In September, Sandy and I will be married 23 years.  In our wedding ceremony, we made promises to each other in the presence of God and our closest friends and family.  Among those promises was the pledge that our relationship would be exclusive.  We promised that our romantic and sexual relationship would admit no intruders.

The Church is often criticized as being obsessed with sex.  It’s true that when you hear some representatives of the church talk about sex, they make it sound shameful and dangerous.  It’s also true that these same folks seem to act like the moral questions around sex were the most important ones in the Bible.  I would urge them not to be more prudish than God, who created us as sexual beings and created all the pleasurable incentives that lead to sex.  As to morality, the Bible gives much more attention to the moral imperative to care for the poor and powerless than what people do in bed. 

Nevertheless, sex is important.  We are bodily creatures and we enact our love and attachment to one another through our bodies.  If we are not faithful to our partners sexually, it is hard to believe that our hearts are truly faithful to them either.

The other topic churches get criticized for talking about is money.  Truthfully, some churches harp on their finances all the time, but many churches should probably spend more time talking about it.  One of my failings as a pastor is that I have not said enough about money.  Jesus talked about it frequently.

I think money is a lot like sex, in that it is a revealing symbol of our loves and our loyalties. 

How we use our money, the good we do with it, who benefits from it, and whether we are generous or fearful with our wealth tells us a lot about our values.  As Christians, we have promised all our lives to God.  We have proclaimed that Jesus is Lord (boss, sovereign) of our lives, which obviously includes how we use our wealth.  These considerations precede the question of whether (and how much) to give to your local church. 

Giving is symbolic before it is practical.  Fundamentally, it expresses gratitude to God who is the source of all I have.  It expresses the promise I made to give my life to God.

Secondarily, it is practical; it supports the work of Christ, nearby and around the world.

Neither sex nor money is the most important thing in the world, but they are valuable windows onto the most important things.

Prayer:  Generous God, all that I am and all that I have is a gift from you.  Receive my time and talent and treasure as the symbol of my life pledged to you in love.  Amen.