A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16]
What God has joined together, let no one separate.1
Marriage and divorce. I doubt that there are any of us whose life has not been touched by divorce. Divorce, once a social taboo, now is relatively unremarkable (albeit, still sad, still painful). According to the 2024 statistics gathered by “Forbes Advisor”, first marriages have a failure rate of 43% among us. Second marriages fail at a rate of 60%, while third marriages fail at a rate of 73%. These statistics point to what; do you think?
Marriage’s reality in our time is that, while most marriages involve individuals who have not previously been married (60%), nonetheless, 40% of new marriages include a partner who is remarrying; and 20% of marriages involve remarriage for both partners. The statistics for same-sex marriage are too limited for precision, with most of the small-sample-size-numbers come from Massachusetts. (Same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts in 2004.) But while the raw numbers for the past two decades of experience are incomplete, the marriage patterns for same-sex unions echo that of the heterosexual marriage measurements.
Clearly, in our time and in our culture, marriage is in a state of flux. And if marriage were a stock on Wall Street, would you be buying or selling?
All these numbers confirm what our personal experience indicates: Marriage is not working as it traditionally has been envisioned. What’s wrong? Perhaps, another question might be more illuminating. What does divorce among us say about our understanding of and commitment to our relationships? Even more specifically, what is the content of our relationships? On what are they based?
Here's a short story that provides one perspective about how we regard our relationships.
In the first parish in which I was rector, I received a phone call from a young woman who called to see if she could use the church for her wedding. She was not a member of the church; nor was she evidently someone who had any idea of what the church and its life are about. I say this because when, in the most diplomatic manner I could manage, I asked her for her reasons she wanted to be married in our church, her response was that she thought that our 1803, white clapboard, New England-style building would go well with the wedding gowns the female participants would be wearing.
Glad that at the time there was no such thing as “facetime”, I looked down at my desk, seriously thinking of banging my head against its hard top and just silently gulped. Before I could compose myself, the young-bride-to-be asked how much it would cost to accomplish this plan. Quickly seizing the absurdity of the moment, I calmly and directly said, “Ten thousand dollars.” That figure must have been outside her movie-production budget because the phone conversation immediately ended.
What God has joined together, let no one separate.
So, in light of marriage being so commonly valued as just another commodity people “get”, what do we make of Jesus’ comments about marriage and divorce? What do his words say about what marriage and divorce look like to God? More to the point, when you and I hear this challenging – and let’s be honest, this strict-sounding version of marriage and divorce, is Jesus simply providing some biblical case law; or is there a larger framework at play that doesn’t dilute his words but rather sets them in the context of God and God’s life?
The fact is that today’s gospel lesson can only be understood and faithfully applied as a life-giving resource, if we couch Jesus’ words within his purposeful drive to get to Jerusalem and unleash the God-life once and for all.
The gospel lesson provides us with a clear insight into what life with God is like as opposed to what life is like doing our own thing. And this specific gospel picture emerges with the help of Jesus’ old and reliable antagonists – the Pharisees. The Pharisees – the self-appointed, Hebrew “religion police”, once again confront Jesus with a loaded question: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” The asking of this question speaks to the problem because everyone in this story (after all, they are all Jews) – everyone knows the answer, which is the source of Jesus’ responding to this question with a question: “What did Moses command you?”
To no one’s surprise, the Pharisees answered “Yes”, Moses allowed for divorce but not in a willy-nilly fashion but rather according to specific governing guidelines. The Mosaic law and its divorce proceedings involved a formal, legal procedure that dissolved the marriage but in a manner that still protected the wife from abandonment by her suing husband. Everyone knew this.
So, if this was common knowledge among the Jews, why the question? Could it be that the unspoken issue at hand is this: Is the God-life simply a matter of being legal (that is, of not breaking the Law)? Or rather, does the Mosaic Law point to the larger issue of what life on God’s terms is like? And life on God’s terms raises the core problem and the reason that the Law is necessary: namely, humanity’s “hardness of heart”?
For the better part of the last two months, I have been reminding you that the answer to what life on God’s terms is like will be fully revealed by Jesus in Jerusalem: namely, that life with God is stronger than all fear, all human failure, and all death. The fact is that in Jerusalem, through his crucifixion, death, and resurrection, Jesus will demonstrate the God-life, unleashing its restoration in him and through him and by him; and (as that wonderful Advent phrase (via Handel’s Messiah puts it) “all flesh shall see it together”.
“What wondrous love is this, o my soul…”
The will of God is Communion; and that means that what is between us in relationship is meant always to be of God – “the Source of light and life”.2 (By the way, this is exactly what the Peace is about in the liturgy: Not a half-time chit-chat but an enfleshed acknowledgement of the Christ that is between us -- or the Christ that needs to be between us.)
