A World Bright with Joyous Saints

A World Bright with Joyous Saints

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

October 28, 2015

This week is the Christian autumn (in the northern hemisphere, at least) Triduum (three day festival): All Hallows’ Eve (Oct. 31), All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1), and All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2).  It mirrors the Spring Triduum (Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday).  Where spring reminds us of life and new beginnings, the fall reminds of death and the endings that must precede new things.  All Hallows’ Eve commemorates our hope and confidence in Christ in the face of all that frightens us, All Saints’ remembers the faithful departed whose examples and faith encourage us to follow them and ask for their prayers. All Souls’ remembers all the departed, beloved to us, for whom we pray. 

Here at Trinity, at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, we will have the funeral for Charles Friesen, former music minister here and beloved mentor to many of our musicians. Because roads will start to be closed at 1:30 for the Halloween parade, we suggest that everyone build in an extra ten minutes to get into Church. 

Sunday will be the solemnity of All Saints: during the morning services we will solemnly read the list of our beloved departed, offer our pledge envelopes for the coming year at the offertory, and welcome this season’s class of new members of the congregation.  The evening contemplative Eucharist at 5 p.m. will have an All Saints’ theme. 

On Monday, we will have Sung Morning Prayer at 8:00 a.m. followed by Holy Eucharist in the commemoration of All Souls.

Our commemorations of the departed, both the Saints and all the rest, remind us that we all—living, dead, and yet-to-come—are in this together, beloved creatures of our loving God.   We remember the examples of the saints and hope that they pray for us; we mourn the loss of the beloved ones we no longer see, and we pray for them.   

A favorite children’s hymn for the Fall Triduum reminds us that we all are saints in the sense of being made holy by Jesus in our baptism, and that the distinction between saints and sinners is thin indeed.   Saints fail like all other sinners.  They just keep picking themselves up and try again, and again:

   

I sing a song of the saints of God,
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green;
They were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right for Jesus' sake
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
And there's not any reason, no, not the least,
Why I shouldn't be one too.

They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one too.

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+ 

Jesus is Calling (Proper 25B)

“Jesus is Calling”

25 October 2015

Proper 25B

Homily preached by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

at Trinity Episcopal Parish

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

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

Jericho is an oasis set in a bone dry valley almost a thousand feet below sea level.  The air is oppressive:  hot and heavy, even when you sit beside a small intermittent stream in the shade.  There you see an ancient and immense sycamore fig tree, said to be where Zaccheus climbed to see Jesus.  In the distance, you see what is called the Mount of Temptation, said to be where the Devil confronted Jesus during his forty day fast.  And you see the ancient market place, now crowded with vendors of all sorts of modern goods, where the blind Beggar Bartimaeus accosted Jesus, the story told in today’s Gospel. 

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.

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.   Maybe by using it he will get Jesus’ attention. 

The disciples 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.” 

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 are as surprised as Bar-tame’.

Hearing their encouragement, he casts off his cloak and goes to Jesus.   The beggar’s tattered and filthy cloak was a chief way of appealing for aid, kind of like a cardboard sign saying “anything you can give helps.”  

Bar-tame’ throws off his cloak, and with it his sole means of support, the little bit of security he might feel he has, all to meet Jesus.    But he also casts away all his assumptions about himself, his belief that he really is a loser, all the dysfunctions and fears his disability has wrought.

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.

 

“Take heart—Jesus is calling you.”  This is the origin of a favorite evangelical hymn: 

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.
Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

Sung as an altar call to people in a congregation who feel weighed down and trapped by their shortcomings and deliberate wrongdoings, the hymn addresses everyone’s need to feel pardon.  But by reducing the call of Jesus to one of pardon alone it misses a lot of the power of the story of Bartimaeus.    Jesus is calling to fix whatever is wrong with us.  And he is doing so by calling us to follow him.  The only right response is to follow him, and throw off anything that might get in the way of doing that.  

When we encounter Jesus, he transforms us.  He calls us to new ways of living, of feeling, or being.  If we haven’t been transformed, we just have not encountered him.  Whether sudden or gradual, transformation is a sign of having met Jesus.   

