No Body Is for Sale

My name is Anthony Parrott. I get to serve as one of the pastors here at the table. They're going to fix my EQ and it's going to be great. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you, worship team, for everything you did today, this morning, so far. Amen. Honestly, I'm shocked that there is more than like three of you here because it's a three-day weekend and it is rainy AF, so thanks for making your way. I am also sure that there is like record numbers on the live stream, so thanks for logging in.

So, we are in a series called Hot Takes. We're in the book of 1 Corinthians, the letter of 1 Corinthians. And the thing that you don't know in your Bibles is that there is this volley back and forth of these letters between Paul and his problem child of Corinth. So, there's a letter, 0 Corinthians, that they send a letter to Paul and they ask a bunch of questions and say a bunch of stuff and then Paul writes back.

And then there's like one and a half Corinthians where Corinth writes back again and then 2 Corinthians, Paul writes back again. We are in this response letter from Paul to Corinth that we call 1 Corinthians, but in some ways it's the letter 2 in this correspondence. Last week, we took a look at chapter 5. This week, we're going to take a look at chapter 6.

Again, I have some off-ramps in case this takes me too long because we've got a lot to cover. But good news, I'm preaching again next week, so we'll try again, okay? Again, I need to give just a bit of a content warning today's passage.

Again, involve sexual harm, talk about sex work. We're also going to take a look at a passage that's been used to harm LGBTQ people. So, please take care of yourself if you need to step out, if you need to put some headphones in and tune me out.

All of that's allowed and acceptable. We're going to be dealing with some heavy topics today. But the big idea for today's sermon is that bodies matter.

Bodies matter. And the scientists in the room are saying, yes, bodies are made out of matter. Good job, Anthony.

You passed third grade science. But I'm saying that they matter. They are important.

And there are streams of Christianity that will tell you that bodies are not important. That all that matters is your spirit or your soul and what happens after you die. We do not subscribe to that.

I do not subscribe to that. I invite you to not subscribe to that philosophy. I believe that bodies do matter.

I believe that scripture teaches that bodies matter. From the very first chapter of the scripture, we have a story about creation and physical matter and bodies being created and called very good. But there are also forms of Christianity that say bodies matter, but it's about bodies can be ruined.

You can ruin your body. Anybody been in a youth group or youth conference experience that talked about the rose? And every time that you, you know, got funky with somebody, a petal of your rose was taken off.

Or the chewing gum. Every time that you got intimate, it was like putting chewed gum back into your mouth. Or maybe you had a purity ring or a pledge ring.

And what these views taught is that bodies matter because they can be ruined. And so you have to protect your body and you have to make sure that your body stays pure. Because if you don't, then you have disappointed the world.

You have disappointed your people. You have disappointed God. But there's a different way to talk about the way that bodies matter.

And that's by saying the bodies matter because God raises our bodies. God lives in our bodies. God has bought our bodies.

So in order to hear chapter 6, right? Which if you have a Bible or a device, I invite you to turn to 1 Corinthians 6. We'll be again going through verse by verse.

We got to understand 1 Corinthians 5, which I preached on last week. But just to review, Paul's hot take is that you need to judge insiders and leave the outsiders to God. It is important for a church or a community of believers or those that call themselves siblings of Christ to judge insiders.

Because if you want a community that protects the freedom and safety of marginalized people, that means there are some things and some people that you have to say not here you won't. So case number one that Paul deals with is that he's heard a report from Chloe's people that a man is sleeping with his stepmother. Last week we talked about that we can presumably read this as a form of assault or abuse in some way.

He's sleeping with his stepmother in a coercive way. And the church has not dealt with this, probably because there's money involved. So Paul says you should have grieved and not been proud.

No one's power, no one's money buys an exemption from accountability. Because if we believe, Paul says, that the kingdom is here among us now, if we inherit the kingdom, that means that we have to be as family and be willing to say, no, not here, you won't.

So a man of standing gets consequences, has to be removed from the community. Paul does not condemn the woman who's been abused, but the man. And that was one man.

Now, Paul's going to widen the lens in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. But he's still talking about people who use other people. People who use other people.

So quick little preview of what 1 Corinthians 6 holds. Verses 1 through 8, you've got siblings in court. You've got Christians taking other Christians before Roman judges.

