Sunday,
10-3-2021
A preacher should know who their speaking
to.
I think I know you well enough now to
imagine that today’s gospel is somewhat unsettling to many of you.
Mark’s Jesus is straight forward in his
condemnation of divorce.
Some Christian churches still do not
recognize civil divorce, including the largest Christian denomination in the
world—the Roman Catholic church.
(But, as a Catholic, if you ‘know
someone’ high enough up or are willing to pay for the service, the Church will provide
you with a Papal ‘annulment’ so you may leave your spouse behind and remarry!
That seems a tad ‘two-faced’ to me….)
The Episcopal Church recognizes divorce
and re-marriage. It would be ironic if the church, having come from the Church
of England which came into being in 1550, breaking from the Roman church so
King Henry VIII could divorce his wife Catherine and marry Ann Boleyn, would
not have a more open view of divorce and remarriage!
The re-marriage of a divorced person must
come as a request from a parish priest to the Bishop of the Diocese, who makes
the final decision.
I must tell you, in nearly 40 years as a
priest, I have never had that request turned down. (However, as some of you
know, the most recent marriage I did, permission did not come until the eve of
the wedding day!)
Would I have done it anyway? Most likely
I would have and let the Bishop’s ire come on my head.
In Jesus’ time, women were considered
‘property’ by Jewish law. ‘Property of their father from birth and ‘property’
of their husband after marriage.
You notice when the Pharisees come to
Jesus, they ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” No mention of a
woman divorcing her husband since, as Jesus gets out of them when he asks what
Moses said, they answer: “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of
dismissal and to divorce her.”
For his time, Jesus was a great defender
of women. We see it over and again.
But in the gospels, men were described by
where they came from: Saul of Tarsus, Jesus of Nazareth, like that.
But women were described as related to
their husbands or their sons: Mary, wife of Joseph or mother of Jesus—in John’s
Gospel, on the Cross, Jesus tells his mother that the beloved disciple is now
her son. He does that to give her and identity since Joseph is dead and Jesus
is dying.
The only woman in the gospels named for
where she comes from is Mary of Magdala.
(I have a lot to say of Mary of Magdala,
but not today!)
So, we could see Jesus’ rejection of
divorce as an act in defense of women.
At any rate, divorce is not the issue for
us.
For human beings, when something is
‘broken’, we either fix it or get rid of it.
When my car broke down on Route 8 South,
leaving here the third Sunday I was with you, I had it fixed and drive it
still. But the day will come when it can’t be fixed and I will trade it in.
The same of marriages. My first advice
for a broken marriage would be to ask the couple to try counseling and
re-conciliation to ‘fix’ it. But, if that doesn’t work, the best idea for both
people is to move on.
All of that said, the Gospel ends with
Jesus taking children in his arms and declaring, ‘whoever does not receive the
kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
Lord knows, children make mistakes. It’s
how they learn and grow.
It is the same with we adults—we learn
and grow from our mistakes.
Even when the mistake was a marriage.
Our mistakes teach us humility and makes
us like little children again open to the kingdom of God….Amen.
