The Seventh Commandment: You Shall Be Faithful to Those You Love, by Rev. Michael McGee, March 6, 2011

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The Seventh Commandment: You Shall Be Faithful to Those You Love

Reading:

“The Kama Sutra of Kindness: Position Number 3” by Mary Mackey

It's easy to love
through a cold spring
when the poles
of the willows
turn green
pollen falls like
a yellow curtain
and the scent of
Paper Whites
clots
the air

but to love for a lifetime
takes talent

you have to mix yourself
with the strange
beauty of someone
else
wake each morning
for 72,000

mornings in

a row so
breathed and
bound and
tangled
that you can hardly
sort out

you have to be willing to move through
life
together
the way the long
grasses move
in a field
when you careen
blindly toward
the other
side

there's never going to be anything
straight or predictable
about your path
except the
flattening
and the springing
back

you just go on walking for years
hand in hand
waist deep in the weeds
bent slightly forward
like two question
marks
and all the while it

burns
my dear
it burns beautifully above
you
and goes on
burning
like a relentless sun.

Sermon

        I love the poem Natalie read this morning, especially this line: “to love for a lifetime / takes talent”. Terry and I recently celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary, and I must say that it does take talent, as well as perseverance, patience, and a fair amount of dumb luck. And when it works there's no greater joy in the world.

        The obstacles to a long and loving relationship are many, but one of the biggest is addressed in the seventh commandment, which reads: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” This commandment is short and to the point, and you would think crystal clear. And yet the ancient Hebrews believed that adultery was committed only when a married man had sex with a married woman, but not with an unmarried woman. Since women were seen as little better than cattle and slaves, the offense committed by the man was theft of another man's property.

        Throughout history, being unfaithful has been a constant theme in marriages. I like the “Speed Bump” cartoon that shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and Eve has her arms across her chest with a judgmental look on her face, and Adam is saying, “Someone else? How could I be seeing someone else?” In fact, Hebrew folklore claims Adam's first mate was not Eve but a woman called Lilith. And when Eve was created, it became the first love triangle, and Adam the first adulterer.

        Adultery is one of the most popular forms of entertainment today, not only for those doing it but for all of those who experience it vicariously through the media. Almost on a weekly basis we hear of steamy and slimy illicit affairs by actors, politicians, preachers, and media people.

        But adultery is not only for those in the limelight. It's estimated that roughly 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an affair at some point in some marriage. So let's take a poll... nevermind. Since the Catholic Church just came out with a confession app, maybe we can come up with a UU app that will take confessions and then dispense Hail Emersons and Thoreaus – and instead of rosaries, we can use Mardi Gras beads.

        I don't want to make light of adultery, because it has caused great suffering, and it's a pain that does not go away easily. And the number of infidelities is increasing, partly because women have entered the work force in greater numbers, and they have also become more accepting of their sexuality.

         You probably know that emotional infidelity can inflict as much, if not more, suffering than physical infidelity. Remember the famous words by President Carter when he was interviewed by Playboy: “I've committed adultery in my heart many times....” Email and Facebook have made it much easier to commit adultery in our hearts, as well as in bed.

        Some cultures have adopted extreme measures to combat infidelity, usually victimizing women with burkas, female circumcision, and even capital punishment. Other cultures view infidelity as more of a curiosity than a serious moral problem.

        I dare say that the Seventh Commandment has not been very successful in eliminating adultery, and largely because it deals with the symptom rather than the disease. Sex is certainly a critical part of most romantic relationships, rather they be gay or straight or married or unmarried.

        I loved all the sexual confusion in “A Midsummer Night's Musical,” which I highly recommend. I especially liked Shakespeare's line, “Love and reason keep little company together”. Or, as Bette Davis said, “Sex is God's joke on human beings.”

        For me, the real issue about relationships is not sex but faithfulness, and that's why my interpretation of the seventh commandment is this: “You shall be faithful to those you love.” I've expanded this moral imperative so that it relates not only to the person you are married to or living with but to all those you love. And it's not just about sex but about intimacy and caring. To be in any loving relationship requires faithfulness, that is having faith and trust in another person and being someone who can live up to the faith and trust of another.

        Being faithful is not only a moral issue but a happiness issue. Jonathan Haidt, in his book, “The Happiness Hypothesis,” writes that there are two kinds of love we experience in romantic relationships: passionate love and companionate love, and we need both to make a happy relationship. He explains that, “According to the love researchers Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Walster, passionate love is a 'wildly emotional state in which tender and sexual feelings, elation and pain, anxiety and relief, altruism and jealousy coexist in a confusion of feelings.' Passionate love is the love you fall into. It is what happens when Cupid's golden arrow hits your heart, and in an instant, the world around is transformed. You crave union with your beloved. You want, somehow, to crawl into each other.”

        Do you remember what that was like? Didn't it feel like there was nothing else happening in the world, and there was no one else but you and your beloved, and that all you wanted was to be united?

         Plato captured this urge in a myth about the origins of love in which people originally had four legs, four arms, and two faces. But one day the gods felt threatened by the power and arrogance of human beings and decided to cut them in half. Ever since that day, people have wandered the world searching for their other halves.

