The opening lines of the excellent film Crash are...
"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."
This feeling of disconnection is a sentiment that Rob Bell echos in his book, Sex God, about spirituality & sexuality. Sex can be a way of bumping into people, into being naked, connected, vulnerable with another human being for a few fleeting moments.
But for Rob this sense of connection is more than just a reason for sex it is his definition of sexuality itself, as he writes:
"For many, sexuality is simply what happens between two people involving physical pleasure. But that's only a small percentage of what sexuality is. Our sexuality is all of the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other and with God."
If we take this broader definition of sexuality than maybe we can see that in Jesus is someone who was far more sexual than we give him credit for (unless you're a fan of the Divinci code in which case Jesus was very sexual ;).
When it comes to sexuality and Jesus you will know doubt have your own view - my view for may years of Jesus was a very asexual figure. A very nice man but not really a very sexual one. In some ways my view of Jesus was a bit like a divine action man - someone like a GI Joe doll, all virile dynamic action on the outside but drop his trousers and its a plastic blank where any form of sexual identity should be.
One of the shocking thoughts from last year was to re-evaluate my view of this limited humanity of Jesus - the Jesus with no penis and no sexuality - celibate asexual Jesus. But if Jesus is fully human and indeed shows us how we can become full human than that just can't be the case - Jesus must have had a fully human sexuality to match his fully human mind, soul and body (complete with working penis).
If I now throw Rob's definition of sexuality into the mix then Jesus becomes one of the most sexual people of all time - someone who through himself into the business of reconnection, who found that reconnection was worth both living and dying for.
For Jesus being about this work of the Father was better than sex, or food, or anything else - it gave him purpose, energy and passion. Jesus reaching out to touch people, heal people, teach people - reconnecting people with themselves, each other & God.
Jesus, for me redefines, what it means to be a stud - to give life for others, to thers. If Jesus was come as he said so we could have life to its full, that surely must include our sexuality as part of what he meant.
After all our sexuality is one of the things that makes us human, that makes us different from both the animals (urge/lust/casual sexuality) and the angels (spiritual, asexual) - as Rob highlights in one of the chapters in his book and worth a post in its own right.
I find my sexuality challenged and inspired by this deeper version presented by Jesus. It encourages honesty within me - to share who i am, to enjoy the way i have been made and reconnect my sexuality and spirituality in a way that i have never quite been able to reconcile before.
How does this view of Jesus as the expression of the fullness of human sexuality, the stud of God, impact you?
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