Unshackled

Scripture:       Amos 5:6-15   Psalm 90

Hebrews 4:12-16          Mark 10:17-31

As you’ve spun your way around the radio dial – maybe while on a long car trip and trying to find a station playing some half decent music on it, perhaps you’ve run across the radio show “Unshackled”.  Broadcast by the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago since 1950, the radio show “Unshackled” features old timey radio dramatizations, complete with voice actors and sound effects and organ accompaniment – lots of organ accompaniment - of testimonies of people falling into sin – defined as alcohol, gambling and such, – and being saved by the power of Christ. For those who aren’t familiar with the series, it’s sort of like Garrison Keillor’s Guy Noir, Private Eye segments on Prairie Home Companion, except that on Unshackled, the two eternal answers to life’s persistent questions – to every last one of life’s persistent questions - are Jesus and schmaltzy organ music, roughly in that order.

My sermon title that’s in the bulletin and on the sign board, “Stuck”, with a question mark, was the best I could come up with by the time I had printed the bulletins yesterday morning – I’d been fishing for a title all week – but after I’d printed the bulletins, I realized that “Unshackled” was the word and the sermon title I’d been groping for.  “Unshackled” – the word conjures up a vivid image of having an old fashioned metal ball and chain shackled to one’s ankle, or having one’s arm shackled to a metal ring in the wall of a jail cell, and then somebody coming along with a big old metal key and opening the metal shackle, allowing us to walk free.

In our gospel reading today, we’re told that Jesus was preparing for a journey, maybe on his way out the door, when a young man ran up to him and bowed before him.  It’s really quite a striking image:  we’re told later that the young man was quite wealthy, and it’s unusual for someone of wealth and social status to run for any reason, let alone to some scruffy traveling preacher and healer and his smelly sidekicks, the disciples.  Wealthy people are used to sitting still and having other people running around scrambling to meet their needs….think of the phrase from a few years ago, “I’ll have my people call your people, and we’ll do lunch sometime.”  But this young man didn’t send his people to talk to Jesus’ people – thank goodness, or the disciples would have messed everything up.  Nor did he send enforcers to issue Jesus an invitation he couldn’t refuse.  The young man himself came to see Jesus, and clearly there was a degree of urgency in his visit.

Now, think of other people in the Gospels who have walked or run up to talk to Jesus.  They often came to ask Jesus’ intervention with a medical emergency: a son or daughter possessed by a demon and suffering seizures, a woman suffering for years from internal bleeding, a man suffering from blindness, or from leprosy, a servant ill and at the point of death from fever.  Someone is dying, or in danger of injuring themselves or others, and so there’s some urgency – they need healing now. In these cases, Jesus says the word – in some cases, accompanied by laying on of hands – and the illness departs.   Mark tells us of this young man running up to Jesus, and perhaps we’re expecting another request for physical healing – but if that’s our expectation, we’re mistaken.

Perhaps still huffing and puffing and gasping for breath, the young man asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” As I read this story, I thought to myself, “Hey, kid, what’s the hurry?”  By all indications, the young man was in perfectly good physical health.  He had every reason to expect he was going to be around for many years to come.  Why run? What’s the hurry? Where’s the fire?  Why not send your people to talk to Jesus’ people and plan to do lunch sometime when it was convenient to both you and Jesus?  Surely Jesus would appreciate dinner out at a nice restaurant, and the young man could surely pick up the tab for both of them. And yet, here’s this young man at Jesus’ feet, gasping for breath, asking about eternal life, asking ultimate questions.

While the young man was by all accounts in perfect physical health, it was clear he suffered some disease of the spirit, some sickness of the soul, that made him run up to Jesus as he did.  In addressing Jesus as teacher, it would appear the young man thought there was some secret knowledge out there that he was missing out on, some secret of life that Jesus had and the young man desperately wanted.  And so, like a doctor diagnosing a patient, Jesus tries to determine in what way the patient feels something is wrong, to find out where the patient is hurting.  Perhaps the young man feels guilt over some awful crime he’d committed.   “Why do you call me good?” Jesus says. “You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'"  The young man replies, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.”

