Why?

The dead ranged in age from 18 to 67. One of the first-year students was active in Future Farmers of America. Two had just started college. Another was studying chemistry and volunteered at an animal shelter. One of the dead was one of six daughters of a local landscaper. Another had just returned to college to study alongside her daughter. Another student had come back to school after recently turning his life around. The oldest of the dead was an adjunct professor who loved literature and was also an avid outdoorsman. Despite the best efforts of an Iraq war veteran to protect them, in all ten people died, and another nine were seriously injured.

By now you know that I am talking about the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Along with the devastated families of the dead, perhaps you too are grieving. I can’t even place myself in such a situation or begin to imagine what those families are experiencing. Perhaps too you are thinking of those who died at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, SC, or of the children in Newtown, Connecticut, or of those who died in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, or of Gabby Giffords, whose rising Congressional career was tragically cut short in Tucson, Arizona by a deranged gunman. As those other tragedies flash by in your mind, perhaps you are tempted to ask what those who died or their families and communities did to bring about such suffering. After all, isn’t that basically what the disciples asked Jesus when they saw the blind man, “Rabbi,” they asked, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” And maybe, as you grieve, perhaps the only word that comes to mind is “Why?” Why do tragedies happen? Why do we suffer?

Why? It’s an age-old question. It’s the central question of the book of Job, but it’s not unique to Job. In fact, long before Job was composed, ancient writers of the Near East asked these questions. And every faith community since has some version of this question. Actually, the book of Job is a strange and difficult book. We will hear three more readings from Job in the coming weeks. It is part of what is called Wisdom literature, which includes the Book of Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and other similar books. Often there is no mention of God in these books, as their goal is to teach us something about how to live moral and upright lives.

The book of Job is essentially a fable. It is intentionally not set in any recognizable time or place. Like the opening of Star Wars – long ago in a galaxy far, far away – it’s intended as a universal story, applicable to everyone. It begins and ends with a frame story. In between the frame are many dialogues between Job and his friends – his tormentors, some would say – as wells as complaints from Job to God, and God’s final answer to Job. Today, we’ve heard the opening scenes of the frame story, in which the Lord has convened a heavenly council. The Adversary has posed a challenge to the Lord concerning the steadfast commitment of Job. An aside here: Satan here is not the devil of later popular lore. This Satan, rather, is a kind of check or challenger to the Lord. The Adversary, the word used in the Jewish Publication Society translation, is one of the Lord’s councilors whose role is to make sure that the Lord considers all angles of a situation. So today, we hear the Adversary’s suggestion that Job would forsake the Lord if any harm came to Job’s body. It would be as if you lost your faith if you came down with shingles. Next week we’ll hear Job’s complaint that God has abandoned him. Two weeks from today we’ll hear God’s response to Job’s questioning, and, finally, three weeks from today we’ll hear the end of the framing fable.

As a fable with much embedded dialogue, the book of Job raises many difficult and important questions, even for us Christians. Perhaps the most serious question is, why do we have faith? Why indeed do we hold fast to a belief in God? Isn’t that what Job’s wife is really asking when she says, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die.” Job holds fast to his commitment to God. But why? What has his commitment given him? When he was wealthy and happy, was it his faith that blessed him? Does faith save us from suffering? Clearly, Job, as well as the faithful Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, the innocent people who have been condemned to death, and the families of victims of mass shootings would emphatically say no, faith does not save us from suffering. So what good is faith? Why does Job, why does any of us, believe? Is belief just a habit, something we’ve always had without thinking or questioning? Or do we believe, as the Prosperity Gospel suggests, so that we might be wealthy and happy? If we’re not wealthy and happy, is it because we don’t have a strong enough faith? At some point in our lives – perhaps at many different points, perhaps even in response to personal tragedies – all of us must grapple with these questions – and there are no easy answers.

The story of Job also raises the question of why people suffer. Do people bring their own suffering on themselves? Are they responsible for the bad things that happen to them? That was surely what the disciples thought when they posed their question about the blind man. And wouldn’t we agree? We moderns don’t believe in fate, so it must be our own fault when something bad happens, right? The book of Job says emphatically, “No!” Despite all the attempts of Job’s “friends” to get him to justify his suffering by “confessing his sins,” Job steadfastly maintains his innocence – and is ultimately vindicated. And in our hearts we know that Job is right. In truth, most of what people suffer it totally undeserved. None of the people who died in Oregon deserved to die. None of their families deserved to have to mourn their deaths. Gabby Giffords did not deserve to be shot in the head. The children and teachers in Newtown did not deserve to die. Suffering and death simply are.

