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Sermon: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 (See also 1 Samuel 3:1-10; John 1:43-51) Today marks our church's return to the book of 1 Corinthians. You may remember that during the last Epiphany season, we studied 1 Corinthians every Sunday. That's because our assigned lectionary readings actually cover almost all of 1 Corinthians during Epiphany, but the readings are divided up over all three years of the lectionary cycle. So this year and (God willing) next year, we will be studying the epistle lessons throughout the Epiphany season, which will all be taken from 1 Corinthians. As a refresher, the New Testament books 1 and 2 Corinthians were written by the Apostle Paul to Christians living in the city of Corinth. Paul had planted a church there during his second missionary journey. Corinth was a port city and a major center of trade in the Roman Empire. Port cities have a tendency to get trashed kind of like hotel rooms. Sailors cruise into town, cause a ruckus while at port, then leave the place behind as somebody else's problem. It's a net gain for the city's economy, but definitely a net loss for the culture. Drunkenness, violence, and prostitution are the norm in cities like Corinth. In addition to all of that, Corinth also hosted a major temple to the goddess Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love and beauty, later identified in the Roman pantheon as Venus. As a goddess of love and beauty, worship of Aphrodite frequently incorporated cult prostitution. That's exactly what it sounds like: for a donation to the temple, patrons could elicit the services of a temple prostitute, all in the name of religious worship. The city of Corinth was a very worldly place, and thus the temptations it held for Christians there were very worldly in nature. It wasn't like Jerusalem, where the morally conservative religion of Judaism set the tone, nor was it like Athens, where wisdom and moderation were held in high esteem. Corinth was more like modern- day Las Vegas, attracting people looking to abandon their moral compass and drown their worries in fleshly passions. I tell you all of that to set the scene for Paul's letters to the Corinthians, which were written to straighten out some of the unique problems that had infected the church in Corinth. Last year we spent a lot of time looking at how Paul dealt with politics and power plays in the church. People were allying themselves with certain pastors, including Paul himself, in order to gain political leverage over each other. "If I follow the best pastor, I'll have some degree of authority over those who follow lesser pastors." Paul wrote to them that vying for power in the church is ridiculous and counterproductive. We are all working to advance the kingdom of God and proclaim Christ—it doesn't matter who your favorite pastor is or what you can gain for yourself from that. 1 That was all in chapters 1 through 4, which was all that our church lectionary covers. We took a look at chapter 5, though—beyond the assigned readings—to end the series last year. 1 Corinthians 5 is a very uncomfortable text to read in church, which is why it isn't in the lectionary. It deals with the specific situation of a Corinthian Christian who shares his father's wife. This was such a blatant sin that even the pagan Corinthians balked at it. "Sharing a woman with your own father? That's disgusting!" Yet the Corinthian Christians boasted about it! Why? Because they saw God's forgiveness as a license to sin. "See how awful this guy is? Well, he gets to live like this because God forgives him!" It was like a selling point for them. Paul set them straight in no uncertain terms: "You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord." Clearly they had misunderstood forgiveness. You are not forgiven so that you can sin more; you are forgiven so that you can live for Christ with a clean slate, a clean conscience. If you continue to embrace sin, then you are clearly unrepentant of it. And if you are unrepentant, then you are unforgiven. "Do not associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler," Paul says. Such people who live in blatant unrepentance do not belong in the church, should not bear the name of brother. Note, though, that these condemning behaviors are ongoing and public. If you fall into sexual immorality (or any sin) and repent, you will be forgiven. But when you choose to live a life of sexual immorality, you clearly are not repentant, nor, therefore, are you forgiven. If such a man refuses to remove himself from the church, Paul says, the church must take it upon herself to remove him. And that brings us to today's reading, where Paul broadens the discussion to cover all manner of sexual sins. The Corinthian church really had their work cut out for them living amid such a depraved culture. The sexual appetite is such a strong, base, primal force that it can be nearly impossible to resist its urges. In fact, later on in Corinthians Paul will essentially prescribe marriage to those who can't resist the urges of the flesh. It'd be best to stay single, Paul says, but if you burn with passion, you're better off getting married to have a healthy outlet for all that. With such strong temptations to revel in fleshly pleasures, I would argue that the city of Corinth is very much like our contemporary America. True, we haven't reached the point of openly condoning incest yet, but hey, neither had Corinth. They thought it was gross, too. But our American culture has become so downright obsessed with sex that it's practically inescapable. Even our commercials are replete with sexual situations, never mind our movies, music, and TV shows. I even see news web sites using images of scantily-clad women in order to attract users' attention to certain articles. How do "the hottest celebrity beach bodies" have anything to do with congressional budget discussions? 2 I recently heard the word "hypersexual" for the first time, and it was being applied to this nation. The prevalence of pornography in American homes is unreal, especially among young people; the gay and trans rights movements fight to pervert even the most fundamental aspects of human sexuality; we've gone from forbidding sex between unmarried partners to encouraging and even expecting it. Our country has rebuilt the temple of Aphrodite, only at the center of our cult prostitution is the vain worship of self. At least the Corinthian pagans thought they were serving some greater good. And we Christians, plunked down in the middle of it all, are supposed to fight all of this. We face temptations daily: temptations to lust after sensual images, to despise the sacred institution of marriage, to excuse or look the other way when our children and grandchildren choose to live in sin. We're called to live counterculturally, to follow the sixth commandment and live a sexually pure and decent life, but that's hard! Why not just give in now and be forgiven later? Can we be forgiven of any sin or not? To which question Paul answers: "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything. Jesus has set you free from sin, freed you to do good things with your new, redeemed life. To return to sin is to submit once again to slavery. That's why we characterize the Christian life as one of daily Baptismal renewal, of crucifying the old Adam and raising up the New Man every morning. Repentance and forgiveness are like breathing for a Christian: life-giving and ongoing. You never stop repenting, and God never stops forgiving. If you do stop repenting, it's like you've stopped breathing, and eventually your faith will perish. To repent is to cast aside all sin, even the sins that everyone else is doing, even the ones you might enjoy a little too much. Those sins can sometimes be the most destructive of all. Verse 18: "Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body." God doesn't give his commandments just to boss us around, you know; they are his prescription for us to lead a healthy life, a good life. Most of them are given for the sake of our neighbor: don't steal, don't murder. But the call to sexual purity is as much for your benefit as anyone else's: to break this commandment is to sin against your own body. And even moreso, you sin against the Body of Christ. "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?" The overarching theme of 1 Corinthians is that we Christians are called to unity. The church is a garden that bears good fruit, a building that withstands life's storms, a temple wherein God himself chooses to dwell. We are the Body of Christ, each of us a different member.

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