Mark begins the next sentence with the words, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”  Clearly the young man had gotten Jesus’ attention.  The young man wasn’t seeking cheap grace to cover over some crime, but a serious follower of the Jewish faith, a sincere seeker after truth.  It’s striking that in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ encounter with the young man is the only time Mark explicitly tells us that Jesus loved someone, even though love was behind all of Jesus’ actions.  The young man was living according to the best that his faith tradition had to offer….and yet, somehow, it wasn’t enough.  It just wasn’t enough.  And the young man knew it.

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him,”…..and Jesus loved the young man enough to tell him the truth.  “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  These words may shock us, scandalize us, as they did the disciples.  Certainly, if this took place in an episode of Unshackled on the radio, this would be the time when the organ music would swell and Jesus would say, likely with a Kentucky fried accent, “You need to get down on your knees – on your knees, young man – and pray for me to come into your life. You must repent of your sins and receive the Holy Ghost.”  And while it didn’t happen in exactly that way, Jesus did invite the young man to come, follow him.  Jesus invited the young man to be a part of Jesus’ life, and Jesus’ ministry.  In fact, Jesus invited the young man to be a disciple, along with Peter and James and John and all the rest..  But he told him he had to do one thing first:  “Go, sell all you have and give the proceeds to the poor, and you’ll have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me.”

Oops.  That wasn’t what the young man wanted to hear.   This wasn’t Jesus telling the young man, “Send in your love offering of $100 to bless this ministry, and we’ll send you a genuine anointed fabric sample….er….prayer cloth, and blessing will be upon you and your home from that day forward.”  No, Jesus didn’t want the young man just to make a donation, and he didn’t want the young man’s money for himself or his ministry - Jesus didn’t need them.  But the poor did.  “Go, sell, give, then come and follow”, Jesus told the young man.  Jesus had put his finger on the sore spot, had named the elephant in the room: the young man’s wealth.  The young man had wealth he didn’t need, and the poor needed wealth that the young man had.  Jesus asked the young man to make the connection, to connect his gifts with the world’s needs.  And the young man turned away. 

Although the young man ran up to Jesus, all the same, he was shackled by golden handcuffs to his wealth, to his land holdings, to his stash of cash, shackled away from the eternal life he sought. Jesus held up the key that would leave him unshackled – give away your stash to those without cash – but the young man refused.  Likely it was, at least in part, a lack of trust or faith or confidence in Jesus – “If I give away everything I own, how do I know that God will provide?  How do I know that Jesus and his posse won’t leave me begging in the streets? That Judas guy following Jesus seems like he’d just as soon backstab me as look at me.  How do I know that I’ll be ok?  Nah, I’d best stick to what I know.”

Actually, I think the young man’s wealth was more than a shackle, more than a ball and chain.  I believe it had become a part of his identity, a part of how he saw himself, a part of him, like an arm or a leg.   Before he saw himself as a young man or as a Jewish man, he saw himself as a wealthy man.  Wealthy people move differently in the world than the rest of us do...as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand."  Or, as Fitzgerald wrote of two characters in his book The Great Gatsby, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”   The rich are different, and this young man was rich. To give away his wealth would not only change the young man’s circumstances, it would change him, at the core of who he was.  He’d be different – not a “wealthy man” but a “formerly wealthy man”. To give away his money would be like cutting off his own arm or leg……and, indeed, we remember that Jesus said, “if your foot makes you stumble, if your eye makes causes you to sin, cut it off, pluck it out.”  Jesus asked the young man to do exactly that – “if your bank account makes you sin, give it away”.  And it was more than the young man could do.