Section 2, we have the list of those who do not inherit the kingdom of God. Section 3, we have the body and why the body is good and important. And in the conclusion in part 4, verses 19 and 20, this idea that God has bought us, bought our bodies with a price.

And the frame over all of this, both 5 and 6 and eventually 7 next week, when Paul talks about sex and marriage, is that we are part of the kingdom. We are inheriting the kingdom. Therefore, how do we act?

And all of these sections all deal with the same kind of person. So verse 1, you have chapter 5, verse 1, you have a man of standing that the church has shielded. In chapter 6, verses 1 through 8, you have siblings who could afford a court.

We'll talk about that money aspect in a second. And sue their fellow Christians to take them to court. The list in 9 and 10 is this list of those who are unjust.

Literally those who are without justice, without righteousness. And then verses 15 through 18 is about men who could afford to buy bodies, prostitutes. People with money and standing who use people who don't have money and standing.

That's what chapters 5 and 6 are about.

So case 2, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 1 through 8. We're going to only talk about this a little bit because we have a lot to cover, but I do think it's important. So chapter 6, verse 1, when any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous or the unjust instead of taking it before the saints?

And the saints meaning, and Paul said this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, y'all, to the church in Corinthian, the saints who are called to be saints, you're taking your civil cases to court instead of amongst you all. He says in verse 2, do you not know that the saints will judge the world?

And if the world is to be judged by you, are you so incompetent to not be able to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels, to say nothing of ordinary matters? I'm going to stop here and right now and say, what does it mean to judge angels?

I have no idea. We're not covering that today. I'm sorry.

Verse 4, if you have ordinary cases then, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there's not a single person wise enough to discern amongst the brothers and the sisters?

Instead, brothers and sisters go to court against one another, and this be for unbelievers. In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a loss or a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged?

Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud and other brothers and sisters and siblings at that. So, to make something perfectly clear, the language that Paul was using here about going before court and judges and these sort of disputes, we're talking about civil matters.

We are not talking about criminal matters. So, if somebody commits a crime, a criminal act against another sibling, then Paul does not have a comment here about the rightness or wrongness about calling the police or taking it to a criminal court, okay?

That is not the topic on hand. This passage has been used in ways to say, hey, Christians, you can't call in a crime if somebody hurts or assaults or commits a criminal act against you. This has been used in churches when a woman has been abused by a pastor for the elders to go to the woman and say, hey, that pastor who abused you, we'll deal with it internally.

It's fine. Don't call the authorities. When a kid has been abused by churches, this passage has been used to say, don't call the cops.

We'll just deal with this ourselves. And deal with this ourselves usually means sweep it under the rug. That is a misuse, a blatant, terrible misuse of this passage.

This is not what this passage is talking about. Are you with me? Yes.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay?

But Paul is still making a pretty wild, bold claim that, okay, there are going to be disagreements amongst you all. And remember, a first century church, their lives are far more intertwined than our lives typically are. These are folks who are perhaps sharing resources and money and food and shelter.

And in the first century world, there's not a concept of something called privacy. So there is going to be lots of disagreements and lots of things that you could potentially have an argument about with your Christian neighbor. That's the issue at hand.

So we're talking about civil cases. And Paul says, you are taking these cases before the unjust. And this is a key word in this chapter.

The unjust, meaning the Roman judges of the empire. Now, in the Roman world, the court system, as you can imagine, was not particularly fair. Fortunately, this doesn't have anything to do with today, right?

But back then, court systems were not fair. And they dealt in bribes. They dealt in power and reputation.

They dealt in who had the most honor in the society. And that would help decide who's going to win the case, which predictably meant the rich, the powerful, the well-connected could win the case. And the poor and those without honor, those with social shame are likely to lose the case.

James, the book of James, James chapter 2 talks about this, where he condemns the rich. And he says, why do you look up to the rich? Aren't the rich the ones who drag you into court?

So this is a theme in Scripture. You'll see it in Proverbs. You'll see it in the Psalms.

But the rich, the powerful, the mighty, those with class and social standing, using that to take advantage of those without it. Which is why Scripture has to repeatedly put in these laws and practices. Do not have unequal weights.

Do not move people's boundary markers in their property. You have to have some systems of justice, some system of justice which is fair. Rome did the best they could, but they were still very much bound by their time and their culture.

And so it was the rich and the powerful that the courts favored. In fact, Paul says in verse 7, having lawsuits amongst each other at all is a defeat for you. And then, again, another verse that's been misused.

Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? But listen to who Paul is talking to.

He says, but y'all yourselves do wrong and defraud. And I use y'all in my sort of working translation as a reminder that there's lots of you plurals in the original language that English doesn't always capture, except with the lovely word y'all. But y'all, you rich, you powerful, the ones who have the ability to drag people into court, you yourselves are the wrong and defraud.

And your own siblings, your fellow Christians at that. So Paul is not talking to those who have been hurt or those who have been abused by the system. Because remember, in chapter 5, he is defending a woman who is being misused by her stepson, being sexually abused by her stepson.

So it's not as though Paul is like, hey, if some terrible thing is happening to you, you should just shut up and be quiet about it. That is not what Paul is saying. Paul is talking to the rich and powerful and saying, hey, you rich and powerful who are dragging your siblings into court, why not rather be wronged?

You're rich already. Why not rather be defrauded? You're rich already.

Paul is speaking to the powerful ones, not to the powerless or to those who are being wronged. Not to the victims. So hang on to that phrase, do wrong.

Why not rather be wronged? And Paul's about to turn it into a question about who inherits the kingdom of God. So case one from last week is the man sexually assaulting the stepmother.

Paul's decision is, hey, kick that man out, protect the woman, protect the community. Don't be proud, but grieve. Case two is about the rich dragging their fellow Christians into court.

And Paul says, hey, powerful folks who have the ability to drag people into court, how about not?

And then we get into verse 9, which is the list. I, sorry, chapter 6, verse 9. Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. And then the list. So the question on the table for Paul is, who inherits the kingdom?

Now, we have to remember the kingdom is not just some future hope that we pine for. That we just sort of ignore the problems of earth and hope for heaven, I'll fly away, by and by, all of that. It's not just a future hope.

It's a present reality that we live in today. It was the very first thing out of Jesus' mouth in the gospel of Mark chapter 1, the earliest gospel. And Jesus shows up on the scene, and he opens his mouth, and he proclaims the good news.

The kingdom of God is here. It's at hand. It's present.

It's available. So when Paul says, who inherits the kingdom of God? This is not a passage about who goes to heaven when you die.

Are you with me? This is not about who goes to heaven when you die. Inheritance is family language.

This is who gets to be part of the family today, right now. Who gets to partake in the Father, in God, the Creator, God, the heavenly parents, rule and reign and family reunion now. That's the question.

And Paul tells us, the unjust, this is chapter 6, verse 9, the wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God. Literally, the adikos, the anti, those without righteousness and justice. Those that do wrong.

And Paul actually puts the rich and the powerful plaintiffs, the sue-ers, in the list before anyone else. So you can see the sort of rhetorical progression that Paul is making. We start with a case of a man assaulting a woman.

You guys are proud. You should have grieved. Then we progress to, okay, here's a bunch of people, a group of people who are dragging their siblings into court.

How about you not do that? Don't you know that the unjust, those that defraud the wrongdoers, they're not even going to be part of God's kingdom here today. Now, before we deal with this, we have to deal with a few words that have been used to harm and exclude LGBTQ people.

The word in a lot of translations, homosexual, did not show up in English Bibles until 1946, okay? That word did not show up in English translations of the Bible until 1946. It was the RSV, the Revised Standard Version, that put the English word homosexuals into the Bible for the first time, here in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9.

And there's a couple words that we'll deal with in just a moment that got combined into a single word because these words are notoriously difficult to translate. So they had a history of translation, none of which had to do with homosexuality or use the word homosexuality. The RSV uses this word, then translations after that pick up on that, and then the RSV and the translators of the RSV said, we made a mistake, we're going to re-change our translation because translations are updated routinely, but the damage had been done.

And lots of English translations from then on, and then for other languages of translation used their language's word for homosexuals, and so the dominoes went. Homosexuality as an orientation was not really identified until the 1840s, not to say that homosexuals did not, that same-sex attraction did not exist until the 1840s or 60s, but that that word, the concept of orientation, didn't really start until the 19th century. So Paul's world didn't really have a concept for this, which means that if somebody tries to tell you the Bible or the church has always condemned homosexuality, that means they're lying to you, or they've had the truth withheld from them.

