually full of pagan temples where animals were sacrificed to the various gods and goddesses by people who wanted a favor, or who wanted to leave their gods a thank offering to ensure their continued good fortune.  But idols of stone don’t usually have much of an appetite for such things.  I mean, what’s a statue of Zeus going to do with a goat?  Nothing.  So the meat from these sacrifices was taken to the market and sold.  The proceeds went to support the temples and their priests. Now, if you were going grocery shopping, you could be sure that the vast majority of meat for sale at the market had first been sacrificed to an idol.  So in the new Christian community the question came up, “What about this meat? Since it had been used in pagan worship and offered to false gods, was it fit for a Christian person to eat?  By eating it, aren’t we participating in the unholy worship of the pagans?”  In reply to this question, Paul had taught them, “Don’t sweat it.  So what if it was offered to idols?  We know there’s nobody home there anyway.  Idols are just carved rocks.  And an animal sacrificed to one of them is just meat.  Eat it and enjoy it; and don’t worry about where it came from or what it was used for.”

            Now, some of the men in the Corinthian church tried to extend Paul’s argument.  They said, “If it’s okay to eat food offered to idols, how could it be wrong to dabble in a few of the other pagan practices?  If I can eat this “unholy” meat when I’m hungry, why can’t I satisfy some of my other ‘hungers’?  It’s just another kind of appetite; what’s the difference?”

This is the line of thought that Paul is responding to in the first part of the Epistle reading. And his reply is that the difference is huge.  And to help us understand what he says, I’ve got a training aid that may help make this clear.  This silver pitcher is called a flagon.  It’s part of the communion ware that we’ve used at the church for years to hold the sacramental wine that, when consecrated by the Words of Institution, conveys to us the very blood of our Lord Jesus.  Now it happens that this particular flagon leaks and is no longer serviceable.  The silver smiths I’ve consulted tell me that it can’t be effectively repaired.  But, for the moment, that’s beside the point. The point I wish to make is that many years ago this vessel was dedicated to the Lord’s service.  It was, with the rest of the communion ware, set aside for the Lord’s use in our worship; and so it was made “holy”. That’s really what the word holy means:  set aside exclusively for the Lord’s use and purposes.  So, properly speaking, we could say that it belongs to God. It’s his private property.  And so it’s fitting that we use it only for the holy purpose for which it was set aside to begin with.  For example, though it could serve as such, it would not have been right to use it to serve coffee after worship.  Nor would it have been right for me to take it home during the week and use it to water the houseplants or to catch used motor oil drained from my car.  Even if I had steamed cleaned and sterilized it afterward before using it again for communion, it just wouldn’t have been right.  And I think we can all see that.  I mean, even now that it’s no longer able to hold the consecrated wine, it still wouldn’t be right to use it to hammer nails into the wall or to hold the night-crawlers I gather to go fishing.  Just by virtue of having been made the Lord’s and used for his holy purposes, it wouldn’t be right to use it now for such less-than-noble things.

            Now, if that’s true for this – what’s really nothing more than a piece of semi-precious metal that will eventually be melted down and recast into who-knows-what; how much more is it true for your body?  Your body that is so much more than this ever was?  Your body that isn’t just an article used for a few moments intermittedly in worship and that once in a while merely holds the blood of our Lord; but is instead a body purchased and won by that blood and that is at all times a living temple of God’s Holy Spirit?  Your body that is one day going to be raised from the dust of its decay to live forever in glory with the Lord?

            If we recognize this flagon as a holy vessel, how much more should you see your own body that way?  It belongs to God.  It’s his private property.  More than that, it is a part of the body of Christ.  It really is one with him. Accordingly, how much more should you recognize the need to keep your body holy and use it only for the purposes God has in mind for it?  How much more should you recognize that whatever it is you do with this body, you are doing with Christ?

But we don’t normally think of it that way, do we?  Today we want to say, “It’s my body.  I’ll do with it whatever pleases me.”  Or, “Who are you to judge?  What goes on in private between consenting adults is none of your business.”  Well, we should expect such things to be said by the people who remain lost in the darkness of the culture that surrounds us; but they cannot be said by the children of God.  Paul is emphatic about it.  In the passage that immediately precedes this text he writes:

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexuals nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were set apart and made holy, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

            It’s in view of what God has done to save us through Christ Jesus that Paul pleads with the church at Corinth (and through them with all God’s holy children) to flee from sexual immorality in all its forms. Our sexuality is a precious gift that finds its fulfillment in the context for which God created it:  his institution of marriage between one man and one woman in which the two become one flesh according to God’s design.  All other expressions of sexuality run contrary to God’s plan for his children, be it so-called casual sex while dating, living together without the benefit of marriage, adultery – that is, sex with the spouse of another, homosexuality, or the use of pornography, to name the most common abuses that are so rampant in our world.          It’s out of such darkness that God has called us in Christ Jesus.

            And the good news this morning is that though we may have failed in the past to keep ourselves pure, he continues to call us heavenward into the light through his Son.  That’s the great truth of the Epiphany.  Let us therefore resolve to do what Paul says.  Let’s flee from sexual immorality in all of its forms however and whenever we are tempted.  Let’s flee to the cross of our Lord Jesus who gave his body for us to make our bodies his own.  Let’s receive again for ourselves the sacrifice he made for us that we may be cleansed of sin and made his holy vessels to serve only his holy purposes. And in that way let us be, in time and eternity, God’s private property in Christ Jesus.  To him be our praise and glory forever.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!