My first year in seminary, I found myself teaching sex education to a bunch of junior highs in a Congregational Church outside of Boston.
There I was naming all the anatomical parts and passing around diaphragms and IUDS and multi-colored condoms. The worst part of it, however, was that the curriculum was spiritless. It was all facts and terminology and biology. And it was totally lacking in values or scriptural content or moral grounding. And so, three years later, when I once again taught sex education to junior highs at the First Presbyterian Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania, I wrote my own curriculum.
I did include a birth control show and tell. But more importantly, central to each class was a passage of scripture β including the two texts we have heard this evening. My hope was that the young people squirming in those chairs in front of me would sense the sacred quality of sexuality β the sacred goodness and joy and delight and pleasure that God has implanted in our bodies.
I wanted them to leave knowing that their sexuality was a precious gift β a gift to be lived out responsibly and joyfully to the glory of God. Phyllis Trible has written β pardon the pun β the seminal modern commentary on the Song of Solomon. It is an ode to erotic love that describes what could have been, and can be again. She reminds us of the suspicion β even hostility β that the church has given to this love poetry. Trible does a deft comparison between the Garden of Eden and this re-created Garden of Eros described in the Wisdom literature.
In the Garden of Eden we find sexuality entangled with guilt and judgment and shameful nudity. In the Song of Solomon we find love woven with play and imagination and delight β a nudity that is both exalted and desired.
