Sermons are meant to be heard, listen here!
So, we just heard Jesus talking to the Pharisees and his disciples about divorce. Or maybe marriage. And...well...it's pretty hard to preach a sermon that will speak good news to every single person here when marriage and divorce become the focus of what I say It becomes especially hard to preach when I and others in this room can't get married and so aren't legally allowed to experience what Jesus is saying. It is hard to preach when there are people who have heard this text and stayed in abusive relationships for fear of going to hell. It's hard to preach this when there are broken marriages which have, at least tangentially, affected everyone here. I don't particularly want to preach about the beauty of marriage, when people are content with being single, for fear of alienating them. And then there are people who are in happy and beautiful marriages that might just tune out since this doesn't apply to them. In fact, this story about divorce and marriage has taken on such a life of its own that we might forget what marriage really was back in Jesus' time.
First Century marriage was not about white dresses and flower girls and the love of your life and 'happily ever after'. That came to us much later, through the likes of Leave it to Beaver and the Disney corporation. Marriage in first century Palestine was pretty much just a legal contract, in which the families of the two people being married gained the most benefit. It was helpful to marry off your children to avoid enemies, and to have a bunch of people to be at your back when enemies did come knocking. And then the worst part, after the marriage, the guy owned the woman...like I own a printer.
And my printer...I love it...but if it ever stopped spewing out warm pages full of toner, I'd have to get rid of it. Marriage was that way as well, one school of rabbinic thought stated that a man could divorce his wife if she so much as burnt the toast for breakfast. Imagine the state of the world if that was the norm...I'd imagine there would be very few people still married.
After this burnt toast fiasco, the husband would simply dismiss the wife and she'd be out on the streets. Alone. With absolutely no legal protection or The Gathering Place or Dolores Project to help her find some dignity and a new life. Divorced women in the first century were sort of like first century children...they were often unwanted, and generally subjected to isolation and vulnerability because of their status.
After hundreds of years of the church telling us what relationships should and shouldn't look like, and making judgements about the state of relationships, we've begun to read Jesus' words a bit differently. We forget that Jesus is almost exclusively concerned with the wellbeing of the outcast in the gospel of Mark.
It's clear to me that this is a morality story, but not in the way we like to think about it. The morals being shown might not be about marriage...maybe they're about looking out for marginalized people...and women and children happen to be primary object lessons for the pharisees.
So, let's harken back to Genesis for just a minute. Again, this sermon has been preached to hurt people, especially those who identify as LGBTQ since 'obviously' God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. It's easy to want to focus on gender...because it ignores some pretty disturbing things that might not be that easy to talk about. The most disturbing of which is that God somehow divinely rufies Adam and cracks out his rib one night. For a loving God, that's pretty violent, and I'd imagine Adam was in a lot of pain the next day, considering God had not yet created Vicoden.
And the Truth about this story is that God cares so much about us. God cares that we have connection in life. It took a lot of work on God's part to find the right connection, because Adam kept not being interested in porcupines, sea lions, or those fainting goats. But God kept trying because God knew that Adam needed a connection, a way to see and experience and love God through something else. So God finally created a creature that was part of Adam.
Adam and Eve...or whoever they really were...were connected to one another through their very being. And connected to God through each other. And it was good.
So back to Jesus. Jesus understood how important connection was. And how relationships were not only legally protective, but protected the fragile emotions that live within each of us, and that those emotions are often dependent on other people. Jesus got it when he read Genesis, people were literally made from and for each other.
We are people made for connection, for relationship with others. And Gods will for us is connection, God's will for us is relationship, be that romantic or platonic. Yet we do a pretty good job of screwing that up. We live in a culture obsessed with disposability and individualism. And we are a people who abuse ourselves and others because we try to jump out of our role as creature and into the role of creator, which doesn't work for us. You see, when we're busy disposing of relationships or running along in our own world with disregard for others, we don't recognize that we are all created by God, and that God sees us as good, and valuable, and relational.
Thinking that church should be a club instead of a place where all people are welcome and valued as part of a community. Climbing the corporate ladder to get more, to be higher, and ultimately, to reach the top of the Norman Rockwell version of the American dream without thinking of those we leave in the dust. Being self righteous as an activist while alienating others who might have different opinions about issues. These things are pretty commonplace, and pretty far from God's will for creatures that were pulled from the ribs of each other.
The hurt we cause at the expense of others, and at the expense of ourselves and our relationships puts people in the same state as first century divorced women, and outcast children...vulnerable, scared, feeling isolated. And so Jesus calls us to remember that the kingdom of God is countercultural to his society, as well as ours. Certainly the alienation people feel looks different...and the same...as when Jesus talked about broken relationships, but God's will for people has not changed. God lamented for broken relationships and children, and God laments for us when we find ourselves thrown out due to someone else's refusal to see our sameness to them as created and good....AND God laments for those people that we throw out on the curb because we think that their God given goodness is threatening ours.
Jesus word's to the Pharisees and to us point to the goodness of God, who created all things good, and has a deep commitment for the created order. Jesus' words point us to the truth that God is invested in our commitment to each other. Jesus' words point us to a new way of living, one that is deeply concerned for our neighbor and one that recognizes that we too are neighbors of someone...we too are in need of concern, and of love.
So maybe...instead of a lesson that is cut and dried about marriage, Jesus is calling us to a way of discipleship, a way of seeing the world differently, and a way of interacting with people differently. We aren't perfect. We hurt people...deeply...when we break our relationships with them. We get hurt by those same people when they fracture relationships. Walking through life is so often about avoiding the broken glass shards left by our shattered relationships with others. And Jesus is telling us that God wants more from us. God wants us to see others as humans, created from the same flesh as us, from the same bones. God wants more from us about relationships.
Because God wants more FOR us. God's will for us is wholeness in our relationships, our friendships, our aquaintences, because we exist as children of God, all created perfect, all created good. God wants more for us so badly that God's own kid, Jesus, came to restore our relationship with God and with one another. God wants more for us, because the kingdom of God is full of beautiful, healthy, good connections, and we are the beginnings of that.
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