Take Heart, He is Calling You (Proper 25B)

“Take Heart, He is Calling You”

28 October 2012

Proper 25B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Jer 31:7-9; Ps 126 ; Heb 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52

Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus stood still and said, "Call him here." And they called the blind man, saying to him, "Take heart; get up, he is calling you." So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man said to him, "My teacher, let me see again." Jesus said to him, "Go; your faith has made you well." Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

In the Pixar movie Finding Nemo, a little clownfish named Nemo living near the Great Barrier Reef is netted by a scuba-diving dentist to adorn a tank in his Sydney office.  Nemo’s father, Marlin, is devastated, and he sets out to find his only child with no idea where to go. He meets a blue Tang, Dory, who helps him discover the address of the dentist, despite her own very limited smarts.  Overcoming multiple setbacks and dangers, they are told to find the East Australian Current, which will take them to Sydney harbor.  Gathering their courage, Marlin and Dory risk everything by swimming through a swarm of stinging jellyfish to get into the current.  Suddenly they find themselves carried along in the surge of a great parade of happy sea creatures.  Effortlessly floating in the current, they no longer have to struggle to make their way in the vast, lonely ocean.  A wise sea turtle, Crush, tells them things they need to know to continue their journey.  By the time Dory and Marlin jump out of the current in Sydney, they are very different fish.  Their bewildered fears are now joyful hope.

Transformation!  Change!  From broken to whole, or at least not-so-broken.  From confusion to purpose.  From self-loathing recrimination to confidence and hope.   At one time or another, we all want it, we all need it. 

But our experience and “common” wisdom tells us not to expect it.  So accepting the unacceptable becomes the norm in our lives, or worse, not accepting it, but having to live with it all the same.

Today’s Gospel story says that Jesus can transform the untransformable.   Bartimaeus begins the story blind, rejected, begging on the roadside, and ends up seeing, confident, and walking along with Jesus and the disciples. 

This story in Mark is the only one in the Synoptic Gospels where the name of the healed person is given.  Some take this as evidence of its link to an actual historical event.  Importantly, Mark gives the name twice:  “Bartimaeus, or son of Timaeus.”  Though Mark is writing in Greek, Aramaic was the language Jesus and his followers would have been speaking with each other.   In Aramaic, the word bar means son, and so clearly Bar-Timaeus means “son of Timaeus.”  But Timaeus was a Greek name.  It means “honored one.”  It was not an Aramaic name.  If indeed the blind man was called this, the word in Aramaic would have been bar-tame’ or “son of shame.”  It is not a real name, but an insulting nickname:  “Loser.”  People thought God had punished him for some shameful sin by striking him blind (cf. John 9:34). 

So “Mr. Loser” is not just suffering from the disability of visual impairment.  He is loathed, outcast.  He can get enough food to eat only by begging.  He either believes or suspects that what the others say about him is right.

Caught up in the excitement at news that the healer from Nazareth is passing by, Bar-tame’ begins to shout, as loud as he can, to get Jesus’ attention.  “Have mercy on me, Jesus, son of David!”  This is the most extravagant and dangerous way of talking about Jesus Bar-tame’ has heard on the street, Jesus as the ideal David of the future, the Messiah, who would be a healer.   

The disciples, concerned that their opponents may report them to the Romans’ and get them all arrested, try to shoosh the crazy beggar up.  “Jesus is ministering here!  How dare you interrupt him with your begging! Can’t you get money from any passerby? Leave us alone.” 

Their reaction is understandable.  A strategy of street begging, one I saw often in China and which one encounters occasionally even here in polite, genteel Ashland, is this:  when simple appeals to compassion fail, make yourself so disruptive or obnoxious that people will give you money just to get rid of you.  A meal’s a meal, whether you got it from stirring compassion or provoking disgust and aggravation!

But Mr. Loser just gets louder.  Jesus finally asks what’s going on.  At this, Bar-tame’ balks.  He hadn’t really thought Jesus would stop.

