The Eye of the Beholder

Scripture: Exodus 20:14; Matthew 5:27-29; 6:22-23

Sermon: The Eye of the Beholder

Topics: Sex, Lust, Chastity

Preached: October 12, 2014 Woodlawn CRC

Rev. Mike Abma

Our Old Testament passage is the 7^th commandment from Exodus 20:14

14 You shall not commit adultery.

Our New Testament passages come from the Sermon on the Mount.

Both passages deal with our eyes.

Matthew 5: 27-29

27 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.”²⁸But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Matthew 6:22-23

22 ‘The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; ²³but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

All week I have been thinking up reasons I should not be preaching this sermon.

But then I kept seeing reasons why I should be preaching this sermon.

1. Have you noticed how much abuse there is in the news:

Celebrity athletes abusing their spouses;

The shocking numbers of date-rates on campus;

And that whole sordid mess of those hackers who got access to nude photos of celebrities.

What these hackers did is inexcusable,

But did you happen to hear Jennifer Lawrence’s recent explanation for why those photos existed in the first place is?

She said that “either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he’s going to look at you.”

Isn’t that a rather sad comment?

At least, I felt rather sad when I heard it.

2. A second reason why preaching on this topic may be timely is that,

according to popular opinion, Christians are against sex.

Even the latest CHIMES here on campus has an article entitled, “Christianity has developed a damaging view of sex.”

The popular conclusion is that the church should stop saying anything about this topic.

However, we can’t really stop saying things about this topic.

We believe God created us as male and female.

We believe sex is a beautiful and holy act to be handled with care.

We also believe that the ethics surrounding our sexuality as not simply a

personal thing.

In the church,

we confess that my body, and your body, and all our bodies

belong to One Body — the Body of Christ.

We have a keen interest in the health of that Body.

3. A third reason why addressing this topic remains important is because,

Although the Church has made missteps and errors along the way,

It is still true that the Christian faith has done more to promote the equality of men and women than any other movement in the history of humankind.

It is time for the Church to speak up again to a culture which

in the words of one New York Times journalist,

“has reduced relationships to a collision of narcissists

educated only self-love.”

OLD RULES, NEW RULES —

So let’s take a look at these two passages from the Sermon on the Mount.

To understand these passages

I think it is helpful to understand some of the sexual rules of that time period.

Rule 1 — women had to get married. They had no choice in the matter.

Rule 2 — women had to be faithful in marriage

For men faithfulness was optional; for women, it was obligatory.

Rule 3 — women showed they were married by wearing a veil.

Women without veils were assumed to be available

or assumed to be prostitutes.

Rule 4 — if men got excited, it was the woman’s fault.

The Christian Faith changed all those rules.

In the church,

men and women could choose not to get married.

To be single was a blessed life-style choice. Read Paul’s letters, especially 1 Corinthians 7.

In the church,

both wives and husbands were expected to be faithful to one another.

In the church

widows, married women, and single women all got to wear veils –

even though some of the veiled single women were slaves,

and some were prostitutes, the church allowed them all to be veiled so that they would all be treated with respect.^[1]

In the church, if men got excited, it was not necessarily the woman’s fault.

Men had to take responsibility for how they viewed women.

That was the revolutionary thing about what Jesus says in this passage.

Men were used to saying to women, “My lust is your fault.”

But Jesus says “No.

It is your own eyes that are causing you to sin.

You know that all people are created in the image of God.

All people deserve to be viewed with honor and respect,

Regardless of whether they are wearing a veil or not,

Regardless of the length of their skirts,

Regardless of the number of tatoos they have.

Regardless of how much skin is showing.

Everyone must be viewed as an image bearer of God.

FOR MARRIED FOLK TOO

I think we make the assumption that this commandment and this section of the Sermon on the Mount are mainly directed at teenage boys

and perhaps married men who keep looking at younger women

who are not their wives.

We assume that “lust” is only something outside of marriage.

We assume that within marriage, anything goes.

There are even some popular preachers who have said as much recently.

But is this really true?

Way back in 1980, Pope John Paul II said that it was possible for a man to have an adulterous lust for his wife.

After he said that, the journalists had a field-day.

There goes the church again

the anti-sex

anti-body

anti-pleasure church.

But Richard Mouw — who was a philosophy prof here at Calvin at the time —

defended what the Pope said.

Mouw wrote that the Pope was simply saying

what many people advocating for gender equality

were saying —

namely that not all sexual desire is healthy.

Too often an “anything goes” attitude in marriage

is at the expense of the woman.

What Jesus is saying in this passage is that there is a difference between love and lust, and that lust is never okay.

Lust takes,

Love gives;

Lust objectifies

Love appreciates

Lust possesses

Love cherishes

Lust conquers

Love comforts

Lust holds another simply as Hot

Love holds another as Holy.

CHASTITY – VIEWING WITH LIGHT IN OUR EYES

Because love is a word with broad meaning,

the church uses another word

for this “respectful love” between the genders.

That word is “chastity.”

If lust is the vice, chastity is the virtue.

Chastity is an old word, but a good word.

It does not mean “no sex, please, we’re Christian Reformed.”

No, it means treating our own bodies,

and the bodies of others

as temples of the Holy Spirit.

Chastity changes the way we see others.

Chastity is what our second passage in Matthew 6 is about.

Our second passage reads:

“The eye is the lamp of the body.

So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.”

In the ancient world,

they believed that eyes produced light,

and that is what allowed them to see.

I know that this goes against what you learned in biology.

You learned that eyes gather light, they do not produce it.

But Jesus calls eyes “lamps” not to describe anatomy,

but to describe morality.

Jesus wants us to know that our attitudes

and motives shape what we see.

I happened to run into an article in the Psychological Science Journal for September that says exactly this. The article is entitled “Love is in the Gaze: An Eye-Tracking Study of Love and Lust.” The whole point of the article is to show that what we see does not cause lust, but rather how we see it causes lust.

Different people were asked to look at the same person.

The person they saw was the same.

But how they saw this person differed:

the gaze of love took one path through the brain;

the gaze of lust took a completely different path through the brain.

To have eyes that are like lamps,

is to have eyes filled with the light of Christ,

Eyes that see others with the respect they deserve,

appreciating their beauty,

honoring their holiness,

and always desiring the best for them.

JESUS – CHASTITY IN ACTION

When thinking about chastity,

I think the best place to start is with Jesus himself.

We need to remember the humanness of Jesus,

God among us in a body,

With biceps and shoulders,

With lungs and lips

With hands and hormones

With drives and desires.

Jesus, a human person

yet remarkably comfortable in his own skin,

remarkably comfortable with the responsibility and freedom

to make choices:

The freedom to choose not to be married — an odd thing for a Jewish man

back then;

The freedom to make friends with men and women,

with those married and with those unmarried,

even though it caused tongues to wag.

The freedom to hang out with prostitutes and remain

remarkably non-judgmental of them —

again, something scandalous to many;

The freedom to allow a woman to wipe his feet

with her hair — a provocative act, which Jesus accepted as a gift.

Jesus, whose eyes shone brightly

Upon the most broken and the most beautiful,

Upon the most damaged and the most demonized,

Telling us all,

“You are holy, your body is holy

You are cherished

You are precious in the eyes of the Lord.”

CONCLUSION

I started by saying that I didn’t want to preach on this topic,

and that I assumed that you didn’t want to listen?

Why is that?

I think that the real reason I felt reluctant is because I know

we all feel especially vulnerable in this area,

fragile even.

We have all ached to be loved, and to love.

We have all hungered for intimacy and closeness.

We have all desired to be cherished and treasured,

To hold and to be held.

All of us, at one time or another,

have twisted these good desires out of shape.

We have twisted them into

something selfish,

something hurtful

something demeaning

something demanding.

We all have been less than pure and holy,

and some of us still struggle with this every day.

People of God,

What I want to say to you this morning

is that you can start over.

You can start again.

It is a new day.

Jesus invites you to welcome in the Holy Spirit

So that you glow with the brightness of his love:

A love that is patient and kind

A love that is never self-seeking but

always rejoices in the well-being of the other;

a love that appreciates the beauty of bodies,

and that recognizes the loneliness of souls.

A love that acknowledges that before any body belongs to us,

that body belongs to God.

Amen

Prayer: Lord God, thank you for our bodies;

For bones and muscles;

For blood and nerves;

For eyes, and ears, and hands and lips.

Thank you for the gift of our sexuality,

And for the deep desire for intimacy.

Give us the wisdom, the strength, the grace

To accept these gifts

With the tenderness and gentleness

Of your Spirit.

Amen

1. See Sarah Rudin, “An Apostolic Oinker? Paul and Women” Paul Among the People the Apostle Re-interpreted and re-Imagined in his own Time. Pantheon, 2010. ↑