It’s not about how we feel, whether we think we’ve been changed, or can give a date of when it supposedly happened, or can work up a psychological state that some call “belief.”  Though it’s about real risk—it demands that we throw off our begging cloaks, for starters—it’s usually not all that dramatic.  Much of the transformation happens gradually as we learn to stop our old ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves and others, and bit by bit learn the Way Jesus calls us to.  It happens as we slowly earn to forget our old name of loser and child-of-shame and realize our true name has always been child of honor. 

Today, we usually encounter Jesus in his body, the Church.   We encounter him in the Church’s sacraments, teaching, worship and prayer.  Transformation is what the Church is all about.  If we are not being changed by our participation in Church, something is wrong.

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

“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 sacraments offered in the Church give 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 accept your unacceptable lot.

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.  

The Gathered Church (Mid-week)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

October 21, 2015

The Gathered Church

One of my favorite hymns (# 302 in the 1982 Hymnal) is taken from a very ancient Eucharistic Prayer found in the Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, written about the year 90 C.E.:

“Father, we thank Thee Who has planted
Thy holy name within our hearts.
Knowledge and faith and life immortal
Jesus Thy Son to us imparts.
Thou, Lord, didst make all for Thy pleasure,
Didst give us food for all our days,
Giving in Christ the bread eternal;
Thine is the pow'r, be Thine the praise.

Watch o'er Thy Church, O Lord, in mercy,
Save it from evil, guard it still,
Perfect it in love, unite it,
Cleansed and conformed unto Thy will.
As grain, once scattered on the hillsides,
Was in this broken bread made one,
So from all lands Thy church be gathered
Into Thy kingdom by Thy Son.”

The hymn gives a glimpse into the life of the Church at that early time:  the broken bread, one loaf from many grains, is seen as a symbol of the church, a single possession of God drawn together from many different kinds of people.  God is the one who draws the diverse church together, planting the name and teaching of Jesus in our hearts.   

When I as in Beijing serving in the interdenominational Congregation of the Good Shepherd, I was struck by how different Christians talked about Church.  “God, bless our church,” the Mennonites, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists would generally say, where Episcopalians, Anglicans, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics would prefer “God, bless your Church.”  In the older view, the Church is a creation of God rather than an assembly of like-minded people.  The Church belongs to God.  In classic imagery, the church is Christ’s bride.  It is bigger and wider and deeper than the local congregation.  We are the Church, not consumers served by the Church.

This difference in viewpoint explains why the recitation of the Nicene Creed is an important part of our Eucharistic celebrations:  we have the intention to link our faith with what has been believed by all believers in all places and at all times. 

The Didache lets it theology of the Church teach us about what our attitude should be toward our possessions: “Share all things with your brother or sister; and do not say that they are your own. If you are sharers in what is imperishable, how much more in things which perish.”  Stewardship for the Didache is rooted in the view that we are part of the mystical body of Christ and the fellowship of all faithful people:  because in church we share eternal mystery with each other, we should share our material possessions all the more. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+ 

  

Zebedee's Wannabes (Proper 24B)

Zebedee’s Wanna-bes

Homily delivered by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, Ph.D., SCP

Sung Choral Eucharist at 9:00 a.m.

Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 24B

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (OR)

October 18, 2015

Isaiah 53:4-12 Psalm 91:9-16 Hebrews 5:1-10 Mark 10:35-45 

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

Today’s Gospel has the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, ask Jesus “will you give us whatever we ask?”  These two, along with St. Peter, were the inside group that shared all of Jesus’s most personal moments.  Elsewhere, these two are called “sons of thunder,” meaning, variously, “noisy children” or “angry children.”   Clearly motivated but also somewhat ambitious, they are at the heart of several Gospel stories where the disciples argue about who is most important.  Jesus won’t give them a blank check, and asks, “Just what are you thinking about asking?”  The reply:  seat us in honored places, one at your right and one on your left, when you reign.   

The Chinese have a proverb about being careful what you wish for.  Jesus seems to have a similar idea in mind when he says, “you have no idea what you’re asking.  Are you able to drink the cup I drink, or be immersed in the waters I will go beneath?”    The “cup of God’s wrath” was a symbol of the bitter and befuddling drunkenness experienced by a person made to drink whatever God sent him.  Similarly, “sinking into the flood,” or “floundering in deep water or the mire” was a symbol of the afflictions some felt God had sent upon them.  Jesus is thinking of his own likely bad end:  you want to be near me, but that means you’ll have to suffer like me.  Can you take it?”  “Oh yes, Jesus, it’s just what we want!” they reply innocently, having no idea of how ironic their words will appear once they have deserted Jesus at the first sign of trouble during Holy Week.  

