18th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22)
Mark 10:2-16, Genesis 2:18-24, Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-11
Okay, I might as well begin as simply as possible. Based on today's gospel lesson, marriage is good, divorce is bad. Children are good. We like it when the categories are clear and clean, when distinctions are precisely defined. Good is good and bad is bad. No shades of grey. Of course the real world is no where near so simple. Another scandal breaks in Washington. It should be simply a matter of identifying the wrong but immediately the whole situation is caught up in the spin and damage control of political power. It is not a simple task of naming that which is wrong. The question is shaded into who knew what when and what did they do with what they knew when they knew it. The simple truth that identified wrong and dangerous behavior shifts to extreme categories. One representative suggests doing away with 15 and 16 year old congressional pages which one columnist notes makes no sense since the real evil is the actions of House Representatives not the pages. If the real source of the evil is to be eliminated then it should be the representatives who are removed or at least replaced by adults who think first of the care of children rather than preserving their own power and political careers. It's hard not to think of Jesus' words in our Gospel lesson inviting us to give place and value to the children, not chase them out.
To live with clear categories in a world of precise and distinct values. It would be so simple but it is not realistic. Marriage is good. Divorce is bad. We hear the gospel lesson for today and think, "Life is just not like that." The reality is that we live in a world where divorce and marriage have almost equal place in our daily lives. Even if you have been married 31 years like Chris and I have, or 56 years like my parents or 61 years like her parents--divorce still touches our lives. Statistical analysts note that in most any American family of three or more children it is unlikely or very unusual that at least one of the siblings does not suffer a divorce. One of my 5 siblings has been divorced and five of my cousins.
And it is an absolute 100% certainty that we all have friends who have experienced the pain and heartache of a broken marriage. Statistics vary widely --but somewhere between one third and one half of all marriages today end in divorce. There is no segment of society immune from divorce although one of the curiosities of our modern world is that divorce is significantly less among couples who worship together at least once a month. But there are still plenty of divorces among the Christian community, even more among conservative evangelicals than active mainline Christians. Our church--as a denomination --has long recognized and respected the fact that some marriages are so broken--so destructive--and sometimes even so violent --that divorce is the only humane response to the brokenness. We live in a community that regularly recognizes October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month intending that we support and help rebuild lives damaged by the extremes of dysfunctional relationships. Our Lutheran church has long recognized that people who have been divorced have a full place in the life of the church and if they choose, the right to be remarried in the church with the full blessing of the church. This is a teaching that not all Christian communities agree with or affirm primarily because they read our gospel lesson for today and see at least one place in the world where they can make things real simple. Divorce is bad. To be honest, this is one of those passages of scripture that we would probably prefer not to have to look at too closely. This is the kind of scripture that we would prefer to overlook or declare no longer applicable. But that kind of selective reading is dangerous.
It can allow us to deny the power of any scripture we find uncomfortable or inconvenient. Ultimately it can let us create God in our image by having God say and mean only the things we want to hear. And that is not God. Which is why I am glad that the Lutheran church is a liturgical church with assigned lessons revolving over a three year cycle forcing us at times to look at portions of the Bible that we and most preachers, would prefer to ignore. These are not lessons intended to make us feel good but they do challenge us to think about God--our faith--and the word. They are words that force us to look closely at what is really being said.
People came to Jesus who wanted to challenge him and they say to him, "Is it permitted...?" "Is it permitted for a man to divorce his wife?" Jesus responds, as he often did, with a question that goes back to the beginning. He asks those questioning him, "What did Moses say about it?" Check with the source of the law tradition. The one who presented God's laws to the people, Moses. And they responded accurately that Moses said that a man could divorce his wife by writing her out a certificate of dismissal, giving her the certificate, and sending her on her way. Scholars would remind us that in the world of the first century women were but property, first of their fathers and then of their husband. Just like today, not every relationship was good but within the Jewish community of the day there had developed two schools of thought about divorce and those questioning Jesus were probing which school of thought he aligned with. The answer Jesus gave was not what anyone expected. Jesus replies, "But, in the beginning, God's intention was..." and he recalls the familiar story in our first lesson from the book of Genesis. The story of the first couple in the garden and God's intention that marriage be permanent and just and joyous. Jesus does not side with either position concerning divorce but instead declares that there can be no divorce in what God creates.
Later his disciples who were surprised by this statement questioned him further and Jesus basically says that the divine union created by God precludes divorce --divorce is not an option. There is a difference to be found here between an ideal, which almost every modern marriage believes it is striving to be, and a legalism which is the marriage license. There is absolutely no question about Jesus' teaching and the church's teaching that it is God's will and intention that all marriages be whole and healthy and permanent and life-giving and just. We also need to remember that in the ancient world marriages were about living together, about living in relationship. Love was a late addition to the equation. A marriage was a covenant or contracted relationship that might also eventually find an emotional center, but it was intended to be first and foremost a union of commitment not feelings. Feelings change but the covenant endures.
