Jesus, Marriage and Discrimination

Here is my sermon from 10.8.06. Readings for Sunday, Genesis 2:18-24 and Mark 10:2-16.

Creation. Today we hear an account of the creation in Genesis. But if we go back to the beginning of Genesis, we can hear God’s pronouncement over and over that “it was good.” God created something and God saw that it was good, and was pleased with what had been created. In the account of the creation story we hear today, we see that God is not pleased with only having one person. God had just created the entire earth and saw the first human standing there and realized that something was missing, that there was something else needed. God was not quite ready to call it “good” yet. God knows that it is not good for us to be alone – now granted – Adam was not really alone – God was there, which is pretty big and there were animals all around him, but God knew that there was a need for another human, for another person here on earth to relate to, to love, to be with.

The core of the creation story is not about roles or who should do or not do what, but it is really about what it means to be a human being. It is about relationship. I’m not saying that everyone needs to be married or be in a relationship, but rather that at the core of what it means to be human is that we are made to be with other people. Even monks and nuns are in relationship because they live in community with one another. We are created to be in relationship, in community. We can only grow into who we are created to be with and through each other. This growth happens in a variety of ways, but it cannot happen alone.

This is where the Gospel reading comes in as it talks about marriage and divorce. I have to be honest that most clergy I know, including myself, dread the Sunday that this comes up because it is such a touchy subject. My parents are divorced, my dear friend got divorced at the age of 25, my brother-in-law is in the midst of getting a divorce. In one way or another, I’m sure that most of us, if not all of us have been touched by divorce or know people who have been touched by divorce. Sometimes it is an amicable split, but I find that those are the exceptions to the rule. Most divorces are full of anger and hurt, fighting and disappointment to say the least. It is the dissolving of a relationship and that is painful. Yet sometimes, divorce, even though painful, brings hope and new life to a person.
So, why is Jesus telling us that we cannot divorce and remarry and if we do we are breaking the law and we are breaking God’s will for us?

I believe that Jesus is not calling us to hopelessly high standards, rather Jesus is calling us to a high vision of what could be and what we should work toward. We are human, which means we will mess up, we will fall and have to get back up and try again. That is written right into the baptismal covenant! Jesus, here and elsewhere in the Bible is teaching us, showing us, helping us see what God wants and is also teaching us that when we fall short of that, we can come back and try again and again. I believe that is why Mark tags on the story of the children being blessed by Jesus. He is showing us again that what we think might be okay, ignoring the least of these – ignoring the people that are other than – ignoring or displacing those who do not fit in – is not part of God’s call to us. As people of God we have to continue to work toward the commandment that Jesus gave us – to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. This goes for us, it goes for kids, it goes for everyone, everywhere.

The culture around Jesus at this time was one of contract marriages. It was about joining two families together to share everything with one another. It was more of a business deal than a relationship. It was also mostly about procreation because people did not live to be very old. So, in order to carry on, children had to be born and help out on the farm, around the house, etc. until it was time for them to marry. This is a totally different understanding of marriage than we have in our culture today.

This summer, I officiated at two weddings of good friends of mine. As I think back on those weddings, I was reminded that in this culture, we are not marrying out of contract or out of a business deal. Most of us, if we choose to marry, do so out of love, out of that deep need to be with someone and to love that person.

At one of these weddings, I met a couple who had been dating for years and was pretty clear that they did not want to be married, but rather to live into their relationship. I asked them if they were scared of the commitment, which is usually the case when people decide not to get married. They assured me that, no – they were deeply committed to one another and were thinking about having a party to honor that commitment, much as you would with a wedding. Other people that I know well have decided not to get married because their friends who are gay or lesbian cannot get married. They have said to me and many others that until everyone can receive the sacrament of marriage, they will stand by them by not getting married either, and will commit themselves to a relationship with each other rather than get married in the traditional sense.

In about a month’s time, we are all being asked to vote on a referendum that many people are calling “a ban on gay marriage,” but if you read the language, it is much more than that. This would write into the constitution that only a man and a woman can marry AND that a legal status identical or similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals will not be recognized. This is pure and simple prejudice against a certain part of our community. This would be using the constitution to limit people’s rights rather than securing their rights or giving them equal rights. You many not agree with gay and lesbian people getting married, and you and I can debate that later, but what is at issue here is people being singled out and treated as less than simply because they choose not to marry, but to remain in committed relationships. This means that if a couple, be they gay or straight, decides not to get married for whatever reason, cannot enter into a civil union and have the same benefits of health care, life insurance, etc. as the rest of us. This is pure and simple discrimination and we cannot let that be written into our constitution. Each time that the government as tried to limit the rights of the people, it has been stopped or done away with – slavery, slaves being treated as property, therefore they could not legally marry or own land or vote, women not being able to vote, the list could go on and on. Limiting our very being is not what God intends.

God’s love for us, each and every one of us is an all inclusive love. Jesus ate with the outcasts, he healed people who most would simply ignore, he talked to people of a different culture and did not worry about the laws, he showed us time and again that God’s love is not about exclusion and judgment, but rather about love and acceptance, about welcoming the least of these, about welcoming everyone, even if they don’t fit into our narrow definitions of what is or isn’t acceptable. What we can get from today’s readings is that God’s intention is for us to be together.

Relationships – be they marriages, or committed relationships, or living in a community like monks and nuns, or any other kind of relationship – they are truly about what you can do, who you can be together and as individuals. “At its heart, marriage is not a convenient human institution for protecting property, regulating sexuality, and safeguarding children.” [The Rev. James Liggett[i]] Marriage and relationships are about love and dedication; they are about growth through all the joys and struggles that they bring our way. Marriage is often painted to be a rosy, easy thing but it is not. Marriage and relationships are hard work and no matter who you are with, there are going to be problems, there are going to be things that you fight about, things that you disagree on. The real question is, who do you want to work on these problems with? Who do you want to struggle with in order to make this relationship work?

I believe that what Jesus was getting at in today’s Gospel was not about creating a law against divorce, but rather that he wanted people to focus on the relationship, on the marriage, on the commitment, before they began even thinking of separating from one another. God’s intention is for us to be together, and that is the focus of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus taught us to love, to take care of each other, to live in peace, to love our neighbor as ourselves, and when we fall short on these things, we are to keep coming back to God and working on attaining these goals.

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[i] The Rev. James Liggett has been rector of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Big Spring, Texas, since 1994. He is a native of Kansas and a graduate of the University of Houston and the Episcopal Divinity School. He has served parishes in Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. Father Liggett and his wife Kathleen have a 20-year-old son.