Year B
Genesis 2:18-24
Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

By the time my father died four years ago…  my parents had been married for sixty-seven years…  and even though there was some dysfunction…  mostly around being taught how to name…  honor…  and express the widest range of our feelings…  they had a good marriage…  and we had lots of fun…  I later came to consider myself fortunate…  there were family trips up to New England…  long weekends in the Catskills…  also called the Jewish Alps…  day camp in the summer…  Jewish sleep away camp…  why…  one time…  after dinner…  my mom and dad actually had a whipped cream fight in the kitchen…  spraying Reddi-Whip on each other…  and my brother and I laughed with glee…  there was never the kind of overt tension that some families experience…  but no marriage…  is perfect…  though there are both arranged marriages which flourish beyond expectation…  and those with very long courtships which crash and burn almost as soon as each person says I do…

But today’s Gospel is difficult to preach on…  because so many of us have been divorced ourselves…  or have been affected by it…  and because we are broken people…  we have broken relationships with each other…  and with God…  but I’ve long said that we are wired…  we were created…  to be in relationship…  and our reading from Genesis emphasizes that point…  when God says…  It is not good that the man should be alone…

And one of the pastors in a Bible study group…  wondered if this verse implies an admission that God got something wrong the first time around…  so to correct the miscalculation…  God will next march all of the animals past the human…  so that the human may name them…  but Plan B doesn’t work either…  among the animals no suitable companion is found…  so Plan C…  deep sleep…  remove a rib…

And so we can talk about whether its Adam and Eve…  or Adam and Steve…  but there is one deeply inarguable claim made by St. Aelred of Rievaulx …  that we move toward God in and through our relationships with other people…  and not apart from…  or in spite of them…

In fact…  at a global gathering of Episcopal bishops…  Rabbi Jonathan Sachs once talked about covenants and contracts…  he explained that in a covenant…  two or equals come together in a mutual bond of love and trust…  to share their interests…  maybe even their lives…  by doing together…  what neither of them can do alone…  and that’s not the same as a contract…  because a contract is about interests…  a covenant is about identity…  a contract is about transaction…  and a covenant is about relationship…  and that’s why…  he said…  that contracts benefit…  while covenants transform… 

But in order to understand why Jesus was so vehemently against divorce…  we have to remember that the power structures between men and women had been even more skewed than they are today…  women had no voice…  no vote…  could not own property…  and her husband could divorce her if he disliked what she cooked for dinner…  listen to what Deuteronomy 24 says…  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 his 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 [suppose] the second man who married 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…  made unclean…  but why then is the second man allowed to marry her…  and what is it that has made her unclean…  and who has done that…

This Law to which Jesus refers was given to protect both individuals…  and the community…  and Jesus is speaking to men who are used to being able to divorce their wives for trivial reasons…  and when that happens…  there are ripples of consequences…  and so we have to ask…  why was the divorce happening…  under what circumstances…  and we have to remember that marriage was a social service network…  to be married meant that one had at least some social standing and access to certain kinds of services…  the way being a mother these days gives access to playgroups for their children…  and the social interaction with the other moms…  but to be divorced was to lose that interaction…  to lose that support…  to be divorced puts someone in jeopardy…  and far too often…  it’s the wife and children… and too often…  when the couple gets divorced…  their families and friends get divorced too…

But on the other hand…  although some churches and some pastors have looked past various kinds of emotional…  physical…  or sexual abuse…  and encouraged couples to work it out…  I can’t imagine Jesus telling any woman to simply accept it…  in fact…  at an address about sexual ethics given [at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Evanston, IL] on October 4, 1992…  Catherine Wallace observed that divorce is another instance where sexual ethics can provide spiritual guidance…  though not specific advice…  in the terms I have outlined…  she said…  when the relationship has ceased being a blessing for [both of] its partners…  the sacramental marital union has [already] ended…  and some people should divorce…  she said…  [but] some people should stay married and work it out…  only they can know what to do…  and they can only know by praying…  by that difficult and sustained openness to the sacred depths within us and beyond us… We are broken people…  if you have any doubt…  just look at what’s going on socially and economically…  we may be unable to cure everything…  but we can be healed…  and part of that healing comes to us through the forgiveness which God in Christ has already made available…  and our reading from Hebrews affirms…  It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings…  because…  I believe…  perfection…  is the inclusion…  and forgiveness of imperfection…  just as Jesus said…  Father forgive them…  for they do not know what they are doing…  and it is in our imperfect humanity…  that we are saved…