Genesis 2:18-24
Mark 10:2-16
World Communion Sunday
October 4, 2015
If you are wondering where in
the world I am going with these two texts, you are not alone!
He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and
marries another commits adultery against her; and if a wife
divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
How can I, a man who has walked the difficult road of divorce not once but
twice, hope to preach this text to a congregation, some of whom have walked
that same road? How can I, with a straight face and any measure of
self-respect, preach these words?
If we take the traditional reading of this text and leave it there, the answer
is I can’t preach it. Not without being shrouded head to toe in
hypocrisy. The traditional reading of this text, like the traditional
reading of so many texts, takes the words, rips them out of their context,
thrusts them before the church and says, “Here. Don’t ask questions, just
take the words at face value.”
While that is a tempting way to read this complicated book in which we put so
much stock, it is not a very respectful way. To take the words of Jesus
and act as though the moment did not matter; to take the answers Jesus gives to
life’s questions and act as though the one who asked the question was
inconsequential to Jesus in that moment is to give precious little respect to
the way God reaches out to and for us in Christ. The words absolutely
matter, but the context in which they were spoken matters as well.
So what was that moment? What was going on that day when Jesus gave this
difficult answer to a question on divorce?
As it happens, divorce was a pretty hot topic among first century Jews.
And Jesus’ audience that day was a group of Pharisees. The debate he
found himself dragged into was likely one between followers of two influential
Rabbis; Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai.
The two groups disagreed on several issues, but
divorce was one of the most divisive. The Hillelites argued that
Deuteronomy 24, the law on divorce, gave a man the right to divorce his wife
for any reason. The Shammaites argued that it reserved divorce for only
cases of unfaithfulness.
Back and forth they went arguing and debating and finally drawing Jesus into
the debate to see on which side of the fence he would fall.
Jesus, doing what he does so often especially in Mark’s gospel, gives a short,
concise, and thoroughly infuriating answer. He tells them that they are
both wrong. A pox on both of their houses, he seems to say. His
frustration with their questions is evident even when he talks to the disciples.
He said to them, “Whoever
divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and
if a wife divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Throughout the gospels, Jesus challenges these debates about the law by not
taking sides but questioning the debate itself.
Is this the way to get a divorce or is that the way?
“You are asking the wrong question!”, Jesus replies.
Divorce in the first century was predominantly a one sided affair. While
there were ways for women to divorce their husbands, they were few and
extremely rare. According to the Hillelites, a man could divorce his wife
on a whim; for whatever reason strikes his fancy. The Shammites were a
little less cavalier, but even they focused on how a husband could be rid of
his wife under the law.
It does not take much time spent with this text in light of the rest of Jesus’
ministry to see that by answering the way he does, Jesus is trying to point the
Pharisees to a new place in their debate. The point, he tells them, is
not figuring out how to get out of a marriage without breaking the Mosaic Law,
the point is realizing that a broken relationship of any kind is more than an
equation of legal reasoning. It is more than a puzzle to be solved.
Whenever the children of God are involved, there is more at stake than coloring
inside the lines. The problem with the Pharisee’s argument is that they are
focused on how to most efficiently and effectively be rid of people they saw as
disposable. Women were, in far too many ways, viewed as throw away people
in first century culture and Jesus presses back on that underlying assumption.
Now, it would be a wild stretch to say that in this text Jesus is trying to
somehow rewrite the cultural norms of gender and marriage. To be sure,
Jesus pushes the boundaries on gender at many times in his ministry.
Here, however, there is no evidence that he is doing anything so radical as to
upend the traditions on gender in ancient Jewish communities in the Roman
Empire.
Even without that radical turn, what Jesus does here is important. He
reminds the Pharisees and he reminds us that the breakdown of any relationship
between two of God’s children is a thing worthy of more than a Pharisee’s
debate and something with more at stake than being inside or outside the lines
of the law. And when the breakdown of that relationship happens, no one
is disposable; there are no throw away people despite what the culture might
like to teach.
In the case they present to him, divorce involves two of God’s children- two
people brought together by God- not merely a puzzle of the law.
Not an entirely comfortable reading of the text, but at least one that feels
slightly less hypocritical for this plank of the crooked timber of humanity to
preach.
All of that is well and good and the preacher may have been rescued from quite
so great a measure of hypocrisy, but there is still another question lingering
today. What in the world is this text doing on World Communion Sunday?
World Communion Sunday is one of the particular
contributions of the Presbyterian Church to the worldwide Christian community.
Started in the 1930’s in the midst of growing American isolationism in the
world, the first World Communion Sunday was celebrated at Shadyside
Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. It was less than 20 years later that
the World Federation of Churches endorsed the now common Presbyterian
celebration on the first Sunday of October and a worldwide celebration of the
unity of the body of Christ was born. Today Christians around the world
in traditions as varied as the Anglican Communion and the Congregationalist
Churches are celebrating that despite what makes us different in the way we
live our faith, it is a shared faith Christ Jesus that binds us together
despite it all.
So we on this day celebrating our unity in
Christ, we get a text on divorce as the gospel reading.
