I mean, what the heck? First the story of Job and then we
have Jesus talking about divorce. Oh, and yeah… today is The Feast of St.
Francis and today we will be blessing pets. So… Did someone set out to trap
every preacher in the land today?
Well, I don’t know about that… maybe it’s just poor
planning. But we do know that when Jesus was doing his earthly ministry, there was
always somebody out to trap Jesus in his own words. It was as if they were just
waiting to say “a-ha! Gotcha!” as soon as he said something wrong. Well, they
might not have snagged Jesus, but they have certainly been catching preachers
in their net ever since.
Here were some of the traps they set for Jesus.
They asked Jesus about money: is it lawful for faithful Jews
to pay the occupying Roman government their taxes? And preachers have been
scratching their heads about money ever since.
They asked Jesus about eating or healing on the Sabbath, and
we preachers have been hung up on rules and ritual ever since.
And in today’s Gospel, we hear them ask Jesus about divorce.
“Is it lawful,” they ask? And event though they wanted to trap Jesus, it’s been
Christian preachers who’ve been falling into their bear trap ever since!
Here’s the rub: we think of this as a question about whether
one can get out of a marriage (or not). When in fact Jesus answered a very different
question: what is marriage—come to think of it, what are relationships—for?
Let me gently but firmly put aside some of the ways that
preachers and the Church have fallen into the marriage trap they set for Jesus…
and taken a lot of ordinary Christians with them down the sink hole.
First of all, there is no single, uniform teaching in the
Bible concerning the permissibility of divorce.
·
Moses
says that you can divorce a wife (Dt 24:1)
·
Paul
says that divorce is permitted in some instances – such as when an unbelieving
partner requests it (1 Cor 7:15).
·
In
Ezra 10:2-3, 44, the sign of a good husband is to divorce his foreign
(unbelieving) wife.
·
On
the other hand, Paul says that it is the sign of a good spouse not to
divorce his or her unbelieving mate (1 Cor 7:12-13).
·
Joseph,
a "righteous man," felt that it was his duty to divorce Mary when she
conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matt 1:19) until God told him in a vision not to.
·
And
yet, Jesus says that you can't separate what has become one (Mk 10:8-9)
For the better part of the church’s
life, we’ve tried to enforce the impossible by doing the ridiculous by turning the
ideal of marriage into a regulation. For a long time, we’ve attempted to
enforce the notion that every person was entitled to only one marriage per
person per lifetime. But when relationships broke down and divorce happened,
the Church found ways to accommodate that reality for the sake of the rule. And
so, some church’s invented annulment—the idea that there was some defect that
allowed us to say (sometimes contrary to all outward evidence) that that
apparent marriage was not really a marriage at all, which evades the question
of how to care for people when divorce happens.
It was all deeply painful and often humiliating. And that is
why the Episcopal Church got out of the annulment game over 50 years ago …
because we gradually came to the realization that marriage was made for people;
not people for marriage.
Second, like many Rabbis, it was common for Jesus’ to hold
out an impossible ideal to drive home a more important point: that God wants
something more for us … something found in our hearts not in a rulebook.
Remember when Jesus was asked about whether it was lawful
for Jews (or early Christians) to pay taxes to the Roman Empire? He changed the
question from mere taxes to the purpose of our wealth. When we render to God what is God’s, he is calling
us to live as if everything belongs to God.
When Jesus is asked about whether it is okay to eat or heal
on the Sabbath, Jesus says that the law is made for man; man is not made for
the law. He focuses on the purpose of the Sabbath as our participation in God’s
time not merely to give a part of one day to God every week.
And when Jesus is asked about divorce, he focuses on the
purposes of marriage and says what God makes is greater than what we humans can
make ourselves.
God wants something more for us. Marriages that were based
on family ties, honor and property—or in the case of Henry VIII the need for a
male heir—is not at the heart of God’s purpose for us. We cannot love God with our whole being or
our neighbors as ourselves if continue treat each other like property subject to
contract law.
We preachers (and the church as a whole) have time and again
fallen into the trap originally laid for Jesus. Sometimes (okay… lots of times!)
we get hung up on the question of “how do we get out of something” --how
do we get out of paying taxes; how do we get out of working or
healing; how do we get out of our relationships?—instead of seeking to
be faithful to God in all that we are, and do, as well as in all our
relationships.
If everything we have is from God, then use what we have for
God’s purpose.
If all our time and all our skill and talent is from God,
then strive to make all our time God’s time.
If our relationships reflect God and show off God’s presence
among us, then seek God’s face in the people God has given to us and pray for
the grace to be the face Christ to those who seek him.
When we see God blessing and transforming our relationships
in our homes, our friendships, and our communities, we see that God is building
something that no one on earth can put asunder.
When we remember that at the heart of the Good News is that when
covenants break… God meets us where we are in the person of Jesus, and through
his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, God forgives us and gives us the
tools and the power to start again.
That is why Jesus re-frames the question by bringing the
children into the equation at the end of the Gospel lesson.
We have a choice: we can try to figure out a spiritual rule
for every contingency and then come up with exceptions and contingencies when
things go wrong. (Like when Church acts as if an unhappy, even abusive or
violent, marriage was never really a marriage; or worse, blames the victim of
the abuse for not working harder!) Or, instead, we can recognize the truth often
people make covenants with the very best of intentions, but sometimes they
break down.
Just look at what God did in the face of the whole human
history of broken covenants: God keeps coming back, and eventually changes the
equation through Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection.
That’s why Jesus invites us to come to God as little
children. He invites us to come to God with openness, trust, playfulness, and
wonder. He invites us to come to God in Christ not knowing anything except that
we love and need love; that we nurture, and we need nurture. Christ invites us
knowing that we are limited and imperfect and has the faith in us that we can
learn, grow, and try new things.
Most of us were baptized as little children. And even if we
weren’t, when we came to Christ, we were helpless, we were new, we were
dependent. And while we have many skills and much history as adults, before God
we all need to come as people ready to learn, ready to discover, and ready to
play.
Preachers like me and Christians like all of us get trapped
when we try to turn God’s ideal into intricate (often goofy) human rules.
Ironically, the way that we reach Jesus’ impossible ideal is by having the
sense of wonder and awe that we see children bring. And accepting the
vulnerability that comes with growth, we enter into a way of being that is respectful
and truthful to one another. We are called to grow into mature, healthy
relationships, free from anxiety where we know and love ourselves and each
other just as we are.
Life can be messy, and the promises we make at one time in
our life can fall apart or sometimes land us in a heap of trouble. But we are
invited into something wonderful and new. It is often when are the most
vulnerable that we discover that God is always faithful. God never fails in his
promise to love us fully, and is with us always, even to the end of time.
+ + + + + + + + +
Bulletin for the Day is found here.
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