Pentecost 19, October 3, 2021

Today’s Gospel is one of the few times Jesus talks about marriage!  So you’d think it would be the perfect choice to be read at a wedding!  And actually, there is a line from this Gospel that has actually become part of the Christian wedding liturgy.  At every wedding I’ve been a part of, right after the couple exchange their vows, the officiant is directed to repeat words of Jesus from today’s Gospel reading.  “What God has joined together, let no one separate.”  Or as the older translation put it: “Let no man put asunder!”  which sounds much more dramatic! 

But the rest of the reading probably wouldn’t be a good Scripture to have at a wedding ceremony.  Really much better to stick with 1 Corinthians 13 or another text about love.  Because the context of today’s Gospel is another confrontation Jesus had with the Pharisees – the law experts – the religious authority — the gate keepers – and the conversation they had was really more about divorce.  And no one wants to think about a DIVORCE at a WEDDING! (or EVER for that matter) And yet we all know that divorce is common.  It’s part of the messy brokenness of our lives.

You would expect Jesus to be more tolerant of divorce. But today it sounds like the Pharisees are actually the ones promoting a more lenient attitude about it.  Usually they are the hard liners.  But here it seems like it is JESUS who takes a more restrictive view on it. 

In fact, the Pharisees DID believe that it was permissible for a MAN to leave his wife. Let me say that again, for a MAN to leave his WIFE!  It was very easy in Jesus’ day for a husband to divorce his wife if she displeased him for any reason.   There was no due process; all he had to do was send her away with a certificate of dismissal. Something, as you might guess, that was NOT available to wives who were considered, like children and slaves and cattle, to be PROPERTY of their masters. So Jesus, while sounding like he’s enforcing the law here, is really advocating once again for those who are easily cast off and abandoned and rejected. Once again, Jesus shows a new way.  Not the Moses way.  Not the law way.  But the way of love.

While the Pharisees love to lean on Moses, their revered Law Giver of the Old Testament, Jesus goes back to God’s original intent for people – he goes back to the beginning when God first created humanity.  When surveying all the things he made created, God pronounced each thing he saw as good.  When he saw his human creation, he said it was VERY good.  But one thing he saw that was NOT good.  “It is not good for the man to be alone.” So God created a partner for the man. And when Adam saw Eve he knew they belonged together.  So what Jesus reminds us of in our Gospel and what our first reading from Genesis reveals to us is that God created us to be in relationship. 

As Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ legal question – a question really meant to trap him in some kind of inconsistency, Jesus is concerned about people being alone.  In this case women who were often the victims of the oppression and abuse.  It is not good for anyone to be alone and discarded and forsaken. And Jesus’ concern applies to everyone.  God’s desire that we not be alone is fulfilled in many kinds of relationships.  Not just marriage. 

The most notable character in the New Testament was the apostle Paul and he was not married.  But he found community with brothers and sisters in the Christian congregations he was a part of.  In his letters he often sends greetings to his friends in these cities; thanking them for their support and partnership.  He wasn’t married but he was not alone.

Jesus himself was unmarried but was in community with his Father and the Spirit in the divine community of love that is the basis for ALL human relationships.  So we enjoy community, yes, in marriage and also in family connections, with parents and children, with brothers and sisters, with friends and neighbors.  This is God’s design for us – all of us.

Jesus is reminding them that it was never God’s plan for people to be alienated from each other.  And yet we know that relationships are difficult to maintain.  Marriages, family relationships, friendships — they take work.  And sometimes they don’t work. . .

Some among us are divorced. Some of us are married but have not always comforted and honored our spouse like we promised.  Some of us are estranged from family and feel that hurt every day. Sometimes our friends have not been there when we needed them.  Some of us have betrayed friends who counted on us.  We have all experienced the brokenness of human relationships and the loneliness that follows because let’s face it . . . it’s difficult.

When relationships break down, this is not part of God’s plan for us.  That’s what he trying to get the Pharisees to understand who are trying to make allowances for quick and easy divorce! He wants us to belong together . . . to be in relationships that are life-giving.  He wants us to know love that is unconditional and long-suffering and never gives up.  And when things break down, there is hope in Jesus.

Jesus knew what it was like to be alone.  The Gospel of Mark starts with Jesus all alone in the wilderness with the wild animals . . . much like Adam was in the Garden before Eve. It was not good that Jesus was alone.  He suffered alone.  Just like many women felt in Jesus day cast away by their husbands – just like children felt when they got in the way – just like we feel when our relationships fail and we feel rejected and alone. But in his loneliness Jesus joined himself to us.  In his brokenness he connected to our brokenness.  The Gospel of Mark eventually shows us Jesus on a cross . . . hanging there alone.  And in our Gospel today he is on the lonely road to that cross.  So Jesus’ words today come from one who is walking that road to the cross with a focus on that one place where human relationships are repaired and renewed.

See, when Jesus finally got to Jerusalem down that lonely road, he himself was dismissed and sent away.  He was separated from his Father.  He endured all that in order to witness to God’s faithful  love for all people.  He did the work that was required to establish our relationships on something that will last. 

Which makes possible the most important relationship of all.  The one we all have with Jesus. In Jesus’ life and death and resurrection he poured out his love for us. He takes us in his arms just like the children in our Gospel and in that embrace makes our most important relationship – the one with him – solid and certain. And rooted in that bond, he invites us to form human relationships based on his unconditional love for us.  Today he says to all of us, “You are never alone. I am joined to you forever.”  And you know what?  What God has joined together no one can separate.