So the plan right now is we're going to read the whole list, and then we'll deal with those two specific words. So this is verse, we'll read verse 9 again. Do you not know that the wrongdoers, the unjust, will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Don't be deceived. The sexually immoral, or as I translate it here, so does the Lit Bible, the Literacy and Inclusion Translation. Do not be deceived, neither sexual exploiters, and we'll talk about that word again in a moment, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor malakoi or arsenokoitai.

Those are our two challenging Greek words, we'll come back to them. Nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Paul says, this is what some of y'all used to be, but y'all were washed, y'all were sanctified, y'all were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Spirit of God.

So, who are the unjust? Who are those who do not inherit the kingdom? Well, this is the third and longest version of a list that Paul has slowly been building since chapter 5.

Because every few verses, Paul will say, well, not these people. And then he'll list three things. And then he'll say, not these people.

And then he'll list five things. And then he says, not these people. Well, now we have a full list of ten folks who do not inherit the kingdom.

And these words all have a connection in that they're all about taking something from somebody. They're all forms of exploitation or grasping or taking in some way. So, beginning with word number one, the sexual exploiters.

This is the word that we talked about last week, porne, and all of its related words, that begins with a root that means to sell. And outside of Jewish and Christian writing, it meant the sex trade. It meant the buying and selling and trading of human bodies for the purpose of usually male pleasure.

And in this chapter, the exploitation Paul names is a purchase, which we'll talk about in verses 15 and forward. So, the guilt in Paul's imagination always falls on the buyer. If you are buying, selling, and trading bodies for, again, typically male pleasure, the guilt falls on the purchaser.

And never on whoever had no choice in the matter. The desperate are never the guilty ones. Idolaters in the ancient world.

Idolatry was this form of sort of pulling a cosmic slot machine, hoping to get the gods on your side. If I make this sacrifice, if I talk to this priest, if I pay this offering, I can get the god of the harvest, or the god of planting, or the god of rain, or sunshine, or whatever, on my side. And in Colossians chapter 3, Paul actually identifies greed with idolatry.

Idolatry is this form of greed, of grasping, of taking, of trying to twist the divine to do your will. Worship as transaction, using God to get your own gain. So, you've got the sexual exploiters, the idolaters.

Then you've got three money words that we typically more associate with greed. The thieves, the greedy, and the swindlers. People who take that belongs to someone else.

People who take more than their share. People who seize and trick others. And this is right after a paragraph about fraud, right?

Hey, you who are dragging your siblings into court, you're the ones who are defrauding. You are the ones who are doing wrong. These sorts of people don't get to experience God's kingdom rule and reign today.

You have adulterers, which is breaking faith with a spouse in order to pursue some sort of pleasure elsewhere. You have verbal abusers who tear other people down. Drunkards, swindlers who are always taking more and more and more.

So, in this list, this is all forms of what kind of injustice? The taking, the grasping, the stealing kind. These are the unjust who don't get to experience the kingdom of God.

Paul will have to specifically deal with the drunkards in a couple chapters, chapter 11, when Paul is describing what's happening during their worship services. They come for communion, and people are getting drunk off the communion wine. That's how bad the situation is.

To the point that other people are coming hungry, and there's nothing left to eat. Because communion was more than just like having a little piece of bread. It was a feast or a meal or a potluck of some sort.

And people are showing up early. The rich people are showing up early, being like, hey, free food, some food I don't have to pay for. And the poor sort of bring themselves in because they've got chores for the day because they're actually working and laboring on the land.

And they come in, the food's all gone, and the drunk people are like, whoo, wasn't communion good today? Okay? So Paul, when he's building this list, has these folks in mind.

So, with all of that in mind, we get to our two challenging words. Malakoi is a pretty common word, actually, in New Testament Greek. It simply means soft.

But the word soft began to take on additional meaning. All right? Sort of similar to English, how you might look at, like, a child in a sports field.

You're like, oh, that kid is soft. Okay? And it's an insult.

It's pejorative. It's not kind. And something similar is happening in New Testament Greek, where if somebody was accused of being malakoi, it could be an insult for men who were judged to be self-indulgent or unmanly in some way.

And remember, you're in a world with a pretty strict gender binary and pretty strict gender expectations. So if a man was somehow pampering himself to the point of exploitation, he's using others, he's using his wealth to sort of make himself soft. He was judged to be malakoi, self-indulgent.

