Please Read Colossians 3:1-11
I try to watch MTV every once in a while because it is the hip cable music channel that is the depository of all things cool and in style. I want to find out what is being thrown at our kids. Sandi and I try to be as open as possible to what is out there, but we want to use the contradictory things to point out how Christianity is not like it is sold in the public arena. MTV and the Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana provided me with a golden opportunity a few years ago.
There used to be a popular music group called Destiny’s Child. Destiny’s Child was not alone in all of this, and I do not mean to pick on them alone, but the Post-Tribune had a story which was entitled “Shake your booty if you love Jesus,” about Destiny’s Child. Destiny’s Child claimed to be a popular music group filled with Christians.
They routinely get up on stage in extremely revealing outfits that show off their upper and lower body parts. Then they do dances and gyrations that cause me to change the channel quickly when the music starts on MTV. Their Christian witness included the once popular hit ‘Bootylicious.’
The song is completely about how a woman really finds a young man ‘bootylicious.’ It is a song entirely about the sexual desires of a young woman. The Post-Tribune article took its headline from this song.
The Post-Tribune article was about how Destiny’s Child and other popular entertainment groups were being taken to task by ministers throughout the country because of their claim to being “Christians” all the while promoting their obsession with the earthly things of this life, such as ‘bootylicious’ boys.
While I was studying and praying for this reflection, I wondered how the words from the reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Church at Colossae fit with the lives of our ‘bootylicious’ Christian sisters.
Hear the words of the Lord through St. Paul again,
Since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
How does that square with ‘bootylicious?’
Now, I am not just going into this moral diatribe because I want to shake my finger at the society of our youth. I am pointing this out because our young people are being sucked into a culture that makes people into things to be used and exploited. The culture of ‘bootylicious’ is a culture that looks at young people as sexual play things without any regard for the person contained within that attractive body.
As Christian communities, we know that sexual intercourse is fullest when the two people who share it give it as an expression of their undying love and commitment. St. Paul tells us that when we engage in sexual intercourse with another person, we unite our souls as well as our bodies. Who here wants themselves, or our children to unite their souls, with another person who wants nothing to do with them when they are done being sexually gratified? No one. You and I are not sexual gratuities.
We, on the other hand, we want to love our neighbor by treating them with dignity. The immorality that is talked about in St. Paul’s letter are all things that cause us to treat people recklessly. Sexual immorality, lust and impurity all reduce people into things that are used for our own capricious pleasure and then thrown away because we have no use for that person after we have used them for our own sexual gratification.
This passage from Colossians is a more detailed explanation of what it means to “love thy neighbor.”
More than just a call to individual holiness, this passage from St. Paul’s letter to Colossae is a calling for us to be an alternative to the misleading and abusive philosophy of society. We, as Christians ought to be a counter-culture to the loud, abusive, abrasive world that purports to be liberating.
What is liberating about being used by another human being for their sexual gratification? What is liberating about not being seen as a special creation of God, created in his image for respect and admiration? What is liberating about knowing that the person with whom you want to share the rest of your life has given their soul to another person? True liberation is found in not having to worry that the person we are going to marry has been used or will use us as something for their own gratification. Liberation is knowing that our relationship with our spouse is a mutual gift, not a mutual misuse.
Today, I have used the example of how Destiny’s Child is just one of many entertainment sources which teach our children that they are sexual playthings to be used by other people and then discarded after the pleasure is gone. I could have used any number of empty things to which we Christians have an alternative that is more full and dignifying.
Should I say something about our materialism over spiritual growth? Should I say something about our fits of anger which destroy our bodies? Should I say something about slander and gossip which destroy others for our own sport? I won’t because I believe it would be too painful for all of us, myself included, to bear.
More than that, I am here to say, that because we were baptized into Christ Jesus, we, as a community, need to gather in our churches with worship of Christ as the first heavenly activity about which we set our minds. From that, we need to find ways to express, as a community, that we believe people are of sacred worth because they are people. We need to be the counter-culture to a society that uses people, divides people based on race and religion, denigrates people based on their looks, and appeals to people to be slothful as if their contribution to society was worthless.
Why don’t we believe in sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive language? We don’t believe in it because we have been changed into new creatures in our baptism. We have put our minds on heavenly things. Those heavenly things come from the fact that God has created all creatures in his image and likeness. We are the one community that knows, because of the knowledge given to us in our Baptism, that people ought to be treated like they are in the image and likeness of God.
Keeping with my theme of musical entertainment, I was very upset at the time when the Christian Pop Music Star Amy Grant “crossed over” to the secular music scene. Her actions sent the message that real achievement was not to be found in singing about God and the Christian life. Subsequently her Christian witness was further destroyed by her divorce from her husband, her adultery with another secular rock star and their almost out of wedlock birth. But, even though her life and the lives of her children from her first marriage are a mess, she was hailed as “making it” as a performer.
What happens when the fame and accolades are gone? What happens when our reputation has been stripped from us? What is left to our human dignity when the world is done using us for its momentary pleasure? Well, if she ever wants to come back to it, for Amy Grant, there is the Gospel life that calls us to treat ourselves and others with dignity and respect through the way we live our lives.
We offer anyone who is tired and heavy laden with the demands of the world, which are often abusive and unforgiving, a yoke of obedience to Christ which gives us peace-filled rest for the soul. We are a counter-culture of lives lived to praise Jesus Christ because, for one reason, it is a life that treats us as full human beings who ought not be used by anyone for any reason. Whether the reason be for a woman to look at us and say ‘bootylicious’ or for the world to use us for their greedy gains and brief entertainment value, we are the counter culture that says people are not to be used, period.
So, my friends, I invite you to rejoice in the peace and strength given to us in our Baptism. As living members of Jesus Christ, we have the strength to live lives of dignity in a society that doesn’t grant anyone dignity. So, I encourage us to continue to become communities that promote a counter culture to that mess. Amen? Amen.
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