I saw a cartoon recently that features two churches directly across the street from each other. Both churches have signs out front presumably announcing the message for the upcoming Sunday. The sign at the church on the left-hand side says, “Sermon series: What God Has Said,” and beside it stands the lonely pastor, waiting for the people to arrive, shooting a menacing glance to the pastor at the church on the right who stands, by contrast, surrounded by a crowd of interested people who are trying to enter his church. His sign, over which he gloats with a face of smugness, reads, “Sermon series: What You Would Rather Hear.”
I
would imagine that’s how many of us feel about many Sundays, and don’t go
thinking preachers feel any differently than you do, as smug as we may
sometimes come across! On the one hand we’d like to think any of us would come
to worship or Bible study to learn what God has said, to explore the meanings
of Jesus’ teachings or the letters of the New Testament, but on the other hand
we know that hearing things that make us feel good or that help us ignore and
smooth over the more uncomfortable sides of our lives is a lot more easy to do.
This particular Sunday’s readings may take the
cake, though, and those who have been affected by divorce, or who have been
unfaithful to a spouse, may feel especially put on the spot. Indeed, those who
find themselves in an abusive marriage, for example, might, because of Jesus’
words, feel forced to choose between continuing in a harmful relationship or
seeking an end to the marriage, then re-marrying at the risk of being labelled
an adulterer. We’re not used to Jesus giving us no good options.
It
must be said: if you are feeling that any of these situations applies to you, take
heart that you are not alone today. You need to know that you are surrounded
here by people who no doubt have experienced divorce and infidelity and broken
relationships in some way, whether as a child, a sibling, a parent, a friend,
or another divorcee. And while the topic that Jesus is forced to address by the
religious authorities’ question may initially seem to single out certain ones
of us, the truth God has something to say to everyone this morning.
First
of all, the specifics of marriage contracts and divorce agreements were much
different in Jesus’ day, and that’s something to keep in mind. Marriages, in
first century Israel, were largely contracts arranged between families and were
used as a way to combine wealth and power between the families of the bride and
groom. It goes without saying that in these arrangements, the woman was treated
more or less as an object to be owned. She had few rights, as we would
understand them nowadays, and, in fact, was not often permitted to write a
letter of divorce to free herself from her husband if needed. Men would
regularly abuse their power in this scenario, writing letters of divorce for
their wives simply so they could take up another partner, and in many cases
they had already secretly done so. That’s really what Jesus is addressing here.
In
the law of Moses, Jesus reminds the Pharisees, God had certainly allowed for
the possibility of divorce. It was not an option for which anyone should strive
but the realities of sin would taint any aspect of the human experience, even
marriage, and there would be times when that sacred bond between a man and a
woman would need to be dissolved. However, the use of divorce as a cover for
infidelity was clearly a misuse.
But
besides all of that, there is a deeper level to Jesus’ words which were very groundbreaking,
although he was not saying anything totally new. In answering the religious
authorities’ self-serving question meant to trip him up, Jesus bypasses the
laws of Moses which speaks to the contractual and property aspects of the
marriage bond and hearkens instead all the way back to creation, and the
original nature of marriage. Jesus explains that in both creation stories that
Israel told, which are contained in Genesis, God places man and woman on equal
footing.
 |
| "The Creation of Eve" (Michaelangelo Buonorroti) |
In
fact, in one of those stories, when God looks at man, who is alone, God declares
that he needs to have an ‘ezer, which
is typically translated as a helper or a partner. There is nothing subservient
or secondary about the term ‘ezer, as
if the fact that woman is created second she must be just a variation on a
prototype. In fact, ‘ezer literally
means “one who corresponds to him” and is, in fact, the same word used for God
in several others places in the Old Testament. Created together as one
humankind, then, male and female complement and correspond to each other, and
marriage becomes the sacred union of the two, these two fleshly counterparts
becoming one flesh, creating an intimacy so profound that it can only be
described poetically or, better yet, lived.