“Take heart! Go, Jesus is calling you!”  The disciples realize that perhaps there is more to this beggar than they thought.  Bar-tame’ casts off his cloak and goes to Jesus. 

In the days before cardboard signs that read “Anything you can do will help,” the beggar’s tattered and filthy cloak was a chief way of appealing for aid.  Bar-tame’ throws off his cloak, and with it all his assumptions about himself, his belief that he really is a loser, all the dysfunctions and fears his disability has wrought.  He casts aside the little bit of security he might feel he has, all to meet Jesus. 

So when Jesus asks him “what do you want,” this one-time son of shame does not say “money” or “bread.”  He asks to be healed.  He asks for his sight.  He asks not to be broken any more. 

And Jesus tells him his faith has already healed him.   Sight is restored.  And Bartimaeus—now a son of honor—starts to walk the Way with Jesus and the other disciples.   

Van Morrison, in his song on hope of recovery from addiction, sings:  

Whenever God, shines his light on me
Opens up my eyes, so I can see
When I look up, in the darkest night
I know everything's gonna be alright.
In deep confusion, in great despair
I reach out for him, he is there.

When I am lonely as I can be,
I know that God shines his light on me.

 
Reach out for him, he'll be there
With him your troubles you can share.

You can use his higher power
In every day and any hour.

Jesus saves and heals the lame

Says you can do it too in Jesus’ name 

He'll lift you up and turn you around. 

He’ll put your feet back on higher ground.

When Dory and Marlin jump into that current, they have to risk all by swimming through the jellyfish.  They have to cast off fear, discouragement, and pessimism.   They have to let themselves be carried away by that stream, part of the joyous parade. 

This is what happens to Bartimaeus in this story. 

It is what happens to us. 

When we encounter Jesus, he transforms us.  If we haven’t been transformed, we just have not encountered him.  Whether sudden or gradual, transformation is a sign of having met Jesus. 

And it’s not about how we feel, whether we think we’ve been changed, or whether we can work up a psychological state that some call “belief.”  Though it’s about real risk, it’s usually not all that dramatic.  Today, we usually encounter Jesus in his body, the Church.   We encounter him in the Church’s sacraments, teaching, worship and prayer.  We meet him in our service to the stranger and one in need.

Writing about our Prayer Book tradition of faith in worship, author Vicki Black says:

“For many new Episcopalians, Marlin’s experience of the East Australian Current echoes their experience of entering the liturgical life of prayer and worship in the Church.  Many of us have searched for God on our own for years, praying by ourselves, perhaps sharing our yearnings with a few faithful friends or perhaps being completely alone.  And yet when we make the leap into the Church’s ongoing liturgical life, it is like suddenly discovering that a vibrant, powerful stream of worship and praise to God has been going on centuries upon centuries.  We are at first swept off our feet, perhaps a bit confused and uncertain.  But soon we catch the rhythm; we begin to understand what is happening at each celebration of the Eucharist, at every baptism, at each service of Morning Prayer.  We grow from the wisdom of the learned and saintly among us.  And we discover we have been welcomed into an enormous, eternal, diverse community of human beings who are likewise seeking to worship God who created all things, who’s beyond all things, and yet who lives among us.  We discover we are not alone, and that this liturgical current of worship, prayer, and praise will indeed take us where we want to go—to union with the God we seek to love”  (from Welcome to the Book of Common Prayer.) 

The worship, prayers, and sacramental life of the Church gives us the strength, the will, and empathy to reach out to others: to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sick, stand with the downtrodden, and give shelter to the homeless.    To be sure, one can do this without the Church and without prayer.  But a great curiosity in our history has been that the more active the sacramental prayer life of a congregation is, generally the greater its corporeal acts of mercy and social justice. 

Like Bartimaeus by the wayside, do we undervalue ourselves?  Do we feel wholly constrained by our disabilities and failings?  Do we have a vague sense that there must be more to life than this?  

