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

Scandal!

Scripture:       Numbers 11:4-30,   James 5:1-20     Mark 9:38-49

 

While I have a fairly solid record of non-pastoral employment, there have been some stretches in my past when I was between jobs.  When these happened, I was fairly energetic about sending out resumes and grabbing temp work and such – but occasionally I’d take a break and turn on daytime TV.  And oh, what an interesting world awaited me. Of course, there were the soap operas.  I turned on General Hospital and learned who Luke and Laura were, and in preparing for this sermon I checked Wikipedia, and lo and behold, it would appear those characters are still on the show, 35 years later.  I turned on the Peoples Court, and while Judge Wapner is now long gone from that show, the Peoples Court lives on with other judges, and has given birth to edgier, more confrontational TV court shows such as Judge Judy.  Frankly, if I had occasion to go to small claims court or traffic court, I’d rather not have my business broadcast on national television, but whatever.  And then there are the scandal shows –Povich, Springer.  Enough said.  Daytime TV, which could be used to educate, to enlighten, to ennoble, to lift people up, instead exists mostly to tell us that somehow, somewhere, no matter who we are, or to what depths we’ve sunk in our lives, there’s somebody somewhere whose life is a bigger mess than ours, and they’re willing to go on national TV to tell the world all about it.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus was speaking about scandal, though the word doesn’t appear in our English text.  Jesus speaks about stumbling blocks, things that cause us or others to stumble in our faith; he says, “"If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”  The Greek word translated here as “put a stumbling block before” is “skandalizo” – and, yes, it’s the Greek word from which we get our word “scandal”.  So the text could be read, “If any of you does something to scandalize one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better that you had a millstone put around your neck and were thrown into the sea.”

The church is supposed to be a place in which faith is nurtured, not destroyed – because once someone loses their faith, it’s very hard for that person to regain faith, to regain trust.  As we grow in Christian maturity, our faith becomes more durable, and we can maintain our faith in God while also realizing that the church is made up of human beings who make mistakes, sometimes really bad mistakes, and who even sometimes do really awful things on purpose. But we have to come to maturity first, and if our faith is derailed early on, we’ll never reach that place of maturity. Many of the most vocal atheists, who express the most contempt for religious faith and the people who hold religious faith, may initially put forward very learned arguments for their position, but if we ask enough questions, we may find out that their childhood faith was demolished by someone they’d trusted – a nasty Sunday school teacher who embarrassed them in front of others, a priest or pastor who did something to hurt the families under his or her care, or a congregation which through their unloving behavior threatened rather than nourished their faith.  How many people who could have been effective evangelists for the good news of Jesus have instead become vocal opponents, because they couldn’t get past the limitations and the sins and the crimes of those who minister in Christ’s name.

What are the things that cause scandal?  Of course, the clergy abuse scandals have destroyed the faith of many – and while we may like to think it’s mostly a Catholic thing, it isn’t. Believe me, it isn’t. The UCC congregation of which I was a member in college, suffered greatly when a pastor who had served the church after I’d left college – who had by all accounts done good ministry in that congregation - had driven across state lines to engage in unlawful conduct with a minor, and been arrested.  The church was a strong, resilient congregation, and they’ve long since rebounded….but I happened to be on campus for an alumni event the weekend the announcement about the pastor was made, and I still remember the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, though I hadn’t been active in that congregation in more than ten years. How could something like that happen in a place where I’d always felt safe.  In fact, in the United Church of Christ and most mainline Protestant churches, clergy have to go through psychological/ vocational testing so that there is a level of assurance that the pastor doesn’t have issues with behavior or personality or mental health that would tear apart a congregation and destroy the faith of its members. United Church of Christ clergy in this area have to undergo what is called boundary training, to remind us that there are boundaries, involving but not limited to sexual behavior, that clergy should not cross with congregants. We have to do this every three years.  And Pennsylvania has recently mandated that not only clergy, but all volunteers who work with children, have to undergo periodic background checks.  It’s also recommended that where volunteers work with children, there should be two adults in the room at all times.  And yes, these are procedures that, as small as we are, we will need to implement here at Emanuel as well.  This is a case in which the church was unwilling to hold itself accountable, and so the state has stepped in.  Jesus said that, if a hand or foot causes us scandal, we should cut it off.  Nowadays, a better metaphor might be something like an infection or a tumor – it needs to be cut out immediately, lest it spread.  We in the church – mostly we the clergy - were unwilling to do that, and so the infection of clergy abuse spread, and it was left for the state to step in to cut out the infection, as often happens using a meat cleaver instead of a scalpel.  And so a burden has been placed on all of us, the innocent carrying a burden along with the guilty.

