The Gospel for this week is not the easiest to address here this day in this culture.
Today we are looking at what Jesus was saying about marriage,
and we will see the presenting issue
and then the deeper issue.
Now, when dealing with marriage and divorce, it can get very personal.
So this can be sensitive territory for many people in the congregation
who have been divorced from their first spouses and remarried to others.
“What God has joined together, let no one separate.”
We quote this verse in every marriage ceremony.
“What God has joined together, let no one separate.”
But in light of what we commonly experience and observe in this society,
what do we take this to mean?
When we read this Gospel selection, we bring to it a lot of baggage.
We make tremendous assumptions about what the text says,
assumptions based on
socio-economic, political, theological, and cultural frameworks.
We read into
this Gospel event of conversation between the Pharisees and Jesus
all the meaning structures of a culture 2000 years later.
Let’s reflect some about the passage.
The first question that comes to my mind is
why were the Pharisees asking Jesus about divorce.
How was their question meant to be a trap for him?
Were they looking primarily to see if he would uphold the Torah,
the Law of Moses?
Were they expecting him to do something funny
with the laws of marriage and divorce
like what he did about keeping the Sabbath?
And how is it that, as usual, Jesus turns them around in their thinking?
It would seem that they were focused on the Law of Moses,
and Jesus asked them specifically about their reading of the Law of Moses.
They, of course, respond with a law
that indicates male ownership of the woman,
his prerogative to keep her or get rid of her.
The law is about how to dispose of her.
Jesus points to the hardness of heart of the men,
as necessitating the commandment,
which indicates to me that the addition of a commandment about divorce
implies a concession, an allowance, and a backing away from
some original intent of the Law regarding marriage.
There were marriage laws about inheritance rights
to insure the passing on of property to appropriate heirs.
But the divorce law was to restrict the callous abandonment of women.
Notice then how Jesus moves them to a new frame of reference.
He broadens the scope
from a theological, political, sociological, or economic construct
to creation.
Jesus goes back prior to the Law of the Covenant,
to the arch÷ of creation, the Source.
He points out that from the beginning
the MdÎa was male and female, inclusive of both.
One thing that this indicates to me that I pick up on
is that he is bringing the woman into consideration here
on an equal footing with the man.
In creation there is no intention
for the man to have political dominance over the woman,
and ownership is a non-issue on the level of creation.
Then Jesus talks about relationships of family,
the basic human configuration of community.
When a person (anqrwpos generic human as opposed to anh÷÷r specifically man)
leaves the father (of him) and the mother,
he glues to (proskollhqh÷setai) the woman of him (his wife).
Can this be read as indicating a natural move on the level of creation
into relationship, relatedness?
If someone leaves one configuration of relatedness,
will that person inevitably or instinctually or habitually
seek to be in relationship with others,
and, more specifically, in close relationship with one other person?
And we could say that two is the most basic and irreducible number
to constitute community.
But even in this connection of relatedness the two become one,
a unity so foundational
that it is not just a theoretical or spiritualized oneness,
or even a oneness of like-mindedness or affinity,
but a physical oneness, organic, ecological.
This does not necessarily have to refer exclusively to sexual union,
but in recognition of the same kind of oneness
as the genetic bonds of father and mother
that this person had left behind.
The unity of creation is so intrinsic
that it is impossible not to get glued into union, if not relationship,
with others.
Of course, humans, acting out of hardness of heart,
will pull away from relating with others,
will frustrate relationships,
will hold to illusions of alienation
or create alienation in relationships.
This is not the flow of the life of creation,
which is life in the Spirit of the Resurrection Jesus.
In the Gospel reading Jesus ends with the statement,
“What then the God has yoked together/joined/united,
let not a person make apart -- let no one separate.”
The reality comes down to union of all creation.
We see distinctions and separations,
we view the world in terms of duality.
We talk and act as though there were this and that.
But all is that.
So in essence Jesus has shown the Pharisees
that their laws about divorce are illusory constructs
that are frustrations in the face of the reality of creation.
So, brothers and sisters, what do you think?
Here is an invitation
to examine your own experience of marriage and divorce.
What is the purpose of marriage?
What is marriage based on?
And how much of how we might answer those two questions
is composed of assumptions we make about marriage
that are actually conditioned by culture, economic, or sexual politics?
(and by sexual politics,
I am referring to who has power over another)
What was it, in the creation story, about finding a helper as a partner
that could not be found in any of the animals?
We don’t have the same genetic bonds, for one thing.
Partner in Hebrew means corresponding to, that which is an obvious equal.
I think that the way Jesus was looking at divorce
leads to a radical reframing of the character of marriage
not as a social, sexual or familial matter,
but as a matter of union with God.
“What God has joined together, let no one separate.”
The reality is union of all creation.
We see distinctions and separations,
we see in terms of duality.
We talk and act as though there were this and that.
But it is all one.
God has joined together,
God created all as one ecological unit, one unity of being.
But in our minds we have separated, put asunder.
In the creation story
Eve and Adam were originally one with each other and with God.
We say that in Christ we are a new creation,
one with each other and one with God.
May I suggest that we look at marriage
as a relationship of union that is an icon of God?
The Prophets of the Old Testament certainly did!
There are many examples in the texts of this marriage image
between God and humankind.
May I suggest that all our relationships
- in families, in friendships, and in faith communities -
all therefore are also to be of that same reality of union with God?
May I suggest
that whenever we make separations between beings
we are putting asunder the unity of God?
that whenever we make distinctions
we are dividing creation?
So basic human relationships, how we see one another,
as separate, or as another unique expression of who I am…
We start with the first form of community, the marriage of two people,
the relationship between two people,
and we build from that relationships within family,
within tribe,
within a society, culture, town, city, nation, the world.
If we could really see the basic unity, what God has joined together,
on the first level of two together,
then our view of the world should change,
and how we are with everyone else would change.
Perhaps we would even see the basic heresy of war as a strategy for peace.
Perhaps we could see the necessity of welcoming the stranger,
those different looking or speaking a different language,
the alien, the refugee
as included in this unity of God.
What God has joined together, let no put asunder.
Some things to ponder…
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