David Bentley Hart, in his translation of the New Testament, says that some translators have used this to mean, and again, frank conversation of sexual acts, okay? That the malakoi person was the receiving partner in a sexual act. They were the passive partner in a sexual act.

But Hart says there's really no reason to assume that. There's no other evidence of that in New Testament Greek and the New Testament world. Any sort of assumption that, well, the malakoi is the receiving partner of a sexual act, that was just by basically bigoted translators who wanted to make sense of these words.

Oh, it's the person who receives, and that has to mean something, right? But modern translators say, no, that's not what the word means at all. And somebody who's self-indulgent, who is pampering themselves to the point of absurdity, of flaunting their wealth and using that wealth to be intensely self-indulgent.

The second word is even more complicated, arsino koitai, and its first use in Greek, ancient Greek, is here in 1 Corinthians. It's in Paul. It's likely built off of a Greek translation of Leviticus 20, which is a passage that deals with same-sex acts.

And Paul squeezes two words together that you can see koitai, koitis, okay? And arsino mean men. So men who bed or have koitis with men.

It's also next to the word for slave dealers or slave traders in 1 Timothy chapter 1. And again, David Bentley Hart in his translation sees the most common way that men would bed other people gendered as men would be masters and rich patrons using enslaved boys. The word for this was a catamite, a boy raised for pedophiles, for pedophilic sex.

But Paul's the first one ever to use this word. He seems to be coining a word for this action of men bedding boys or other men. And as a reminder of what I said already, Paul's world had no category for sexual orientation.

Again, not to say that these folks did not exist, the LGBTQ folks did not exist 20 centuries ago, but we had no language for it. We had no conceptualization of orientation. So sex between men was almost always organized by status and purchase, masters and enslaved, men and boys, buyers and bots.

And the word homosexual itself was coined in the 1860s. In Paul's world, sex almost always ran on status and buying power. Like, in their world, men ranked higher than women.

And so even that relationship had this sort of background sense of inequity. Paul's category simply could not have covered mutual covenanted partnerships between equals. Paul had never seen anything like that.

Therefore, we can very confidently say that 1 Corinthians chapter 6 has nothing to do with gay people. Paul could not condemn, amen, amen. Paul could not condemn an orientation that no one in the first century had conceived of.

Now, we have to admit what we don't know. We don't know exactly what Malakoi and our Sunokowitai precisely meant. But it's because of that uncertainty that would be a really, really stupid act to use a verse like that to shut anyone out of a church.

Are you with me? No. So, again, the rhetorical argument.

Chapter 5. There's a man who is having sex with his stepmother. The man gets condemned, kicked out of the church.

Chapter 6. There are people, rich folks, who are dragging their siblings into court. Should you rather be defrauded yourselves and not defraud your own siblings?

This is the story, Paul says. There are certain kinds of people who cannot experience God's rule, reign, and kingdom today. These kinds of people are the ones who take and grasp and use and abuse and purchase and buy everything from everyone for their own good.

So, if we're talking about that sort of person, how on earth does that have anything to do with any LGBTQ person you've ever met? Hello.

Then there's a turn. Verse 11. And this is what some of you used to be, Paul says.

There are people who hear this list, and they're like, oh, yeah, that was my job. I swindled people. Oh, yeah, that was my entire life.

I was greedy. I took and I took and I took. I was an idolater.

I went to the temple day after day after day. And I tried to convince the gods to be on my side. And there are people who, they went to the brothel and they purchased the woman, the child, and used that person for their own pleasure.

And Paul says, this is what you all, some of you all, some of you all used to be. But you were washed. You were sanctified.

You were justified. You were justified in the name of Christ Jesus and in the spirit of our Lord. And so the unjust become the justified.

God makes the unjust just. The kingdom goes to the people that God has washed. Not to the people with clean records.

In Romans, Paul will use a similar tactic where he lists a bunch of unjust people. And then in Romans chapter 2 says, so you yourselves are condemned. And then in future chapters 3, 4, and 5 we'll say, but there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God. This is what some of you all used to be. It's not for the people of clean records.

It's the people that God has washed and cleansed and sanctified and justified. So, to my queer siblings, you are fellow heirs of the inheritance. You are not the topic of this passage.

You are included with us who have been included in the kingdom.

So, so far Paul has done the talking. And now we get to hear from Corinth. Because Paul begins to quote them.