However, the book of Job also reminds us that we don’t have to accept suffering stoically or uncomplainingly. As we will hear next week, Job vigorously questions God and complains to God. Job knows that God is part of what’s happening to him, and Job expects answers! Towards the end of the book, Job succeeds in getting God to answer him. And does Job get the answers that he wants? For many of us, as we’ll hear in two weeks, Job does not. Spoiler alert! Speaking out of the whirlwind, God will say, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” God then goes on to thunder questions back at Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth…. Who determined its measurements – surely you know….” Can you make it rain, or send forth lightening, or create dust storms? Did you create the animals? Whether or not we want to hear it, God reminds Job that the nature of God is a mystery, that truth is more complex than we with our limited minds can comprehend, and that ultimately humans cannot know the reasons for suffering – or often for anything that happens to us.

So what can we take from the story of Job? There are no easy answers to the questions this book poses. However, even if we find God’s answer in chapter 38 unsatisfactory, we can be assured of this: God is present in the complexity of our lives, in our griefs and sorrows. God doesn’t cause our suffering – please no trite sayings, “God doesn’t give us more than we can bear,” or “God needed another angel in heaven” – but neither is God divorced from our sufferings. God is with us in our suffering. While life offers us no guarantees, Job reminds us that nothing can separate us from God’s love. Other books of the Hebrew Bible affirm God’s nearness in our suffering. What is more important for us Christians, we believe that in Jesus God experienced all that we humans experience, including suffering and death, and that eventually all our suffering will be redeemed through Jesus, as we will hear repeatedly in the Letter to the Hebrews this month. And we cling to the hope that in God’s good time, we will be reunited with those we have lost, and that all creation will be made whole.

Meanwhile, we pray for forgiveness for the sufferings and wrongs that are within our responsibility, most especially for those we have inflicted on others. We pray for the grace to trust in God’s love for all of us and to have compassion for those who suffer and mourn. Perhaps most important, we pray for the energy to do what lies before us to mitigate suffering: to seek sensible gun laws, to work for the end of capital punishment, to broaden the availability of mental health services, and to actively work for justice. As we live out own brief lives, may God help us to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God, as children worthy to bear the name of the Prince of Peace.

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.

If You Had Faith....

“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Why are you sitting in this church? Are you here out of custom or habit? Or do you hunger for the nourishment of God’s word and sacraments? What do you seek? More to the point, what does Jesus expect of you? If you’re here, sitting in this church, then perhaps you’ve already made some commitment to being one of Jesus’ disciples. If that weren’t the case you’d be home enjoying your coffee and Sunday paper. Even so, if we believe we’re trying to follow Jesus, then it’s not hard to wonder what true discipleship really entails. Even we long-time Episcopalians sometimes feel as clueless as the disciples in Luke’s Gospel seem to be.

For the last three months we’ve been on the road with Jesus, heading for Jerusalem and the inevitable conflict there. Along the way, Jesus has been offering the disciples, the Pharisees, the crowds, and, by extension, us glimpses of what discipleship involves. What have we learned so far? Through the story of the Good Samaritan we’ve learned that when we’ve landed in the ditch, God comes to our aid, often through people very different from us in social class or ethnicity. When Jesus visited the home of Martha and Mary, we learned that deepening our relationship with Jesus supersedes all personal and social obligations. Through watching Jesus heal on the Sabbath, we learned the importance of doing good to others even when the need to act violates community or liturgical boundaries. We’ve learned about the need for humility. We’ve been reminded that when we’ve gone astray God actively seeks us out. Last week we were warned of our obligation to take care of the needs of the poor in this life while we still can. In the verse immediately preceding today’s lesson, Jesus tells the disciples that they must forgive others as much as seven times a day! What? No wonder the disciples feel overwhelmed! Perhaps we do too, when we consider all that the Lord seems to want from us.

So the disciples ask Jesus to “increase” their faith. Perhaps they assume that they need more faith in order to live up to Jesus’ demands. But Jesus shatters their assumptions. I’m not talking about quantity of faith, he tells them. With even the smallest amount of real faith, with faith equal to a barely visible mustard seed, you can do anything that God calls you to do. You can be a full disciple, you can accomplish great things for God. All that’s needed is that you rely on God’s grace and not on your own powers. Certainly it’s human to fear that we’re only very limited beings. And often we let our fear excuse us from moving beyond “we’ve always done it this way.” Jesus doesn’t care about whether we think we have enough faith or not. He wants us to stop being concerned about ourselves and turn to God, whose Spirit is already in us producing the faith that we do have, the faith that drew you here today. Jesus offers the strongest possible assurance that whether we have enough faith for the life of discipleship is immaterial. If we trust God and share God’s love for us with others God will enable us to be the faithful disciples God has called us to be.

