2-9-23 - Divorced From Reality?

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

Oh joy! Today we come to Jesus’ teaching on divorce. He doesn’t say you can’t – just that if you do, you’re committing adultery or causing someone else to: “But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

Great! In a nation where some 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, where many find themselves with more mature, even godly relationships in a second marriage, what do we say to this? “Get with the times, Jesus?” Do we ignore this teaching, which goes beyond even the stringent codes of the Mosaic law? Does that undermine Jesus’ authority for us?

Jesus was telling his would-be disciples that following him would mean faithfulness. And guess what? Even though they walked and talked with him for three years, they weren’t always so faithful. They may have stayed true to their marriages, but not always to him or to each other. It doesn’t mean the standard wasn’t there – it means that they failed, and Jesus did not reject them. I don’t believe he rejects us when we fail, either.

Yes – this standard for marriage matters; anyone who’s been through the pain of a broken relationship will tell you that. But it cannot be isolated from all the other areas of sin and pain and failure we endure and inflict, all of which we are invited to bring before the loving, judging eye of the God who made and redeemed us.

So then, is divorce sinful or is it forgiveable? Yes. I don’t think there is an absolute answer – choose the first, and you end up condemning someone who has suffered deeply, either because they have divorced, or because they haven’t. Sin is sin and humans are humans. And God is bigger and more powerful than all of it.

And that might be the point of this whole teaching, as Jesus makes the standards of sinfulness so broad no one can wiggle out. If we are as liable for what we think and feel as what we do, we all have to admit we stand in need of redemption. The man whose teaching here seems so harsh is the same man who reminded a crowd about to execute an adulterous woman that they should feel free to cast stones only if they themselves are without sin. Who among us could in good conscience pick up a stone?

When have we been affected or hurt by the dissolution of a marriage? Perhaps the wound is still fresh, even many years later – divorce has that kind of power to hurt and keep hurting. We cannot give ourselves to another with all the hopefulness that marriage entails and remain unscathed when that hope dies, even if new life arises from those ashes. So pray for the people involved. Pray for the grace to forgive if you need to. Imagine each person blessed by God.

And ask how you can support marriages you know to be difficult or shaky. Marriage is a joy and a burden meant to be carried in community. When a marriage fails, so has the community. In that sense, even people who are single are involved in the enterprise of marriage. Divorce signals a failure of love. We can help fill that gap, to pour our love into the void, bring healing and wholeness, in concert with the God whose love goes beyond death into life.

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9-29-21 - Law/Grace

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Want to see people get legalistic in a hurry? Bring up a “life-style” issue. It even happened around Jesus. In his remarks on marriage, divorce and adultery, he seems to emphasize the Law more strenuously than with many of his teachings. He says that Torah, the Law of Moses, provided for men to divorce their wives, but implies that this “out” was given only because of they were so incapable of love. Talking to his disciples in private, offers no such wiggle room. To which we might reply, “Yeah, well, he wasn’t married, was he?”

Nope, we don’t get to play that card. Jesus knew the human condition well enough, and no doubt had enough married friends to understand how challenging it is for two people to put their lives together for a lifetime. Yet he offers little grace in his teaching on divorce, he who was so forgiving of people who squandered their gifts in loose living, and even those who hoarded wealth and cheated others.

This is one reason it’s never a good idea to “proof text,” to find one passage of scripture to back up a position. Chances are another passage will contradict it or provide a broader context in which multiple interpretations can thrive. I think there’s a reason Jesus said these things to his disciples in private rather than to the general public – perhaps he was holding up for those who were leaders in his movement an ideal standard which he knew people less committed to God-Life might not manage.

That’s a big, wild guess, of course, if a comforting notion. I don’t know why Jesus said these things, and why he didn’t say them publicly. What I do know is that the Law is God-given – and can crush the life out of us if misused. The Law (at least in abstract) is God’s pure gift, given to impure human vessels who cannot live it fully. This puts us in rather a bind, as Paul wrote about so movingly in Romans 7 (read chapters 4-8...)

Realizing we cannot meet the demands of God's Law can inspire different responses:

• We can give up, and toss it out altogether, living by our own instincts and reason.
• We can bear down harder, trying to legislate and control what the heart doesn’t seem capable of doing willingly.
• We can carry its standards in tension with the forgiveness of the loving and merciful God we’ve been taught to worship, and invite the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to help us live into it. 

Gee, which one do you think I favor?