How about us?  What has us shackled?  It may be sins that are known to us, like addiction or infidelity or out-of-control anger or bigotry.  But, like the young man, we may be shackled by things that seem innocent, that aren’t explicitly prohibited – after all, nowhere in the Ten Commandments does it say, “Thou shalt not be wealthy” – but that keep us from responding to the invitation of Jesus “Come, follow me.”  It may be wealth, or power, or comfort.  It may be ideas of respectability that keep us from hanging out with the so-called disreputable people who need to hear the good news of Jesus, or that keep us from confronting the evils of Empire – militarism, oligarchism, economic elitism, which might bring disapproval or even arrest and imprisonment upon us.  It may be assumptions – about our place in the world, about our community’s and our country’s place in the world, about what’s rightfully ours – that keep us blinded to complacent, self-righteous attitudes and beliefs and actions that desperately need to change.  

Yesterday Mark and Barbara and I were at a training session in community organizing held by POWER – Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild – which our church recently joined.  At the beginning of the session, we were asked to write down the answers to two questions:  “What’s holding us back?” and “What would we do if there was nothing holding us back?” My answers to the first question, aside from physical nuisance stuff like advancing age and retreating stamina, an expanding waistline and diminishing vision and hearing, involved my litany of fears: fear of confrontation, fear of disapproval, abject terror about dealing with conflict, on a more personal level, fear of being truly known for who I am and for how I experience myself, and rejected for it.  Despite my jokes and my bluster, I live with fear – lots of it - and battle against fear every day, 24/7/365.  In my battles with my fears, I win some, and I lose some…though having fought many battles, my batting average has improved over the years.  And my answer to the second question – what would I do if those were removed – involved my dreams of an Emanuel Church.  And my dreams were not about an Emanuel Church with more money or more space…though some chair lifts for the stairs and wash basis for the rest rooms would make me so happy! Rather, I dreamed about an Emanuel Church that’s even more welcoming than we already are, even more diverse, a church with many many more children, and more teachers and leaders to guide them, an Emanuel church that does more to look in on our shut-ins and elderly members, and let them know how much they’re loved and appreciated, a church even more engaged in proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ and in helping one another and the wider community than we are, a place where all are not only welcome but are loved and affirmed and celebrated, and feel affirmed and celebrated enough to give back to others by being active in some kind of ministry helping others; ultimately, a church even more faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ than we already are, a church that has good news and is good news – all qualities we already have, but kicked up several notches. Really, in the language of my sermon title, the questions were “What has us shackled?...Where are we stuck?”, and “what would we do if the shackles were removed?

“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  What’s holding you back, holding me back?  What could you do, what could I do, what could we do together if nothing held us back? May God grant us the grace to ask for our shackles to be removed, and the vision to see God’s dreams for our unshackled lives.  Amen.

 

One Love

Scriptures:
Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Psalm 8

Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12  Mark 10:2-16

Today is World Communion Sunday.  World Communion Sunday, observed by some Protestant denominations on the first Sunday of October, began within the Presbyterian church as a way to lift up the unity of the body of Christ.  It was adopted and promoted by which would eventually become the National Council of Churches, of which the United Church of Christ is a part.  Of course, as a Roman Catholic friend reminded me, Roman Catholics – along with Orthodox Churches, Anglicans, and Lutherans, celebrate communion every week, so for them, every Sunday is World Communion Sunday.  But it’s nice that, along with the Presbyterians, we Reformed churches can get our acts together once a year to rouse ourselves to join in the worldwide demonstration of Christian unity.

