The Park Road Pulpit
Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church
Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors
Matters of the Heart
Exodus 20:14, Matthew 5:27-30, Romans 13:8-10
Amy Jacks Dean, July 21, 2002
A Three-Part Disclaimer: First of all let me say I am fully aware of the sensitivity of the subject matter at hand today. This is private stuff. As Russ said last week, “The Ten Commandments done gone to meddlin.’” I am also fully aware that this is a particularly painful topic for many people. I realize that there are people in this room who have been deeply hurt by the pain of adultery - your spouse cheated on you, one of your parents had an affair, a friendship was lost in the aftermath of disclosure, you are disappointed to learn that someone you respect makes this kind of mistake and then lies about it. For some of you, somehow, by the grace of God, your family held it together and you found joy once again within your family - but you never forget the pain – the word “adultery” seems louder than the volume of other words. For others of you, the weight of an adulterous affair was more than your family could bear - and your family, as one solid unit, fell apart. I am aware that this topic today may feel a little too close to home, it may stir up some pain, it may make this day in worship less than joyful. I say to you that I can think of no better place to deal with pain than in this sanctuary. I can think of no better place to be troubled, to cry, to experience the reality of the pain of adultery than in this company of God’s gathered people in worship. For those of you who have lived through the pain of adultery - and have survived (and obviously you have or you would not be here) - I say to you: May you know the grace and peace of God. You are loved. You are a person of great worth. And may the love and care of this family of faith be a sign of the presence of God in your life. I pray that we would be found faithful in how we care for you.
Secondly, let me say that I am fully aware that there is a high probability that someone sitting in this congregation today is currently involved in an adulterous affair. The statistics tell us that you cannot gather this many people in a room and that not be the case. (The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior said that more than 1/3 of the men surveyed and more than ¼ of the women surveyed admitted to having an affair. In a 1997 Newsweek article, 30% of the male Protestant ministers admitted to “inappropriate sexual behavior” with someone other than their spouse. And the 1993 Journal of Pastoral Care interviewed Southern Baptist pastors – 14% said yes they had had an affair and 70% said they had counseled with at least one woman who had had an affair with another minster!) So chances are that someone in this room is currently involved in an affair. You hold a secret that is slowly eating away at you and you live in pain and misery even while continuing in an unfaithful relationship unbeknownst to your spouse. I can think of no better place to offer confession than in this sanctuary. I can think of no better place to let go of unfaithful behavior than in this company of God’s gathered people in worship. I say to you: May you know the grace and peace of God. You are loved. You are a person of great worth. There is a wideness in God’s mercy, and that is Good News. And may the love and care of this family of faith be a sign of the presence of God in your life. I pray that we would be found faithful in how we care for you.
Finally, I am fully aware of the presence of children in our midst this morning. As I have contemplated addressing this subject, I have struggled with how to talk about issues that are delicate, to say the least, and yet how to be appropriate with the subject at hand. I remind us all that our children are inundated with sexually explicit language and images in all the places we live our lives. The church should not, and cannot, avoid talking about issues of sex and sexuality for fear that our children may hear us talk about these things. It is precisely in the church that we must discuss such things. Our children must overhear us in this room talking about such issues as sex and faithfulness. I can think of no better place for our children to hear us talk about the difficult issues facing our culture than in this sanctuary. I can think of no better place to hear about faithful living in keeping our promises than in this company of God’s gathered people in worship. I say to our children and to their parents: May you know the grace and peace of God. You are loved. You are a person of great worth. And may the love and care of this family of faith be a sign of the presence of God in your life. I pray that we would be found faithful in how we care for you.
I do realize that adultery is but one way that we can break a covenant relationship. It is the subject matter at hand today, therefore that is all I will attempt to deal with.
Now, having said all of that, let me talk about this seventh commandment: “You shall not commit adultery.” (Exodus 20:14) John Shelby Spong says that this commandment “plunges us inevitably into a consideration of sexuality, sexual ethics, and sexual practices. It rises out of the JudeoChristian view of the sacredness of human bodies, the sacredness of human relationships, and the sacredness of person-hood.” (From the 10th chapter of his book The Living Commandments) Our modern understanding of adultery and the Hebraic understanding of adultery are worlds apart. In the ancient world, this commandment was situational. Remember that polygamy was practiced, not monogamy. And the patriarchal society in which the people lived mandated that women were mere property. So, to understand this commandment in its original setting, we must understand the double standard that was set: in the Hebrew world, a man committed adultery only if he took another man’s wife. If a married man had a sexual relationship with an unmarried woman, he had not committed adultery. Therefore, for a man, adultery was an offense against another man’s marriage and not against his own, for he had taken the property of another man – namely that man’s wife – and had potentially corrupted the blood-line of that other man. A married woman, on the other hand, committed adultery if she was unfaithful with any man whether he was married or not. Again, she was just another man’s property not to be used by anyone else. So if a married man just avoided married women, he could all the affairs he wanted!
