Oct 04 | “Union with God,” (Sermon, October 4th)

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ ³He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ ⁴They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.’ ⁵But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. ⁶But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” ⁷“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, ⁸and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. ⁹Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; ¹²and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’

13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. ¹⁴But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. ¹⁵Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ ¹⁶And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Mark 10:2-16

 

When you’re a curate, being asked to preach on this kind of Gospel reading falls under “paying your dues.”

Don’t panic.

I know what this sounds like.

I promise you are safe with me. Really. There are two generations of divorce in my family. On my mother’s side my grandfather was on his second marriage. On my father’s side my grandmother left her family, and later my grandfather married the woman I thought up until about ten years ago was my biological grandmother. Finally, my parents have been separated since I was two years old, and formally divorced since I was seven.

I was lucky. The split was perfectly amicable, and they remained very close for the rest of my father’s life.

Even though my parents split in the more liberal ‘80s, I know my mother still endured criticism for subjecting me to a “broken home.” That stigma still exists today. I had to shut off the TV several years ago during a debate because Mitt Romney was saying that, as a child from a broken home, it was only a matter of time before I was destined to go on a shooting spree.

I’m sure you’ve heard that statistic about 1 in 3 or even 1 in 2 marriages ending in divorce. Less people have heard that that statistic is a bald-faced lie. Divorce among married couples has been in decline for a for nearly forty years, and yet people still quote it as though it’s one of those universal truths. It just goes to show you how much sway a moral panic can hold over our population. Folks will often point back to how great and simple things used to be. Real life is always messy and complicated, and it was just as messy in Jesus’ time.

Divorce was actually pretty common then. However, it was very different, as you can imagine. Among the Jewish population, a woman could not divorce her husband – only the other way around. A divorce was also far more devastating for that woman. Unless she could marry again – which might be difficult since she would likely be viewed by potential suitors as (excuse the harshness) “damaged goods” – she was sure to become destitute. Without her husband’s protection, she could be forced into any number of degrading and dangerous jobs and crushing poverty.

Now among the Pharisees, there was debate about what grounds existed for divorce. The conservative Shammai school insisted that only marital infidelity was appropriate grounds. The more liberal Hillel school claimed that anything could be grounds for divorce, including – I kid you not – burning the bread. The Pharisees who come to Jesus to test him would have been familiar with this debate, and the very fact that they ask him this question show that they are not really interested in his answer. They already know the “lawful” response, which is yes…but, as sermon writer Mark Davis eloquently explains, it is not lawful in the same way that “Love your neighbour” is lawful.

Jesus is not encouraging anyone to remain in loveless, abusive, or broken marriages. To say otherwise is a complete perversion of our Lord’s command. What he commands here is far more Christian.

First: He reminds those in power of their duty to take care of the weak and vulnerable, which is evident from the placement of this passage just before the one where he blesses the children, the most vulnerable and voiceless within his culture. He also elevates these powerless ones. He elevates the woman by making her just as capable of divorce as her husband, which would have sounded absurd to his detractors. Equally absurd were his claims that a husband’s adultery was not a sin against another woman’s husband but against his own wife, and vice-versa. He later elevates children by claiming that it is they who receive the Kingdom of God – not in some romantic way that has to do with innocence or humility but in a way that says very explicitly that God chooses the small and the oppressed as royalty within the upside down kingdom.

Second – and even more wonderful: Jesus reaches outside the accepted parameters of biblical interpretation and makes marriage not just about legal contracts between families but about the whole intention of created order. In the freely entered union between empowered individuals, God intends a model for what we once had and have since lost between ourselves and our fellow human beings.

That’s why marriage is a sacrament.

This is not to elevate marriage above all other forms of human relationship. What it does do is say, “A freely entered marriage between two people demonstrates a deeply sacred truth. Any union of companionship between people, like it or not, is an outward and visible sign of the inward and visible grace of communion that humankind is meant to embody all the time. All people in these beautifully diverse unions are bound to this depth of commitment, but if you are going to stand before God and your families and friends and vow to model that union in your life, you had better read the vows carefully beforehand, because there’s no erasing those promises, even if the union ends.

That’s supposed to be good news. Marriages do end, for all kinds of reasons, and not all of them are dramatic. The truth underlying the ritual is never sullied by human frailty. Thank God for that!

And people wonder why it took me eight years to propose.

So that’s marriage. But there’s a whole other part of today’s passage that we must not leave behind. What about the children?

Here is another moment where the upside-down kingdom is made manifest. We are to take instruction from God on how to be closer to each other. We are to take instruction from children on how to be closer to God.

It is not that a child is smarter than an adult, or more innocent, or more humble. We mustn’t romanticize children in the way that women are sometimes romanticized. As flattering as it can be, being put on a pedestal is actually dehumanizing, literally.

What I have discovered about children is that a child has no time for shame during the process of learning.

What do I mean by that? I taught Celtic harp for nine years. Teaching harp to adults was way more difficult than teaching harp to children. Adults, upon making a mistake, dropped into a funk – with varying degrees of intensity – and often gave up, convinced they’d never get it right. They would become embarrassed and constantly apologize for mistakes as though I would be angry at them for not knowing everything. As often as I tried to say, “Learning is not something to be ashamed of,” they would forget it instantly.

That never happened with children.

They made a mistake. They tried again. There was often impatience, but rarely despair. There were no value judgements made against themselves for taking time to learn.

When you are a child, you don’t have time for that kind of weight. You are learning 24 hours a day. You let it go and move on.

There is a tremendous beauty, courage, and prophetic spirit in that. Heck, that attitude is great for a marriage! That is what childlike humility really looks like: the ability to simply learn, without pride insisting that you stop before someone laughs at you for being “useless” or “stupid.”

Jesus embodied that humility constantly throughout his ministry.

It is so hard to let go. That weight is accumulated gram by gram, year by year, until it feels like an organic part of you. But it’s not.

It was not always so, my beloved.

What could we do without that weight – if we were really willing to learn without Adam’s fear of being seen naked?

I think without that weight, we could even stay married to God.

When you come to the altar today to receive your beloved, try to set that weight down. Don’t worry if you don’t leave all of it there on the first go – it takes time.

Take some instruction from our children and start slow. Maybe try leaving just a piece.

Exchange it for bread.