Rogue Reverend

Some Days Are Like That

I’ve been preaching at least twice a month now for two years, and pretty regularly before that, at least twice quarterly for the last 8 years (I can’t believe that I’ve been ordained for nearly 8 years!). In all of that time, I’ve preached sermons that didn’t quite come together, or came together at the very last minute, a few times (maybe 3?).

I have never had a Sunday like yesterday at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond. Not only did the sermon not come together at the very last, or not only did it just “not quite” come together, it was just really bad. At least in my mind.

I’m not tough on myself, and this isn’t self-flagelation. It just never came together for me.

So, I’m not posting it on here, but I am going to post the texts that I read and a couple of points from it tomorrow. You can glean what you will.

Sex in Church

My face has never been so red in church as it was this Sunday. Preaching on sex certainly has it’s challenges, and my biggest one is this beet-red face of mine. A friend watching the sermon said, “I noticed that you kept your face down, looking like you were reading more, during this sermon.”

I mean, really… How am I supposed to look church members in the eye when I’m talking about bad sex?

The sermon went really well, though. A few people commented that it was the most they’ve ever heard in church about sex. Which scares me a bit. I mean, it’s the biggest driver of our culture, don’t you think? Shouldn’t we talk about it in church?

The majority of the post-preaching discussion centered on what we teach our children. While very few of my congregants  expect that their children will remain abstinent until marriage, they still have the expectation that their children will wait until they are really old enough to decide to have healthy, consensual sex. Of course, the law tells us that the age for this is 18. Many should wait longer.

We’d all like to live in a utopia where sex is not problematic, where shame isn’t common, where maturity is understood, where the consequences of sex weren’t so life-changing or even, death-bringing. But we don’t live in that age.

We must look to our children, challenge them to wait, but give them the tools to do it right. No, I’m not talking about how to receive or give the most pleasure, but how to tell if you are emotionally ready, how to say no constructively, how to make sure that your partner is worth your time.

And how to tell someone if it goes horribly wrong.

And really, a red face was worth the trouble. Let’s see if it’s as red when I preach this Sunday on “Good Sex.”