Janis Joplin was once asked what it was like being a rock star. She replied: “It’s pretty hard sometimes. You go on stage, make love to fifteen thousand people, then you go home and sleep alone.”
Jesus was once asked, as a test: If a woman marries seven times and all her husbands die before she dies, whose wife will she be after the resurrection? He answered that, after the resurrection, we will no longer marry or be given in marriage.
These two answers Janis Joplin’s and Jesus’, are not unconnected. Each, in its own way, says something about the all embracing intent of our sexuality. What Janis Joplin is saying is that, in our sexuality and our creativity, we are ultimately trying to make love to everyone. What Jesus is saying is not that we will be celibate in heaven, but rather that, in heaven, everyone will make love to everyone else and, already now, we hunger for that within every cell of our being. Sexually our hungers are very wide. We are built to ultimately embrace the universe and everything in it.
To understand our sexuality and to live with its unfulfilled tensions, it can be most helpful simply to understand this. In loving, the ultimate wound is not to be able to marry everyone. The greatest human hunger, felt in every cell in our being, is that we cannot be completely united with everyone and everything....
It is important to understand this, but it is also important not to misunderstand it. Because our sexuality is ultimately geared to embrace everyone does not mean that we can be promiscuous and, already here in this life, try to live that out. In fact, paradoxically, it means the opposite. Only God can sleep with everyone, and thus, only in god can we sleep with everyone. In this life, even though our sexuality has geared up for universal embrace, we only have two options that are life-giving: Either we embrace the many through the one (by sleeping with one person within a monogamous marriage) or we embrace the one through the many (be sleeping with no one, in celibacy). Both of these are ways that will eventually open our sexuality up so as to embrace everyone. If we go the route of promiscuity, eventually, we will embrace no one.
Look here for what I take from this.
Interesting. That says it much better than what you have tried to tell me. It helps me understand your thinking a little better. I love you!
ReplyDeleteMy Buddy Mike Morrell (zoecarnate) turned me on (no pun intended) to your blog. Very thoughtful stuff.
ReplyDeleteJesus in Matt 22 is fascinating on several levels. One being that the story of the 7 brothers comes from the Book of Tobit -- a writing that the Sadducees (as a Palestinian Jewish party) would not have considered to be sacred or inspired.
Meanwhile, are you familiar with Fatboy Slim's song. Heaven. Teh lyrics repeats the phrase, "Fatboy Slim is f****** in Heaven." It's multilayered to me. One is that it's the response of the "pious" who can;t believe that Fatboy Slim actually made it in (so to speak). Another is, obviously, an allusion to the incredible intimacy of God with humanity -- collectively and individually.
Then there's Sarah MacLaughlin;s song, "Burn in Heaven." Will we burn in heaven like we do down here?
Thanks for the thoughtful post.
Blessings,
Kevin