What might such a life of trust in God’s power look like? Tomorrow the church remembers Francis of Assisi. This afternoon we will bless animals in his name. Francis was born in 1181, one of seven children of a rich Italian cloth merchant. As a young man Francis was fond of wandering minstrels, bright clothing, rich friends, and worldly pleasures. At the age of 20, he joined a military expedition, was taken prisoner, and possibly experienced a spiritual conversion during his imprisonment. He began seriously to talk about betrothal to “lady poverty,” and repeatedly asked God for enlightenment. After a pilgrimage to Rome he had a vision of Jesus in the Church of San Damiano just outside Assisi, in which the icon of Christ crucified told him, “Francis, Francis, go and repair my house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” Thinking this meant the ruined church in which he was praying, he sold some of his father’s cloth and gave it to the local priest for the repairs. When his father repeatedly tried to draw Francis away from service to the poor and back into the family’s commercial life, Francis publicly renounced his father and his patrimony, even stripping off the clothes from his father’s house. After living for a time as a beggar, Francis heard a sermon on Matthew 10:9, in which Jesus instructed his disciples to go forth without any money or baggage to proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom of Heaven. Francis committed himself right there to a life of poverty and preaching. Within a year, Francis had 11 followers all dedicated to his vision of absolute poverty. Francis was moved to create an order of “Friars Minor,” i.e., brothers who would not be priests but would be committed to evangelism and living a simple communal life. In 1209 Clare of Assisi and her brother Rufino heard Francis preach and realized their own calling. In 1211, Francis received Clare, and the Order of Poor Clares for women was established. By God’s grace, the Franciscan order began to grow, and its final rule of was approved by the Pope in 1223. As he was praying in his mountain retreat on or about September 14, 1224, the Feast of the Holy Cross, Francis had another vision and received the stigmata, i.e., wounds in his hands and feet that correspond to Jesus’ crucifixion wounds. Suffering from the stigmata and from an eye disease, his body weakened by years of hard work and travel, Francis’s health began to decline. He died on the evening of October 3, 1226, at the age of only 45.

Stories of Francis’s deep faith and trust in God abound. Perhaps you’ve seen a collection of legends and folklore about him called “The Little Flowers of Saint Francis.” Many of these stories deal with his love for animals. On one journey, for example, it is said that he stopped in a forest grove and told his companions to “wait for me while I go preach to my sisters the birds.” The birds surrounded him, drawn by the power of his voice, and all stayed to listen. In another legend, Francis was said to have persuaded a wolf to stop ravaging the livestock of a village. Throughout his life of charity and poverty, Francis had a great love for all of the natural world. He preached to all, both humans and animals, of the universal ability of all creatures to praise God and of the human duty to protect and enjoy nature as both protectors and members of God’s creation. Having renounced by faith in God’s promises the inheritance of a cloth merchant’s son and having courageously embraced the life of poverty to which God had called him, Francis left the church a rich legacy of numerous communities dedicated to his ideals.

What does such a life of trust in God’s power look like in the 21st century? In addition to communities of monks and nuns, Francis’s legacy also continues to flourish among lay people. Anglicans and Episcopalians, for example, can join the Third Order of the Society of St. Francis, whose members live by Francis’s rule of evangelism and the simple life while maintaining their secular vocations. If you would like to see some examples closer to home of folks working together and faithfully following God’s lead in serving others, I invite you to come to Mountain Grace this coming Saturday. There you will hear about the Common Friars, an intentional community created by Paul Clever at the Good Earth Mission Farm in Athens and about Jonathan Youngman’s urban Jezreel Community. You can hear Harry Chase describe how the Maple Tree Learning Center reaches out to lower income families in the Appalachian region of Tennessee. If that’s not enough, you can hear about Academic Day Camps in Charleston, WV and about summer reading camps in our own diocese. Would you like to screw up your courage and put together a mission trip? Gordon Brewer, a deacon in the Diocese of East Tennessee, will tell you how. Would you like to be greener? Let Frank Edmands, a priest in this diocese, lead you into a deeper awareness of environmental issues for churches.

All of these people and many others model for us the life of faithful discipleship. Most of them probably started with less than a mustard seed’s worth of faith, but all of them let God lead them along the path that God had marked out for them. We thank God for their faith and their ministries. We thank God for the witness of Francis of Assisi. We also thank God for our own faith, the faith that has drawn into this church today. Trusting God, we step out in faith to do the great things that God will do as God works through us.