• Lawlessness leads to highly subjective ethics, and often to licentiousness and heartache.
• Legalism distorts God’s gift and focuses us on penalties, and then we lose sight of the Spirit and often find ourselves trying to control other people’s behavior more than our own.
• Living in the light of God’s amazing grace leads us to freedom, fostering an environment of love and forgiveness in which people can find themselves, find God, and move toward wholeness. It is only in relationship with God that we are enabled to live the Law as God intended. 

If the Law of the Lord is to revive the soul, as the Psalmist wrote, it must be leavened with Grace, described here by a modern-day writer of psalms. Where will you pitch your tent?

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9-28-21 - Putting the Holy In Matrimony

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

When Jesus is asked whether or not divorce is permissible for the faithful, he goes to the Scriptures, quoting Genesis: “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh."

Sounds simple enough. It’s the ideal of what marriage is. Much more than a change of life status and condition, marriage in the Judeo-Christian view is the creation of a new person, if you will, an entity crafted from the union of the two partners entering into this covenant. It’s a beautiful ideal, and maddeningly difficult to live into, especially in a culture that understands marriage as the consummation of romantic love. And to the question of whether only two people with different genders can become “one flesh,” the bible is silent, as it is on abortion, medical ethics, labor laws, and so many other issues that vex us today.

What Jesus is not silent on is the sanctity of the union once made. He answers the Pharisees in a fairly general way – “…Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” But Mark tells us that in private he has a different answer for his disciples: Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

Harsh words. I wonder why Jesus didn’t define it so starkly in public – did he know it might drive people away, as it once did a parishioner of mine when this passage was read in church? And why does this statement allow no room for situations like abuse, infidelity or neglect that might warrant dissolving a marriage? And what do we make of our times, in which so many marriages suffer estrangement, unfaithfulness and often break down completely?

In the Episcopal wedding liturgy, the congregation is asked, after the two parties have declared their intent, whether they will do all in their power to support these two persons in their life in Christ. This is where we have a chance to enhance the “holy” in matrimony. Whether or not we are present when a couple made their vows, we can pray for them, talk with them, tangibly support their ongoing emotional and spiritual connection. And we can counter the cultural messages about marriage with the Christian narrative – that God has made a new creation out of two distinct persons in order that they reveal Love in the world. That new creation is fragile and vulnerable – it needs nurturing and protecting.

It is not up to each couple to save their marriage – it is up to their community to support and to love them, even when they fail to stay together. If we want to see marriage upheld as holy, let’s pray and support the couples we know, for the holy comes from God, through God's people.

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9-27-21 - Culture Wars

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

We land smack dab in the middle of it this week: marriage and children. Jesus weighs in, not on marriage equality, which was not an issue in his day, but on divorce, a topic on which many “family values” warriors are silent, perhaps because divorce is so prevalent in our times, even among Christian evangelicals.

Why is he commenting on this topic at all? Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.”

Jesus did not bring this subject up on his own. His focus was always on how we might better understand God’s love and activity in our world, and how we are to treat the poor, the infirm, the elderly, the young, the alien, and those with whom we have conflict. Jesus seems little interested in laying down the law on marriage or any of the topics that claim so much time and energy in American Christianity.

But here come the Pharisees, trying to bait him again, this time on whether or not divorce is permissible. Jesus is, as always, cagey in his response. Rather than answer the question he points them back to the Law of Moses, “What did Moses command you?” They answer that the Law allows a man to divorce his wife. And Jesus replies that this “out” is provided to allow for “hardness of heart,” not because it is godly. (More tomorrow on what else he says …)

My question is: what does this have to do with the Good News? What does this have to do with “the kingdom of God has come among you,” “The Word became flesh and dwelt among you full of grace and truth?” It was then, and is now, a distraction from the fullness of Jesus’ message. Yes, how we live, and the honor with which we do and do not regard the people in our lives is definitely connected to that Good News of wholeness restored. Yet human behavior is not where we are to focus. When we do, we stop looking at Jesus and proclaiming him as Lord.

I try hard not to get too drawn into “culture war” debates. They so massively distort what the Christian enterprise is and is meant to be. They obscure the power of love and healing with which the Church has been entrusted, and trumpet legalism instead of love, law to the detriment of grace. All of revelation is important, but when the debate about these matters drowns out the Great Commandment to love God with heart, soul and mind – and your neighbor as yourself – we have a problem. As we agreed at bible study last week, morality without love is self-righteousness.

One of the religious organizations I follow has as its tagline: “Love your neighbor. No exceptions.” When somebody asks what you think about marriage, sexuality, or any other social issue of the day, you might just “pull a Jesus” and ask in return: How can we best love our neighbor on this question? I guarantee it’ll change the quality of the conversation and invite Jesus smack dab into the middle of it.

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