Who's Your Model

Who’s your model of Christian discipleship? Who exemplifies for you what a faithful follower of Jesus looks like? Take a minute or two right now and ponder who stands out for you, in your own life, as a faithful follower of Jesus. It can be someone living or dead, someone you’ve read about or someone you’ve known face to face. The person might not even be a professed Christian, yet still exemplify faithful discipleship. Take a minute or two and see who comes to mind. [Congregation ponders for a minute or two.]

I’d like to propose another possibility, one perhaps that none of you has thought of: formerly blind Bartimaeus from today’s Gospel reading. Let me remind you that the Gospel of Mark, or any of the books of the Bible that tell a story, is like a novel or a movie. If you hadn’t slogged through all 960 pages or all four hours of Gone with the Wind, for example, Rhett Butler’s parting words to Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” wouldn’t make much sense. It’s the same with the Gospel. In church, we read it in snippets, a scene here, an episode there, and out of order to boot! No wonder you have a hard time following the story! So let’s recap again. We’re at the end of a large section that began in chapter 8 with another healing of a blind man. This section has depicted Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. Along the way, Jesus has predicted three times what will happen to him in Jerusalem. Of course, we already know what will happen in Jerusalem, since we heard that part of the story back on Palm Sunday and Easter! Jesus has also been explaining to his friends what being one of his followers really involves and how leaders of a community of disciples ought to behave. Surprisingly, Jesus’ closest disciples don’t understand his message. Time and again, they are deaf and blind to it: clearly they expect Jesus to be a political messiah, and they certainly don’t behave as servant leaders. They have yet to realize that following Jesus ultimately leads to a new way of seeing.

Bartimaeus gets it! Here at this last stopping point before Jerusalem, Mark finally provides his readers with a model of what faithful discipleship truly looks like. Are you surprised? A blind beggar is a model of discipleship? Let’s take a closer look at Bartimaeus and what he does in this story. To begin with, Bartimaeus recognizes Jesus. He understands that Jesus is indeed God’s anointed one, even if he is not a political savior. “Jesus, Son of David,” he calls out, using one of the traditional titles for the messiah. Knowing that Jesus is God’s anointed, Bartimaeus asks Jesus, not to “have mercy,” i.e., think kindly about him, as the NRSV translation puts it, but, more correctly, to do something for him. What’s more important, Bartimaeus is insistent and persistent in reaching out to Jesus. Even though he is physically unseeing, he is not deterred by the obstacles thrown up by others, and he continues to call out. When Jesus reaches out to him, he leaves behind what might have been his sole possession, his cloak, and rushes toward Jesus. In answer to Jesus’ question, he clearly states his need. How different his answer is to James’ and John’s answer to that very same question, which we heard last week. Clearly, too, Bartimaeus is a person of faith, trusting Jesus and expecting something life-changing to happen. Finally, Bartimaeus allows his encounter with Jesus to change his life. He “followed him on the way,” presumably to Jerusalem, and probably in the new way of life that Jesus’ death and resurrection inaugurated.

So is Bartimaeus a model of discipleship for us? Let’s turn the spotlight back on ourselves. Do we recognize Jesus’ true identity? Is he really God’s anointed one? Was he an interesting historical figure, the subject of some revered books, or is he, as Marcus Borg puts it, “the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like?”1 Is he active in our lives? Do we call out to him in prayer, and are we persistent in our prayers? When he calls us into his service, can we surrender all those elements in our lives that get in the way of our relationship with him? Think about it: what might you have to give up in order to have a deeper relationship with Jesus? Are we like James and John, sure that Jesus has nothing to give us but wealth and fame? Or, rather, can we admit our helplessness and need and honestly ask Jesus to heal our spiritual brokenness? What kind of faith do we have? Does our faith consist only of intellectual assent to certain propositions about God and Jesus? Or do trust in Jesus’ love and care, persist in staying in relationship with him, and try to model our lives after his example? Does our encounter with Jesus change our lives? Are we changed and renewed people when we rise from prayer or when we receive Christ’s Body and Blood?