And we think we have progressed so much in our modern world. We understand that women are not property. We are free and independent. And we all understand adultery as defined by Oxford American Dictionary as “the act of voluntary sexual intercourse by a married person with someone other than his or her own spouse.” Unfortunately our progression of understanding has also proven to be a progression of promiscuity, infidelity, and unfaithfulness. Every soap opera, every movie, every office, every neighborhood, every congregation dwells in the midst of adulterous living.
Obviously it must be said that adultery is not good. It is unfaithful. It is promise-breaking. It is taking the wonderful gift of our bodies in a committed relationship and using that gift in an offensive and destructive way. It must not be condoned or taken lightly. Spong speaks of marriage as sacred, and he uses the word fidelity, and he talks about the effect of adultery on our society and the very sacredness of human life. He says that “reasons [for adultery] must be far deeper than boredom and far deeper than the oft-repeated `My wife doesn’t understand me,’ or `My husband no longer pays attention to me.’ There is no normal biological need in any human being that cannot be met inside the sexual exclusiveness of marriage. There is no biological necessity for a variety of sexual partners. Nothing but the human ego is involved in the incessant desire for new thrills and new conquests, which are designed basically to overcome one’s own psychological doubts and fear of sexual dysfunction.”
In a word: don’t be involved in this kind of unfaithful behavior and unfaithful living. Nothing good can come from adultery.
Now, having said all of that, let me say that the first commentary we have on this commandment is found in the teachings of Jesus. He said that adultery was a matter of the heart. His recorded utterances are particularly graphic. In keeping with his patriarchal society, he only addresses the men and their lustful ways. But what he says is that adultery is a matter of the heart.
In order to bring everyone here today into the conversation – married and single – I want us to consider all of the relationships in our lives to which we have made commitments. I admit up front to stretching the text. I acknowledge that when adultery is mentioned in Scripture, including as a prohibition in the seventh commandment, it is technically only speaking of issues of unfaithful sexual practice within the context of marriage. But I think Jesus, as he was prone to do, opened up a new way to consider the expectations of God in our human relationships. And we can therefore take this teaching of Jesus and continue to expand it into our own modern culture. Jesus said of this commandment that adultery was a matter of the heart. And so I ask us to consider all the ways that we have been unfaithful in any of our committed relationships. When we take a moment to ponder this we quickly realize that we are all adulterers of the heart and in need of God’s grace. It is so easy to judge the person caught in adultery and so difficult to see our own unfaithfulness.
I have noticed that we do not live by the law of love – in our marriages, in our friendships, in our working relationships, in our families. We say hurtful things to one another. We say hurtful things about one another. We sabotage each other. We have our priorities out of order. We do not love our neighbor as we should. We do not love our spouse as we should. There are times when we don’t even love ourselves as we should. We break promises, we neglect commitments. We falter and we fumble our way through this life seeking the good life. And it does exist. God so desires for us to have a fullness/an abundance in all of our committed relationships – including our relationship with God. And whenever we are unfaithful in our human relationships we have been unfaithful in our commitment to God.
Respect, honor, and integrity are not casual portions of a covenant relationship. Walter Brueggemann says that the seventh commandment, in its fullest interpretation, “envisions covenantal relations of mutuality that are genuinely life-giving, nurturing, enhancing, and respectful. Such a notion of long-term trust is treated as almost passé in a narcissistic society, preoccupied with individual freedom and satisfaction.” (New Interpreter’s, Vol ?, page 850)
Are your committed relationships genuinely life-giving? Are your committed relationships genuinely nurturing? Are your committed relationships genuinely enhancing? Are your committed relationships genuinely respectful? Probably not. We are most likely to hurt those we care about the most. Sometimes we do irreparable harm.
Finally, in keeping with the intent of the text, I must say specifically that there are marriages in this room that need desperate work. You said holy and sacred vows to one another and you are not living up to your promises. J. Ellsworth Kalas says that “marriage is lived out in the crucible of ordinary, sometimes hectic days; it has to be fulfilled in the midst of budget-balancing, alarm clocks, conflicting schedules, and human weariness.” (The Ten Commandments from the Back Side, page 78) And in our search for the good life we sometimes confuse our longings for something magical that seems almost out of our reach. And that is the place where adultery begins. I think we should not be afraid of the physical affair nearly as much as we should be terrified of the emotional one. When your longing for something outside of your marriage usurps your energy and emotion, you have already committed adultery. Her name can be money. His name might be success. It might the job, the drinking buddies, the mall, the golf course.
Unfaithfulness comes in all shapes and sizes - in all relationships everywhere. Perhaps our simple prayer should be: May we be found faithful. May it be so.