Sometimes we in the church have faulty vision, being unable to see ourselves as others see us.  Sometimes we are scandalized by things that those outside of the community don’t understand, and sometimes those outside the community are scandalized by things at which we don’t bat an eye.  In our Gospel reading, the disciples are apparently scandalized that someone outside their group was casting out demons in the name of Jesus.  “Hey, Jesus, there’s this guy casting out demons in your name, and he doesn’t have the secret handshake or the secret decoder ring or anything – so we tried to stop him.”  And Jesus tells the disciples not to do that – where the disciples saw a threat, Jesus saw a potential ally: “One who does a deed of power in my name will not later be able to speak evil against me. Whoever is not against us is for us.  Truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose their reward.”  And we can easily be scandalized by people who don’t follow our behaviors – those who have tattoos, those who drink, smoke, and chew, and date girls or guys who also do, who even may not get to church all that often, if at all – but who care about the poor, who care about those in prison, and in general share many of the priorities of the Gospel.  For us, sometimes the packaging of those outside the church gets in the way so much that we can’t be blessed by the gifts inside.

On the other hand, what are the things that cause people outside the church to lose faith, to laugh at the church?  Mostly it’s when we proclaim Jesus but don’t act like Jesus.  Many, perhaps most outside the church, at least in this country, have some acquaintance with the stories of Jesus as told in the Gospels.  They have heard of a Jesus who welcomed and ate with sinners, even notorious sinners, heard of a Jesus who divided loaves and fish to feed the multitudes free of charge, who healed the sick free of charge, even those with disfiguring, contagious diseases such as leprosy, a Jesus who preached about food for the hungry and recovery of sight for the blind, liberation for the captive and release for the prisoner – that would mean “letting people out of jail”; in short, a Jesus who loved and cared for the poor and marginalized, cared for those who were struggling.  Those outside the church know those stories, and they love them.  So they come to church, and find well-dressed people inside lovely buildings who don’t welcome sinners, who don’t care for the poor and the sick and instead cater to the wealthy, and who want to lock up more and more and more and more people in prison and throw away the key – and support politicians who want to write these priorities into law.  And there is what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance”….like the old Sesame Street song, “One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong”…..these church people say they follow the Jesus of the Gospels, but they’re nothing at all like the Jesus of the Gospels, not even the tiniest bit. They say they follow Jesus, but they’re not “Jesusy” – or as we’d say, Christlike. And then we respond to them by twisting some of Paul’s teachings to get ourselves off the hook, saying “Well, we’re justified by faith through grace, so we don’t actually have to act the slightest bit like Jesus, or do any of the things Jesus did, we just have to believe in Jesus and pray to Jesus.”  That’s a distorted, twisted view of Paul’s teachings – it’s what German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”- but far too many Christians think that’s the real thing.  And then we wonder why people walk away from the church in disgust.  Jesus himself spoke harshly of those who say, “Lord, Lord,” but don’t do what Jesus taught.  Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”  One of the reasons that Pope Francis is popular in a way that Pope Benedict never was, is that in Pope Francis, Christians and non-Christians alike see some measure of similarity between the words and actions of Francis and those of Jesus.  Of course, the tremendous wealth of the Roman Catholic church is itself a scandal to many – just as is the lesser but still over-the-top wealth of some Protestant churches and megachurches – but Francis has said that, if churches are unwilling to help the poor, they should be taxed.  So he’s even taking on that issue to some extent.  (Fortunately or unfortunately, Emanuel Church cannot be accused of sitting on top of vast reserves of wealth while the poor starve.)

Of course, nobody’s perfect.  Of course, when we mess up, there’s grace.  But people inside and outside the church do hear what we say and see what we do.  Our lives have more impact than we know.  Let’s make that impact for good.

After his words on scandals and dismemberment – and please, don’t literally go home and try to cut off your hand or foot; Jesus was speaking figuratively, so please don’t try this at home…..Jesus has some odd sayings about salt….especially that last saying, “Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”  That’s a saying common in Jesus time, but that hasn’t passed down to us.  Of course, salt is used as seasoning and preservative, and we as Christians are to be the salt of the earth – and so if we lose our saltiness, our distinctiveness, we’re of little use.  But salt was also used in sacrifices, and in covenants – part of concluding a covenant or agreement would involve eating food that had been salted – and so to “have salt among yourselves” meant to live in covenant with one another, to live in right relationship with one another, to be on good enough terms with one another that you can sit down to eat together without throwing things at one another.  And relationship is the key.  In America, we value our glorious individuality, but in the church, the emphasis is on “we” not “me”.  We are the body of Christ, not the dismembered limbs of Christ, and we need to behave in ways that build up and do not destroy the body.  It is usually when we’re pursuing our own agenda that we cause scandal, and so remembering that we are in relationship with others and that our behavior affects others may help us to avoid causing scandal.

May God grant that we have salt among ourselves, that we live not as individuals responsible only to ourselves, but as members of the community of faith, the body of Christ.  May our words and actions glorify God and strengthen the faith of all who come our way. Amen.