On this Sunday of unity, our reading from Mark’s gospel raises a church-dividing issue – marriage. In every age, the church has had hot button, divisive issues – ranging from the role of Gentiles in the church and whether it was ok to eat meat sacrificed to idols – these were hot buttons when the New Testament was being written – to the nature of Jesus – whether human, divine, or fully human and fully divine – to whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, or from both the Father and the Son – that issue divided the Eastern Orthodox churches from the Roman Catholic church – to the authority of the Pope, to slavery, to evolution, to the role of women in the church, to whether divorced people were allowed in the church – While some of the early questions sound ridiculous to our ears, wars were fought over them, and today the last few are still hot buttons in some parts of the church. And in our day, there’s the question of whether two adult human beings can be married regardless of gender.  That last question wasn’t on the radar in Jesus’ day – wasn’t addressed by Jesus directly – but is a question in the church today, to which we respond as best we can not only with the letter of Scripture, but the spirit as well, reminded that it is the Risen Christ who is the living word of God, to whom the Scriptures point but whom the Scriptures cannot confine.  If there’s any good news, it’s that many of the older questions were just as hotly debated as our current questions, and the church eventually came to consensus and survived.

Jesus’ words were prompted by a question, not about marriage, but about divorce.  “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife”, some Pharisees asked.  And it wasn’t an innocent question, by any means – there were various schools of thought in Judaism about whether and under what circumstances a man could divorce his wife, and so no matter what Jesus said, he was going to offend someone.  Jesus responded to their question with a question of his own:  “What did Moses command you?”  And the Pharisees replied, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”  And Jesus basically said that Moses’ words were a concession to human “hardness of heart” – but it wasn’t God’s original intent. From the beginning of creation, Jesus said, “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.”

I’d like to look at the reference to Moses – to the Old Testament – that the Pharisees made, to provide some additional context.  Deuteronomy 24:1-4 states:

“Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of the house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife.  Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who marries her dies); her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that would be abhorrent to the Lord.”

Some things I’d like to bring up:  it’s notable – likely especially notable to the woman among us – that this  is a very male-driven process – it’s all about whether the man finds something objectionable about the woman.  Nobody’s asking the woman whether she finds something objectionable about the man.  Formally the phrase “something objectionable” would be a reference to indecency or infidelity on her part, but let’s face it, if a guy finds something else objectionable, like she’s put on a few pounds over the years or snores in her sleep, it’s easy enough to conjure up justification for divorce.  By the standards of Deuteronomy, if the guy finds something he considers objectionable enough, he can hand his wife a piece of paper and send her away, with no recourse – her views on the matter are irrelevant. In that patriarchal society, there was a huge power differential between men and women, and Jesus’ example of interacting with women and the early church’s acceptance of women in some leadership roles did much to empower women.  Certainly, in that patriarchal society, there was no such thing as alimony – so in a divorce, the woman would essentially be abandoned, with very little means of earning a living other than latching onto another man – either on a long-term basis via remarriage, or repeatedly on a short-term basis via prostitution.  And so, in that culture, religious rules giving a lot of latitude for divorce were great for the guys, but not so good for the women they sought to dump.  And let’s face it, then as now, some guys are dogs. 

When the disciples were alone with Jesus, they asked for clarification.  And Jesus said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” In that patriarchal society, there wouldn’t have been a lot of female-initiated divorces, but this was more common in the Roman society surrounding Judea, and so Jesus addressed it.  So it would seem that Jesus concerned about divorce, but really concerned about remarriage after divorce.

It would seem that Jesus himself recognized that not everybody could accept his words.  In a parallel passage, Matthew 19 contains a passage parallel to today’s passage, but with some interesting additions.  Matthew 19:9 says, “Whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.”  That “unchastity” exception is not contained in the Mark passage.  In Matthew’s gospel, the disciples respond by saying, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”  And Jesus responded, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given.  For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”  So Jesus gives what he knows to be a difficult teaching, at the same time acknowledging that it’s not for everyone.  I think we can do no less – state the teaching of Jesus, but remember as Jesus did that some are not called to marriage, and remember also that even those called to marriage are broken human beings and that where our lives don’t look like the teaching – and all of our lives, single or married, fall outside the teachings of Jesus in all sorts of ways – if we seek it, God’s grace will prevail. Life is complicated, and the one thing I do not want to do is to lift up this teaching as a club with which to beat ourselves or others over the head. Those who have divorced and remarried have already been through plenty of pain, and there’s no just cause to add to it. Even the Roman Catholic church, which does not recognize divorce, provides for annulments by retrospectively looking for evidence that there was never a valid marriage in the first place according to their guidelines – full and free consent, sufficient maturity to understand the magnitude of what’s involved in marriage, commitment to fidelity, openness to children… you could say, that God had never joined the couple together in the first place.[1]  Of course, this approach has its own problems – where does that leave the children of any age that came out of a marriage that’s annulled, that was retrospectively determined never to have existed?   