Who’s your model of faithful discipleship? Is it Bartimaeus or someone else? Thanks be to God, models of faithful discipleship abound! Beginning literally with Jesus’ resurrection and stretching all the way to those whom we encounter in our own lives, Jesus’ faithful followers are beyond numbering. Let me tell you about two whom I recently discovered. On our church calendar for this past Friday I discovered Alfred the Great. Although he was a fifth son, Alfred became king of England in 871 and reigned until his death in 899. Most of his reign was consumed with repelling Danish invaders. “Battle, murder, and sudden death,” were common events. At the same time, Alfred was a deeply faithful Christian, and in his later years he strove to repair the cultural and educational institutions damaged by the Danes. He especially wished to see parish clergy better educated, and he supervised translations into English of important theological and historical works. His devotion to continual renewal in Christ shines forth in his reminder – timely even for us – that, “He seemed a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.”2

There being no one on our church calendar on October 24, this past Wednesday, I turned to Robert Ellsberg’s All Saints, an inspiring collection of reflections on saints for our time. There I discovered Fritz Eichenberg, a Quaker artist who lived from 1901 to 1990.3 Born in Cologne, he was a talented artist from an assimilated Jewish background. In 1933, realizing that there was little hope for a career in art in Nazi Germany, he emigrated with his family to the U.S. However, his wife tragically died in 1938. Finding consolation in Quaker teaching and attracted by the Quaker vision of the Peaceable Kingdom, he formally joined the Society of Friends soon thereafter. In 1949, he was introduced to Dorothy Day, the editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper and founder of intentional communities serving the poor. By that time, Eichenberg had become known for his woodcut illustrations of the Russian classics, in which Day was also greatly interested. Seeing in Day’s newspaper an expression of his own pursuit of mercy and peace, he agreed to Day’s request that he serve God through his woodcut illustrations. He began by depicting the saints. His woodcuts, whether of Benedict, John of the Cross, or Francis of Assisi, show strong flesh and blood people who struggle to follow Jesus and challenge us to do the same. Depictions of modern saints also came from his hands: Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton, Cesar Chavez. Finally, he agreed to depict the life of Christ in contemporary settings. His moving and powerful images show us Jesus’ birth in a war zone, Jesus in a line of people waiting for their daily handout of bread, the “Christ of the Homeless,” and a haunting Pietá, that links Jesus with refugees, outcasts, and prisoners.

Who is your model of faithful Christian discipleship? Is it formerly blind Bartimaeus, who had the courage to persist in making known his true needs to Jesus, and who was forever changed by his encounter with the servant messiah? Is it Alfred the Great, who, despite the political turbulence of his time, understood the need to continually pursue and facilitate deeper Christian learning and formation? Is it Fritz Eichenberg, who used his great artistic talent to open the eyes of those around him and to further the cause of peace and justice? Or is it someone else altogether? Someone perhaps known only to you? The good news is that God has surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses, both living and dead, a great cloud of faithful disciples of Our Lord. I invite you to reflect on one of these models and ask God to help you to become a more faithful disciple yourself.

1. The Heart of Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 2003), 88.
2. Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2006 (New York: Church Publishing, 2006), 430.
3. All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 463-4

Jesus is on the Move

Sitting is hazardous to your health! Why did James and John want to sit with Jesus in his glory, one at his right hand and one at his left? Didn’t they hear what he’s been telling them? Didn’t they understand his mission at all? In the two verses immediately preceding the beginning of our lection, Jesus has given James, John, and the other disciples, for the third time, a clear statement of his fate. Mark tells us, “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’ (Mark 10:32-34).” There they have it: the rest of Jesus’ story in a nutshell, and Jesus’ clearest explanation for his disciples of the kind of messiah he will be.