I suppose there could be a more awkward day for
this text to appear. It could be assigned to Christmas Eve!
Greeting this text about the breakdown of human
relationships on this day celebrating Christian community really does require all
of our interpretive skills.
I’m not sure, though, that even looking at Jesus’
words in their own context can soften the edges of this text enough to make
them work today.
Thankfully, the word Jesus spoke then- the word
we encounter today- is not a word stuck in the past in that moment with the
Pharisees. What Jesus said then, that there are in truth no throw-away
people- no people whose value is less than in the eyes of God-, is as true
today as it was then.
For the most part, we have gotten past the Hillelite/
Shammaite debate over Mosaic divorce law. We have even made some, though
not nearly enough, progress on issues of gender both inside the church and in
some parts of the world. So what is the equivalent in our world?
What today is the forum of the Pharisee’s demanding these words of Jesus?
The answer, I think, is in both the text and in
the day. We read this text today precisely because it needs to be read in
a global context.
If women in the first century were too often
treated as throw-away people- as beneath consideration of anything other than
the details of legal niceties- that role today is played by migrants and
refugees. As we celebrate this World Communion Sunday, our world is
plagued by a rapidly growing crisis of displaced people viewed by much of the
world as either disposable or a mere nuisance.
As we sit here today in the relative comfort of
our church community, worshiping under the umbrella of, despite what some
politicians would have us believe, is the least restrictive and least
oppressive nation on the planet, there are 60 million people forcibly displaced
from their homes due to conflicts of politics, religion, and wealth. 60
million people whose only crime was being alive in this moment in a particular
place in this world.
Josef Stalin was reported to have said once, “A
single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.”
Too often we view migrants and refugees around
the world as statistics or abstractions to be plugged into an equation.
Germany will take this many and Britain will take this many and the Swedes will
take this many. We see people as a nameless faceless whole as easily kept
at arm’s length as a math problem on a classroom board.
It is the sort of logic that allowed the
Pharisees to coldly and unsympathetically spend their time debating the finer
points of divorce without being burdened by the human realities.
It is the sort of cold logic that allows too many
people today to say things with such Pharisaic callousness as Donald Trump’s
atrocious claim that Mexican immigrants are rapists or Mike Huckabee’s
staggering claim that Syrian refugees are Jihadists sent by ISIS. It
allows the Obama administration to act with shocking indifference to the
refugees of the world and the governments of Europe debate the fate of men,
women, and children as though they were cargo on a ship looking for a port.
In our moment, the debate of the Pharisees might
be different but the response from Jesus is the same.
He said to them, “Whoever
divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and
if a wife divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
He said to them, “If you take a hundred and see them as a statistic, you are
missing the point. And if you take a thousand and treat them as anything
but your brothers and sisters, you are missing the point!”
Two weeks ago I found myself
increasingly bothered by the rhetoric of our politicians on this issue.
As I sat and stewed in my own juices, it began to dawn on me that I was
actually approaching the issue the same way they were. Hopefully I was
being less heartless than many of them have been, but I found myself talking
about the 60 million displaced people in the world in much the same way.
The outcome of my cold calculations were different and the expectations I am
willing to put on individual nation states are different, but I found myself
thinking in the same cold impersonal terms.
Perhaps Stalin was right and what might look like a tragedy for one family is
only comprehensible as a statistic when it grows to this level. Perhaps
the only way to get our minds to wrap around this global issue is with the kind
of cold calculations that define the geo-politics of displaced peoples.
Then one afternoon, listening to the radio, I heard a news story that helped
turn the key in the lock. Pope Francis, addressing the issue of
immigrants coming to Europe and fleeing the war in Syria, called on each parish
in Europe to take in one family.
One family.
Not a portion of a whole population with larger parishes taking in more and
smaller taking in less. Take in one family, he asked, and show them the love
and hospitality of Jesus. Take in one family and get to know them not as
statistics but as mothers and fathers, children and grandchildren. Get to
know them as people who worry about many of the same things you do; making the
world a better place for their children, ensuring that their children are safe
and their loved ones cared for. Get to know them as people rather than
statistics.
You have heard me mention my friend Lucy who is an elder in Batesville. Lucy is
the one who, when I would get too wound up in my head worried about church
things and trying to find the answer to a difficult problem in a book rather
than in the community, would look at me and say, “Robert, put down the book and
pick up the baby.”
Jesus said the same thing to the Pharisees.
Jesus says the same thing to us.
Life is not an equation to be solved and the people in God’s world are not
pawns in an intellectual legal or political quandary.
Put down the book and pick up the baby.
Stop treating people like puzzles and start living the way God intended us to
live from the beginning; face to face, side by side, workers together tending
the vineyards, and brothers and sisters together worshiping God.
This World Communion Sunday through the words of this text most of us would
like to leave to its own devises, Jesus reminds us that while our human
relationships may break down from time to time, one thing never changes; we are
all beloved children of God; all deemed worthy despite our unworthiness for the
love of God; all deserving of the respect and dignity of a child of God.
And none of us- NONE of us- is
disposable in God’s eyes.
Amen.
