Looking at the scriptures I would need to craft a sermon around, I became discomfitted to a fairly significant degree. Compared to my previous outing back in 2013 which had involved the Beatitudes ("Blessed are the meek" etc), the tenth chapter of Mark made for some tough sledding, I tell you:
10 Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”3 “What did Moses command you?” he replied.4 They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”5 “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. 6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’[a]7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,[b] 8 and the two will become one flesh.’[c] So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this.11 He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
The chapter goes on to talk about the very popular and crowd pleasing "Let the children come to me" anecdote, but coming as it does after such stern-sounding pronouncements from Jesus, it almost feels tacked on; a spiritual sorbet to cleanse one's palate:
13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.
2 On another day the angels[a] came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”3 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”4 “Skin for skin!” Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life. 5 But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
6 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life.”7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. 8 Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.
9 His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”10 He replied, “You are talking like a foolish[b] woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. "
I can't even describe how gratifying their response was; the moment I finished, both ladies let out a simultaneous "oo" that made me think I might be on the right track after all. They both agreed we should use it, as it brought a bit of whimsy to the proceedings, without diminishing the debilitating effects of both love and its absence.
Still, the Lord hates a coward, or at least, so I have heard, so I sidled up and took my best shot at it.
(If you would rather read the sermon than listen (and I flatter myself with the very notion you might be interested in either),
Overall, it went really well; no one fell asleep that I could see, there were lots of thoughtful nods, a few chuckles in the right places, a tear or two, and, I am reliably informed, a simply massive rolling of the eyes from my wife when I mentioned the Kobayashi Maru from Wrath of Khan.
Gaining confidence and momentum as I neared the end, I finished feeling I had conveyed the message Val and Linda and I had agreed on, but the real test would come afterwards. Would I be thanked perfunctorily by people on their way home to write angry letters to... well, I don't know who actually. Would those people more steeped in scriptural knowledge than myself simply shake their heads of lament how close I got while still missing the target. Worst of all, would those in the congregation who I knew had gone through marital breakdowns feel hurt or judged?
Thankfully, all the faces we saw in the receiving line after church were happy ones. Many people thanked Val and Linda and I for the cohesiveness of the service, something we amateurs can find hard to pull off. Some made a point of thanking us for addressing the more difficult of the two readings, as it hadn't always played out that way in their experience. Others thanked us for the research we did, and for taking the time to bring context to a passage that they found trying, or fraught with personal judgement.
Rev. Mervin's wife shook my hand with a wide grin, having heard her fair share of sermons on that text over the years, and saying we had done a great job. Some of my friends in the congregation shook my hand while laughing at the impertinence (maybe even chutzpah) of a comic book being quoted in church, and at my oblique Star Trek reference, and once again it was suggested that perhaps I had missed my calling, probably the highest praise I can think of.
I found myself wondering what Rev. James and Rev. Mervin would think of it, if they got a chance to listen to it, or what reaction it might have prompted from our late friend Roger, a divorced and remarried minister. In the end, I was satisfied that the spiritual and emotional needs of those who had heard the message had been met, and the family and I soon had to leave church to attend the Pro Coro concert that Fenya and Cantilon were performing at that afternoon.
That evening, a former church board chair called to say he was sorry he had missed me, and wanted to thank me for making him laugh and think that morning, and how he had almost started applauding the way one might after a drum solo when I wrapped up my 'rebuking disciple' monologue in the midst of my sermon. I told him the truth, that I was lucky have such strong and supportive colleagues in Lay-Led Worship, and that you can accomplish great things when you are on a Dream Team.
"You're on two," he reminded me. "Your family is another great team, and I hope you know how proud they are of you."
"I do," I confessed.
"Well, except for the Kobayashi Maru bit," he added. "I thought Audrey's eyes were going to get stuck up in her forehead, she rolled them so hard."
Most meaningful of all though, was an email I got from someone that I had I emailed the text of my sermon to, after they told me they had difficulty hearing it (probably due to the speed of my nervous delivery!).
As a divorced person, I can’t express to you how meaningful I found your interpretation of Mark’s passage to be.My spouse and I separated in [the mid-nineties], after 20 years together. They passed away [a few years ago], and until then I lived with a sense of failure – and guilt for not being able to make it work.I have also felt embarrassed, and even now prefer to say that I am widowed rather than admit to failing in my marriage relationship. This has been fed somewhat by the literal interpretation of the Bible, and I assure you that I am not a literalist at all, but it still has an impact on how one sees oneself.Your thoughtful and extremely well-designed reflection was very much appreciated.Perhaps you have missed your calling???I attended a workshop this past weekend and the facilitator said that he did not see himself as the originator of his stories, but rather as a conduit for them, and this email made me realize the truth of his words. There is nothing I could have come up with on my own that could have affected this person as much as the sermon I was able to wrangle out (with able assistance from my teammates!) from a thorny patch of the New Testament, despite how onerous I found the task to be at the onset.
