A Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Posted on by The Rev. Zeb Treloar
Sermon 10/6/24
Trinity, Hartford
How many of us are uncomfortable with this Gospel lesson?
Yeah, I don't think it's on anybody's favorites list. Add that in with the first part of Job and you've got a doozy of morning. At least our reading from Hebrews is inspirational.
It's especially hard because we're together with people who have all either been through divorce or know people who have gotten a divorce, often for very good reasons. I don't have direct experience of divorce, neither my parents nor I have gone through it ourselves, but if you've gone through it yourself, this passage can be particularly painful. What do we do with these tough passages that don't fit into our understandings of the world? Or have even done harm to people who were told to stay in bad relationships?
There are a couple of options. We can consider the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God, or we can look at the cultural context and have a conversation with the Holy Spirit about it.
There are plenty of Christians who believe the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God. They say things like, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." This idea is actually a fairly new development in Christianity. It comes out of the Fundamentalist movement in the United States that started in the late 1800's and really took off with the writing of The Fundamentals in the 1910's, a twelve volume set of essays by theologians seeking to protect what they viewed as Christian orthodoxy against modernism and theological liberalism. The genius of it is that it is a set of ideas that could be embraced by any Protestant congregation, it isn't denominationally specific. They took the idea all Christians hold, that the Bible is the inspired word of God, and defined inspired as infalliable and inerrant.
They also asked big questions about the Bible's role in society, particularly around the social progressive movement. Should the Bible be used to support women's rights movements or racial integration? Should the theory of Evolution be embraced by the Church? Where were the lines between what people wanted and what God mandated? How could we know? These were questions being asked in all congregations across the United States, the fundamentalists just happened to have simple answers that closed the book and settled the questions in the minds of many people who just wanted to know what to believe.
The Episcopal Church is one of the denominations that has rejected fundamentalism. In fact, we lean into the social progressive ideals that the original fundamentalist theologians fought against. We did use to have congregations that agreed more with fundamentalist theologians than more progressive ones, but even then they were never entirely fundamentalist, they never embraced all their principles, but did see value in their views on the Bible. Our denomination tried to tow the middle line. But then the Philadelphia Eleven were ordained and there were women priests. We couldn't be in the middle, we had to decide if women could or could not be ordained, and we had to figure out how to work with the eleven that already were. That was the start of a shift that has resulted in many more conservative congregations to break away. Our understandings of the Bible weren't compatible with each other any more. After Gene Robinson was ordained as an openly gay bishop, those congregations that split over the decision, along with others who had split away from The Episcopal Church earlier, joined forces to create the Anglican Church of North America. Interestingly enough, the Anglican Church of North America allows for women priests but not women bishops because different congregations have different understandings of women's roles in the Church. Still, the break, which we've seen ripple through many American denominations and has only sped up with the question of the role of gay people in the Church, is all based in this question of how we decide what is an essential mandate of God and what is our own will.
Part of how we decide this is by looking at the context of the text. If you look at the context of marriage in Jesus' time, you'll see something that is fairly different from our culture today. Marriage is one of those things that has been developed in human societies across the globe, but can be shockingly different from one context to another. It's also constantly evolving.
In our culture, marriage is between two people who love each other and desire to spend the rest of their lives together. If they then decide to divorce, they often spend a lot of time, energy, and money deciding on a settlement that divides their assets. If there are children, there are custody arrangements to figure out and those can be challenged over the years as the child grows. This is entirely new, something that older generations have seen shift in their lifetimes. The focus is on a reasonable split of assets and the best arrangements to care for children. It doesn't always work well, but that's the goal.
In Jesus' day, women became part of their husband's household at marriage. They were transferred from their father's household to their husband's. There was a time of betrothal beforehand, where they spent time getting to know one another and the marriage could potentially be called off, but once they married, the wife was in her husband's house and all the children she had were also part of the husband's household. In the case of a divorce, the woman not only lost the protections of being in her husband's household, she could also lose her rights to her kids. Young children may stay with their mother, but older kids were part of their father's household.
I'm convinced that when the Bible talks about the two becoming one flesh in marriage, it's not talking about sex as much as it's talking about creating children. The two parents create a new life and the two parents are both equally responsible for it. I think Jesus was more concerned for the kids in the divorce, not necessarily for the adults.