Frederick
Niedner, a professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana, tells the story in a
recent article about a couple in a parish he served at the beginning of his
career, decades ago. By the time he arrived there, the couple had been married
nearly 70 years. They had wed in 1902 at the ages of 16 and 18 and had “eked
out a living, sometimes just barely,” he says, “on a small farm at the edge of
the city.” They never had children, they had no pension and very little
savings, so they continued to raise a few pigs to cover expenses into advanced
years. One day, Niedner says, the wife didn’t wake up. Having outlived all
their kinfolk and most of the few friends they’d made, only a scattering of
people attended the funeral a few days later. When the moment came for the
funeral director to close the open casket, Niedner writes, “the wiry little
husband, dressed in an old suit he may well have worn at his wedding, jumped
from his seat a few feet away and, before any of us could stop him, climbed
into the casket and lay there clinging to his beloved. ‘Just bury me with her,
please!’ he begged, over and over, between his sobs. In all the years since,”
Niedner goes on to say, “I may have done something more difficult than helping
to pull a weeping old man from his last embrace that day, but I don’t know what
it might have been.”[1]
“What God has joined
together, let no one separate,” Jesus says, as he shuts down the religious
authorities with their pesky questions. Certainly even the most wholesome
marriages are still influenced by sinfulness, but this union is something God
has blessed, and the joining together of two equal ‘ezers is something to be respected and revered, not manipulated for
personal gain or denigrated.
I’m
not sure the Pharisees got all of what Jesus was trying to say. I’m not sure
the disciples got much of it either, even after Jesus takes the time to explain
the issue of divorce to them in private. To be quite honest, I’m not sure any
of us ever really get it, even though we constantly come to God with our silly attempts
to clarify and define God’s love for humankind merely as a series of cases and
for-instances: Does God’s law apply here? And what about here? What would God
say about this? And while verbal
answers to our questions are fine now and then, while sermons about “what God
has said” and how he wants us to live are helpful up to a point, they end up
falling short of grace in the long run.
For
Christ did not come to earth primarily to answer people’s questions and solve
theological riddles about the law. In fact, Christ came not so much to say
something for God but to do something. Christ came not to explain and
illustrate God’s love for all people but to embody it. His kingdom is always
about grace, always including sinners and the insignificant in spite of
themselves. This is why is it so significant that in both gospels where this
prickly issue about divorce and marriage comes up, Jesus immediately follows
his answer by doing something that illustrates the powerful grace of God’s
kingdom.
People
(probably women) are bringing him small children (probably even ones that are
sick), which is the kind of nonsense that a theological riddle-solver and Bible
expert would never have time for. After all, children can’t understand the
finer points of the law, right? They haven’t experienced enough, haven’t
developed the life skills to know what’s good for them. Surely they don’t appreciate
just who this is that they are being brought to. Surely the don’t understand what
kind of gift, for example, is being offered at the communion rail even as they
stick their little hands out in trust. With their screaming and crying, their
weakness and recklessness, their diseases and disfigurements, they’re just
bound to get in the way.
That’s
when Jesus’ rebuke, “Let them come to me!
Do not stop them!” reminds us again, that Jesus brings a kingdom that
automatically seeks out the lost and little. If we must talk about not
separating something that God has joined together, then don’t separate Jesus
from the little children. It is to such as these that the kingdom of God
belongs. God has joined himself together with them. For, my sisters and
brothers, the kingdom isn’t intended for those who’ve figured out the key to
marriage, or who’ve managed a lawful divorce, and it’s not for those who know
exactly which rules and laws apply in every case. It doesn’t belong to those who
go to church for the “right” reasons, either, or preachers with their clever
signs and clever sermons. The kingdom, rather, is for those who look at the
cross and learn to trust a God who takes them in his arms and blesses them, no
matter what. It is for those who look at a dying Son of God and don’t even know
which clever question to ask because they’re so broken, as well as for those
who never seem to have their questions answered. The kingdom is for those who
look at the one who hangs there and see God who will jump right into the casket
along with us because he loves us and nothing, nothing, nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Now,
I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing what we want to hear, but my guess is
it’s what we need to.
Thanks
be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W.
Martin, Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment