“For your hardness of heart [Moses] wrote you this commandment [about divorcing your wives]. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’” St. Mark 10:2-9; also Genesis 2:18-24
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Today’s Gospel shows that Jesus regarded divorce as a consequence of humanity’s fall, arising from our “hardness of heart.” It also shows that he saw marriage as grounded in the first principles of life in the beginning, at the creation, when “God made them male and female.” When I saw this week’s Gospel, as a preacher I wanted to run in the other direction. But let us submit ourselves to the appointed Scripture, (I’ll put on my coat of mail and you buckle your seat belts), and look first with Jesus at divorce and then at creation, in which God makes them male and female.
Even when it is absolutely necessary, divorce is at least a result of sad news. People – wives, husbands, children, family and friends, society – suffer divorce. Hearts and families are broken; finances are often ruined. Divorce is easily in the category of losing one’s job and usually ranks as a greater trouble. Nevertheless, Moses of old and the Church from the beginning made provisions, in one way or another, for divorce or annulment of marriages. The difference is that in the New Testament women are given equal rights and responsibilities in marriage and divorce with men.
The Episcopal Church requires any priest seeking to solemnize a marriage in which one or both of the parties has been divorced to receive written permission from the bishop to solemnize the new marriage. A canonical process, which includes answers by the couple to important questions and a written statement of application from the priest, concludes with the Declaration of Intention, which every couple seeking Holy Matrimony in the Church must sign. This Declaration states the couple believes marriage to be what the Book of Common Prayer rite of marriage, following Jesus and the apostles’ teaching in the New Testament, defines it to be; namely a lifelong, exclusive, union of husband and wife, open (if it may be) to the procreation of children, and seeking God’s help to keep these solemn vows.
Marriage preparation, of course, is not for the pulpit but for the priest’s office. I ask each couple to meet with me for several hours in three appointments over what should be at least a six months’ preparation period. In the case of a re-marriage after divorce, it often takes more, in order to prepare our application for the bishop. In our instant-gratification, throw-away society, sacramental marriage means tacking against the wind, and I want Saint Thomas to be a support for Holy Matrimony, not an accomplice in yet more divorces. It is my experience that those seeking marriage who have undergone divorce often have a particular seriousness, as the Psalm says, “It is good for me that I have been in trouble, that I may learn thy statutes.” (Ps 119:71) It is also noteworthy that Jesus’ longest conversation in the Gospels is with a Samaritan woman who had five husbands and whose current consort was not her husband. (John 4:7-30) Our Lord, whose specialty is mercy, upholds the highest standard for marriage and yet at the same time gathers around him many whose lives and living arrangements are diverse and often complicated – like us here.
At the heart of the issue of marriage is the fact that the ministers of the sacrament are the man and the woman who make the vow. At the start of the marriage ceremony, at the Declaration of Consent (confirming the Declaration of Intent which was signed before), the priest asks the bride and the groom: “Will you have this man/woman to be your husband/wife, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?” To which the answer must be, “I will.” But the man and woman each minister the vows to each other: “In the Name of God, I, N., take you, N., to be my wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”
Jesus grounded marriage, and defined the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, in the first principles of creation, at the division of the human race into male and female. This is the only division in humanity which comes before sin. Even racial differences, ethnic and language differences, for that matter, differences of personality, temperament and sexuality, important and defining to our identity as all these differences in nature and nurture are, are later. The noun for a human being is man or woman, boy or girl. All the others are adjectives. Whatever else we can say, we are all first and last men, women and children. “Person” may be a helpful abstraction, but an abstraction nonetheless. We are particular men and women, boys and girls.
In the coming together of male and female as one flesh in the beginning and in marriage, Jesus is pointing to something rooted in the creation itself. It involves the biblical revelation of what I call the Big He and the Big She.
Holy Scripture reveals that the Godhead, the transcendent deity, is “male” in relation to the creation. By the same token the universe, the whole cosmos, is “female” in relation to the creator. This is reflected in the language of the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit named by Jesus on the one hand, and “Mother Nature” or “Mother Earth” on the other. Holy Wisdom, nearly but not quite deified in Scripture, is the feminine principle pervading and inhabiting the creation and drawing it, “her,” to bless her creator.1 This male-female polarity and union are also evident in redemption, where the Gospel refers to Jesus Christ as the Bridegroom and to the Church, the people of God, as the Bride.
You and I, whether we are men, women or children; whatever our state in life; we all are invited to be members, through baptism and faith, of Holy Mother Church, Christ’s Bride. It turns out that we all need a certain kind of “marriage preparation” called training in Christianity, to embrace a spouse who will never divorce us, no matter what. We need to be ready; for at midnight comes the cry: “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh! Go ye out to meet him!” So you see, every one of us is espoused – to Jesus Christ the Bridegroom, who has made us members of the Body of which he is the Head.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