Do the disciples get it? Do they want to go up to Jerusalem with him? Even though James and John were to become revered apostles in Mark’s community, here it is clear that they still haven’t understood Jesus’ teaching. They still think that Jesus will establish a new political regime, in which he will reign like the other despots of the ancient world. Like little children sheepishly asking for a goody from Dad, they ask if they can sit, seemingly static and unmoving, and bask in his reflected glory. As if we didn’t need another, here is just one more illustration of the gap between what the disciples thought and what Jesus himself foretold. Like Peter before them, James and John cannot get their minds around what Jesus has told them, so they instead envision a static kingdom with themselves in places of honor. As if that weren’t bad enough, James’ and John’s insistence on sitting with Jesus when he becomes king creates dissension within the little band of followers. The other disciples also want their piece of the pie! They too want to sit with Jesus in glory.

Is that what we want? Do we too want to sit with Jesus, inertly basking in his glory? Jesus is on the move, and sitting is hazardous to both our physical and spiritual health. Certainly we have been bombarded by messages that sitting is hazardous to our physical health. Think about it: how much time do you spend sitting each day? Most of us spend a lot of time in our cars. Perhaps we work at a desk. What about the time you spend in front of your computer, or eating, or reading the newspaper, or paying bills, or watching TV? On the weekend, do you sit in a movie theater or in the bleachers at a sporting event? When you add it all up, middle class Americans spend an average of nine hours a day sitting! And that’s a problem. A recent study by the American Cancer Society found that sitting six or more hours a day increases your risk of early death from any cause by 18 percent for men and 37 percent for women. Someday your office chair or your easy chair just might come with a Surgeon General’s warning that says, “Caution: Sitting may be hazardous to your health.”

Sitting may also be hazardous to our spiritual health. Certainly, there is a place for silently sitting and listening patiently for God’s word. But think about it: is your prayer life static and inactive? Do you go through the same rote prayers day after day? Have your ideas about God, Jesus, Church, and faith stayed the same since the bishop laid hands on you in confirmation? Have you learned anything about the Bible since then? Or perhaps you only think about your spiritual health sitting in the pew? Perhaps our pews should come with a warning: “Caution sitting here may be hazardous to your spiritual health!”

Sitting is hazardous because Jesus is on the move! No sitting allowed for his disciples! Jesus has invited his friends to walk with him to Jerusalem. He has invited them to be partners with him in the events that will play out there. James and John, at least, glibly and naively assert their ability to share Jesus’ fate, and Jesus assures them that they will do just that. Just to make sure once more that they understand the demands of the new community he is forming, Jesus reminds them that they are not called to sit like despotic kings but rather to be up and moving as servant leaders. And he proclaims one more time that if they are truly his disciples they will eventually find themselves, like him, walking toward the cross.

Do we want to walk with Jesus? Movement is good for our health. Indeed, building any kind of extra physical activity into our day is beneficial. In fact, as you are able, stand up right now, breathe deeply, and stretch. Don’t you feel better already? Walking is especially good for your health. Physician and priest Bill Watson reminds us that, “…walking is a part of God’s design. It is a natural action, perhaps next to breathing, our most natural. Walking opens the world to us and is central to who we are.” Experts at the Mayo Clinic detail the benefits of walking. Walking lowers bad (LDL) cholesterol, raises good cholesterol (HDL), lowers blood pressure, reduces the risk of or helps manage type 2 diabetes, helps control weight, improves your mood, and helps you stay strong and fit.

But did you know that walking also has spiritual benefits? To convince clergy of the benefits of walking, CREDO, the clergy renewal program of the Episcopal Church has designated October as the month to “Walk and be Well.” For each day of the month, there is a brief meditation – ideally to be heard while walking – that connects our physical and spiritual well-being. Walking a labyrinth is another form of spiritual walking. Have your ever walked one? A labyrinth is not a maze. It is a circular arrangement of stones or marks that has only one path to the center and back out. Walking into and out from the center of the labyrinth enables one to experience spiritual centering, contemplation and prayer. It’s a wonderful practice that, if done slowly and contemplatively helps us quiet our minds and focus on a spiritual question or prayer. People in Gallipolis are fortunate: there’s a labyrinth in the healing garden at Holzer medical center. Try it sometime! Yet another form of spiritual walking is pilgrimage. Pilgrimages are, of course, ancient forms of devotion, and almost every faith community has some form of pilgrimage practice. Pilgrimages were especially popular in medieval Europe, but even today, nearly 200,000 people walk the Way of St. James to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Walking may also be a form of spiritual witness. We are familiar with the charity walks that raise visibility and funds for many good causes. But have you ever heard of the Peace Pilgrim? Starting on January 1, 1953, Mildred Lisette Norman, calling herself only "Peace Pilgrim," walked more than 25,000 miles on a personal pilgrimage for peace. She vowed to "remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food." In the course of her 28 year pilgrimage she touched the hearts, minds, and lives of thousands of individuals all across North America. Her message was both simple and profound. It continues to inspire people all over the world: "This is the way of peace: overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love." Although she died in an automobile accident in 1981, her witness lives on in her book and through the voluntary organization of Friends of the Peace Pilgrim.