So, complicated thing in translating Greek. There's no punctuation. There's no quotation marks.

And a huge amount of confusion in translating scripture and interpreting scripture, particularly in the Pauline letters, is what is it Paul is saying? And what is it the Corinth is saying? And translators and interpreters have woken up to this fact over the years.

He realized that there are things that we have to put in quotation marks because it seems very clear that it's not something Paul would say. It's something that Corinth has written to Paul in their, you know, zero Corinthians, their first letter to him. And Paul has to respond to.

So that's what we get in verse 12. Verse 12. All things are permitted for me.

That's in quotation marks. This seems to be a Corinthian slogan that was written to Paul. And Paul has to bat down and respond to.

So, if anybody has ever used 1 Corinthians 6.12, all things are permitted for me. I'm sorry. You're quoting the wrong person.

Okay? 1 Corinthians 6.12. All things are permitted for me.

But, Paul says, not all things are beneficial. Corinth again. All things are permitted for me.

But, Paul says, I won't be dominated or enslaved by anything. Verse 13. Well, food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.

And God's going to destroy both of them anyway. It's fine. Paul says, no.

The body is for the Lord. God raised Jesus. And God is going to raise us.

Therefore, our bodies matter. Corinth's logic is, bodies are temporary. So, do what you want with them.

It doesn't count. And Paul says, no, no, no, no, no. You have it all backwards.

Verse 13. The body is meant not for sexual exploitation, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will raise us by his power.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I, therefore, take the members of Christ? Greek word for the word members is melos.

It's where we get the word melody. So, I love this idea of melodies and harmonies all part of one symphony together. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ, making melody with Christ?

Should I, therefore, take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. That's what Paul says.

Verse 13 and 14. Bodies matter because God raises them. And here we are in a very pro-body text.

It's not our spirits that belong to Christ. It's actually the King James Version that adds the word and your spirits, too, because they were sort of uncomfortable with this pro-body language. But Paul says, no, it's your bodies.

Your bodies are members of Christ. Your bodies have been, will be raised with Christ. And the logic is, if God is going to raise your body, then what you do with it matters.

And so does what you do to somebody else's body. And this is when Paul gets specific. Shall I then take a member of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?

Never. Don't you all know that the one who joins himself, note, every case in this passage, 15, 16, 17, Paul speaks specifically to male members, okay? So lots of places in Scripture, brother and sister, y'all, okay?

There's lots of, can be read to a group or community. In this passage, he changes to very specifically male pronouns. Don't you all know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her?

For it says, this is Genesis, for the two will be one flesh. But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him. So who was the prostitute?

Most likely enslaved. Most likely she was indebted. Most likely she was destitute and poor.

Prostitution was legal and common in Roman Corinth. And the setting is usually just ordinary commercial prostitution. But it was a function of the patriarchy.

It was a function of class and wealth, pushing someone to desperation and having to sell their body to the highest bidder. So we don't have time to get into it today. Modern conversations on sex work, on whether sex work is work, whether it is naturally exploitive or not.

That's a different conversation. In Paul's world, in the Corinthian world, it was pretty much always exploitation. There is no passage in 1 Corinthians that tells women not to engage in sex work.

Do without what you will. But there are lots of passages in 1 Corinthians that tell the men, stop purchasing women. And then Paul does something amazing.

He uses Genesis chapter 2 and says the two will be one flesh. Paul calls the purchase, the use, the exploitation of a woman's body a real union because she is a person and not a product. The market is happy just to leave her in product status.

But Paul says, no, no, no, no, no. If you want to have sex with this person, I've got news for you. She is a person.

Scripture has lots of things to say about prostitutes. Tamar in Genesis 38, Judah, one of the 12 patriarchs of Israel, takes her for a prostitute and orders her burned. She does some things to get out of this situation.

And Judah says, Tamar has been justified rather than I. Rahab, from the story of Joshua in Jericho, is called a prostitute in Joshua 2. And then referred to again in the book of James, Rahab, the prostitute, was justified.

Same word as chapter 6, verse 11 here. You all were justified. So the women that the world called prostitutes, Scripture calls justified.

But Paul is clear. Don't join your body to what you consider a product because that product is a person and they don't deserve to be exploited.

And then Paul says to these men who are purchasing bodies, your body belongs to God. And God's claim outranks every other claim on you. Flee sexual exploitation.

