Pentecost 18, Year B
The Rev.
In Genesis God declared: “It is not good that the man should be alone….” These words, which highlight the centrality of relationship, are spoken by a God whom we believe always has and always will exist in community. God is both whole as each Person of the Trinity, yet deeply connected so that the Three Persons together make One God. God would have no trouble in understanding how it is that we could be two and yet one. From that perspective it seems only natural that God would decide that what the one human needs is for God to “make him a helper as his partner.” God may be the ultimate helper, as Scripture tells us, but Adam needed a helper with whom he could be one. Therefore God created Eve from the same substance as Adam, so that when God brought her to Adam he responded in recognition: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh….” While they were two separate people, they were intrinsically connected. Adam and Eve were, in the fullest sense of the phrase, made for each other.
Our culture has long romanticized the search for the one special person who is ‘made for’ us. Is this the one? The hope is that there is a particular person out there, someone intended by God to be our soul mate, the one whom we will recognize as our ‘better half,’ just as Adam did with Eve. In the movie Jerry Maguire the lead character has fallen in love with a woman named Dorothy and is struggling to find the right words to articulate his feelings for her. They enter an elevator with a couple who is using sign language, which Dorothy is able to understand. When alone again Jerry asks Dorothy what the other couple was signing. It was the very sentiment Jerry was searching for: “You complete me.”
While holding up the ideal of marriage based upon this kind of ontological recognition, we also live in a culture which permits, and even encourages, a quick exit from a marriage that is not all one hoped it might be. Celebrities are infamous for exhibiting an attitude toward marriage which appears to be an advanced state of ‘going steady’. Once the infatuation, youth, or usefulness of a spouse wears off, it’s time to trade them in for a new model. This is in direct contradiction to the understanding of marriage we hold in the Church. We believe marriage to be a sacrament, the outer signs of which indicate that God is at work in this relationship. It is intended to be a lifelong covenant in which two people become one held together by the ongoing power and presence of God. The marriage vows clearly commit each person to this Trinitarian enterprise until death. There is no exit strategy. That is why there is a serious caution in the opening address of the liturgy for marriage: “Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God.”
When the Pharisees approached Jesus to question him about his understanding of divorce, the cultural standards for divorce were very loose indeed. They want Jesus to clarify under just what circumstances divorce should be permitted. He points them back to Moses and the Law. The choice of words is interesting here, for the Pharisees are correct, Moses “allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal” and divorce his wife. Jesus minces no words, Moses did this “because of your hardness of heart.” Divorce was a fact in Moses’ time and in Jesus’ time, just as it is in our time. In Deuteronomy Moses established a process for regularizing divorce that protected the woman, who otherwise could be cast out of a marriage at any time with no legal documentation to prove she was eligible to remarry. This did not amount to an approval of divorce, but rather established a more compassionate process for dealing with its reality. If the Pharisees are looking for approval for divorce, they are not going to get it from Jesus. He points them back instead to the intention of marriage.
The harshest words against divorce come not in today’s text, but in the Book of the Prophet Malachi: “For I hate divorce, says the LORD….” Why would God speak so forcefully against divorce? The primary reason becomes clear when we take a look at the writings of the prophets, in which God repeatedly uses marriage as a metaphor for God’s relationship with the people of Israel. In this metaphor we see many parallels to human experience: the act of God’s people being chosen for covenant relationship, as with a marriage partner; the declaration of never ending love and commitment, as in wedding vows; the repeated experience of pain, betrayal, unfaithfulness and abandonment, as in a broken marriage; and the alternating desire for reconciliation and divorce, as in human relationships. God hates divorce because God knows the chasm between the intention of marriage and its often broken reality. God knows the experience of steadfast love that has been betrayed, neglected, denied and cast off. God knows firsthand.
If somehow we think that living the metaphor is not enough, that God couldn’t truly understand our pain without literally enduring it, there is Jesus. In today’s reading from Hebrews we hear these words about being God’s children: “Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things…” Jesus came as God among us to choose us for everlasting relationship, to share steadfast love, to create a way to life and love that isn’t parted by death. Once again, in a very human context, God experienced a rejection of love, of commitment, of faithfulness in relationship. God knows. What was gained by this firsthand knowledge? Hebrews says: “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”
God hates divorce because it is a testimony to the ongoing reality of our pain and suffering, of our distance from God and one another, of the power of sin to separate us from the love God intends us to know and live out together. The Good News is that God is with us in the midst of our experiences of brokenness, whatever forms they might take, to move us through them into something life giving.
Author Anne Lamott was asked in an interview what she wanted her son Sam to know about God. She responded:
I want
to convey that we get to be human…We get to make awful mistakes and fall short
of who we hope we’re going to turn out to be. We get to keep finding our way
back home to goodness and kindness and compassion...I want him to know that no
matter what happens, he’s never going to have to walk alone….
God is a God of steadfast love, a God who shows compassion and mercy. God is with us to lead us into wholeness, into holiness, into new life. God knows.
Amen