Perhaps you and I are not called to duplicate the walking of the Peace Pilgrim. But Jesus is on the move, and we are called to walk with him. We can commit ourselves to the appropriate habits of exercise that will keep our bodies strong and enable us, frail and mortal though we may be, to be his faithful followers and servants. We can commit ourselves to continuing to grow in our understanding of our call, through study of the Bible and other aspects of our faith. We can commit ourselves to serving those of his children who are sick, in need, in prison, hungry, and hurting. We can work for a more just and peaceful world. And we can ask God to strengthen our desire to grow spiritually through worship, contemplative prayer, study, walking prayer, pilgrimages, retreats, quiet days, and any other way that God may open to us.

Jesus is on the move, and I want to walk with him. O Master, let me walk with thee!

What Must I Do?

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” What must we do? Take out your bulletin. Take a few minutes and write down somewhere on the bulletin – perhaps on the cover -- three things you think you must do to “inherit eternal life,” to live in God’s realm. This is for yourself only, so you can be honest. [Give the congregation two or three minutes to write.] So what must we do to enter God’s realm? Do we have to follow every one of the Ten Commandments? Do we have to observe all 650+ prescriptions in the laws of Moses? Do we have to leave our families and our livelihoods to follow after an itinerant rabbi? Do we have to be crucified upside down like Peter? Must we be thrown to the wild beasts in Rome’s arena like Perpetua and her companions? Must we spend our lives as contemplative anchorites like Julian of Norwich? Will I be welcomed more warmly into God’s realm if I am a spell-binding preacher like “golden-mouthed” John Chrysostum or Phillips Brooks? Do I have to found settlement houses like Vida Dutton Scudder, or enter a convent or monastery? Must we all forsake the kingdom of thingdom, close all our accounts, sell our houses, and live as homeless beggars? Will any of these actions gain us entrance into God’s realm?

What must I do to inherit eternal life? We’re still in the gospel of Mark, and we’re still on the road to Jerusalem with Jesus and his friends. In preparation for his leaving them, Jesus has been instructing his closest friends in what discipleship involves. As we’ve been overhearing these conversations, we’ve learned, with the disciples, that we must truly understand what kind of messiah Jesus is. We must accept that he is a suffering messiah who will die a criminal’s death on a Roman cross. We’ve learned that those who wish to lead a community of Jesus’ followers must be servants of all. We’ve been reminded that we must respect the sacred commitments we’ve made to our life partners. We’ve learned that we must become spiritual children who acknowledge their vulnerability and their dependence on God alone.

Now, we come face to face with a shocking reality: in order to be able to accept God’s love, in order to truly live as spiritual children, we must relinquish our sense of self-control. We must let go of all that we place ahead of God, all that encourages us to trust our own possessions, powers, and abilities instead of God. How could this be? People of Jesus’ time, both Jews and Gentiles, believed that the rich especially enjoyed God’s favor. Wasn’t the rich man in today’s reading especially blessed by all his possessions? It’s painful to watch this scene play out. Can’t you see the look of shock and disbelief as this powerful man hears Jesus tell him to give up all his possessions, to let go of everything that had given his life meaning, to set out in a different direction? Can’t you see the tears running down his face, as he turns away from Jesus?

