SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND NATHAN A. RUGH, CURATE
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
THE EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
8 OCTOBER 2006

 

 

 

 

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus 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. 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. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." --Mark 10:2-9

 

 

 

 

Well, after a gospel reading like that I imagine some ears are perked. The question you might have for yourself is ­ how is the curate going to wiggle of this hook? The reason why this is an issue of wiggling is because we are a very confused culture and church on the topics of sexuality and marriage. We stand at a point in history where the old models are being called into question, often for very good reasons, and therefore the old answers just do not work for many of us anymore. The reality is that the world has left those old answers by the wayside because too much has changed in other areas.

 

 

In trying to write this sermon, I wrote two other sermons, where I waded into that confusion and got lost. If you would care for it, I will give you my ethics of marriage and human sexuality another day. I was dwelling on the topic of what is the end or the purpose of marriage and not on the topic that this Gospel reading is particularly concerned with and that is the topic of discipleship. This reading is all about marriage and its qualities, but especially in so far as it finds meaning in the context of our living out our lives in relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

 

 

Let's turn to the text to see what I mean. While in real estate location is everything, in Biblical exegesis and interpretation, context is everything. In today's reading, Jesus is marching toward Jerusalem. He has predicted his death and resurrection twice and with those predictions he has pointed toward how his disciples are to live in response to his upcoming crucifixion. Jesus has told his disciples that to be followers of his, they too must take up their cross and that they must be servants willing to empty themselves rather than masters and lords. Starting here in the tenth chapter we get to see how that life gets played out in the world.

 

 

We come then to this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. It is a fine example of rabbinic debate. By way of their question, there is reason to believe that the Pharisees had already heard of Jesus' teaching on the topic of marriage and divorce, though this is the first time the topic comes up in the narrative. And so having heard Jesus' teaching, they want to question its validity. In rabbinic style, Jesus responds to their question with a question ­ "What did Moses command you?" Here Jesus is getting the Pharisees to straightaway put their counter-argument to him on the table. The Pharisees bring up that Moses allowed husbands to present their wives with a writ to secure a divorce. Jesus fires back that Moses only did that because he knew people were pigheaded and hard hearted and that on this topic we should really be looking at God's will. God made the two one flesh, just as we saw in the reading from Genesis 2, so no one should split them. That's where the lectionary ends the reading.

 

 

But you can tell that the lectionary is trying to give preachers and congregations a break because it ends the reading prematurely. But as I am a glutton for punishment, I will fill in the blank. This scene ends and in the next verse we find the disciples asking about this teaching and Jesus says, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." That conversation shifts its focus to the disciples learning means that we who are also Christ's disciples must listen.

 

 

Now, as I was saying in Biblical interpretation context is everything. And Jesus was speaking to a world that had a definite cultural structure to marriage. In those days, in Roman, Greek, and Jewish societies marriage was a patriarchal institution. A woman's identity was wrapped up with the identity of her husband or her father. Without one of those two men, she was extremely vulnerable both economically and physically. In that cultural context women often needed the protection that marriage granted them. As a result we need to hear the teaching of Jesus on this issue as a condemnation of a practice of the abandonment of women in a society that was hostile to single women.

 

 

Let's also pay attention to how Jesus is using Scripture. The common argument about marriage and divorce looked to the first chapter of Genesis, where the command was to be fruitful and multiply, rather than to the second chapter we read today. As such divorce was often sanctioned, because children were not conceived and born. Jesus rejects this utilitarian approach to marriage, by elevating what is called the "unitive" dimension of marriage (where the two become one flesh) over the procreative dimension. It seems that Jesus conceives of marriage and human sexuality as primarily being for the joining of individuals into a new shared identity and only secondarily for procreation. What's more Jesus is seeing the partners as equal, and moreover the same, sharing a single identity.

 

That was their context, ours is markedly different. Women no longer need a spouse in the same way they did in the first century. And while sexism is still rampant, in our culture women are making dramatic economic strides. Women simply do not need men in the same way. Furthermore, in this post-industrial society of ours, the prioritizing of the unitive in marriage and sex over the procreative does not strike us as radical in the least. It seems to me that as a culture, we are overwhelmingly giddy with the notion that doing you-know-what does not have to result in you-know-who.

 

 

And these are some of the reasons why Jesus teaching might seems so strange to us today. It is almost like receiving a note from the past on how to milk a cow. We simply do not need to know how to do that anymore, because we buy our milk from the store.

 

 

And yet, for some, these words might not seem so irrelevant after all. For some of you it might seem like a beloved teacher has called you out to air your deep wounds and hurt in front of the entire class. Often in the ecclesial setting, those have been divorced are meant to feel particularly naughty when held up in comparison to the not divorced. All I have to say is that I wish pride was viewed as the most damning of sins, the Christian community would be far better for it. Just because I have not been divorced, does not give me the license to look down my nose at those who have. As I am not free of sin, I dare not throw stones. And, more importantly, as with any bit of our lives that we experience as broken, Jesus asks us to come near, not as a judge to condemn us, but rather as a healer to restore us to wholeness.

 

 

So, while this word from Jesus seems strange to us today, this teaching is not irrelevant, because we stand in an era where marriage and human sexuality stand under such question marks, and therefore we might prosper by turning again to this teaching as a way of grounding us. For Jesus calls us to question the way we treat our closest and most precious relationships as disposable both in the ancient near-east and in this culture. I think that it should not be lost on us that Jesus spoke of men divorcing women, but also of women divorcing men ­ contrary to the customs of that time. This equality in relationship means his words still have immense weight.

 

 

I think we live in an era where we really do not know what these deep committed relationships are for anymore. But opposed to this being a curse for us it can actually be a blessing. A blessing because as the structures that once existed lose their grip, we are being asked to re-evaluate the why of marriage and of committed sexual relationships and out of this introspection we can be called to a new and deeper understanding of their purpose and intention.

 

Christ's call is to discipleship. The call to discipleship is a call to remaining open to God in order to have your life transformed by the power of God working in your life. Living out this transformed life means that it is a struggle. It is a struggle with our own selves, a struggle with God, and a struggle with our neighbor. And our closest neighbor is our partner, especially the partner to whom we have made unique and public vows of fidelity towards. Jesus is calling to question the notion of disposable relationships and disposable intimacy. He is calling to question an ancient world practice that viewed people as instrumental to the aggrandizement of our egos in the birthing of children. He is still calling us to question, asking how more contemporary notions of romance and sexual attraction turn our partners into an aggrandizement of our contemporary egos.

 

 

Marriage and committed partnerships are an adventure. It is the arena where we can make God's love known to the world. It is an arena where at times it is like bearing our cross, but Jesus tells us it that it is in those times that we are paradoxically the most free. For us who look to follow Christ, marriage is an exercise of radical service to the other, for the building up of the two who have become one. Jesus points us toward this realization with these words.

 

 

Amen