I knew it would be quiet. It usually is. Sixth commandment night at confirmation class: “You shall not commit adultery.”
The catechism’s explanation isn’t too risqué: “sexually pure and decent life in what you say and do” and “husband and wife love and honor each other.” But when you get down to the nitty-gritty, there’s plenty of giggles, shock and silence.
Where do we start? Right at the beginning. Male and female, be fruitful and multiply, hold fast, one flesh. God’s gift of sex is a good thing in the context of marriage.
However teacher and students live in a world where countless variations on that theme exist outside the marriage relationship. From pre-marital sex to same sex relationships to rape and incest, the discussion gets very real very quickly. As soon as we jumped in the deep end, one student remarked, “Pastor, you don’t have to talk this. My mom already tried. I told her we had teachers to explain it to us.”
I thought that was pretty interesting. From his point of view, this was a topic to be covered at school, not at home and certainly not at church! Though only a few wanted to admit it, I am sure they had all been exposed to the sexual variations I mentioned. Maybe more. They just didn’t want to talk about it.
Which is probably why we’ve got a lot of the problems we do. Teen pregnancies, chronic STDs, more charges of harassment every day. Maybe a few discussions with our middle schoolers can make a dent. Maybe a few discussions at home, too.
Waite for it... 
This is so weird for me; my “normal” growing up was that sex education happened at church. We had annual sex education “Sunday School” and (gasp- I am dating myself) we even had filmstrips. My “where do babies come from” book was purchased at church and had a biblical basis. The curriculum grew as we did. And while I don’t remember my parents teaching us about sex ( other than giving us books), my pastor did. I made a point of teaching my kid the way my pastor taught me. When she attended a sex ed seminar at college she was the only one in the group to raise her hand to the question if sex was talked about comfortably in her home. I am still shocked; we need to do better.