        In contrast to passionate love, companionate love is “'the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply intertwined.' Companionate love grows slowly over the years as lovers… begin to rely upon, care for, and trust each other. If the metaphor for passionate love is fire, the metaphor for compassionate love is vines growing, intertwining, and gradually binding two people together.”

        Or at Mary Mackey writes,

“you have to mix yourself
with the strange
beauty of someone
else
wake each morning
for 72,000
mornings in
a row so
breathed and
bound and
tangled
that you can hardly
sort out
your arms
and
legs”

        Passionate love is like a drug – actually it is a drug – with its symptoms being similar to those of heroin and cocaine, lighting up your brain like a pinball machine and releasing the addictive chemical dopamine. Passionate love is one of the strongest of addictions for human beings.

        But, like drugs, passionate love does wear off eventually. And when it does, you crash like a rock. Suddenly, the person you craved so badly falls off the pedestal and is human again, with faults and frailties, the magic gone.

         True love is not passionate love, though passion is certainly a part of it. True love, is companionate love, with a spice of passion, between two people who are firmly committed to each other.

        Ideally, as passionate love falters, companionate love grows. But if a couple hasn't worked on building a caring and communicative relationship during the time of passion, they may end up either going their separate ways, wounded, angry, and distrustful, or they may commit to a heartless marriage out of duty rather than love, and be confined to years of unhappiness. The danger for both of these possibilities is that the individuals may be so discouraged with their defeats that they're never able to break the cycle of failure.

        I believe that the key to companionate love is compassion. I spoke of compassion last month as being at the heart of the sixth commandment that I interpreted as, “You Shall Nurture and Protect Life.” Actually I believe compassion is at the heart of all the commandments and at the heart of all religions. And compassion is at the heart of every one of us.

        Being in a loving relationship is our best opportunity to learn the art of compassion. At the beginning of a relationship we are so caught up in our passion that we're not able to look beyond our own needs and desires. But as we grow our relationship, we eventually experience the pain of being at odds with the person we love, feeling ignored or rejected or just angry.

        We may be wounded by something the other person said or did or by something outside of our relationship altogether. The critical step is whether this pain closes us off to the other person or whether it opens us up to their pain and thus to their soul. The challenge is whether we are able to step outside of our skin and into the skin of the other, not for sex but for empathy.

        If we're unable to do that, not just in one moment but over and over again, then the relationship – and a part of ourselves – will surely die. We become loving companions to each other only to the degree that we open our hearts in empathy and compassion.

        There are certainly times when companionate love simply does not work, when the compassion is not mutual, when the person you trusted is not faithful, and we must make the decision that for our soul to grow we must leave the relationship and seek another in which we can find true love. This is never easy and usually comes with great pain. But it can be the pain of labor in which we give birth to something within us that desires not only the pleasure of passion but the commitment of compassion.

        For some that ideal combination will never be found, and instead the companionate love that comes with deep friendships will nurture our souls. But when we can intertwine the joys of passion with the compassion of being a true companion, then our lives can find a fulfillment that gives an indescribable satisfaction.

        This is no easy journey. It takes a lifetime of work, a work of the heart, and a faithfulness of the soul. As the poem reads,

“you just go on walking for years

hand in hand

waist deep in the weeds

bent slightly forward

like two question

marks

and all the while it

burns

my dear

it burns beautifully above

you

and goes on

burning

like a relentless

sun”.

        This is what faithfulness looks like. The best translation of the word faith from Buddhist texts is from the word “saddha,” which means “to place the heart upon.” "Faith,” in the words of Sharon Salzberg, “is being in touch with the strengths or powers in this universe that are not defined or crushed by our circumstances. Then we can go forward, even if we're very afraid.”

        Or as Jesus said, "Let us love beyond our ideals and sprout acts of compassion for all creation." As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to be faithful to the moral imperative to “stand on the side of love.” We often use those words to mean that we stand for justice, equality, and peace. But we need to also stand on the side of love when it comes to personal relationships. We cannot save the world until we can save ourselves and those we love. Then and only then can we reach out beyond ourselves and be faithful to the love that binds us all together.

        This is the faithfulness we are called to keep. This is the faithfulness that renews and strengthens our relationships. This is the faithfulness that in the midst of turmoil and pain enables us “to try again, to trust again, to love again.” (Salzberg). May this be the abiding faith we live out in all that we do.

Benediction:

There is someone here today who has not been touched by another human being this week … until now.

There is someone here today who has not heard a kind word this week … until now.

There is someone here today who has not been held by the love of our religious community all week … until now.

Let us touch with love, speak words of love, and hold each other in love.

Shalom, Salaam, Blessed be, and Namaste.

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Sermon Sources

• “Faith, Trusting Our Own Deepest Experiences,” by Sharon Salzberg

• “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom” by Jonathan Haidt

• TruthAboutDeception.com, Facts and Statistics About Infidelities

Covenant Group Questions

1. How long were you or have you been married or in a committed relationship?
2. To whom are you faithful and why?
3. What does faithfulness mean to you?
4. What does the poem, “The Kama Sutra of Kindness: Position Number 3” mean to you?
5. Does the meaning of passionate love and companionate love make sense for you?
6. What part does compassion have in your relationship?