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Change is painful. Letting go is painful. Deciding to let go of our prized possessions, beliefs, attitudes, habits, or voting patterns, and trusting God to lead us into new life is difficult. Perhaps the man in this story “went away grieving,” because, as most people think, he knew he couldn’t do what Jesus had asked of him, and he wept because he was turning his back on an opportunity to change his life. Or perhaps he had decided to follow Jesus, but he knew how hard it would be to see the furniture crated up and carted off, the silver and china sold at auction, the silk and wool robes given to the relatives, the art work donated to the local synagogue. The tears would surely flow again and again.

Entering with Jesus into God’s realm is not easy. Letting go and following God’s leading is difficult. Taking that first step into new life, letting go of old ways of living, is often so painful that we put off doing what we know we must until our lives become unbearable. Attending that first AA meeting: can you imagine the guts it must take to stand up and say, “I’m Bill, and I’m an alcoholic.” Letting go of the past and taking those first steps toward wholeness is so difficult: making that first appointment with a marriage counselor, calling your physician about a mysterious symptom, returning to school, coming out to family and friends, sitting down with strange people, visiting a nursing home, hearing a call to ministry, or, as it was for this man, intentionally and honestly examining our use of our resources.

In our culture, letting go of some of our control over our resources can truly be painful and difficult. Money is the last taboo for us. It’s hard for us to admit that “where your treasure is, there your heart is also.” It’s hard to acknowledge that for most of us our bank statement reveals more about what we truly value than any other document. “Rich or poor, it’s nice to have money,” my mother used to say, but the hard spiritual truth is that our bank accounts will not save us. Make no mistake: we are not called to a life of destitution. Rather, Jesus is asking the rich man and us to see our money not as a measure of our self-worth, not as ticket to heaven, not as means of separating ourselves from others, but as a tool, as a means of benefiting others, especially the least, the lost, and the left behind of our society. What is your money doing? Who besides you is benefiting from it? Does your wealth help or harm the poor? Are you giving back some of your wealth to God?

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Ultimately entering God’s realm is about living a new and transformed life. Our lives are so busy and stressful, we might reasonably wonder, “Then who can be saved?” How can I possibly live up to what God expects of me? Where can I find the time, the nerve, and the resources to take those first necessary steps toward God? In our story, the rich man actually did something right: he came to Jesus! Coming to Jesus is actually the first step of a spiritual transformation that helps make all the other changes possible. When we spend time in Jesus’ presence, in worship, in reading the gospels for ourselves, or in private prayer, when we join ourselves to a community of people committed to Jesus, when we bear each other’s burdens, then we are giving God’s spirit time and opportunity to work in us and to gently lead us into the new ways of living that bring us farther into God’s realm. “With God, all things are possible,” Jesus reminds us. Buoyed by that hopeful word, we can trust that God is already at work within us, recreating and transforming us, giving us the courage to live into the changes that God has already begun in us.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Ultimately, nothing. You can’t do anything to merit entry into the kingdom. We are do not merit the kingdom because we are just, honest, merciful, and generous. We are all only there by God’s free gift in Christ. If the rich man learned nothing else from his encounter with Jesus, he surely must have realized that he could not buy his way into heaven. He could only gratefully accept Jesus’ offer of a new and changed life. As Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us, “No matter what we do, none of us earns eternal life. We can keep the commandments until we are blue in the face; we can sign our paychecks over to Mother Teresa and rattle tin cups for our supper without ever earning a place at the banquet table of God. The kingdom of God is not for sale. It never has been; it never will be. The poor cannot buy it with their poverty and the rich cannot buy it with their riches. The kingdom of God is a consummate gift.”

What must I do to inherit eternal life? The way may be difficult, we may hesitate to take the needed first steps, we may fall off the road and have to wait for Jesus pick us up again, and we may even face the cross. But we can take heart that we have Jesus to accompany us on our journey. We can trust that, despite our own shortcomings and sinfulness, we have already been graced by God and showered with God’s love. Will we too go away grieving because we cannot let go of all that holds us back, cannot bear to change our lives? Or will we let Jesus’ love lead us into the only life worth living?

Jesus and Bill Doubleday on Marriage and Divorce

A Sermon Preached at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Mt. Kisco, NY
By the Rev. William A. Doubleday
October 7, 2012

In the name of the One God, Who Creates, Redeems, and Inspires Us.