Jesus is passing by. He can heal and take away whatever weakness or handicap that holds us down.   

God’s kingdom is here, in our midst.  Things once cast down are being raised up; things once old are being made new; all things are being brought to their perfection by Jesus.  Take heart, child of shame, Jesus is calling you.

Don’t heed those who think you are a loser, unable to change, who say you are daydreaming if you think Jesus is calling you.   Don’t listen even to Jesus’ disciples when they tell you, like they told Bar-tame’, to shut up, be quiet, and don’t approach him.   

Jesus is here to heal our blindness.  We often are unable to see things clearly because we are so beaten down by experience.  Fear immobilizes us, and hardens our hearts. Jesus is here to turn our hearts of stone to flesh again, to empower and transform us from passive bystanders to his active and compassionate fellows, ministering and healing, and bringing interest and flavor to the lives of others.  He wants us to be yeast to leaven the whole loaf around us.  Salt, to give flavor to the pitiful bland fare we see offered right and left.   

Let him in.  Let worship, prayer, and the sacraments wash over you and carry you away in that great stream driven by the beauty of God’s holiness.  Say the prayers and sing the psalms.  Eat the bread, drink the wine; feed on Jesus.   Then feed others, and give them what they want and need.  Don’t just come to Church.  BE the Church.   Go forth and heal others.  Go forth and feed them.   

 In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Community, not Consumption (Mid-week Message)

Community, Not Consumption

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

October 17, 2012

A few weeks back in the Sunday lectionary, we ran into the phrase  “you ask only that you might consume it upon your lusts” (James 4:3).

Having a robust demand for market goods is key in building a healthy economy, and having a good base of consumers is needed for this.  Our modern advertising industry is all about building consumer demand:  you won’t attract the right lover if you don’t smell right, and you won’t smell right without our product; you cannot achieve happiness without our product because you are too ugly to go out without using it to cover up your blemishes; you will not be part of the “in” crowd if you do not wear our brand of tennis shoes or underwear; etc.    The basic message is: YOU ARE INADEQUATE WITHOUT WHAT WE HAVE TO SELL.  SO BUY, BUY, BUY. 

Our scriptures don’t seem to be extremely keen on the idea of consuming or being a consumer for consumption’s sake.    They are much more affirming on the idea of community, and of relationship.  There is a lot of talk in the Bible about covenants and relationships:  God is the husband, Israel his wife; Christ is the bridegroom, the Church his bride; God is our father, we his children;  Christ is no longer our master, but our friend.

I hear sometimes about one or another person who got fed up with something at their Church, and then left.  They supposedly now are shopping for a Church or a pastor that fits their needs better.     Here in Ashland, I often hear “spiritual but not religious” people talking about religious ideas and spiritual practices as if they were market commodities that they can pick and choose as they see fit.   

This way of seeing things captures an important truth about our freedom to choose in this free society, in this marketplace of ideas and personal association.  But if this is our only way of seeing life, religious ideas, and faith, it can be deadly for real growth, healthy relationships, and life in God.

Back in August, we read for the Sunday Gospel a story where Jesus said something that really annoyed his followers, many of them left.  At this point Jesus turns to his close disciples and asks, “Are you going to leave too?”  Peter answers,  “And just where else would we go?  You have the words of Eternal Life” (John 6:68).    

Spiritual growth and life in God is not about consumption, not about finding what pleases us.  It is about relationship and commitment.    This has been a subtext in many of the Sunday scriptures we have been reading these last few weeks of Ordinary Time: in addition to the James and John passages above, we also read Jesus’ condemnation of treating our personal relations as disposable commodities two weeks ago (Mark 10:2-16), and his telling us to sell our possessions to help the poor last Sunday (Mark 10:17-31). 

