*** DEBUG START ***
*** DEBUG END ***

This is my body, given for you

16 April 2008

The gift of a body is central to the Christian faith. But what does the body of Jesus tell us about sex, asks Timothy Radcliffe

An act of love: a full-sized digital image of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci watched by viewers in Tokyo

I REFLECT on Christianity and sexuality with some hesitation. First of all, as a celibate priest, I cannot claim to have practical experience on which to base my reflections. When priests talk about sex, then we easily become ridiculous.

Our society is obsessed by sex, even in England, despite comments of a previous French prime minister about the virility of English men. But our culture lacks a profound reflection upon what it means for us to be sexual beings.

Christianity ought to offer a deep vision of sexuality, but the media usually present the Church’s interest in sexuality in terms of control. The Church is seen as deciding what is permitted and what is forbidden. It is true that every human society, throughout history, has had rules about sexual behaviour, but we have need of more than rules if we are to understand our sexuality.

When I was in Rome, I tried to explain to my brethren why cricket is the most beautiful game in the world. Telling them the rules of cricket would not be enough to show the point of playing cricket. One does not play cricket in order to obey the rules, even if the rules are necessary.

The Church does have a reflection on sexuality which is based on the natural law. This is illuminating, but often it has given us a very limited appreciation of sexuality, which focuses mainly on the begetting of children.

Sexual intercourse is often seen narrowly in terms of reproduction. So I would like to start elsewhere, with the event that is at the heart of Christianity, the Last Supper. On that night, Jesus gathered the disciples around him, and he took bread, blessed it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, given for you.”

At the heart of our religion is the gift of a body.

What can the Last Supper teach us about how to live our sexuality well, and with beauty? How can our sexuality really be eucharistic?

WE START with the words “This is my body.” What does it mean to be bodily? For much of the history of the West, there has been a sharp dichotomy between the body and the spirit, the soul or the mind. We have tended to despise the body as a rather unworthy receptacle for what really matters, the non-physical part of us.

We have been seduced by the idea that it is our minds that really matter, especially since the 17th century. Cogito ergo sum. And this means that communication and human community are usually seen in terms of the mind.

If you think like that, and most people do, then bodies are not important. They are even an obstacle to communication. If only we could be pure minds, then we would be in immediate communion with each other, without the possibility of misunderstanding.

Jesus’s words at the Last Supper take us back to an older tradition. The human body is the basis of all communication. It is because we are bodily that we can be in touch with each other. We can see, hear, smell, and touch each other. It is as if our bodies were tools of communication, like a telephone.

The human body is of itself deeply communicative. Through our bodies we are present to each other. When human beings became capable of language we did not leave our bodily communication behind. Being able to talk gave our bodily communication a deeper meaning, a new depth.

Let us start with food. We eat to celebrate friendship, to sustain families, to make contact with business partners, to celebrate birthdays. We feast and fast. We eat to remember the past and to hope for the future.

And so it was that when Jesus wished to establish the new covenant between God and humanity, he gathered the disciples for a meal. He blessed and broke the bread and shared it. Eating did not just become the ingestion of nutrition, but expressed the common life of divinity and humanity. So it is with sexual intercourse.

Because we humans are linguistic beings, sexual intercourse is given an even deeper meaning. It becomes a fundamental expression of how we are in communion with one another. It is not that we speak before or after having sex, though that matters. It is that sexual behaviour should be communicative. It should be expressive of who are the people involved. It is a way of speaking deeply.

The body is made to be communicative, and the face is the apex of the body’s communication. The face shows what it means to be bodily, and the mouth, speaking and kissing, expresses the culmination of communication.

When we think of Christianity and sexuality, then people usually ask what is permitted or forbidden. What sexual activity is permitted between people who are not married? Can people of the same sex have a sexual relation? This is to start at the wrong place.

The first question in all ethics is: “What does my behaviour say?” To quote Herbert McCabe OP, “Ethics is just the study of human behaviour in so far as it is a piece of communication, in so far as it says something or fails to say something” (Law, Love and Language, Continuum, 2004, p. 92).

Ethics is learning to behave to each other so that we relate ever more deeply. An action is not bad because it is forbidden but because it undermines human communion, though if it obviously does do that, then it may be good to forbid it.

So it is natural that when Jesus wishes to express the utter communion of God and humanity, then he does so by giving his body. He is not giving us a lump of matter. He is making a sign that speaks and creates communion.

JESUS SAYS that this body is given for you. It is gift. This can be hard for our society to understand. What does it mean for Jesus to give us his body?

This may be incomprehensible, because for the past 400 years we have tended to think of bodies as possessions. Human dignity is founded on the ownership of possession.

Usually a man was seen as owning not only his own body, but also the body of his wife. He could do what he liked with her, though she did not possess his body in the same way. Adultery by the woman was seen as a form of robbery, since in sleeping with another man she would be unlawfully disposing of her husband’s property. It was usually more acceptable for a man to do what he wished with his own body, since he owned it.

When Jeremy Bentham, a famous 19th-century English social thinker, died, he left his body to University College, London. It is stuffed, and you can see it in the main hall. When there is a meeting of the governing body of the college, then the body is brought in.

