Love and Marriage

Genesis and Mark about marriage and divorce! Along with Revelation, Mark and Genesis are my favorites to study. I love Bible study, I love studying the Bible by my self, I loved group Bible study with other folks. 

In leading Bible study groups, I always tried to trust people enough to share my formal education about the Bible, what I learned, and methods of study, at theological seminary and later. It’s risky though, and many pastors will not take the chance, because they face parishioners with absolute certainties about the Bible, people who will not tolerate inquiry, who will not risk challenging what they were taught in kindergarten Sunday school and have held to ever since. Pastors have been driven out of the pulpit, indeed, away from the church by such folks. 

But opening Bible study with the clarification that “There are no issues that cannot be raised, no questions that cannot be asked, nothing that cannot be discussed” worked for me when people in my classes were eager to explore, discuss and learn new things about the Bible even though new things can be shocking, disillusioning. 

I remember a woman who was outraged when I suggested that, in a particular Bible passage, Jesus was being sarcastic with enemies who wanted to kill him. She angrily upbraided me, “Jesus would NEVER have been sarcastic.” 

I remember a man saying in class that he was “deeply offended” by what we were studying (it was standard material in theological seminary first year, first semester Bible courses).  

Let me risk it! First, I’ll tell you: we do not go into the Bible looking for God's rules for us. We use God's love, the Holy Spirit, to explore and understand the Bible and its many puzzlements. 

A favorite illustration is Deuteronomy 21, verse 18. Listen: 

"If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who willl not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother SHALL take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of the town SHALL stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid."

A person of Fixed Mindset might either be dismayed and not know what to think - - or rise from his Bible and start gathering stones to carry out the law of God. A person of Growth Mindset would be interested to learn that such a law was early Israelites forming into organized society with expectations and rules of conduct. We are a different day and age: that law has nothing to do with us, nor we with it.

We do not go into the Bible to find our laws and rules. We take the love of God into the Bible to help us understand what we read. 

That includes today's gospel, where Mark has Jesus talking about divorce. 

I was going to tell you a lot of stories about marriage, divorce and remarriage, stories from my life as a priest, but the sermon turned out way too long, so I cut it to a few choice tidbits! Here’s one!!

Years ago a woman comes to my office and asks me to officiate her wedding. It’s a small town, I know who she is, I say, “What are you talking about?! You're married." She says, “Yes, but I’m thinking about divorcing my husband to marry my boyfriend, if I do, will you marry us?" I say, "No." She did divorce her husband and marry her boyfriend, but then her ex-husband won her back, so she divorced again and remarried her ex-husband. I don’t know the rest of the story: her back and forth was still going on when we left town a quarter-century ago.

We clergy are required to have premarital sessions with couples who come wanting to be married by a priest of the church. I ask each one, “What does he (or she) do that annoys you?” In turn, each one talks, while the other listens. Usually each already knows what the other finds annoying, especially these days when couples already live together, and the Neat Freak is annoyed at now living in a pig-sty. But sometimes there’s a surprise, and it’s good to surface grievances ahead of Time instead of getting married thinking to change the other person.

For the weddings I’ve officiated, I’m not doing better or worse than the national average that fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce. No amount of pre-marital counseling changes that, because couples who are smitten in love will marry no matter what, and things do not start to unravel until the knot is tied, both let their guards down, and life gets real. 

One wedding I officiated years ago, the bride’s wealthy parents gave them the wedding gift of a voyage, a twelve-month round-the-world cruise on a luxury liner. Within two weeks of sharing a stateroom together, they found they could not STAND each other, and were back home for divorce.

Another wedding I officiated, both of them had strong personalities, with different values and personal goals for life: the marriage soon divorced because the man expected his bride to meld into his lifestyle as an adoring wife, but she was her own person and not obedient, as in love, honor, and obey.” Their differences came out in premarital counseling and they hesitated, but decided they were “too much in love” to call it off.

“Obey” is not in the wedding vows of the Episcopal Church.

Most people do not want to live alone, we need companionship, so we pair up together. Sometimes it works, but half the Time it does not work, and half the folks I know and love have been divorced, most going on to marry someone else. That’s life as it is! No one goes into marriage thinking to divorce, but it happens.

In premarital counseling where one or both are divorced, I get each person to discuss what went wrong in the earlier marriage, and what they learned that will help them succeed in the new marriage. 

In today’s gospel, Jesus’ words about divorce are harsh, unequivocal. Some Bible scholars believe Jesus’ said this because of draconian customs of his day, husbands leaving their wives destitute and helpless, to divorce and go into a new marriage. Other Bible scholars insist Jesus did not say this at all, pointing out that Mark’s words actually reflect practices of the Roman Empire where either husband or wife could divorce; whereas in Jewish law that Jesus knew, only the man could divorce - - suggesting that it was not Jesus who said this at all, but Mark himself, or the early church, writing generations after Jesus, when the gospels were composed. If you do competent, history-mindful Bible study, you learn to understand and appreciate what you find there, including difficult passages. 

A lifelong Episcopalian, I grew up in the Episcopal Church when divorce-and-remarriage was harsh and unforgiving: no Holy Communion for anyone who remarried after divorce (that's “excommunication,” saying “You are not worthy, we will not allow you at the Lord’s Table with us” - - the inference being, of course, "We ARE worthy" [!!!!]). The Church has come out of that darkness into a place where human beings and lovingkindness are more important than certainty and rules of ancient civilization.

A priest is required to get the bishop’s permission before officiating the wedding of anyone after divorce: bishops trusted my judgment, accepted my recommendations, I never had a problem getting bishops’ consent to officiate. 

In one situation, the woman was going into her fifth marriage after four divorces, and the bishop paused and phoned me to discuss it, but he did sign the form allowing me to officiate. Active parishioners who had been together for years, that couple were going to be married regardless, inside or outside the Church. Would "The Church of Love God Love Neighbor" drive them away, or would we encourage them in their life together? 

You may agree or disagree, and that’s fine! In fact, the Episcopal Church used to have a service called the Episcopal Ad Project, offering advertisements for us to print in the newspaper, and I remember one advertisement that said, “In the Episcopal Church, you do not have to check your BRAIN at the door.” We think for ourselves.

I remember a friend who was not an Episcopalian coming to me to discuss cruelty in their marriage. When I asked, “Why do you live with this, why don’t you divorce?”, the friend said, “My pastor told me that if I get a divorce I’ll go to hell.” That must be a different God, that is not the God we love and serve.

Christianity is not about rules: our Christian faith is about how we treat people because of what we believe about the love of God and His Son Jesus, the Man on the Cross, for whom nothing is more important than lovingkindness. 

For whom nothing is more important than lovingkindness. That’s the gospel of the Lord.

++++++++++++

Sermon, homiletic endeavor, by the Rev Tom Weller (Episcopal priest, retired) in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida, on Sunday, 6 Oct 2024. Texts:

Old Testament: Genesis 2:18-24

The Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

this one shall be called Woman,

for out of Man this one was taken.”

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

The Gospel: Mark 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.