Those Pharisees just won’t leave Jesus alone. They keep coming back with questions with which they hope to catch Jesus out, trip him up, prove him wrong, or get him in trouble with religious or secular authorities. They were never really interested in hearing the Good News of Repentance and Forgiveness – of Healing and New Life – of Death and Resurrection - which Jesus had come to proclaim. They were dedicated critics – taking copious notes - with an agenda for the failure of Jesus, not seekers and searchers looking for insight into what new words God might wish them to hear.

In today’s Gospel reading from the tenth Chapter of Mark’s Gospel, the latest Pharisaical question is: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
As he often does, Jesus attempts to turn the question back on his interrogators: “What did Moses command you?”

They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

We might want to ask what the Pharisees are actually saying about the teachings of Moses on divorce. The minority of rabbis in Jesus’ day would have explained their answer to that question by saying, “If your wife commits adultery, you may hand her a note that says something like: ‘Because of your adulterous behavior, I divorce you. Good bye. Good riddance. Pack your bags. Be gone. You’re out of here.’” To modern ears, that perhaps sounds rather abrupt and rather lacking in any sort of due process or concern for individual women. No discussion of reconciliation. No possibility of appeal. No financial provisions.

But the view of the overwhelming majority of rabbis in Jesus’ day was far worse. They would have explained their answer with a simpler and more straightforward understanding of Moses’ teaching on divorce. It went something like this: “If for any reason, at any time, you wish to divorce your wife, hand her a note that says something like: ‘I divorce you. Good bye. Good riddance. Pack your bags. Be gone. You’re out of here.’” No cause need be given, whether it was the burnt toast, the untidy house, the inability to produce children or a male heir, a fading beauty, or the man’s desire to be rid of one wife so that he could more conveniently and with fewer encumbrances seek another. No financial provision was made for the divorced wife. Again no appeal was available. Usually she had to return to her family of origin in hopes of a charitable reception and a safe place to stay. I suppose one might call it a “no fault divorce plan for men.”

I must emphasize that there was no provision in Palestine in the days of Jesus, for women to divorce their husbands at all. Though there would be a time when women would be allowed to divorce their husbands on grounds of adultery, that time had not yet come. Indeed, in the days of Jesus, sexual mores were defined a lot differently than they have come to be in modern times. Polygamy was still an option for men. A married man only committed adultery if he engaged in a relationship with a woman who was in fact married to another man. The lesser sin of fornication, when a married man – or any man - had a non-marital sexual relationship with an unmarried woman was not likely to be punished unless some sort of scandal or serious accusation had ensued. Any sexual sin by a married woman was deemed heinous, and in some instances brought the death penalty either in the courts or in the court of public opinion. You may recall Jesus coming to the aid of the woman taken in adultery who was about to be stoned to death. He said: “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Jesus responded to those curious Pharisees with a challenging teaching that would seem to call them, as well as all of us who would call ourselves his followers, to a higher standard. He says: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses 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.”

Jesus reaches back to the Book of Genesis for his rationale for this teaching, and he is clearly setting a new and higher standard for marriage and a clearer opposition to divorce than had pertained in his day. Many commentators have observed that where the traditional teaching about divorce had essentially cast women in the role of property which could be discarded at will, Jesus upheld and pointed towards the sacramental nature of marriage and the divinely blessed unity of husband and wife. Even if at times our marriages have not lived up to this standard, it is a standard which every married couple in the Christian tradition has been asked to live into. “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

The evangelist Mark tells us that when they got inside the house, the disciples asked Jesus again about this matter. Clearly he had offered a teaching different from any they had ever heard before. Could they have heard him wrong?

But he says 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.” Here it would seem – and this is where much of the Church has been stuck down through the centuries – here it would seem that Jesus is not so much condemning divorce itself, but the phenomenon of remarriage after a divorce. There can be reasons for divorce that have nothing to do with adultery or sexual infidelity. But when remarriage or infidelity occurs, then the “they are no longer two, but one flesh” standard has been violated.