But Jesus was doing something far more profound by his act. When he gave us his body, he was expressing the deepest meaning of what it is to be a body. To be a body is to receive all that is from one’s parents and their parents before them. It is ultimately to receive one’s being from God. Our existence is a gift in every moment. God gives me being now.

Sexual relations should be expressive of the gift of oneself to another, and the acceptance of the gift that is the being of the other person.

I learn how to give myself to another without reserve, with trust and confidence. I learn how to receive the gift that is the other person with reverence and gratitude. A married couple could sleep together, and yet not give themselves to each other, or fail to receive the gift of the other person’s body.

So these words of the Last Supper take us to the heart of a sexual ethic. Sexuality is about communion; it speaks. And what it should express is mutual generosity, the giving and the receiving of gifts.

The Last Supper was also the moment at which Jesus faced and embraced the contradiction of communion. On that night he shared himself with Judas who had sold him, with Peter who would shortly deny him, and with the other disciples who would mostly run away. On that night Jesus faced all that subverts and destroys human communion. He faced and transcended it.

This means that a Christian sexual ethic should be more than just a nice ideal. If it is based on the Last Supper, it should help us to face failure in our relationships and transcend it.

A Christian sexual ethic should help us to live with hope, in the face of our own failures and denials and betrayals of each other.

HUMAN SEXUALITY is, we have seen, about the building of communion. It speaks. It creates communion. But at the Last Supper, we see the collapse of language. Communication breaks down. Judas betrays Jesus. He performs the profoundly untruthful act of treating Jesus as if he were not a human being, but a piece of merchandise, to be sold for 30 pieces of silver.

Peter says that he will lay down his life for Jesus, but when the moment comes he lies. Three times he denies that he knows Jesus. In the face of all this violence and untruth, Jesus becomes silent. He has nothing to say.

Bad sexual behaviour usually involves lies. When David sleeps with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, his sin is not just that he has performed a forbidden sexual act: he is caught up in lies and violence.

A Christian sexual ethic teaches us to speak truthfully with our bodies, and to overcome the lies that we may sometimes tell. When you have sexual intercourse with someone, you say with your body, “I give myself to you, with-out reserve, now and for ever, and I receive all you are as a gift.”

But if we get up early the next morning and leave a note by the bed saying, “Thanks for the pleasurable sex, but I never wish to see you again,” we have, in a sense, lied with our bodies. It is as if we were to say, “I love you eternally” and then walk away for ever. We need to touch each other truthfully, to mean what we say when we kiss. We need to live out the deep meaning of what we do with each other’s bodies.

If a Christian sexual ethic is to be hopeful, it must teach us how to say the words that heal the wounds when we lie. We need to find the words that break the silence and restore communion. It is not enough just to go to confession and get absolution. We need to give and receive absolution from each other. To live out our sexuality truthfully means also that we find ways to overcome lies and heal the hurts.

THE LAST SUPPER was also a moment in which communion broke down because of violence and domination. Jesus was the victim of force. He was bought by the rich and the powerful. He was taken away by the force of soldiers, and nailed to a tree. But Jesus replied to all this violence with pure vulnerability. He placed himself in the hands of the disciples, knowing what they would do. He refused to protect himself. Even though they would deny him, he would not deny them.

Bad sexual behaviour is usually linked with domination and violence. We can see this again with David and Bathsheba. It is the strong and powerful king who takes the wife of the soldier and then organises his death.

All over the world today, one can see the violence that often accompanies sex. War is always associated with the rape of women, but women are daily forced to submit to the domination of men, who force them to have sex.

Once again we can see how the question of what is permitted or forbidden does not get to the heart of a sexual ethic. As John Paul II said, a man may rape even his own wife. Think of the millions of children who are forced into sex with foreign tourists in Thailand and the Philippines. Whenever dominance is introduced into a sexual relationship, the heart of our sexuality is denied.

The Last Supper teaches us that the heart of a Christian sexual ethic is the renunciation of violence. We seek mutuality and equality. When someone desires the body of another person, that desire should not be rapacious, seeking to take possession of the body, as if it were a piece of meat to be devoured.

We must learn to desire in a way that delights in the other, that treasures his or her vulnerability, that takes pleasure in his or her very existence. We must delight in another as God delights in us, tenderly and without dominion. In so far as there is a taking possession, it is to be mutual. As St Paul said, “For the wife does not rule over her own body but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does (1 Corinthians 7.4).

Desire, too finds, its depth in mutuality. We desire to be desired, and treasure the other’s desire for us. We take pleasure in another taking pleasure in ourselves. We take the immense risk of letting ourselves be seen by the other, in all our vulnerability, of placing ourselves in their hands. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a married man, has written about this beautifully:

All this means, crucially, that in sexual relation I am no longer in charge of what I am. Any genuine experience of desire leaves me in something like this position: I cannot of myself satisfy my wants without distorting or trivialising them. But here we have a particularly intense case of the helplessness of the ego alone. For my body to be the cause of joy, the end of homecoming, for me, it must be there for someone else, be perceived, accepted, nurtured; and that means being given over to the creation of joy in that other, because only as directed to the enjoyment, the happiness, of the other does it become unreservedly lovable. To desire my joy is to desire the joy of the one I desire: my search for enjoyment through the bodily presence of another is a longing to be enjoyed in my body. . . We are pleased because we are pleasing  (The Body’s Grace, www.igreens.org.uk/bodys_grace.)