A personal testimony: my parents divorced as I was graduating from high school….my sister was in 8^th grade…their marriage had been falling apart in slow motion for years before then, and the divorce brought an end to years of pain.  While my father was badly hurt in his first marriage, he found great healing in his second marriage, and his second wife – Catholic, as it happens, though they were married out of state by a justice of the peace - was a wonderful caregiver in his final years.  So my father found a measure of grace in his second marriage.  Even in a less-than-perfect situation, grace prevailed….though amid pain, as my father on his deathbed was very clear that he wanted his first wife – my mom – nowhere near the funeral. Grace in the midst of pain…..that’s so often how life plays out.

In looking at this text, I think it’s best not to lay down any law, but to suggest different angles from which to understand the text.  In our gospel, the Pharisees seemingly approach the question from the wrong end, making it about divorce, but Jesus turns around the issue, making it about marriage.  The Pharisees want to talk about the circumstances under which marriage can be broken, but Jesus wanted to talk about keeping marriage together.  Similarly, I think a lot of the culture wars discussion approaches marriage from the wrong end by looking at the gender of those involved, taken for granted in Jesus’ day but an open question in ours.  I’d suggest we look at what Jesus seemed to have emphasized – fidelity in marriage, keeping marriage together.  “Whom God has joined together, let no one separate.”  And I would suggest that the discernment that God has joined two people together, belongs, regardless of gender, to those two people and, if a religious wedding is sought, the clergy working with them in planning the wedding, and not to those outside the relationship.  And if two people and the officiating clergy discern that, indeed, God has joined a couple together, it would be well for those outside the relationship not to find themselves on the wrong side of Jesus’ words, “let no one separate”.  Where God seeks to join together, it’s not for bystanders to insert themselves to get in the way.

In discerning whether God has joined two people together, for those seeking a church or synagogue or mosque wedding, there is a role for clergy, that isn’t present in a civil ceremony. It is customary for clergy to meet several times with couples seeking to wed, not only to plan the specifics of the wedding day, but to help the couple to look beyond the wedding day to the years of marriage that we hope will follow, to pray and bring words of scripture to bear on the relationship.  And note:  this is about clergy doing religious weddings, not county clerks issuing marriage licenses.  Government officials issuing licenses have a very narrowly-defined role – perform due diligence to be sure the parties aren’t currently legally married to other people or that there’s no other legal reason the couple can’t legally be wed, and civil law is the standard - but for those who choose a religious marriage, the role of clergy is more nuanced and more expansive. Every year, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of starry-eyed couples approach clergy asking to be united in marriage.  It is expected that clergy will do pre-marital counseling, and in that counseling they will ask questions – about families of origin, about approaches to solving problems around money and intimacy and such, to offer the couple some guidance in avoiding pitfalls in their shared life.  And every year, in some of those conversations, the pastor or priest or rabbi or imam picks up on realities that the prospective marital partners struggle with out-of-control addiction, anger management problems, tendencies toward violence, or have no intention to be faithful…perhaps one or both of the partners stumble into the counseling sessions reeking of booze, or one partner is wearing sunglasses and has bruises on her neck and arms, or perhaps while the counseling is going on, one of the partners is texting to arrange a rendezvous with someone else later that very evening – and if that clergy person is a responsible clergy person, he or she is going to look that couple in the eye and tell them, in words more polite and pastoral than these, “No.  I can’t in good conscience go ahead with this. Your relationship looks like a train wreck waiting to happen.  If you are joined in marriage, I predict that you will hurt and maybe destroy each other.  I’m not stopping you from getting married elsewhere, either at another church or at a justice of the peace, though I’d urge you to reconsider.  But in good conscience, I can’t do this.”  It sounds unloving to say “no”, but to legally bind two people together in a relationship of mutually-assured destruction is no act of love.  But that discernment is based not on the gender of the partners, but on their character.

