As
you well know, I have had a lot of pretty big things going on in my life
lately, some more pleasant than others. But, now that my surgery is done and
was successful, and I have a few weeks off now to recover before the next steps
begin, I can turn my attention to something much more fun. That’s right: I have
wedding head! Michael and I will have engagement photos taken this week, we’ve
been looking at some possible venues, we have settled on a date – July 20th
in California and a couple weeks after that we’ll have a celebration here in
Rochester – and I’m getting excited to look at dresses, choose flowers, all
that fun stuff. How easy it is to get swept up in all of the excitement of
starting a new chapter, a new life with the one I love!
You
know, I can’t help but notice how frequently the lectionary, the set of
assigned texts for each week, aligns with whatever else happens to be going on
in life. So just as I’m preparing to put on my blushing bride hat and get down
to wedding planning, we’re faced with this difficult text with Jesus’ words on
marriage and divorce. Well, I’ll tell you one thing: it has definitely given me
a reason to do a lot of reading this week on the spiritual aspects of this marriage covenant that Michael and I
are going to enter in… 286 days (!).
And
we do consider it a spiritual covenant.
Marriage wasn’t always that, of course, and that is clear in the Pharisees’
challenge to Jesus in our Gospel reading. Aiming to test him, they ask him a
very legalistic question about marriage – because that’s largely how marriage
was understood in the first century. It was a legal engagement, a matter of
property transference. And honestly, it was a pretty unjust one, and Jesus’
first purpose is to point that out. Up to this point, the woman had been given
to the man as a piece of property, and according to what Moses had commanded, a
man could dismiss that woman for any reason ranging from infidelity to simply
not liking her cooking. One rabbinical source says that burning the man’s toast
could be reason enough for dismissal, or divorce. Boy, in that case, I’d be on
the street in a hurry! For the woman, of course, such a dismissal would be
devastating, because by then, she is damaged goods. She must endure familial
and public disgrace, potentially severe economic hardship, and limited future
prospects for her and her children. In short, in the case of a divorce, she
becomes among the very weakest members of society. Not such a good system – and
no wonder Jesus spoke against it! One could very easily and rightly interpret
this text as one about justice for the weak, which is confirmed by Jesus’
immediately following reference to children, another weak segment of society.
“Care for the weakest among you,” Jesus urges his followers in today’s Gospel!
While
this is a fine reading of this text, and an accepted one, to leave it at that
would miss an opportunity to really talk about this thing, divorce, that has
caused so much pain for so many people, including many of us here, who have
been hurt by an experience with divorce, whether our own, or our parents, or a
dear friend or family member. And it is not the legal aspect that is painful,
is it? Much more than who gets the house or even who gets custody over the
kids, the deep and lasting concern for us today is the spiritual and emotional
impact of the experience, the brokenness and perhaps shame we feel, the pain we
must endure.
Jesus
is also concerned about that spiritual brokenness. Notice how when the
Pharisees ask him their legalistic question, Jesus turns it into a spiritual
one, referring to the text from Genesis that we also heard this morning – the
one about the creation of Eve, and the subsequent partnership that ensued
between Adam and Eve. What is the reason God creates Eve? Is it so she can make
babies? Is it so she can burn Adam’s toast, or not? No, it is because it is not
good for the man to be alone. It is because Adam needed a helper, a partner in life.
And when God takes a part of Adam’s flesh to make the woman, Adam realizes that
this person is a part of him, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” They are
one flesh, one body that nothing can separate.
That
sounds a lot like our relationship with God, doesn’t it? See, that is what
happens in our baptism, when God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, brings us
into the dance of the Trinity, the relationship of the One-in-Three and
Three-in-One, and makes us a part of the one Body of Christ. In our baptism,
God makes a covenant with us, just as God has made covenants with God’s people
all throughout time. God makes a promise, a covenant, a vow, to be with us always, to the end of the earth, to
love us always, to forgive us always. God promises in our baptism to have and
hold us, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in
health. This is God’s promise.
So
the gift of the marriage covenant, in this way, is one deeply profound way for
us to experience in an earthly relationship the covenant that God has made with
us. In marriage, we make a promise to someone, to have them and hold them, for
better, for worse, in sickness and health, for richer for poorer, until death
parts us. And in making that promise to another, we have the chance to more
deeply understand what a Big Deal it is that God makes that promise to us!
Because while I am not yet able to speak from personal experience on this
matter, I’ve heard tell that for all the wonderful aspects of marriage, it can
also be really, super hard.
But God wants that sort of depth of
relationship for us. Covenant is God’s
intention for humanity. That is made very clear throughout the witness of the
Old Testament, starting with what we heard in Genesis a moment ago. “It is not
good for the man to be alone,” God observes, and so provides a companion, a
relationship, for that first man. That is what God wants for us: for us not to be alone, and for us to be in
relationship with one another.
Marriage
isn’t the only way to experience God’s desire for relationship and community,
of course. We may experience it in our families of origin, or with our own
spouses, children, nieces, or nephews. We may experience it through friendship.
We certainly experience it here in the church. As I said before, God assured us
of that in our baptism, and we experience it every time we come forward to this
table, like grains of wheat once scattered on a hill, now come together to
become one bread. Whatever way you look at it, our God is one who desires
community.
And
so our God is grieved when that community, or relationship, or covenant is
broken – when there is conflict in the church, when families refuse to speak,
when marriages fall apart. Just like God is grieved when our relationship with
God is broken. And we do have a history of breaking God’s covenant! You can
read all about that throughout the Old Testament, not to mention the entire
history of Christianity since that babe was born in Bethlehem. We fallen human
beings are not all that great at keeping covenants. Relationships are a great
gift, and marriage can be one of the greatest gifts of all, but they can also
be terribly hard to maintain. They can turn destructive, even dangerous.
Sometimes they do need to end, so that we can better nurture our relationship
with God and with God’s people. Covenants do get broken.
But
here’s the good news: even as we endure the pain that accompanies a broken
relationship, we can rest secure in knowing that even when our covenants fail, God’s
never does. When we fail at our vows, God’s
gracious vow to keep us in this holy family called the church will still stand,
will still hold us upright. And while breaking the covenant of marriage, or any
covenant, is not God’s intention for us, it is also not unforgivable. Despite whatever
brokenness we manage to participate in, God’s grace always manages to wiggle
its way into the cracks and work a new thing. Our sin, our shortcomings, our
propensity to see other’s faults before recognizing our own… none of that is
too big for our God, who promises us in our baptism, and every day since then,
and every time we come to this table, that we are beautiful, loved, and
forgiven children of God, and nothing can ever change that. Thanks be to God!
In
the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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