So the Last Supper invites us to share the immense vulnerability of Jesus, as he places himself in the hands of the disciples. It is the vulnerability that he bears for ever. When he rises from the dead, he shows the disciples his wounds in his hands and his side. He is for ever the wounded and risen Christ.

Do we dare to take the risk of being wounded by the one whom we love? Belief in the resurrection means that we trust that the wounds we receive are not unto death and so we dare to take the risk of getting hurt.

If a good sexual relationship overcomes the distortions of power, reaching for equality and mutuality, then it is a preaching of the gospel to the society in which we live. It challenges the unjust power structures of every society.

A good sexual ethic offers a challenge that is implicitly political. If we are formed in our homes for reciprocity; we will not be at home in political structures that oppress.

THE LAST SUPPER was a moment of supreme hurt to a relationship: betrayal. Yet Jesus transforms betrayal into a gift. This is a supremely creative act.

Every eucharist is a celebration of creative fidelity. So at the heart of a Christian sexual ethic is fidelity. We give ourselves, our bodies, our lives, our hopes and fears, to another unreservedly, now and for ever. The typical form that this has taken throughout Christian history has been through the marriage vows, when a husband and a wife pledge mutual fidelity until death. This has become much more difficult in our society, in which people live much longer, and are more mobile.

Marriage is a fragile institution. In fact, in our society no bonds are as secure as they used to be. We live in a society of short-term contracts, whether at work or at home. And this creates immense problems for couples whose marriages have broken down and who find themselves in “irregular situations”.

At the heart of sexual ethics must be the cherishing of fidelity. Even in friendship, fidelity is essential.

Fidelity is much deeper than simply not getting divorced. It is offering a context in which people take the time to belong to another, to see the other and be seen. It takes time to dare enter into intimacy and vulnerability. It takes time to learn how to be free and transparent in the presence of another. The longer that I am with another, the more he or she will discover my weakness, my fears and failings. Fidelity is risky.

Once again, Rowan Williams says it beautifully:

I can only fully discover the body’s grace in taking time, the time needed for a mutual recognition that my partner and I are not simply passive instruments to each other. Such things are learned in the fabric of a whole relation of converse and co-operation; yet of course the more time taken, the longer a kind of risk endures. There is more to expose, and a sustaining of the will to let oneself be formed by the perceptions of another. Properly understood, sexual faithfulness is not an avoidance of risk, but the creation of a context in which grace can abound because there is a commitment not to run away from the perception of another.

(The Body’s Grace, Ch. 5)

One needs courage to remain with another when he or she begins to see one’s weakness. The eucharist invites us to endure in fidelity, when we are exposed in all our fragility.

AT THE Last Supper, Jesus and the disciples face death. Death is the ultimate enemy of human communion, the final breakdown of communication. Death silences the words that we speak to each other and even to God. But in the face of death, Jesus offers us his body.

There is a deep link between sex and death. In the Old Testament, the begetting of children was the principal hope of immortality. One goes down to the silence of the grave, but one’s children would speak one’s name. One would be immortal in the memory of one’s offspring. So sexuality was our defiance of death.

Sex and death are still linked today. For most of Christian history, the bearing of children was a time of extreme danger for women. The giving of life went with the risk of death. And now in our days, there is the link with AIDS, especially for women in poor countries, where they have no control over when and with whom they have sex. In Africa, for example, sex can so often be fatal.

So what can a Christian sexuality offer us in the face of death? It is not just the delegated immortality of children, though that does indeed reveal the profound creativity of human sexuality in the face of mortality. Also we give our bodies to each other as an act of love which is stronger than death. The Song of Songs says, “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death” (8.6).

In Christ, love is stronger than death. The love of the Father for the Son triumphs over death. If our sex really is, as we say, “an act of love”, then death cannot defeat it. Sexual relations should express that love of the Father for the Son which defeats our old enemy.

OUR SOCIETY is obsessed with sex, yet lacks a deep exploration of its meaning. Christianity ought to offer a vision of the beauty and significance of human sexuality. Sexuality must be placed again in the complex context of human communication, with defeats and victories.

Our sexual behaviour should form people in mutuality and reciprocity. It should heal wounds and break silence. It should be faithful, giving time for people to enter more deeply into this risky vulnerability. It should be an act of love, an embodiment of that love which conquers death.

This is an edited extract from the chapter by Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP in Christians and Sexuality in the Time of AIDS (Continuum; £10.99; 978-0-8264-9911-0).

Browse Church and Charity jobs on the Church Times jobsite

Welcome to the Church Times

 

To explore the Church Times website fully, please sign in or subscribe.

Non-subscribers can read four articles for free each month. (You will need to register.)