By now, some of you may be wondering why I am taking so much time to try to explore what Jesus most likely said about divorce and remarriage. Let me be quite clear, as a pastor I know that there are many times when divorce is in fact painful, grief-ridden, tragic, necessary, ultimately life-giving, and even life-saving for one or both spouses and whole families. As a pastor, I know that there are many times when remarriage is a matter of divine and human love, the restoration of hope, the experience of grace, and the occasion of blessed new beginnings for all concerned.

Though many are, as a pastor, I know that all divorces do not need to be marked by extreme rancor, acute hostility, permanent animosity, or perpetual contempt. As a pastor, I know that with time, many spouses, many children, many families, even many congregations come to recognize that as painful as divorces may be, as challenging and uncertain as remarriages may be, they in fact sometimes give us glimpses of Good Friday and hints of Easter Morning in our very own lives, families, and communities.

Though many Americans still seem to think of the Bible as a sexual rule book, except in the Holiness Code found in the Book of Leviticus and related texts, the Bible says relatively little about sex or even marriage – it is a book far more concerned with economic and social justice and care for the widows, orphans, and strangers in the land. Jesus says even less about human sexuality or marital relationships. John’s Gospel tells us that early in his ministry, Jesus and his disciples attended a marriage in Cana with his mother, Mary, and that in the face of a wine shortage, with his mother’s delighted encouragement, he turned water into wine and thus prolonged a very good party. John tells us nothing about Jesus’ thoughts on that occasion or about his thoughts about marriage more generally.

There are five or six places where in the Gospels – as is the case in today’s reading from Mark - where Jesus touches on issues of divorce and remarriage, and at least in his time and place he appears to have been opposed to both, though in at least one place in Matthew’s Gospel he does allow for divorce and remarriage, presumably for the so-called “innocent party” in a marriage that ended for reasons of adultery.

During much of the Christian Church’s history, divorce was generally taboo and remarriage was forbidden or frowned upon. Protestant churches, earlier than Catholic and Anglican Churches ones, came to an understanding that sometimes marriages fail, sometimes love dies, sometimes people grow dramatically apart, sometimes domestic violence destroys lives and families, and sometimes marriages for very good, if often tragic reasons, need to end. Very often it is far more an occasion of grief and sadness than it is somehow a matter of sin or a reason for judgment.

Today, Roman Catholics still contend with marriage tribunals that annul marriages, effectively saying marriages never existed, though inexplicably there are large numbers of children who were legitimately conceived. Many Roman Catholics who have left that Church for this or other reasons have been able to find sacramental homes in the Episcopal Church, for which I give particular thanks.

I am sorry to say that until the Canons of the Episcopal Church were drastically revised in 1973, the Episcopal Church canonically forbade clergy from officiating at most remarriages. Clergy who read the marriage canons severely, often even excommunicated parishioners who had gone elsewhere for remarriage and then had come right back to the Episcopal Church. Fortunately those days are now behind us – and by most of us completely forgotten – alas I did my curacy in a parish in Western Massachusetts where that was a still very painful issue in 1980.

Whatever Jesus may actually have intended for us in marital relationship today, the reality is that our life spans are immeasurably longer than was the case in New Testament. The social, economic, cultural, and religious settings of our lives, our relationships, and our families are separated by eons from the realities of Judaism three thousand years ago, or the realities of 1st century Palestine where Jesus lived and taught. What we do know is that marriage is a blessed sacrament. What we do know is that we are called to lives of faithfulness. What we do know is that God is a God of Love.

The Anglican theologian, Norman Pittenger, called God a Cosmic Lover – who created us to be lovers, who might both know and reciprocate God’s love, and who might love one another – even in life giving – life sustaining - life creating situations of marriage and family. The shape and parameters of those marriages and families have evolved and changed over the past two centuries and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

My prayer for us today is that God may yet – God may still – God may always bless us – in our lives – in our loves – in our friendships – in our relationships - in our marriages – in our families – in our brokenness – in our healing – in the new beginnings which God offers us – no matter who we are – no matter where we may have been – no matter what we may have done – no matter how we may have failed.