In the burial office, we see the prayer,  “For we consume away in your displeasure, and are afraid at your wrathful indignation” (BCP 472, Psalm 90:7).  This means, of course, “We are being consumed in your displeasure.”  But the Elizabethan words “consume away” are happy reminders that when we begin to treat all things, including faith and relationships, as commodities, we each are left as nothing but disposable commodities ourselves.    When we are nothing but consumers, we begin to suffer what feels like God’s wrath.  How could it be otherwise, given the unbridled and unquenchable desire that the consumer economy and it ad agencies must stimulate in our hearts?  Having a boutique approach to faith or relations destroys our own humanity.   

Being human, merely human, demands that we sink our roots deep into our faith tradition, and into our relationships, and persevere in them, despite occasional frustrations.  It also means the freedom to change traditions or end relations that are simply too painful or abusive to continue.  But let us not confuse this blessed freedom with unbridled and monomanic consumerism, with “consuming things upon our lusts,” or with, as Oscar Wilde wittily observed, “knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.”  In order to grow and prosper, we must live in community and covenant, not in mere consumption. 

Peace and Grace,

Fr. Tony+

Justice in the Gate (Proper 23B)

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Justice in the Gate

14 October 2012

Proper 23B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Amos 5:6-7, 10-15; Psalm 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

The early Church Fathers were pretty unsparing when it came to wealth.  St. Basil the Great said that the riches common to all are held by the wealthy not because the wealthy earned them, but because they were the first to seize them.   St. John Chrysostom said that the rich do not enjoy what is their own, but what belongs to others.  St. Jerome said that every rich person is either a thief or a thief’s heir.    So much for “I built this.” 

This near universal condemnation of wealth by the early Church is not simply “sour grapes” by poor people.  Some of the fathers came from well-to-do families; all of them benefited from the gifts to the Church from wealthy believers. 

The early Church’s condemnation of wealth was rooted in the Hebrew Scripture’s call for social justice, like today’s reading from Amos criticizing the rich for trampling on the poor, and calling for “justice in the gate.”  It comes from Gospel stories like today’s about Jesus and the Rich Young Man.   

Last year, a major U.S. media pundit challenged his listeners to stand up and walk out of Church if they ever heard “social justice” being preached.   “It’s code language for socialism,” he said, adding “Go and find another Church more willing to preach God’s word.”

Those of us who read the Bible seriously were appalled.   Why?  Because “social justice” is a major topic of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Testament, and in fact, a defining theme on both.  If Christian ministers are not preaching social justice, they are not preaching the Bible. 

Just in terms of number of verses that discuss specific things, the Bible is much more concerned with a just and fair economy and laws, more concerned with how we treat the poor, than it is about almost anything else, including sexual morality.

The prophet Ezekiel says that the sin that brought God’s condemnation on the Cities of the Plain  (Sodom and Gomorrah) was ignoring the needs of the poor, to the point of abusing them, in the midst of abundance:

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it. (Ezek. 16:49-51)

The Israelites themselves are defined by their early experience of exclusion and oppression.  An early liturgical fragment says:

My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor. Then we cried out to Yahweh, the God of our ancestors, and Yahweh heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So Yahweh brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders.  He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey (Deut. 26:5-9).

Again and again, the prophets call to the people, “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”  (Exod. 23:9)

Again and again, they say we must take particular care of the wretched of the earth, the poor, orphans, widows.

Providing a fair playing field and then ignoring those who do not succeed is not enough.  We must see the poor, note their needs, and take care of them.   Fair is fair, and we must treat others as we would want to be treated.   Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, is God of rich and poor alike, and is particularly concerned with the poor because the poor need him most. 

There are right and wrong ways of behaving, standards of common decency.  We must not exploit or take advantage of the weak, ignore them or turn a deaf ear to their pleas, nor degrade or violate their human dignity. 

“Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.  Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless ...  If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.” (Exod. 22:21-27)

For three sins of Israel,
   even for four, I will not relent.
They sell the innocent for silver,
   and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the heads of the poor
   as on the dust of the ground
   and deny justice to the oppressed.
 (Amos 2:6-7)

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and Yahweh your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.  When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.” (Deut. 24:17-22; cf. Lev. 19:19-20)

This is one of the great differences between Yahweh and the gods of the nations surrounding Israel.  The Philistine god Baal cares for the rich and the powerful.  Yahweh cares for the dispossessed and poor.  The Philistine goddess Astarte cares for the sexually voluptuous and fertile. Yahweh makes the infertile woman a mother of children.  The Assyrian emperor-god Ashur cares for the militarily powerful and cruel.  Yahweh defends the defenseless and the homeless.  Every local and tribal divinity takes care of his own. Yahweh defends the alien who sojourns in a strange land. 

In contrast to the gods that personify wealth, power, and fertility, Yahweh is the God of all, of rich and poor alike, who takes the part of the weak and defenseless, and can turns things upside down:

“[God] defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.” (Deut. 10:18; see also Isa. 25:4; Psalm 10:14; Isa. 41:17).

Our compassion to others is rooted in and grows out of God’s compassion for us: 

“If there is any poor among you … in any of the towns of the land which Yahweh your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother or sister; but you shall freely open your hand to them, and generously give them sufficient for their needs in whatever they lack.” (Deut. 15:7)

The fact is, Jesus, John the Baptist, St. Paul, and St. James all preach it.  It is found on nearly every page of the Bible.  

All these texts are clear. There are no excuses or exceptions.  None of them tell us to help the poor only if they are hard working, moral, or have complied with immigration and naturalization rules.  None say help the poor “when you feel you can,” “when you feel guilty about it,” or “once or twice a year.” 

The message is simple, but insistent: help those in need.   Give them material support and take up their cause.  It's not at all hard to understand; it's just hard to do.  We must do it as individuals.  And the government does have a role as well:

“[You kings,] open your mouth for those unable to speak, for the rights of all the unfortunate. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.”  (Prov. 31:8-10)

People today often are urged to make the moral choice in voting.  “How would Jesus vote?” is the question most often posed by those who think Jesus would vote for them or their program.   

But based on the evidence in the Bible, if you wanted to be a Biblical one-issue voter, you'd do well to make that one issue serving the poor.

I am not saying here that one party has a monopoly on justice and compassion.  None of these passages clearly says what way of helping the poor is the most effective or the most appropriate.  Those are questions for social scientists, economists, psychologists, and politicians to work on.  But even the most basic requirements of Biblical justice demand that we all, regardless of our political preferences, must work to help the poor and alleviate poverty and oppression.

It is not enough just to give help.  We are also called to “plead the cause” of the poor, i.e., defend their interests and be advocates for them.  When others are silent, do you speak up for the poor in your work place, your school, your church, your community, and your political party?

The poor are real people.  The oppressed are real people.  It is sometimes too easy to filter them out of our vision.  If they are a different color from us, speak a different language, have different morals, we can perhaps say they are not deserving of our attention or our help.  But would you like to go before the Almighty and explain how you did not help someone in need because they were different from you?  Isn’t that the very point of God’s love of the poor?  He wants us to help them because they are different from us.  He wants us to help them because they are undeserving. 

Are you unwilling to help, or have the government help, someone because that person is an “illegal alien?”  Can you imagine having to explain such thinking and feeling to the God who has been so gracious in giving us all that we have?  The very phrase suggests that an entire class of human beings is “illegal” and thus not worthy of compassion.   

To such thinking, the Bible tells us, “Care for the foreigner in your midst, because you too were once foreigners.”
 

Helping others merely because they are in need is a central demand of our faith.  It is just that simple.   Finding the strength and will to do it has to come from our own sense of gratitude at what we have received from others, including the talents and advantages God may have blessed us with.  We often fail to reach out due to fear, especially fear for security.  Love and gratitude drive out fear and enable us to do what God has in mind for us.   “For God, all things are possible.”  

