Sermon 10am Sunday Oct 6 2024

[@FatherMichaelRowe]

Transcript: Pentecost 18, Oct. 6, 2024 Mark 10:2-12; Marriage St. Raphael’s, FMB Michael Rowe In the Name… I want to walk us through this Gospel reading to help us to understand it better. Because we often read it as giving us the Christian rules, compared with the Jewish rules, about divorce and remarriage; and I think that is the virtual opposite of what Jesus is in fact doing. Note first of all the context. This is not open-hearted inquiry from disciples and friends. It is the Pharisees, Jesus’ adversaries, coming to test him and trap him. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Well, Jesus says, you’re Pharisees, the experts in the law. You don’t need me to tell you what is lawful and what isn’t. What does Moses the Lawgiver say? “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” Ok then, that’s the law. But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes on to explain why that is the law - because of your hardness of heart. We might say, because human beings are imperfect, flawed, and they mess things up for themselves and for others. Sometimes people need to leave marriages because their lives or well-being are at stake. Sometimes we have to let people get divorced, even though they are damaging themselves and others by doing so, because in the end you can’t force people to live up to their promises to love and to cherish their spouses, can you? Human hardheartedness means that sometimes divorce is the least bad outcome. But divorce isn’t God’s intention. From the beginning, Jesus says, God created humanity in his image precisely as male and female, precisely so their union as couples would express in the flesh the eternal love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and would express in the flesh the union in love of God for all of humanity. So God’s intention is that marriage, which as Paul says, is a great mystery, an image or sacrament of Christ and the Church, God’s intention is that marital love will be a sign and a reflection of divine love - profound, permanent, passionate, faithful, self-giving for the true well-being of the other. Jesus invites the Pharisees, his other listeners, us and everybody to aspire to God’s true intention, rather than settle for what is technically legal. You see, Jesus didn’t change the Law and his Churches usually have some kind of provision for marriages that shouldn’t have happened in the first place or that somehow go terribly wrong. In particular, the churches usually recognize adultery, abuse and abandonment as legitimate grounds for divorce. In each case, the spouse’s heart is hardened, isn’t it, breaking the solemn commitment to love and protect faithfully. Jesus doesn’t change the law but he does call us to aspire to God’s vision for our marriages and for the marriages of others. What might this mean for us now? Well, first of all, if you are divorced, remember that in Christ there is no condemnation. Don’t let anyone turn Jesus, who is your champion, into a Pharisee opposing you. OK? Perhaps you were abused, abandoned or betrayed. That is bitter agony. But it is on the other person, not you. On the other hand, perhaps you look back and realize, it wasn’t that, but I thought I was justified but now I realize I put myself first and not my wife or husband. I should have lived up to and into my promises. Instead I walked away from them, causing great hurt and harm.. If that is the case, it is essential to tell the truth to yourself and to God, probably to your children and maybe to that former spouse. Nonetheless, in Christ there is no condemnation. No, there isn’t. You may not be able to repair the past but you can live into a better future. Yes? For those who are single with marriage as a possible future, live now in ways that prepare you to get married and be married wholeheartedly. We used to talk about “saving yourself for marriage.” But that was never exactly right. What we are doing - or for most of us at our age, encouraging those younger than ourselves to do - is being faithful now to the husband or wife that we may not have even met yet. It means that we don’t give ourselves physically to those who don’t want to receive us emotionally and spiritually or who only want us temporarily. And we don’t take someone physically when we don’t want their heart and soul and life as well. Why? Because we are not simply asking what is permitted. We are aspiring to God’s true intention for our bodies, our lives, our marriages. For those who are widowed, even after the agony has eased there remains that profound sense of loss, of incompleteness, doesn’t there? Because we are united in one flesh with our spouse and now part our self is gone. This is a time to turn to Christ even more completely and deeply, because he is the one who will reunite us with our beloved in glory and because union with him is the eternal reality toward which our marital union pointed. That hunger for real love that we learned in our marriages is completely fulfilled at the marriage feast of the Lamb. For those of us who are married, today’s Gospel is a particular invitation from our Lord to aspire to God’s true intention. Do you remember what we said at our weddings? In the Name of God, I take you to be my wife, my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow. This is God’s intention for us, that we give ourselves wholeheartedly and receive our spouse wholeheartedly, in complete and generous love. This is how marriage reveals the life of God himself and how it points toward God’s loving intention for all humanity. Whatever our situation, our challenges won’t be easy, but what worthwhile challenges ever are? We are hampered by our hardness of heart just like all human beings of every age. And that is complicated by the particular obsessions and confusions of our current culture. But Christ is on our side, in worship, prayer, scripture, fellowship and above all in the Eucharist, in which he gives us his Body and Blood, so that he dwells in us, so his grace strengthens and directs us, his love works in and through us, so that, if we will agree, his intention will become our reality.