18 PENTECOST, PROPER 22, YEAR B
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY
4 OCTOBER 2009
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Job 1:1; 2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
“Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked…..” What follows is a gospel text that makes preachers groan. Given the wonderful other readings today, the opening chapters of both Job and the Letter to the Hebrews, it’s tempting to ignore the “divorce” gospel. Should we ignore it or should we deal with it? Most likely there are many people who have lived through a divorce who would like to avoid it, too.
But Mark’s gospel text begs to be dealt with.
So first a little context. Men in Jesus’ day could initiate a divorce; a woman, by and large, could not. When a husband got rid of his wife, he annihilated her safety net. On her own now, she was helpless, vulnerable and most often poor. What Jesus was doing in today’s story was turning embedded cultural norms on their head. He was talking about the treatment of women, who were low down on the social scale to begin with, even while they were married. He was making sure that women were kept within the circle, invited to stay. Jesus was bringing women into equality with men.
Likewise with the children part of this story. Children, as we learned the other week, were, like women, ranked low in society. Children were important only when they could contribute their work to the community, if they lived long enough to work, given child mortality rates. “Don’t even touch them,” said the disciples. Jesus not only touched them but he scooped them up into his arms, brought them into the circle and blessed them.
This text today is not what it seems. It is not about divorce. It’s not about trying to make divorced people feel guilty. It’s not even about children. It’s about welcoming the powerless in Jesus’ day. It’s about welcoming the least among us in our day. It’s about hospitality, radical hospitality. It’s about relationships, how we humans relate to one another and treat each other. It is, as a friend and colleague of mine said, it is quite simply about Jesus. About Jesus and how things work in the kingdom of God.
We are now face to face in this country with questions about relationships, about how we treat each other. Will we improve the health insurance system so that every single person is adequately covered? We argue about plans and this plan vs. that one, about government’s role and are we promoting socialism or fascism, words which those who say them probably don’t even understand. We tinker and tweak the proposals… and we dawdle. Where is the voice of Christians, crying out on behalf of those who have no reliable health insurance or who are being dropped from the plan they have because it no longer wants to include them? What does all of this say about the health of our human relationships? Are we allowing the voice of Jesus to be drowned out, are we suffocating the cry of Jesus, who is calling even the least among us to be invited in?
Also, in Maine, we are face to face with the matter of marriage equality, that is, whether we think gay and lesbian couples qualify for the sacrament of marriage.
I can’t tell you what the Episcopal Church’s position is on same-gender marriage, or how the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Maine stands or even what the position is of this parish church. Because as far as the Episcopal Church goes, there is no official position on marriage equality. But the Episcopal Church places no barriers on membership or employment or ordination based on sexual orientation. For our Church, though, the definition of so-called “traditional” marriage remains the union of husband and wife, male and female. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church will have to move to change the Canons and Constitution and Prayer Book, a cumbersome and lengthy project, in order for the Church’s definition of marriage to change to include same sex people. In the meantime, the General Convention last July directed bishops to provide “pastoral generosity” in allowing clergy who wish to to preside over and bless same-sex marriages in states where they are legal.
The Episcopal Church also recognizes that marriage has evolved through the millennia and from culture to culture. From primitive days when staying alive meant the serious business of a man and a woman’s dividing up the labor and raising children for the survival of their people, to marriage with multiple wives, to contractual marriage arrangements between whole families (which was how things worked in Jesus’ day), to the one man, one woman, two children and a white picket fence sort of idealized marriage of the Ozzie and Harriet variety, to now, with the yearning for same-sex couples living in monogamous, faithful, loving relationships to be married, both civilly as well as blessed by their houses of worship. The practice of marriage has evolved, and keeps evolving. The practice of life also evolves and keeps evolving and we struggle to discover God’s desire for us in each new situation. Jesus himself adjusted his teaching and called on his followers to do the same.
I can’t give you an official church statement on same-sex marriage. And I can’t prod you to vote in a certain way on November 3. But I can give you my own position, which I base on quite a few years of living, listening, and watching in the world. And my own understanding of Jesus.
And I can tell you that I will vote NO on Question One. I will vote NOT to repeal the marriage law that was passed in the Maine House last May 5, a day, incidentally, when I was present in the Chamber since I had agreed many weeks earlier to deliver the opening prayer.
“What is the greatest of all God’s commandments?” Jesus was asked. Jesus’ response, we know, was this: that we love God with all our heart and mind and soul and that we love our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus was talking about our relationship to God and our relationship to one another. Relationships based on love. Relationships of hospitality (Are we “hospitable” not only to each other but also to God?), relationships based on welcome, even welcoming people hovering on the fringes, beyond the good life. The commandment does not spell out who deserves health care or how much or who gets it, or what faithful and loving couple can be married and what ones can’t be married. It simply tells us to love God and to love our neighbors.
Marvin Ellison, a professor at Bangor Theological Seminary, hopes that the conversation about same-sex marriage “will take a decisive turn---away from focusing on the gender of the partners in question and toward emphasizing what truly matters, the character of their relationship. The church’s focus, our focus, should be on helping each other—gay and non-gay alike—to learn together how to live a life-affirming, holy love and become a blessing to one another.”
If I take Jesus at his word, if I recognize his commandment to inclusive love as fundamental to my life, how can I exclude any of God’s people? If I understand marriage to be the sign of Christ’s love for the world (as the Prayer Book puts it), how can I then turn my back on same-sex couples whose love for each other is a sign to me of the love of Christ? If I try to respond to outcasts by scooping them up and blessing them, as Jesus did the children, then how can I ignore my same-gender friends whose own sacred relationships are blessings to me? If I take Jesus at his word, how can I tell same-gender people seeking the sacrament of marriage and the church’s blessing to go away and not even begin the pre-marital counseling required of all couples in the Episcopal Church?
I can’t. But I do know that good and faithful Episcopalians disagree with what I’ve just said and that many others are struggling with this ballot question. I would love to listen and talk to anyone who comes to me about this. Maybe we can have a group conversation; let me know if that’s your desire. The whole question of marriage, same-sex as well as opposite-sex, and our bishop’s guidelines for how the church deals with marriage, are a huge subject and well-worth our effort in talking and listening and learning together. How about working through them as a study topic in Advent?
Let our prayer be that God direct our hearts in this season of decision-making as we help to bring about God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.