Social Justice is a core biblical doctrine, and anyone who wishes to truly preach the Bible must be willing to preach social justice.  Anyone who truly wants their faith and actions to be grounded in the Bible will make it a major part of their efforts.   Anyone who wants closeness to God, will make detaching from one’s wealth and giving to the poor a key part of their spiritual disciplines.   

Establish justice in the gate.  Loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke. Share your bread with the hungry, share your roof with the homeless.  When you see someone with inadequate clothing, cover them.  Help the poor and oppressed, and take up their cause.

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Faithful to God's Intention (Proper 22B)

 

Faithful to God’s Intention

7 October 2012

Proper 22B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Preached in Chinese the previous evening at 7 p.m. Mandarin Eucharist

Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8; Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

In the culture wars over sexuality and marriage, some people often say that they support the “Biblical view of marriage.”  When I hear that, I often wonder what Bible they have been reading, since so many different forms of marriage are discussed and endorsed in different parts of the Bible: a nuclear family and couple of a man and a woman (Gen. 2:24), polygamy with one man and several wives or broader polygyny including concubines and slaves, whether your own or your wives’ (Genesis; Judges; 1-2 Kings), levirate marriage to produce offspring for a dead brother (Gen. 36:6-10), forced marriage between a rapist and his victim (Deut. 22:28-29), and even the taking of women in war as booty (Numbers 31:1-18; Deut. 21:11-14).     All of these marriage forms discussed and endorsed in parts of the Bible are based on the idea of the woman as the chattel possession of the man.  

But what people mean when they say “the Biblical View of Marriage,” is usually based on today’s Genesis and Gospel readings:  one man and one woman in a life-long relationship that should not be dissolved by divorce. 

They quote these passages to say that God endorses “traditional marriage and family values.”     

But this misses what is really at work in these passages.  At a much deeper level, these passages actually challenge traditional values, marriage and sexual norms, and the cultures that produce them.

Pharisees here come to Jesus to ask him a question of legal interpretation, of halakah, on the topic of marriage, just as “hot” a topic then as it is now: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 

They ask this full well knowing that the Law allows a man to renounce his ownership of a woman in marriage by divorcing her, and to marry multiple women.    The most common reason for divorce in this cultural setting was infertility, the failure of a marriage to produce offspring, or general dissatisfaction on the part of the man with his wife.  The great economic imperative was to have children to help produce wealth, and besides, “be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth” was a commandment in the Torah. 

There was no provision for a woman to divorce her husband because, after all, she was the chattel, not he.  The reference to women divorcing their husbands at the end of this passage is almost certainly an addition to Jesus' saying from the early Church, for it does not reflect the legal realities in Palestine when Jesus was alive.  

And the science of the era said that semen contained all the life needed for reproduction, and the woman only provided a place to incubate a child.  Infertility was seen as purely a woman’s fault. 

The question “Is it permitted to divorce?” stems from the fact that some Jews of the period saw divorce as forbidden by the Law.  The Dead Seas Scrolls covenanters read Deuteronomy 17:17’s prohibition of multiple wives for the king as a general command against polygamy as well as divorce and remarriage (11QTemple 57:17-19).  Given Jesus’ ties to John the Baptist, and the Baptist’s close proximity to Qumran, the question is understandable. 

Jesus replies not by saying, “and what does the Law permit?”  He asks rather, “What does Moses command you?”   He knows there is no command in the Law anywhere to divorce anyone.   But, like President Obama and Governor Romney at the debates this last week, the Pharisees decide to answer the question they wish had been asked rather than the one that actually was:  “Well, Moses permitted divorce as long as it was done by a written procedure.”  

They are quoting scripture.  They are pointing to the word of God and saying that it not only supports what is, from their perspective, traditional marriage and family values, but that it actually established the procedure to do so.  But Jesus won’t concede the point. “Well, it’s only because you are so hard-hearted, so stubborn, that Moses included that in the Law.”     Jesus is saying that there are things in the scripture only because of human failings, and that go against God’s true purposes and intentions. 