“Whom God has joined together, let no one separate.” I believe we should see this teaching, not as a club with which to beat people over the head, but as an impetus for us to look at ourselves and our society in the mirror, and to ask whether our culture and society supports marriages and committed relationships, or undermines them.  And to scapegoat LGBT persons misses the point that today, of all segments of society, LGBT persons are the most vocal about how high a value they place on marriage, while everybody else can blithely take marriage for granted as an option they can choose or reject as they see fit.  Our culture encourages those of great financial means to look on absolutely everything – even other human beings – as commodities, and at least among the very wealthy, if one’s spouse is showing signs of age, it’s time for a divorce and the acquisition of a trophy wife or husband.  For the rest of us, for us here at Emanuel who aren’t in a financial position to acquire a trophy wife or husband, our economy puts a lot of stress on marriages.  Being forced to work two or three low wage jobs to provide food and shelter doesn’t leave a lot of time or energy for quality time with family.  Higher paid jobs that require a lot of travel are very hard on families, as is military service, especially today in which young men and women are routinely redeployed over and over again.  And public assistance guidelines can work to actively separate women and children from the men in their lives.  So, as often happens, when we point the finger at couples who split up, perhaps as a society we need to look at the three fingers pointing back at us, and ask what we’ve done to make the situation better or worse.  And as a church, I pray that we can be a family of faith where all are welcome – regardless of race or ethnicity, regardless of age or ability, regardless of gender and sexual orientation, and regardless of family configuration, whether single or married, divorced or remarried. 

Perhaps it’s important to remember that even before Genesis speaks of Adam and Eve becoming “one flesh”, it quotes God as saying, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”  Part of our essential humanity – part of the way in which God’s image is reflected in us – is that we seek connection with human beings beyond ourselves.  For many, the primary way that connection happens is through marriage.  Others are called to singleness, but still find human connection through a circle of friends that becomes a “family of choice”.  For those with connections to faith communities, church can become a kind of extended family – as indeed I hope Emanuel Church is or can be for many of us.  It is part of the human condition that our ability to connect with other humans can bring so much joy, and so much pain, into our lives. And yet to live an isolated, disconnected life can bring pain as well…the shooter in this week’s school shooting was a loner frustrated by his inability to connect with others, as was Dylann Roof, Elliot Rodgers, Adam Lanza, and on and on. Isolation can be deadly; connections to others can be literally life-giving.  So may we give thanks for the connections to other people we can make, and may we refrain from looking down on those who feel called to relationship choices different from our own. 

As I said, the church can be an extended family – and it’s a family that extends beyond our own little house of worship on Fillmore Street.  On this World Communion Sunday, we’re reminded that the family of the church, of which we’re a part, extends around the globe, and through time as well as space, connecting us to our mothers and fathers in the faith, and their mothers and fathers of the faith, and so forth through the centuries.  Last weekend brought a joyous gathering of a part of our family to see the Pope.  So even if we spend a lot of time by ourselves, we are never alone – God is with us, and the church surrounds us with care.   May we celebrate all of the families – family of origin, family through marriage, family of choice, the family of the church - with which God has blessed us, and may our family at Emanuel Church always be ready to welcome others to the table.  Amen.

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[1] http://www.beginningcatholic.com/catholic-annulment.html