Sometimes I’m just a little envious of my fellow clergy in churches where a lectionary is not used. They can preach on whatever they choose. It may be the news of the week, or favorite Bible passages, or topics of interest to the clergy (which was actually the description of Sunday morning discussions at an Episcopal church). They can plan a whole series of sermons on whatever strikes their fancy.
But I have to follow the lectionary, whatever it brings. This week it brings trouble. We’ll start the first of four weeks of Job, so I get a chance to explain why a loving God allows suffering, in ten minutes or less. Or I could try to lead everyone through the theological and philosophical arguments of the “letter” to the Hebrews and watch the eyelids droop. Or I could tackle Jesus’ statement that remarriage after divorce is adultery, in a parish with numerous people in second and third marriages. Having been married for thirty-four years to “the wife of my youth,” as the psalmist says, there’s no way I could understand divorce well enough (thank God) to avoid offending a large part of my congregation.
Satan might be fun to talk about, especially in the context of Job, where he is ha-SaTAN, the Accuser, the one who stands before God and accuses people of sinning – falsely, as it turns out. However, that doesn’t get around the problem that God allows Satan to afflict Job with loathsome sores, having already convinced God to let him kill all his cattle and children. (The lectionary mercifully skips those verses.) Besides, I remember what C.S. Lewis said about writing The Screwtape Letters – it “was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch.” Thinking about evil is not how I want to spend my time.
“But we do see Jesus,” the writer of Hebrews says. And that, really, is the saving grace of the readings in a nutshell. We do see Jesus. It can be very hard to see Jesus in the depths of suffering or the pain of divorce. But Jesus is there, nonetheless. I had a seminary professor who bristled every time a student used “mystery” to explain a difficult theological concept. She wanted us to use our God-given reason to grapple with the complexities of a problem. Yet ultimately God is mystery, a mysterium tremendum as a theologian once said, and the love of God given to us through Jesus Christ is something far beyond our comprehension.
Maybe that’s why I like it when Jesus says, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” The Greek is as ambiguous about “as a child” as the English – does it mean as a child would, or as one receives a child? – yet it seems to me that Jesus means the former. He’s talking about all of the layers of emotional and intellectual baggage in adults that obscure the vision of something full of wonder and mystery. The Pharisees tried to trip up Jesus with a question about divorce, and the disciples did their best to keep children away from him. He said, no, let these children come to me, for they see things more clearly than you do. They know love when they see it. They don’t ask me tricky questions. They don’t try to keep people away from me. They just love me for who I am. So he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
Pentecost 18 – Job 1:1,2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
Monday, September 28, 2009
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4 comments:
I don't know, TotF... I wonder if enough people out there are hurting from divorce, still believing that they are more sinful than nondivorced people, that it is worth taking a crack at this.
In the Torah, God does permit divorce, so as a priest on a listserv I'm on put it: divorce is a gift from God. I will put something else he said here:
"Maybe the reality of our hardness of
heart is not part of the bedrock of who we are - maybe universal human
experience is not actually a good pointer towards the deepest truth of
human nature. Maybe we are fallen? And God is still there with us,
working with our fallenness and pointing us beyond it."
Thanks for your comments, Heidi. It is probably worth mentioning that I find this saying of Jesus an especially difficult one. I take his words seriously, and he is quite clear about remarriage after divorce. It's hard to get past the literal meaning of his words unless one uses the argument that Jesus didn't actually say this, a direction I'm not interested in.
I don't agree with the priest you quote that divorce is a gift from God. It is a sign of our brokenness as human beings (no "maybe" about being fallen!). The Torah's permitting divorce is a concession from God, not a gift. And as in all suffering, God is present there in its midst. The true gift is the grace of redemption that allows one to arise out of that suffering and transform it. That takes time and an openness to grace.
Paul Westermeyer writes: "the liturgy [by which he means here both the lectionary and the liturgical texts and hymnody, etc.] protects us from ourselves and keeps the whole story before us even when we are apt to forget it or those pieces we find less palatable." (from "The Heart of the Matter," p. 42)
I commented to my wife the other day "I bet there won't be many Episcopal sermons about divorce this Sunday. They are all going to gravitate to the second half of the passage." I stand by my bet.
Divorced people are already pretty beat up; they don't need the church piling on more guilt, so were I a preacher, I would avoid the passage, too. I'd probably wade into a two-month series on Hebrews, unwise as that might be. I consider the extended argument of this book to be extremely important, but I will grant that the nature of Christ's high priesthood after the order of Melchisedec and its superiority to the Aaronic priesthood is not on most people's list of pressing concerns. But we can't get to chapters 11 and 12 without chapters 1 through 10.
As for the divorce passage, my take is that divorce is, as you say, a concession for the "hardness of your [plural] hearts." Not the individual husband and wife who find it necessary to part company, but the brokenness of society, of the whole human race, that infects every relationship, loads marriage with unattainable expectations, and rips families apart in ways beyond counting, from alcoholism to gambling to selfish behavior to the poison of television and other media, which create the climate in which "relationships" are viewed as useful only so long as they are pleasurable.
If you are in a situation where your spouse beats you, abuses your children, etc., divorce probably does seem a "gift." You don't have to put up with it until death do you part. And the individuals involved should not feel guilt about it; instead, we should all feel guilt for the failure and brokenness of our society.
"And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
Like you, I have not been through it, so I do not feel entitled to speak of remarriage, beyond saying that it is clearly unbiblical, both from this passage and I Cor. 7.
But I think of a family from a previous church; divorced wife, with four children (all in my choir), very precarious finances, children needing more of a parental presence than was possible for her, since she was holding two minimum-wage jobs to pay the rent. She remarried, a fine man from the church. It was, the best I could see, much better for everyone. They are still happily married now, fifteen years or so later. Despite what I said a moment ago, I am not prepared to say that they were wrong to marry.
"It is a mystery."
Westermeyer precisely identifies the value of a lectionary. Without one, it would be easy to avoid difficult passages.
Having said that, I will be a preacher who will not be talking about divorce. Welcoming children is a more immediate pastoral issue for my church. I hope that in three years, when this reading comes around again, I will have learned enough to put divorce within the redeeming work of Christ. Heidi is right -- there are hurting people who need words of healing. And the examples you give certainly show God's grace. They all give me cause for further reflection.
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