Then it is Jesus’ turn to quote scripture.  But importantly, he does not quote Deuteronomy 17:17 as a commandment from God not to divorce under any circumstances, as the Essenes would have done.    Rather he argues from God’s plan in creation, and refers back to another part of scripture, Genesis.    First, he gives a line from the first creation story, “God made man and woman in his own image.”  This is from the priestly creation account, the one where “God saw what he had made, and it was very good” and men and women are created in the same instant by the voice command of God.   

Jesus’ point is that women are not mere chattel, to be discarded according to whims and economic demands.  Both men and women are in the image of God.  One’s gender does not blur the image of God.  One’s marital status does not remove God’s image.  Moderns would add: one’s sexual orientation does not remove God’s image. 

Second, he quotes from the second story of creation: “For this reason, a man will leave his own parents’ home, be joined with a woman, and the two will become one flesh.”  The point here is that the union of the couple is more important than the man’s economic identity as part of his parents’ household. 

This second story of creation, from the Yahwist, is the one that gives a Just So Stories kind of explanation about our day-to-day life:  men abandon their parents to go with their spouse because of that rib thing, women have child birth pain and are subjected to men in that society because she ate the fruit first, the snake crawls without any legs because it tempted the couple.  In that second story, when God creates the world, not all is “very good.”  In it, God says, “it is not good for a human being to be alone” (Gen. 2:18).  And so you have all the animals created, and finally, a “help fit” for the human being. 

It is this need for deep community, for intimacy and oneness with another person, this hunger for society and love—built into every human being, that Jesus sees as what God intends in creation.   Chattel ownership with disposable relations has no part in this.  That is why he says, “What God has joined together,  let no human being split up.” 

People try to make Jesus’ words here into a legal prescription: divorce should never be allowed; marriage by definition is between one male and one female; marriage is the intended state of a human being, and singleness is ipso facto a diminishment of the person.  But this understanding rejects Jesus’ reasoning and undermines his intentions.

It is almost certain that the historical Jesus gave a ruling against divorce.  But this was because divorce was part of a large system of oppression and inhumane relationships, not because he supported the oppression and hurt that continuing a harmful or predatory relationship can bring.  It was because he wanted greater equality between men and women, not because he supported the subjugation of women.   It was because he wanted marriage between men and women to be more just, not because he wanted to exclude loving committed relationships between people of the same gender.  

Jesus here wants us all to better fulfill what God intends for each of us.  Genesis explains in mythical terms the hunger for intimacy, the “urge to merge,” that most of us experience.  Jesus quotes this to say that if God puts that in our hearts, we should be true to it.  It demands faithfulness.

The early Church, despite its other failings, understood the importance of Jesus’ reasoning here.  They turned their back on the “biblical view of marriage” of the day—the chattel system where men owned women, perhaps several—and adopted instead the legal marriage form of the pagan Romans, one man and one woman where a woman had equal rights to dissolve the marriage contract.    

God creates us for community.  To be more fully what God intends when he made us, we need to walk faithfully alongside another person.  And that relationship should not be evaluated on its “fruitfulness,” whether in terms of children, economic production, conformity to tradition, or even in terms of mutual pleasure.    

Jesus’ reasoning here constitutes a profound challenge not just to polygamous chattel marriage and divorce system of his era, but to us today as well.  Jesus here both challenges the idolatry of American "traditional family values" as well our culture's worship of every sexual urge or romantic impulse, which often become warrants for taking up or casting aside another human being like a plaything or a trophy.

For Jesus, relationship that is worthy of the name is sacrificial, where you subordinate your own desires to the needs of the beloved.  Any relationship less than that, particularly intimate ones, is to a greater or lesser degree broken. 

This week I pray that we may all look at our relationships.  Let’s identify for ourselves where we judge our partners on their “fruitfulness.” Are our relationships instrumental or sacrificial, that is, are we in the relationship for what we get out of it, or for what we can put into it?  And then let us take what we find out to our Lord in prayer and ask for guidance to make them better. 

In the name of God, Amen