I am grateful for the opportunity, and also for the great instruction Rev. James gave us when we started the Lay-Led Ministry program.
How humbling to be able to impact people in such a fashion!
What’s Law Got To Do With It?
A
Reflection by Stephen Fitzpatrick
Did anyone else hear today’s reading from Mark about divorce
and get a little apprehensive?
I know I did!
It is a challenging piece to be sure, so my initial instinct
was to centre my reflection around Job’s story instead, but to be honest, that
felt a little cowardly. Scripture like
what we heard from Mark is open to all kinds of misinterpretation and even the
potential for misuse, and the three of us felt it needed to be addressed. It
was gratifying though, as I did my research, to discover that even highly
trained professional theological types are intimidated by trying to sermonize
on the tenth chapter of Mark! And where the professionals hesitate, the amateur
will proceed with an abundance of caution!
When I read Jesus’s words that someone who divorces and
remarries has effectively committed adultery, I feel like it affects me
personally. I’ve only been married the one time myself, but there are people in
my life that I care deeply for who have become divorced, some of whom I felt
were fortunate to have remarried. Given the somewhat depressing statistics we
read about divorce rates these days, I am sure most of us can say the same.
Were we wrong to be glad for these people when they found someone new to
re-commit to? Were we implicitly endorsing adultery?!
And some of the things Jesus is saying about marriage here,
isn’t this the same stuff being quoted by Christians who are opposed to same
sex marriage? What happened to
inclusivity and tolerance?
Did I wander into the wrong church by mistake?
Relax, everyone; you are in the right place!
Make no mistake though: it is not that long ago that some
people would use that part of Mark chapter 10 to justify making divorced people
feel unwelcome in places of worship.
But as we grow and mature as a society, so too does our
understanding of this ancient wisdom become more refined and nuanced. We approach Mark’s story asking “What does
God want of us?”
Interestingly enough, this is not what the Pharisees were
looking for when they opened the conversation with Jesus by asking, “Is it
lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” The Pharisees here are not honestly
seeking knowledge or insight from a revered teacher, they are members of what today
we would probably call a political party trying to get Jesus to say something
incriminating. They tried before, asking if it was lawful to give tribute to
Caesar, which is what Mark means by saying they ‘tested him’. This was not a television quiz show or a game
of Trivial Pursuit, and it makes this story as much about politics as it is about morality, if not more.
Displaying his brilliant command of rhetorical judo again,
Jesus flips the inquiry on its head by responding with his own question, asking
them what Moses said on the topic. When they say that ‘Moses permitted a man to
write a divorce certificate and send her away’ (which we can verify by looking
it up in Deuteronomy), you might think that settled the question, but there is
more at play here than is immediately apparent.
There were small-l liberals and small-c conservatives in
Jesus’ time, just as there is in ours, and like us, they have differing ideas
about most things, from how to apply the law, to interpreting scripture, to how
best to live moral lives. On the topic of divorce, these people living in the
first century were just as conflicted as we are today, with most people falling
into one of two camps: one school of thought allowed divorce for just about any
reason, but another believed in denying divorce for any reason except adultery.
The Pharisees were hoping that by pushing Jesus to take a side for or against
divorce as it was currently practiced in Judea, he would alienate one side or
the other, and reduce his growing popularity. Their question was designed as a
no-win scenario, what the Star Trek fans among us might call a ‘Kobayashi Maru’.
Jesus gets the Pharisees to quote Deuteronomy and answer
their own question, then steps up and answers the unasked one: why? If marriage
was created by God to make two people one, who are we as mere mortals to undo
this divine plan?
“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you
this law” Jesus says, admonishingly. Deuteronomy declares that a man may
divorce his wife and send her away if she becomes displeasing to him, if he should find something indecent about her.
They don’t go into any sort of examples or details (thankfully!), but I think
this illustrates the limited choices of women in times past, particularly the
times of the Old Testament. Remember, none of these people would be individuals
marrying for love, but representatives of families binding together for
increased security and prosperity.
Moses recognized, as Jesus recognizes, human frailty, and
the fact that two people who have entered into a lifetime commitment, for
whatever reasons, may find a time when it is simply better for all involved if
they are no longer together. Jesus describes a divine ideal wherein two people
are brought together to make one – perhaps a child, perhaps community – but
humans are not always able to measure up to divine ideals, and so the provision
for divorce is made.
After the Pharisees have gone, Jesus’ own disciples
challenge him further on this, some translations replacing the neutral word
‘ask’ with the more adversarial ‘interrogate’. He responds by explaining that a man who
divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And
likewise if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man. Is Jesus
saying that divorced people should never, ever remarry?
Some people might think so, but I don’t happen to.
There are probably as many ways to interpret this piece of
scripture as there are people interpreting it, one perspective being that Jesus
is not speaking against someone who divorces and remarries, but someone who
gets divorced to remarry. This is
likely the ‘hardness of the heart’ Jesus is referring to; not some kind of
arterio sclerosis, but a calcification of affection and a lack of adherence to
solemn vows. To Jesus, this sort of spousal
‘trading-up’ was the same as
adultery.
