Reading: Mark 2:2-26
"Broken ... and blessed"
Bill was
a retired furniture factory labourer. He
was a good, kind man – soft-spoken, and he and his wife, Reta were members of a
small-town Baptist church, one of the two that made up my first pastoral charge
up in Bruce County. One day Bill asked
me the question that was weighing on him: “Is divorce a sin?”
His
son – his and Reta’s son, was in the process of divorcing and it upset
them. It was a new, hard thing for them
to take in. They worried about their
son, the hard road he was on, the decisions he was facing, the fall-out in his
life. They didn’t know how to advise
him, were not sure how to support him, and didn’t know how to talk about it
with their friends. What was happening
with their son put them outside – or at least made them feel outside the
circle.
I
tried to be a good pastor to them – to reflect God’s understanding and compassion
for their son and them, and I said much the same thing then that I would still
say now, to try to help them see themselves and their son and his
soon-to-be-ex-wife within the embrace of God’s unconditional love and a flow of
healing grace. Thirty years later I
have no reason to wish I had said or done anything differently in terms of
theological, biblical and pastoral response.
But
all these years later, now that I am divorced and re-married myself, I think I understand
the real personal anguish of Bill’s question a little better and more
deeply. Because there really is pain in
divorce for all connected with the break-up.
No matter what the reasons for it and reasonability of it, dislocation is
involved, brokenness is felt, and ripples of consequence are felt in other
people’s lives and never completely disappear.
Which
is why I like the way Jesus answers the test cases the lawyers and nit-pickers
of his day bring to him.
In his
day there was difference of opinion within the religious community about
divorce – whether it was allowed or not; if it was, on what grounds; and if it
was granted, whether or not a divorced person was still a full member of the
synagogue and the covenant community. That’s
what it’s really about – both then and now.
It’s a question of who is in and who is out of the covenant community; who is in community and right relation with
God and God’s people, worthy of care, consideration and privilege, and who is
not.
And I
like how Jesus answers it. He says at
one and the same time two things that like the two different sides of a single
coin form the currency of the kingdom of God.
On one
hand, he faces head on the brokenness of divorce and the disorder it brings to
people’s lives. God’s good order for
human life on Earth, he says, is for lifelong commitment and covenant
faithfulness. Whether it’s the marriage
covenant, the commitment of families to care for one another, the social
contract of cities and nations to care together for all people within their
borders, our covenant with the earth, or the covenant God makes with all
humanity and all creation to love and sustain us, the basis of life from the
personal to the cosmic is covenant faithfulness of one party to another. And when covenants are broken or can no
longer be maintained in their old form, the pain and upset are real.
And Jesus
doesn’t just dismiss it. Doesn’t say it
doesn’t matter. Doesn’t minimize the
effect by saying, “it happens to everyone…no one’s perfect…don’t worry, just get
over it.”
He
really understands and accepts the reality of the situation which means with
him and in his company we don’t have to hide and pretend when we feel the
pain. It can be admitted and talked
about.
It
also means when he says the next thing, when he shows the second side of the
coin, we can trust what he says.
And the
other side of the coin is, is that God’s Law – the Word and Way of God (like the
part of the Law that permits divorce) is really only God’s way of dealing with
human weakness. It’s God’s way of making
it possible at different times and in different situations for each of us and
for society as a whole to continue to move ahead and grow together in good and
healing ways as imperfect as we all are.
God’s
purpose is always compassion, healing and redemption. It’s always bent towards the inclusion of
people however they are within the bounds of the covenant community, for the
sake of their healing and the healing of the community itself. It’s never the rigid exclusion of them for
the sake of their punishment and an imagined purification or protection of the
community from them.
Just
think of another story where Jesus is tested with a case of marital breakdown –
the story of a woman actually caught in adultery. The lawyers want to cast the sinner out and
stone her. But Jesus says, “Let him who
is without sin cast the first stone.”
And we all know how that turns out.
Jesus
refuses to single out any one sin or any one kind of life or covenant breakdown
as worse than others. Like Paul came to
see, and as he wrote in his letter to the Christians in Rome, we all have
sinned and all fall short of the glory of God.
And
then to drive the point home, Jesus ends this little episode with one of his
famous sayings about children – that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of
God like a little child will never enter it.”
The
disciples, sharing a culture with him, would have got the point. We need to work at it a bit.
And
one thing I found out in my reading this week is that in antiquity a child was
radically dependent on the pater familias
– on the head of the household, for their very belonging in the household because
there was no natural right of belonging for anyone. When a child was born if the father accepted
the child as his, he or she was in; if the father said no, the child was not – not
accepted and never acceptable as a member of the family.
We are
here because in Jesus God calls us beloved daughters and sons. In grace God gives us a place at the table
· which
we do not have by right,
·
which
we do not earn by being good or rich or generous or powerful or nice or gifted
or right,
·
and
which we do not lose by being wrong or broken or in need.
None
of us earns our place, nor do any of us set the conditions for others to have a
place beside us.
It’s
hard to remember this, because in here it’s so nice isn’t it? Once we’re in here, it’s easy to feel good
about ourselves – and that’s surely one of the reasons for church, and for
being part of it – to bring out and nurture that which is good in us.
I sometimes
wonder, in some of my more honest moments, if that’s one of the reasons I
became a minister – why I was as open as I was to the call. It was a way against whatever evidence I felt
the contrary, to make or to prove myself good, and right and maybe even
perfect. It was a way of living with or
within a certain image.
And
mostly it works, until what’s beneath the image comes out, and it’s clear that
I’m not perfect, not always right, and sometimes not even good.
And
then it’s awkward time. Apologies are
offered, forgiveness is given. But it’s
clear we’re not all that comfortable with it.
We’d rather just forget it, let it die down, and get on with more usual
business.
There’s
something else I read this week, though, from David Lose, the President of
Lutheran Theological seminary in Philadelphia, and I’ll end with this. In a reflection on the reading for this
morning, David writes:
“The
church in its origin was a place for all those who knew their brokenness in
life and their powerlessness in the world, who came to see in the crucified
Jesus a God who met them precisely in their vulnerability, not to make them
impervious to harm but rather open to the brokenness and need of those around
them…
“In
the church being broken isn’t something to be ashamed of. Rather, it is our common identity. Our gatherings on Sundays – here and all
around the world, are local gatherings
·
of
the broken and loved,
·
of
those who are hurting and also healing,
·
of
those who are lost and are being found,
·
of
those who know their need and seek not simply to have those needs met but have
realized that in helping meet the needs of others their own are met in turn.
“We
are, in short, communities of the broken and blessed – a hard message that runs
contrary to the conventional wisdom
·
of
what we should try to be
·
and
how we should try to sell ourselves,
·
and
sometimes contrary too to how we want to see ourselves.
But it
is life-giving – it’s like a breath of fresh air and an opened door, to those
who know themselves to be broken and to those of us still in denial, seeking
relentlessly to make it on our own and prove ourselves worthy, even if it kills
us.”
Jesus
says, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will
never enter it.” Then he takes us up in
his arms, lays his hands on us, and blesses us.
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