Jesus implicitly makes this very point when he refers back to the constituting Genesis creation story, where God not only created humanity but also established the inexorable fact that being human is not a “do-it-yourself” enterprise. Being truly human comes in the form of being in a relationship. By Godly design humans need “helpers”, that is, others who will willingly partner as God-bearers with us and we with them. God-bearing is the necessary content of a relationship. God-bearing is what relationships (all relationships) are based on.
Yet, the reality of divorce (as Jesus indicates) is the bitter fruit of distorting the God-life in relationships. And as humans, we are all susceptible to this distortion. So it is that the Law was given as a guardrail against our “hard-heartedness”, that which negates the partnership God intends and provides. So, as Jesus sternly tells the disciples in private, breaking the vows and destroying the commitments that establish the God-life between and among us has grave and fatal consequences. To violate what is really real (that is, what is of God) not only distorts our experience of life; but it also normalizes the “hard-heartedness” that gives birth to brokenness, alienation, and ultimately to death in all its forms. The result is that life is tragically (and unnecessarily) reduced to what we frail creatures can and do make of life and our life together.
So, with divorce so prevalent among us, with our penchant to have life on our own terms, what do we do? Not marry? Cohabitate? Ignore it all?
The most common answer is simply to ignore the standard of the God-life. As it has been said throughout human history, the easiest way -- the most expeditious way -- of getting rid of “sin” is to get rid of God. Yet, is the God-life simply a matter of being “legal”, of not breaking God’s law of life? Does such scrupulosity bring us Communion and the life we need? Does keeping the Law automatically make for good marriages and healthy relationships? How’s all that going?
Make no mistake about it, our marriages (which in fact are based upon our baptismal vows) matter; and they matter a lot. “For better or for worse”, they shape what our life is like: Such is their power and importance. We fail to live into our vows, when we contravene life as God gives it; there are consequences when we break God’s law. But beyond the issue of Law, how do we understand the nature of these consequences? What do we do about them? For we have all “erred and stray like lost sheep”!3
The phrase in this morning’s “Collect of the Day” touches upon the faithful and livable answer. “Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask…4
In our failure to be covenanted partners with God and therefore with one another, we are always called to rely upon God’s faithfulness and to seek “reunion” with the Holy One and the life God gives. We make confession that we have strayed from God and this life. We ask for forgiveness. We seek to be restored in God’s image; and we ask to be strengthened into what we see in Jesus and to what our vows envisioned. This doesn’t eliminate the damage our broken promises create. (Is this what our consciences are afraid of: To admit our frailty and our need of a “helper” – both human helpers as well as God?). There is no “do-over” possible, as if nothing has happened and God is the cosmic erasure. No, recognizing our need of God’s mercy (that is, not being given what we do deserve) does, however, provide for the option of new life, God’s life, on God’s terms.
In the Prayer Book’s marriage rite, there is a set of prayers that are said immediately after the famous marriage proclamation: “What God has joined together, let no one put asunder”. (That reveals a spiritual pattern that all faithful liturgy reflects: namely, that as soon as we make a proclamation, we immediately move to prayer because without God as our “helper”, our proclamations are just fancy words.).
In all truth, at a wedding I don’t expect the wedding congregation to be paying much attention to these prayers (which is one reason that instead I offer them to the couple in our pre-wedding preparations). I find the prayers’ petitions to be a good “job description” for what it means and what it takes to be in a marriage partnership and to be God-bearing “helpers”. Let me close with them. Listen.
Eternal God, creator and preserved of all life, author of salvation,, and giver of all grace: Look with favor upon the world you have made, and for which your Son gave his life, and especially on [these two] whom you make one flesh in Holy Matrimony…[If in our vows we are not made “one flesh”, then why is it so hard, so painful to separate?]
Give them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life, that each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy…[a fairly concise job description of a God-bearing “partner”.]
Grant that their wills may be so knit together in your will, and their spirits in your Spirit, that they may grow in love and peace with you and one another…[being fed and nurtured by the God that is between us all produces a real taste of the life we see in Christ.]
Give them grace, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, and to seek each other’s forgiveness and yours…[Herein lies the nature of discovering and living what is more important than being right.]
Make their life together be a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair…[There is no magic to a marriage with God at the center. Yet, that holy partnership has the capacity to be sacramental, that is, being a living reflection of life with God.].
Not hard-hearted but God-bearing. Amen.
1. Mark 10:16
2. Book of Common Prayer. Holy Eucharist: Proper Prefaces: Of God the Father, p. 377
3. Book of Common Prayer. Morning Prayer Rite I Confession, p. 41
4. Book of Common Prayer. “Collects Contemporary”, p. 234
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