The fact is, following Jesus means sharing Jesus’ sufferings.  It means being present for and with Jesus in his passion, from the garden and on to the cross and tomb.  But it also means living with the consequences of following his teachings and manner of life:  the craziness and utter counter-cultural rejection of the world and its power and pomp, and acting as if God is already fully in charge, right here and now.    

The Jesus Seminar and some more liberal historical Jesus scholars say that this story cannot describe words of the historical Jesus because there are too many post-Easter insights and language.  But here I am with Fr. John Meier:  it is hard to see an early church making this story up.  For one thing, it seems to prophecy the martyrdom of James and John, but everyone knew that John did not die a martyr’s death.   And the use of the image of the cup and the immersion are markedly pre-Easter: following Jesus means accepting the same sufferings he accepts, and gives no assurance of a special place in the Kingdom.    

The issue is acceptance.  The issue is not blaming God for our suffering.  We often go to God with questions: why am I suffering this?  Why is my loved one in such pain?  More often than not, we get no answers from God.  But we do get God’s presence:  Immanuel, God with us.  Comfort and strength, not answers, are given to us in the face of mystery and horror.  And that is precisely because Jesus is there on the cross with us.  

 Accept the bad stuff that comes your way, Jesus says.  But don’t blame it on God and resent him for that.  Let us trust and love God all the more.    Addressing the ambition of Zebedee’s wannabe sons, He says being number one is not so great:  the rulers among the gentiles “lord it over” others.  They “use power” on people.  But the first will be last and the last first.  Such “glory” and “honor” is not what is in store for us who are close to Jesus:  with him, we must be a slave to others, wash their feet, serve at their beck and call, and smile and love it.   Like the people of Israel in today's reading from Second Isaiah, we must become servants, and willing to suffer for others.  That is what Jesus sees as his calling, and he calls us there too.  And put aside any hopes that this will buy you a place of honor near God.  “That’s above my pay grade,” says Jesus.  “Who knows where God will place any of us?”      

C.S. Lewis once wrote,  “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”    

That might not be a comforting vision, but it is true vision.  It is only in letting go of control that we gain anything approaching influence.  It is only in letting go of false aspirations and affectations that we can find ourselves.  This is a matter not of comfort, but of truth.  

In the name of Christ,  Amen

Inward and Outward Faith (Mid-week Message)

St. Pachomius, founder of communal monasticism

Inward and Outward Faith

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

October 14, 2015

This coming Sunday at a parish meeting after a special single 9:00 a.m. Eucharist, we will be continuing the “Equipping the Saints” discussion about our parish calling and identity.  We began the discussion on Trinity Sunday when we talked about Anglican/Episcopal identity and the broad spectrum of what it means to be part of the Prayer Book tradition.   The single largest thing we learned then is that where most of our parishioners identify themselves as having a mystic spirituality, few identify Trinity as a place strong in mysticism.   

In discussions on this in the vestry and worship committee, I have come to realize that there are several simple changes in our Sunday morning worship we might grow into that would help make it reflect and nurture more fully the calling many of us feel in this regard.  I have begun to pace my own prayers and blessings more slowly.  We are taking more time in silence for reflection during the service in order to create more liturgical room for contemplation.   We have begun using a liturgical chime in daily morning prayer and are considering how we might use it gently and sparingly Sunday mornings to, again, create sacred space and focus contemplation.  We are also looking at how to use the sense of smell in a way that does not cause distress for our choristers and parishioners challenged with breathing ailments. 

It is often said that the Prayer Book has a Benedictine Spirituality.  The Psalter is an important part of our worship, as is the cycle of prayers and observances throughout the year.  Our Sunday evening Contemplative Eucharist aspires to more a Trappist or Cistercian spirituality, while our  soon-to-be-inaugurated Celtic Evensong and Communion looks to a Christian spirituality more grounded in the love of creation and incarnational faith of first nations of the British Isles. 

