Sermon, October 5, 2003
17 Pentecost; Proper 22, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Sermon, October 5, 2003
17 Pentecost; Proper 22, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
We open today with the rich story of Adam and Eve. "Adam" is the ancient word meaning "people," literally "Earthling." And God said it is not good that people should be alone. So God made a helper, a partner, "Eve": the ancient word meaning "source." She is the life-source and bearer of children. God's yearning is that people might live together in order have a better life, a source of new and abundant life. The story is not so much about the relationship between men and women as it is about the relationship between individuals and families, aloneness and togetherness. God's will for families is abundant life. It is not good that people should be alone. But when we don't live alone, it's complicated.
Family life and marriage is like a University of Love. The gift of living in families is the gift of learning how to love. The curse of living in families is the challenge of learning how to love. There is something about living in committed intimacy with another person that shapes us and opens us up to levels of love and life and growth unavailable anywhere else. It is a divine gift of creation. And like all divine gifts within creation, it is an ambiguous one. In the marriage rite we say that we take each other "for better, for worse; for richer for poorer; in sickness and in health." It's a mixed bag. It can be pretty humbling too.
Last week I was attending a conference where one of our leaders was retired Bishop Arthur Williams. He told a story about his excitement following his election as bishop in 1986. When you are elected, he said, you get on a lot of mailing lists, especially for the companies that provide episcopal vestments. Sometime shortly before his consecration, early one morning, a box arrived for him. His wife was upstairs getting dressed for work, so Arthur decided to surprise her. He unwrapped the box and put on the bishop's rochet and chimere, the elegant magenta cassock with its elaborately embroidered white covering. Just as Kay was about to walk out, Arthur stood regally at the top of the stairs and slowly began to process down in his bishop's splendor. "You look lovely, Arthur," she said. "Don't forget, Friday is garbage day. Bye, bye."
Part of the humbling instruction that a covenanted life brings us is grounded in the important realization that God is everywhere. You do not need to seek God elsewhere. There is not another place where God is more than God is here. So the commitment to intimacy and fidelity is a covenant to seek God in this place, with this person, "until we are parted by death."
My friend Frank Wade of St. Columba's Church in Washington, D.C. says that such relationships are like having a child:
When a couple marries, the marriage is something like a child of theirs in that it is an expression of both of them, but it is not really either one of them. The marriage, like a child, has a life of its own. It is connected to, but not the same as, the life of either the man or the woman. Like a child the marriage needs to be nurtured and cared for. It needs to be played with and educated. It needs serious conversations and idle chatter. It needs our prayers and our best efforts. And if, like a child, the marriage gets sick or injured, it needs our utmost attention. If the problem is serious, experts should be called for. Pediatricians for children, counselors for marriages. It may require extra time or money to provide the care a wounded or ill marriage needs, but it must be given when needed. All must work together for its well being. But the analogy does not stop there. If the marriage dies, if it cannot live any longer, if its systems have become toxic and its ability for life irretrievably lost, then it is dead, and it should be buried. When a marriage dies, we must do the same things we do when a child dies. We must grieve and ask all of the hard questions about whatever more we might have done to prevent this. We need forgiveness and understanding from those close enough to provide it. We need the strength and the promise of our God. And we need at some point to leave the graveside and return to the business of life, which may include having other children or marrying again. A divorce is a burial for a dead marriage. Divorces do not kill marriages any more than funerals kill people.
(from "Marriage and Divorce," a sermon preached today by Frank Wade on "The Protestant Hour")
Sadly, too many couples do not do the hard work of nurture, prayer and care that it takes to heal an injured relationship and may bury it before it has a chance to recover. A friend of mine was telling me about her older sister who called last week. Her sister has been married four times, and now she is at the point of hopelessness in her ten-year marriage. My friend listened for nearly an hour. She didn't quite feel free to say what she was thinking: "This sounds a whole lot like what happens when you've been married ten years." My friend knows. She's been married fifteen years.
Sometimes when it feels like your relationship is threatened, it is helpful to remember your original promise. Get back in touch with your roots and source. Why was it that you chose to live with this person among all the other people in the world? What were the deep motivations that drew you together? Much of life includes making promises, and breaking promises, and then being willing and hopeful enough to make promises again. Can you recall and renew your original promise, which is also God's original intent that marriage make your life better?
Yet what do we do when a marriage turns toxic, life-choking, and dies? We have this word from Jesus in Mark's Gospel today. The Pharisees cite the legalisms from scripture -- Moses' instruction allowing a man with appropriate documentation to divorce his wife, a practice that made women extremely vulnerable. Jesus challenges the legalism by returning to the original intent. "The two shall become one flesh." Subsequent generations of Christians have sometimes used Jesus' words legalistically either to condemn all divorce or prevent any remarriage. May we not return to God's original intent that marriage might make our lives better, that we might live abundant lives? God does not want for us a living death. Can't our promise to be together until death also refer to the death of the relationship as well as the death of the person? God's desire for our abundance does not dissolve when we are no longer married. Sometimes we drop God's gift and it breaks. That's when we turn to our loving God in thankfulness for God's continuing love, forgiveness, and grace. Such challenging, tragic times are not moments when we should act out of our hardness of heart, but humbly, out of hope in a God who performs resurrections.
No human relationship is perfect. We can only turn to God with such expectations. Our love is always mixed with attachment. But we can accept the reality and acknowledge the way thing are -- really are, and then dig deep into our hearts to combine that acceptance with our passionate desire to make things better. That is what God's heart has yearned for us since the beginning. It is not good for a person to live alone. I will make a helper as a partner.