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
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.
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.
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
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