Jesus begins this section of his sermon the way he begins many of the sections by quoting Scripture and affirming its importance and authority in our lives. He quotes Exodus 20:14 one of the ten commandments but then goes on to expound what he considers the passage to actually point us toward. And in that seemingly simple move, we’ve seen a lot go wrong in the history of the church about women and men, about sex, about temptation, etc. There’s a viral video from 5 years ago in which a man is filming himself while he follows a recipe to make fried chicken. The first thing he reads is that he is supposed to wash the chicken and proceeds to wash all of the pieces with a large amount of dishwashing soap, letting them soak for good measure. He’s brought up short when a woman watching the video says, “Lord, let me pray . . . who told you to wash the chicken with dish soap?” As we seek to take Jesus seriously, let’s be sure to figure out what are we being asked not to do, listen to our sisters, and not eat soapy chicken. So what is Jesus telling men not to do?
There is a sense that “leering” is a good translation for “looks . . . lustfully.” But to be honest, there isn’t a Greek word in the New Testament that exactly corresponds to the English word “lust.” The word in Greek ἐπιθυμέω appears in the New Testament in a variety of positive and negative ways: Matthew 13:7; Luke 22;15; Acts 20:33; Luke 15:16. We perhaps get a little closer to Jesus’ meaning by seeing the word translated in the Greek version of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint. There it is used to translate the word: “covet” which implies to possess what is not yours. It implies objectification, theft, and violence and not merely sexual desire. Jesus is not saying that everyone who has a sexual impulse or thought is an adulterer. This is no puritanical rebuke of every thought of sex. He was stating, however, very strongly that there is no difference between the act of adultery and the willingness to commit it. If you cultivate a covetous desire of power over women, Jesus is saying, it will bear poisonous fruit.
And friends, while Jesus is speaking about adultery specifically, it is not difficult to expand this discussion into broader cultures of male sexual exploitation of women, pornography, and the objectification of women by men.
But something else happens when we listen to Jesus well and place him in context. We begin to move toward a Biblical feminist position which challenges the sinfulness of male dominance that blames women for sexual temptation and abuse.
Cut off your own hand not hers.
The history of male patriarchy and misogyny places the dangers of sexual desire explicitly on women. But that is NOT what Jesus accepts or counsels. The traditional view of expecting women to wear head coverings and dress modestly, in order to curtail male desire is not what Jesus promotes. Rather, he places the responsibility and policing of lustful thoughts squarely on men and men’s bodies and NOT women’s. You are to “cut off your (own) hand” and “gouge out your own eye.” So Jesus does not side with the all-too-common chauvinistic and misogynistic approach to adultery which existed in the ancient world that excused men and blamed women. In the ancient world, adultery was excusable for the husband but not the wife. Aulus Gellius, a second-century Roman writer states: “If you should take your wife in adultery, you may with impunity put her to death without a trial; but if you should commit adultery or indecency, she must not presume to lay a finger on your, nor does the law allow it.” Friends, less you think we’re so different. Think about this. Think about how many words we have to label and blame women for sexually inappropriate behavior. Think them – don’t say them. Now, how many do we have for men? The answer is none. You see, we still want to cut off their hands - even if only with words.
By the end of the second century, this Roman understanding influenced Christianity itself. The Testament of Reuben, a Christan text, will seek to diagnose male lusts as a female creation in which they “contrive in their hearts against men, then by decking themselves out they lead men’s minds astray, by a look they implant their poison, and finally in the act itself they take them captive.” Jesus’ teaching, however, prevents a blame-her-looks or but-she-enticed-me approach. The problem for Jesus is male power which seeks to claim women’s bodies as objects. You don’t get to perform surgery on others
But this can be explored a bit more even with seemingly well-intentioned, male notions of controlling lusts which hurt women. Is Jesus promoting the Billy Graham rule?