However you understand spirituality or mysticism, however, one thing must be clear from the start:  an inward-rooted and driven Christian faith must not be a spirituality of isolation, stark individualism, or solipsism.   Our faith must be grounded in and lead to community, guided direction, and loving service.  This is the point that St. Paul makes in a reading we had just yesterday in the Daily Prayer cycle.  When Paul discusses spiritual gifts, speaking in angelic languages, and prophecy in the Corinthian Church, he says it clearly:  inward-oriented faith is less central and less important that outward-oriented faith:

“Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy. For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.  Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church. Now I would like all of you to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up. … Since you are eager for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them for building up the church.” (1 Cor. 14:2-12).

Paul’s point is this:  as important as inward-looking faith is, it only really matters as it brings us into relation with others, into loving service.   Perhaps that is the real meaning of people who celebrate the Trinity—a social dance of divine love—and find they need quiet moments alone with God. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

Cranky, Beautiful Faith (Mid-week Message)

Cranky Beautiful Faith

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

October 7, 2015

I am writing this from Denver, where I am attending the annual conference of the North American Province of the Society of Catholic Priests.  The conference keynote speaker will be The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, a much tattooed and notoriously foul-mouthed ELCA emergent church pastor and founder of Denver’s House for All Sinners and Saints.  She has a knack for pithy, memorable ways of expressing deep truth. Her new book,  Accidental Saints: Finding God in all the Wrong People came out a month ago. Here are a few quotes from her first book, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint (2013) that I found particularly juicy:

 “God’s grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings.” (p. 49)

 “There’s a popular misconception that religion, Christianity specifically, is about knowing the difference between good and evil so that we can choose the good. But being good has never set me free the way truth has… [Jesus] instead of contrasting good and evil… contrasted truth and evil.” (p. 72)

“There is simply no knowable answer to the question of why there is suffering. But there is meaning. And for me that meaning ended up being related to Jesus — Emmanuel — which means, “God with us.” We want to go to God for answers, but sometimes what we get is God’s presence.” (p. 86)

 “I think loving our enemies might be too central to the Gospel — to close to the heart of Jesus — for it to wait until we mean it.” (p. 115)

“Somewhere along the way I was taught that evil is fought through justice and might. … [but] retaliation or holding on to anger about the harm done to me doesn’t actually combat evil. Maybe it feeds it.” (p. 149)

“Repentance in Greek means something much closer to ‘thinking differently afterward’ than it does ‘changing your cheating ways. … Repentance, ‘thinking differently afterward,’ is what happens to me when the truth of who I am and the truth of who God is scatter the darkness of competing ideas. And these truths don’t ever feel like they come from inside me.” (pp. 192-193)

“The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. And Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of just showing up. Showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening… And it was her, a deeply faithful and deeply flawed woman, whom Jesus chose to be the first witness of his resurrection and to whom he commanded to go and tell everyone else about it.” (pp. 197-198)

See you Sunday.  Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

Measure of Creation

 

Measure of Creation

3 October 2015

Proper 22B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

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

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

Before I preach on the scripture texts today, I want to express my deepest sorrow and compassion for our brothers and sisters in Roseburg.  I also want to name our political leadership’s craven irresponsibility in cutting funding for mental health care and for not enacting serious gun controls after Sandy Hook almost three years ago, as well as the culpability of voters in our society so enthralled by the culture of violence and guns that they block efforts at sensible gun controls.  I also name our own culpability for not pushing harder, and for allowing ourselves to be bullied by gun worshipers.

And now about the scriptures we just read:  In the culture wars over sexuality and marriage, some people say that they support the “Biblical view of marriage.”  Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, went to jail for contempt of court when she refused to issue lawful marriage licenses contrary to what she and her Apostolic Christian Church believe is “the Biblical view of marriage.”

 

I wonder what Bible they have been reading. 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 men owning women as chattel possessions.

What people usually mean by “the Biblical View of Marriage” comes from a misreading of today’s Genesis and Gospel readings:  one man and one woman in a life-long relationship that cannot be dissolved by divorce. 

This misses what these passages really are teaching.  At a deep level, they actually challenge traditional values, marriage and sexual norms, and how we use those with whom we are in relationship.

Pharisees here come to Jesus to ask a question of legal interpretation 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 know full well that the Torah allows men to marry multiple women and to abandon them by divorce. The most common reason was infertility.  The great economic imperative was to have children to help produce wealth. 