Now my opinion is debatable, but I also take my opinion from context clues. This passage today comes after Jesus talked about welcoming children, about protecting vulnerable people like children from harm, and comes directly before Jesus embracing children. All these stories connect with kids, and I think kids stand at the center of the vast majority of the marriage texts within the Bible. That looks different from how we center marriages today.
Jesus, like other teachers in his day gave some real zingers of lessons because lessons were supposed to be talked about, debated about, and help people form their worldviews. It wasn't a "God says it, I believe it, that settles it" world. It was a world of dialogue, discussions, and asking good questions.
But even with this being a dialogue, even with the knowledge of how different marriage is today versus in Israel 2,000 years ago, there is still a sting to this passage. Having context helps, but it doesn't cure the ache. That's where we need a conversation with the Holy Spirit. That's because at the heart of the hurt are entirely different questions: Are we good enough? Are we worthy of God's love?
Those who have gone through tumultuous events leading up to and culminating in divorce may question their worth and worthiness in God's eyes. It's especially exhausting and draining to be in a dying or dead relationship and people may have done things they aren't proud of. Those who have kids now have limits on when they can see them and what decisions they can make for their children. It sucks. Even if it's better for everyone, even if it comes with great relief, it's taxing and draining. Then you add in Jesus' words here and it can feel like adding insult to injury. Are you worthy of God's love? Are you good enough?
This is where we need the healing that only the Holy Spirit can provide. Because yes, without a doubt you are worthy and good enough, but you may also feel profoundly broken. The Holy Spirit can work with those broken pieces. You may feel like dry bones in the valley of the shadow of death, but the Spirit has a way of knitting bones together and adding flesh to them, of making new life. It's a hard journey, it can take a while, but it's possible. God can help you heal.
Jesus emphasized kids so much in this portion of the Gospels because Jesus was trying to teach vulnerability. Kids don't get a lot of decisions in life, especially kids in his day. They don't have a lot of decision making power. They have to develop trust that others can help them get their needs met. It doesn't always work out, but society has always tried to help kids because we know what it is to be a child. We know how hard it is to have so little control.
Jesus reminds us that we still don't have a lot of control. A lot of major decisions depend on more than just our desires. Things get complex fast because multiple people are involved. We require each other, and we require God to help sort things out. Handing ourselves over to God, we can trust that we will be embraced just like Jesus embraced the children who came to him. It's hard. But new life can come out of even the most trying experiences. That doesn't mean that everything that happened to us is okay, a lot of it is not, but God can support us through even the toughest times.
In the end, God doesn't want divorce not because we're supposed to stick out bad relationships but because God doesn't want to see us suffering in our relationships. In God's ideal world, every marriage would be a good one. Every child would have supportive families and grow up in a loving home. We would have our deepest needs provided for and we'd have space to thrive. That's not the world we live in, but that's the world I'd sure like to live in someday.
In the world we live in now, things we didn't expect or didn't want can happen. In the times when we feel broken and defeated by what all went down, we can come to God in our vulnerability. We can seek time with the Holy Spirit to help us. We can know that we are good enough, that we are worthy. God wants to embrace us just like Jesus embraced the children. God doesn't just love our put together selves in the times when everything is going right. God also loves our messy, broken selves in the times when everything is going wrong.
Any interpretation of the Bible that doesn't embrace our worthiness and God's love for us, no matter what, is quite frankly wrong and unhelpful. In the end, it matters less what the words say and matters more how the words help us connect with the Holy Spirit, who always promises to be with us when we study the scriptures and when we pray. That's what the inspired Word of God means, not that the text on the page is inerrant, but that the Spirit of God communes with us and embraces us when we study and seek understanding. It's not the words on the page that give life, it's the relationship with the Holy Spirit that is formed through the reading that helps us move toward new life.
So yes, I don't like this Gospel passage. I wouldn't use it as a basis for policies both within the church and in the wider world. We've seen what stringent laws surrounding divorce do, particularly to those with less power. But I like how this passage makes me ask questions as I consider what relationships should look like, what marriage is and what it should be. I like how it makes me look at how we treat children and how we protect their relationships with the people who raise and care for them. I like the big questions this passage call to mind that require time with the Holy Spirit to figure out. That brings me closer to God. Even if I don't like the words, I like the vulnerability Jesus asks of us within this passage.
That's how the Bible inspires. It takes us into space of reflection with the Holy Spirit. I pray that you may find that space within your own lives, that you may connect with God especially in the hard and broken moments. May you find yourself being filled to the brim with new life. Amen.