The Billy Graham Rule refers to a rule that Billy Graham made famous when he decided he did not want to invite suspicion into his ministry or his fidelity to his wife, and so he refused to ever be alone with a woman who was not his wife. The rule is a common ethic that many well-intentioned male pastors and church leaders put into practice as a means of accountability in their relationships. In more recent years, it has seen a resurgence even among Christian politicians.
Now, on the surface this sounds right. We want to be above suspicion, and everyone should be wary of temptation! But is this an instance of washing chicken with dish soap or cutting off woman’s hands? I think it is. Here’s why:
· The rule puts a cap on women’s (and men's) development in their ministries or careers.
If men and women cannot meet together one-on-one, women miss out on mentoring opportunities to grow in their work or ministry. And in the church, even within egalitarian denominations, representation of women in leadership is still in the minority, leaving men as the only reasonable option for many women to receive mentorship. Jesus’ own ministry and the New Testament reveal that women and men are capable and designed to do kingdom work together.
· It makes opposite sex friendships almost impossible and extremely suspect
· It unnecessarily sexualizes and demonizes women.
It implies that women are untrustworthy seductresses looking for any opportunity to sleep with men or for any opportunity to make false allegations against men in an attempt to ruin their marriages or ministries. In fact, when men say, “we need the Billy Graham rule to make sure no sex happens,” they’re actually implicitly assuming that women want to have sex with them.
Okay – so we’ve seen ways of handling male temptation that don’t work. What is there for men to do?
Struggle with the gravity and freedom of Jesus’ remarks.
On the one hand, the figurative element of amputation is serious and simply claiming that it isn’t literal doesn’t take the sting away. And friends, the gravity is more than many of us realize for it’s not just men who face "Gehenna" (often translated as "hell" but referring to an actual location - a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem) in such lustfulness but women too, all over the world, who find themselves in Gehenna” currently. We must realize that pornography, lewd and misogynistic jokes, unequal visions of power, create a hell for many women and men in the present. We must invest the topic with the significant concern that male desire, when mixed with power that objectifies women, creates an enslaving reality of sex trafficking that kills people souls.
And yet, we must also recognize that Jesus’ choice of figurative language stressing the absolute seriousness of sexual objectification offers a certain freedom in response. He does not articulate a step-by-step plan or process for dealing with it.
I would like to make one suggestion, however, to my brothers in the room that Jesus’ words seem to suggest.
Embrace
powerlessness. [The same point is made in the beginning of the 12-step program for Alcoholics Anonymous with Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable]
It’s interesting to ask “Why amputate the “right hand” and gouge the “right eye”? In the Bible, the right hand and right eye refer to power and value – dominance.
1 Samuel 11:2: “But Nahash the Ammonite replied, ‘I will make a treaty with you only on the condition that I gouge out the right eye of every one of you and so bring disgrace on all Israel.’” In Zechariah 11:17: “Woe to the worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock! May the sword strike his arm and his right eye! May his arm be completely withered, his right eye totally blinded.” So the right hand and right eye are emblematic for power and dominance and their removal therefore, disempowerment and weakness. What might it mean to address Jesus’ words in terms of male disempowerment and weakness?
1. We need to challenge any structure which makes women “less than” men and objectifies them. We must all become Jesus feminist and like Jesus learn to divest ourselves of power.
2. We need to recognize that weak responses like confession, prayer, non-judging love are the way of Jesus. We must courageously and creatively rely upon one another and Jesus.
We want to deal with this not out of some prudish vision of sexuality but from a deeply Biblical one of justice, equality, and love as evinced by the original design of creation which reveals women and men as equals with the same job to do (Genesis 1: 26-28).
So where does that leave us?
It is estimated that one in three
girls and one six boys will be sexually assaulted by the age of eighteen.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, a rape or attempted rape occurs
every 5 minutes in the United States. Currently, the church is being blessed by a new generation of millenials who are calling us more to justice and love on this issue. I'd like to end this sermon by a worship song that aims to name and transform the amputating-Gehenna-bound sin of sexual abuse. You can listen by clicking HERE.
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