There was no provision for a woman to divorce her husband because, after all, she was the chattel, not he.  The reference on Jesus’ lips here to women divorcing their husbands is almost certainly a later addition to Jesus' saying, for it does not reflect the legal realities in Palestine when Jesus was alive.  

“Is it permitted to divorce?” The Pharisees know that the Essenes, with whom John the Baptist is so close, rule that the Law forbids divorce.  The Dead Seas Scrolls understand 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, the question is understandable. 

Jesus replies not by saying, “and what does the Law permit?” but rather, “What does it command?”   He knows that nowhere in the Law is a command to divorce anyone.  They answer, “Well, Moses permitted divorce as long as it was done by a written procedure.”  

They are quoting scripture to support what is, from their perspective, traditional marriage and family law.

But Jesus won’t have any of it.  “Well, it’s only because you are so hard-hearted that Moses included that.”   For Jesus, scripture is a varied thing, and parts of it reflect human failings, and actually go against God’s true purposes. 

So Jesus quotes scripture back at them.  He does not quote Deuteronomy 17:17 to forbid divorce legally like the Essenes.   Rather he constructs an argument from the measure of our creation, from God’s plan in making us.  He quotes Genesis, “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 command of God.   

Jesus’ point is that women are not mere chattel, to be discarded according to whims.  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.   

I would add, thinking of Kim Davis, one’s sexual orientation does not remove God’s image.   And thinking of Caitlin Jenner, neither does gender dysphoria.  “Male and female” here is an example of the Hebraic figure of using opposites to include everything between:  “night and day” “heaven and earth,” “your coming in and your going out” “your rising and your sleeping,”  and “male and female.”  God’s image is present fully in transgendered persons also. 

Then Jesus 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 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 this story, when God creates the world, not all is “very good.”  Rather, God says, “it is not good for a human being to be alone” (Gen. 2:18).  And so God creates all the animals (note that on this Feast of St. Francis!) 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 intimate society and love—built into every human being, that Jesus sees as what God intends in creation.   Jesus here wants us all to better fulfill the measure of our creation.   Genesis explains in mythical terms the hunger for intimacy, the “urge to merge,” that most of us experience.  And that is so, whether it is an urge with a hetero-, or homo-, or a somewhere in between flavor.   Be true to your creation, says Jesus. If God puts that in our hearts, we should be true to it.  It demands faithfulness.  Both to yourself and to the one with whom you pair bond.

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 legalism rejects Jesus’ reasoning and contradicts his intentions.

It is almost certain that the historical Jesus gave a halakhic ruling against divorce.  But this was because divorce was part of a large system of oppression of women 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.  

The early Church, despite its other failings, understood the importance of Jesus’ reasoning here, at least in part.  True, it went legalistic in forbidding divorce in almost all circumstances, at least until the modern era.  But at the same time, it understood Jesus' logic here.  As a result, 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, even to dissolve the marriage contract.    

Jesus himself on occasion was critical of marriage as an institution--but it is always in the sense of this chattel ownership marriage.  And though he gave a halakhic ruling against divorce, he never said a word condemning and excluding the woman at the well, the one with five previous husbands and living with a man who was not her husband.  He invited her and all the Samaritans to worship with him "in spirit and in truth" (John 4).  Jesus never said a word against a committed same-sex relationship.  He even healed the male servant of the centurion who begged for his “dear boy” (Luke 7:1-10) despite possible Torah objections to such relationships.

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 and the social norm 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. 

My marriage to Elena has been one of the great continuing joys of my life, an anchor and refuge.  I think that this is so for many of us.  Marriage when it works is good.  It demands sacrifice, attention, and loyal faithfulness.  But it is worth the effort and the commitment.  Why in the world would anyone think that God would not want to share this blessing with his gay and lesbian children along with all the rest of us?  I believe the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada have been moved by the Holy Spirit in their decisions to welcome gay people and honor, even sacramentally bless and effectuate, their unions.  I see the hand of a loving God in it, and the gradual revealing of the Reign of God Jesus said was already in our midst.  

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 in some degree broken. 

The same applies to our relationship in community.  Love in community, like the church, also needs to be sacrificial.  This is the spiritual basis of our stewardship and financial response campaign here at Trinity:  we need to give to support the ministries and community life we love and care for to the point where we put aside our own desires and wishes.  Faithfulness and loving stewardship is a hallmark of healthy participation in community.   

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