God's presence at the marriage was not to make each party of the marriage perfect and God like but to make it clear that the covenant was established, witnessed and only good as long as God remained at the center. We live in a world that has been forced to legalize the covenant, replacing God's blessing and presence with legal requirements. We have had to take what once was the organic and honest trust between two people and narrowed it, made it rigid and punitive, with loop holes and precedence. We have elevated feelings and emotions into objects to be possessed. We seek happiness. We find joy. We hold on to love. But as God created happiness and joy and love they were not personal possessions but intended to be found in relationships. The mutual give and take, responsible sharing, self giving sacrifice, acceptance of another, forgiveness and even grace are the stuff of which covenants were originally made. The relationships entered into, covenanted into, were intended to define the person, support the family and build community. But instead of living into the covenant and accepting the responsibilities of mutuality, we have elevated emotions to the status of defining the success or failure of all relationships. When something becomes dull or boring we feel we are justified in moving on without any thought of commitment or relationship. If the job is dull, move on. If the class is boring, drop it. If church fails to excite us, find a new one. And if the marriage feels unfulfilling, there is divorce. Jesus said, Divorce is not an option, not in the covenant relationship we have with God. If we can't understand that we need to get better at reading the signs God gives us through scripture. One of the greatest challenges I have as a pastor is trying to help people to understand that relationships of all types, from friendships to marriage, corporate to political, financial to environmental, are based on the covenant model God reveals in the first relationship as described in the Bible. This was not a marriage as we know it. No legal documents were filed. No rings or vows exchanged. It was a commitment of trust and honesty and caring that is found not in the perfect marriage or the perfect job or the perfect life, but only in the faithfulness of God. Jesus said, Divorce is not an option, not in the covenant relationship we have with God. If we can't understand that we need to get better at reading the signs God gives us through scripture. Otherwise we end up following the wrong signals on the road of life.
The confusion people feel and has been created by this text, reminds me of the story about two elderly women who were driving together down the road. All of a sudden the one behind the wheel looked in the rearview mirror and noticed that a police car was behind her with its lights flashing. She pulled over to the side of the road, and when the policeman approached her--she asked, "What's wrong officer? I couldn't have been speeding. I was only going 18 mph." "That's the problem ma'am," the officer said. "The speed limit on this road is 55. You're going too slow." "That's not possible," the little gray haired lady said. "I just passed a sign back there and the sign said it was 18." The officer replied, "Ma'm that was the highway route number. This is Route 18." At that moment the officer happened to notice the other gray haired lady sitting in the passenger seat with a horrified look frozen on her face, white as a ghost with her hands clutching the dashboard. "What's wrong with her?" he asked. The little driver answered, "I'm not sure. She's been like that ever since we turned off from Route 137."
Reading the wrong signs not only confuses us but endangers relationships with others. It is so easy to be distracted by the wrong signals--to focus on the wrong points. Divorce in Jesus vocabulary has nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with the relationship between people. Trust--civility--honesty--priorities that value the interests, needs and pains of each member of the community equally. Divorce is not an option. Likewise hunger is not an option. War and violence are not options. Homelessness is not an option. The ideals are set forth to challenge and stretch our relationships to all who are around us.
God's commitment to us is not just to make us feel good or happy. Our first lesson for today was selected not just because Jesus quotes it in our Gospel. It takes us back to the beginning, to the covenant of relationship created by God in bringing the first humans into relationship with each other. It is God who creates the human condition that makes us responsible to and with each other. It is God at the center of this first relationship. The goodness of this relationship founded by and on God's blessing. When God is displaced and the blessing forgotten then the good is also lost and we enter the world of our creating, a world of shades.
In Mark's gospel the seemingly strict and very rigid teaching about divorce is followed immediately with the story about Jesus inviting all the children to come. And Jesus said to everyone, "Unless you come to God as a child, you don't get there." Another simple truth that reveals the unconditional love of God for humanity. It is not what the child does but what the child is. A child does not deserve our respect or care or love and so it is with each of us. We come to God as we are. No one has a perfect marriage. All of us, married, divorced, single, always single, all of us have failed to fulfill the totality of what God wants us to be and do in relationship to others--in relationship to God.
We come to this discussion of marriage and divorce not as good people and bad people, not as good people who are married and always have been and bad people who are in another category.
We come as one people all of whom in some way have failed to live up to all that God intended, especially when Jesus reframes those expectations into the ideal extremes that we all admire but know we fail to achieve. Jesus knew that the only relationship we could have with God is like that of a child. Not based on any merit, not grounded in credit for any of the great things we have done. God loves and welcomes us in Jesus Christ not because we have been so perfect, but because it is God's nature to love and receive us. The child can ultimately only trust, believe in the love and faithfulness of the parent. In human families such trust is not always justified but the one constant we know from holy history is that God does not divorce us. We hold fast to our faith with child like hope. Sometimes we cannot understand the meaning, sometimes the emotions run dry, sometimes the world seems so confusing and overwhelming, all we can know for sure is that God made all things. And the God "for whom and through whom all things exist" ultimately loved that creation so much that he sent his own son to make it clear once and for all that when it comes to God, divorce is not an option. God chooses to stay in covenant with us, A promise of grace and life everlasting that needs only a faith like that of a child.
If only it were that simple. Sometimes it is.
Amen