Every sin, this is verse 18, a person commits is outside the body, but the one who sexually exploits sins against his own body. Or don't you all know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you all, which you all have from God? And your body is a temple, predictably, has been used to police typically women's diets and dress and piercings and tattoos.

But the text is actually pointing this at the purchasers of bodies and at a community that has failed to protect every body in it. Paul says, don't you know that your body, you, you purchaser of bodies, your body is a temple. The market is happy to buy bodies, but God buys them back.

God redeems, purchases, and set free. And Paul says, hey, you men who think that you can, you men who think you can buy bodies, I've got news for you. You yourselves have been bought.

So glorify God in your own body. You don't even own yourself, much less her. Paul looks at the man in Corinth with the money in his hand, the one who thinks he can buy a body, and Paul says, you were bought.

You walked into that market thinking you were the buyer. You thought the money made you master. You thought that her body was something that you could rent for an hour and a hand back.

But check the receipt, brothers. Somebody already paid for you. You are not your own.

And if you are not your own, then she is not yours. And if you are not your own, he is not yours. The kid is not yours.

And the employee is not yours. And the girlfriend or the wife or the intern or that boy in the youth group are not yours. The market says everything and everybody has a price.

The market says if you can pay for it, you're owed it. The market says that some bodies are for using and some bodies are for owning. But God walked into the market too.

God walked into the market and paid for the woman in Corinth that nobody bothered to name. God paid for the enslaved woman who could not say no. God paid for the queer kid who heard verse 9 read over them like a verdict.

God paid for everybody in this room that somebody else has tried to claim. And what God has bought, nobody else gets to own. Nobody else gets to own.

Not the boss or the boyfriend or the donor or the frat house or the group chat or the pastor or even this pastor. Not the man with money in his hand. You were bought with a price.

So glorify God in your body. Glorify God with hands that heal instead of hands that grab. Glorify God with money that sets people free instead of money that buys them.

Glorify God with power that serves the table instead of power that sits at the head of it. Because the one who raised Jesus from the dead is going to raise these bodies too. Bodies matter.

Your body matters. Her body matters. And no body, no body, no body is for sale.

So to recap. Bodies matter. God raises them and lives in them and bought them.

The unjust are the people who take. The insiders first. And the list describes a past that God has washed.

God makes the unjust just. The verse never named what or who you are. This is a passage about people who need to be confronted and women who are not blamed.

So what do we do? Just a few ideas. First thing, women deserve better.

Are you with me? So when she tells you about the assault or the abuse or the rape, believe her. Skip the questions about what she wore, what she drank.

Let her decide what happens next and grieve before you try to fix. Men need to be held accountable. Are you with me?

So don't try to talk people out of going to the police. Support, stand for real consequences, not essays. People don't get a pass for money or talent or title.

And if somebody is proposing something awful in a group chat, speak up. We need to raise our boys to be better men. Teach consent early.

Everything from tickling and hugs and kisses all the way up. No and not sure means stop. Retire boys will be boys.

Show them how a man treats other human beings. And start the conversations about porn and power and peer pressure before the party invite. And then the church needs to be a safe place for women or anybody who has the potential to be harmed, abused, assaulted.

So we need a way to report that doesn't run through the accused. If you go to thetablechurch.org, go down to the bottom, you can report misconduct. That goes straight to the elders and it cuts out me and Tanetta and goes to all of the elders at the same time.

We need to train and screen all of our leaders and volunteers to know what abuse looks like, what hiding looks like. The church needs to hire outside investigators when somebody is accused and not just deal with it internally. And, I think we do pretty well on this one, people need to see women leading with actual real authority.

And then we need to remember and proclaim and be proud of and not ashamed of that LGBTQ people are heirs of the kingdom with every right to the inheritance and to the household. If any of this touches your story, Tanetta and I are available after the service, as well as members of our prayer team. There are some resources on the screen, including the DC Rape Crisis Center, the Trevor Project, the 988 line for crisis and suicide.

We're about to come to the table, and again, it's this physical thing, this physical manifest thing, that reminds us that our bodies matter. A table where everybody eats and nobody goes hungry. And a little reminder that, as N.T. Wright says, we are meant to be a small working model of new creation.

And we say, this is my body, broken for you. And I know there are a lot of broken bodies in this room. May we receive the brokenness and somehow, miraculously, mysteriously, be healed by it.