By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, RectorOccasionally our lessons bring us into difficult places. Today is one such time. At first, the reading from Genesis is an old favorite, it's the creation story where after creating Adam, God sees that he's lonely and tries to find company for him. He creates the animals and the birds, all of which Adam names.
As we discussed last week during the blessing of animals, they are indeed wonderful and have much to teach us about companionship and unconditional love, but admittedly even animals have their limitations when it comes to intimacy and relationship.
It appears that God discovered this, as well as Adam. Creating animals was, after all, God's experiment to see if any of these creations could do the trick. You can almost see Adam sighing heavily as each animal was paraded by him for his naming, as if to say, "No, not this one either." God seemed truly stumped. We might imagine God scratching His almighty head trying to figure it out. If the image of God were feminine in this passage, she would have figured it out much sooner, but we have to work with what we have.
The company Adam required was human, and in this story of creation a woman was created to be Adam's companion. She was created from his side, from his rib. It's a wonderful story and full of levels of faith, symbolism and teaching. We learn about God's concern for the welfare and happiness on humans. We learn of humans responsibility over creation as stewards. We learn about the need of balance in masculine and feminine. We learn about relationships and tensions as the two created from one, separate and come back together to form one flesh.
Every culture and religion has a creation story, and this one is as good as any of them, for its purpose. I'm tempted to veer off down the road of refuting literalism, but suffice it to say, I don't hold that the creation story here is literal, but that it is a teaching device dressed in the clothing of faith, the faith which draws pictures and allows us to see the truth of God’s creative love expressed poetically.
I'm also tempted to refute the sexism in the story since in naming not only the animals, but ultimately Eve, the author places Adam in a position of power and domination over the rest of creation including Eve. Suffice it to say, I don't believe that either. A theologian from the middle ages reminded us that Eve was taken from Adam’s side to be his equal, not his foot to be walked upon.
I'm not even going to read the gay issue into it either. If I hear once more that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, I'll become most unpleasant.
No, I want to look at this story as it connects to the Gospel lesson concerning marriage. In both lessons we have this quote, "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh." The Gospel lessons continues this thought with the phrase that is well know in weddings, "Therefore whom God has joined together, let no one put asunder."
As I said at the opening, the lesson can bring us into difficult places. I've highlighted a few, in terms of roads I was tempted to go down, but there is another in the gospel lesson today as it should have been presented.
Occasionally I take issue with the editors of the Lectionary because they leave out sections of the scriptures that they obviously feel are to upsetting or controversial for us. I think we have a responsibility not only to see and hear them, but wrestle with them even when they make us uncomfortable. Even if the tension created is not resolved fully to our satisfaction. Only then will our study of scripture yield the fruit of faith that energizes and strengthens us.
In the Gospel lesson Jesus had been asked a trick question by the Pharisees about divorce, was it lawful. Jesus knew as well as they did that Moses allowed divorce with the writing of a certificate. A man, that is, writing a certificate of divorce for a woman, not the other way around. He reminded them of the creation story where the two became one flesh. He graciously allowed that Moses created a law for divorce given their "hardness of heart" but that he, Jesus, believed that no one should separated those who are married. He goes on to say, past the point of our lesson, that anyone male or female who divorces their spouse and marries another commits adultery. Curiously, Jesus allows for the scenario in which a woman divorces her husband. That was not the norm, and yet her consequence would be the same. If they divorce and marry another, they commit adultery.
This passage is painful and difficult for divorced persons, especially those considering remarriage. It creates tension. Perhaps like the editors of our lectionary we should omit this one, ignore it and go on to happier, more fuzzy passages.
But I cannot. Passages like this are like an elephant in the room and need to be addressed, talked about or at least identified. We live in different times, with different customs and understanding of human relationships. We can minimize the impact of Jesus’ stern words by contexturalizing them in a society from two thousand years ago. That's a start, but we need more.
There is the truth of Jesus' compassion. In a society where women were totally subject to their husbands, to be deserted by them would leave them destitute. The enormous suffering could be confronted by husbands not being allowed in communities of faith to divorce their wives. From the beginning of creation we learned that we are related to one another and need to care for one another. This teaching approaches that compassion in strong terms.
Even Matthew in writing his gospel decades later than Mark refers to this same teaching and modifies it to allow for divorce for reasons of "unchastity." In Matthew the disciples grumble about this too and conclude it's better not to get married at all then.
The writer of that Gospel resolves the issue mysteriously, if not poorly, by saying "Those who are able to hear it, listen." That's our cue to nod our heads sagely and say "Ah," as though we understand, when we don't and clearly they didn’t either.
Divorce and remarriage is part of our culture. Divorce is acceptable and remarriage is celebrated. We do not consider it adultery. We consider adultery to be a sexual relationship between one or both people who are not married or partnered to each other but someone else. There are good reasons to get married and there are good reasons to get divorced, there are good reasons to get remarried.
But the spirit of these lessons, rather than the legality is what I think often gets overlooked in such discussions. We tend not to look beyond the picture Jesus is painting to the spiritual truth. When two people commit to one another, either in marriage or same gender relationships, their spirits do become united. For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health the two share a common bond. When that bond is damaged, broken or severed in any of the multitude of ways that can happen, the spirit remains connected even though damaged. For better or worse the two will always share a place in each others heart and spirit. In happy marriages this connection can bring great joy, in unhappy marriages or divorces, it can bring great pain. But it need to be recognized that it is there. Once recognized, if it is painful, healing work needs to be done.
Some couples who split up reunite, most don't, but in every case there is a spiritual dimension to that relationship that needs care and attention. Divorce is a legal parting, but Jesus understood that far more than legal, it is a spiritual bond and not to be taken lightly since the ramifications can be enormous. The anguish and pain caused in the process of divorce and the aftermath for spouses and children, if there are any, cannot be measured, regardless of how necessary the split may be. We can best approach this passage by acknowledging the lasting bond, as painful as it may be and seek the healing grace from God.
Our scriptures are about faith and spirit. They are not science books, or objective history. They are the many expressions of people applying their faith to the world around them and finding God in the midst of struggle and joy. They cannot be taken literally across the board but they hold in them spiritual truths and dimensions that lead us to God's love, healing and peace.
I invite you to focus on passages that cause discomfort and wrestle with them. Bring others in to the conversation and don't get bogged down on the surface, but look beyond to the spirit of the scriptures and the qualities of God they point to and bring us to.
Divorce was the subject of the lessons assigned for the day. I didn't pick them, but I wasn't going to ignore them either. In a short survey of the texts, it's hard to do them justice or come to a neat tidy resolution. Divorce was a topic that Jesus and his followers dealt with in their society, it was an image often used by the prophets in discussing the mercurial relationship between God and Israel.
In the untidiness of our relationships with each other, the animals of creation, the environment God entrusted to us; the untidiness of our relationships with each other, or the one we may have been united to through marriage or commitment, we are called into constant relationship with God who is ever faithful and from whom we can never be parted. Amen.
© 2006 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ
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