It’s also interesting that Jesus explicitly mentions a woman
divorcing her husband, which was not permitted under Jewish law, but was allowed under Roman law, which
suggests to me there is more than just legal interpretation at play here. Jesus
is tackling the larger picture, the ‘what’s it all about?’
When it comes to God’s law, it is not like Hebrew law or
Roman law so much as it is a law like gravity;
an inexorable pull that we can resist, but might not find very easy.
So Jesus is not contradicting Moses, and he is not
explicitly opposed to divorce, but it is clear he finds it disagreeable. And why shouldn’t he? Anytime that a
relationship ends that both parties had earnestly hoped would last a lifetime,
there will be hurt and dismay and bad feelings all around. And not just for the participants either, but
to children, parents, extended families and friends.
When I told my mother about the terrible situation
surrounding a friend’s divorce, she clucked her tongue and said, “It’s a sin.”
Not in the sense that my friend or his spouse had done
something fundamentally wrong in agreeing to end their marriage, or that they
would now have something to atone for, but a sin in that a transgressive event
was now going to occur, and people were going to be hurt, and left broken as a result.
Jesus takes the challenge of the Pharisees and turns it on
its head, making the discussion about human shortcomings, and reminding us that
regardless of our individual wants and needs, it is important to always look to
God’s plan for us.
Similarly, Job reminds us to have patience and faith in God,
regardless of our tribulations.
Can you imagine? A man sitting in a trash heap on the
outside of town, surrounded by ashes and using a piece of broken pottery to
scrape boils and fluid away from his body, and when his own wife suggests he
would be better off dead, he says, in essence, “What are you talking about? You
gotta take the bad with the good, y’know?” Such conviction! It doesn’t necessarily work in Hebrew, but
the Yiddish word chutzpah seems especially
appropriate here.
God calls us together to become whole, some of us through
community, some of us through committed lifelong relationships. Jesus reaches
out to the broken, the marginalized, and the vulnerable, to bring them into
wholeness as well. After his admonitions
against adultery do you think what happens next in Mark’s story is just a
coincidence?
Parents have brought their children to temple for Jesus to
bless by the laying on of hands, as would often be the case for a prominent and
respected teacher, or rabbi, as he was.
The disciples try to prevent this, rebuking the parents;
that is to say, ‘expressing a sharp disapproval or criticism’. There is no
transcript, obviously, but we’ve all experienced a good, solid, rebuking at
some point or another, haven’t we? It
isn’t too hard to picture how things went down, is it?
“Hey, hey, hey, get down from there you kids! Where are your
folks? Look, mom and dad, the rabbi is a busy man, he doesn’t have time to
bless your children right now, he has bigger fish to fry! Why, just this minute
Jesus got finished telling the Pharisees what’s what about people getting
divorced, and it’s pretty important that all of us disciples understand his interpretation
of the word of Moses so that we are all on the same page and-
“Who is interrupting me? I am trying to explain to the moms
and dads here that Jesus is just too busy to…oh sorry Jesus, I didn’t know you
were right there…Great! You can tell them yourself how busy you-
“What? Let them through?
“Like…now?”
“But I thought you were still going over the thing with…
“Sure, okay, no problem! I love kids, myself! Children are
the future, right? Come on through folks, sorry about the rebuking…”
Mark makes a point of mentioning that Jesus is displeased
with the actions of his followers; he demands
they let the children approach, and finds yet another opportunity to impart a lesson, telling them (and us) that
“anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never
enter it.”
In my ears, I hear Jesus reminding us that God is not a
referee, God is not a rules arbitration committee, God is a loving parent who
wants the best for all of us. We need to
approach God with openness and love and trust, embracing our vulnerability and
human frailty, the way the children do. This is the only way we will experience
the wholeness and rightness of being that God intends for us.
In a lot of ways, Jesus is the poster child for being
misunderstood by his peers, and as his followers two millennia down the line,
we often struggle to understand his meaning as well. By focusing on
interpretations of law regarding whom is permitted to remarry who, we can miss
the important lesson here: that a lifelong commitment before God between two
people must be treated with respect, and not discarded for casual reasons.
Britney Spears, I am looking at you and your 55 hour ‘marriage’, here.
What does God want for His children? He wants us to be happy
and whole, helping others and living lives of peace. And who is often the
greatest obstacle to this? Ourselves.
In his teachings, Jesus recognizes our humanity and our
imperfections, our stubbornness and hard-heartedness, and forgives us for them,
even when we have difficulty forgiving ourselves.
Friends, there is a grim humour to the fact that half of all
marriages end in divorce, the other half in death. It is bad when a marriage ends; like my mum
says, it’s a sin. But as followers of
Jesus, it is our job to help those so broken, or those struggling with their
commitment, to find their way to wholeness and happiness again, with God’s
help. And, to me, this is what being an
inclusive, affirming, and welcoming faith community is all about.
Amen.
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