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
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.
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
