Throw-away

Genesis 2:18-24

ADONAI, God, said, “It isn’t good that the person should be alone. I will make for him a companion suitable for helping him.” So from the ground ADONAI, God, formed every wild animal and every bird that filed in the air, and he brought them to the person to see what he would call them. Whatever the person would call each living creature, that was to be its name. So the person gave names to all the livestock, to the birds in the air and to every wild animal. But for Adam there was not found a companion suitable for helping him. Then God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the person; and while he was sleeping, he took one of his ribs and closed up the place from which he took it with flesh. The rib which ADONAI, God, had taken from the person, he made a woman-person; and he brought her to the man-person. The man-person said, “At last! This is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh. She is to be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” This is why a man is to leave his father and mother and stick with his wife, and they are to be one flesh.

Psalm 8

ADONAI! Our Lord! How glorious is your name throughout the earth! The fame of your majesty spreads even above the heavens! From the mouths of babies and infants at the breast you established strength because of your foes, in order that you might silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place - what are mere mortals, that you concern yourself with them; humans, that you watch over them with such care? You made him but little lower than the angels, you crowned him with glory and honor, you had him rule what your hands made, you put everything under his feet - sheep and oxen, all of them, also the animals in the wilds, the birds in the air, the fish in the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas. ADONAI! Our Lord! How glorious is your name throughout the earth!

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

In the past, God spoke to our fathers at different times and in various ways through the prophets, but in these final days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the material universe. This Son is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, and although sustaining all there is by the word of his power, yet made purification for sins, and then sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having been exalted as far above the angels as the name he inherited is more noble than theirs. Now it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But someone has testified somewhere, “What is man that you take thought for him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor, You put everything in subjection under his feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. But in fact we do  not yet see everything under his control. But we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor. For it was appropriate that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the champion of their salvation perfect through suffering. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one origin. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers, when he says, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

Mark 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he 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.” Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said 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.” People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

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How easily we throw one another away. 

The Gospel today starts with a test. The religious leaders approach Jesus to see how he will answer their loaded question about the legality of divorce. Justice and care for the vulnerable is a pretty clear message in the law and the prophets, but for the real-life, day-to-day, religion at home sort of decisions, people read into Scripture what they want to hear, and if there is a loophole in the law, we will find it to justify our own way. We’ve used the Bible to both justify slavery, and to fight against it, for example. Scripture, it has been said, has a wax nose. So how do we interpret what we find there?

That’s the crux of the question to Jesus this morning. If Moses said we can write a letter of divorce and dismiss a wife who no longer pleases us, then why shouldn’t we? Moses is, after all, the one who led us out of slavery into freedom, and the one who brought us the law from Mount Sinai. He’s the ultimate authority on God’s law, when we want him to be.

But in real experience, Jesus knows, life was particularly difficult. Adjusting to freedom takes time, and old habits die hard. Women were property as wives, with dowries and all, and their worth was tied to their purity. If it was easy to divorce a woman on a whim, just to marry another so as to collect dowries, why not marry a new bride every year? Seems like a great way to build up your investments, pad the portfolio, and not have to deal with a nagging wife wanting love and affection and attention in exchange for all that extra wealth.

So few people actually considered the feelings - no, the survival - of the woman in the aftermath of divorce. Who would want to protect someone else’s ‘damaged goods’? Remember Joseph and Mary, when Mary was found to be with child out of wedlock and Joseph considered putting her away quietly? She may not then have been stoned to death for infidelity, but she sure wouldn’t have been received with gladness into an honorable marriage with any other man.

We’re suddenly in the month of October already, and two of the many causes which have laid claim to this month are those of bullying and domestic violence. Why we have to set aside an entire month, but only a month, to talk about these painful realities that don’t take a day off, that someone said these things need to be talked about and we have to set aside particular time for those conversations, when ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a basic rule to all major religions? 

I don’t know the statistics, except that bullying is a lot more visible now that we have texting and Facebook, that domestic violence can be physical, mental, or emotional. It doesn’t always lead to bruises we can see. It isn’t always men beating women. Abuse comes in many forms, as a power play. Sometimes it leaves the abused cut off and the abuser might repent over and over again only to continue the cycle of violence. Often it is learned behavior. Always it is a violation of the marriage vows, a sin against what we claim to believe about the created order of things.

Because the first thing in the creation narrative that God says is definitely not good, is that it is not good for a human to be alone. So God creates all of the animals, in this the second creation story in Genesis, and brings them to the first dirt-person to name. I’ve seen a delightful drama of this story, where each animal comes to Adam and looks wistfully up at him, asking, “wife?” only to have Adam say, “no, not wife: donkey. Not wife: sloth. Not wife: crocodile.” All creatures, created with companionship in mind, but none quite fits the bill, not even the duck, until Adam is rent open and torn in two pieces for companionship, partnership, a helper who is different but equal. The word there, the ‘helper’ word, is used in the First Testament also for God, so this is no lesser servant person, no subordinate, but an equally valuable complement.

So how did we get so far from ‘bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’ to ‘ball and chain’? How did we get from ‘helper’ to ‘make me a sandwich’? From the story that man leaves his home and clings to his wife, to double-checking on the legalities of deciding that the pretty girl next door can be traded in because she burned my toast again this morning?

We were not made for this, friends. We were not made to be one another’s means to an end, to be anyone else’s rung on a ladder, or trophy, or excuse, or even ‘cross to bear.’

We certainly weren’t made to be isolated one from another. Weren’t made to bite and scratch and claw, to bully and berate and belittle, to disregard and dismember. In the kingdom of God come near, we who have grown so accustomed to the pain of one another, who are so dead in sin and so full of spite and malice, are reborn children of God, new, forgiven, and free.

This story isn’t asking Jesus about sexual ethics and male-female marriages. This is testing Jesus about the value of a human person, a vulnerable human person, a needy human person, and the role of a person with power in relation to someone of socially lesser status. Is it lawful to divorce? Well, it’s certainly not ideal, but sometimes tying oneself to another person for life turns out to be toxic rather than life-giving, and those ties need to be severed to prevent strangulation. This is not to be entered, nor exited, lightly. There will be a cost, there’s always a cost when we talk about loving another person. Jesus knows this well.

The people of Israel know this well, too. Their prophets have told stories for ages about God as the jilted lover, with the people of Israel as the unfaithful bride. In many and various ways, God spoke to the people of old by those prophets, but now in these last days, God’s own self, who we call the Son, has come to speak with us face-to-face, to walk with us hand-in-hand, to love us so passionately that he dies with a spear in his heart and comes to us again, scarred by our rejection but arms still open to us in endless love and reconciliation.

Again, this is Jesus who does this. Jesus, as in God-with-us, Emmanuel. This is not a model for abused lovers to bear the scars of their abusers. Jesus is not just a model and a teacher, Jesus is our savior and our God. There are some things Jesus goes through that we don’t have to emulate or imitate. Letting someone beat us to death out of love is one of those things. That’s Jesus’ territory, taken up freely for the sake of loving us through death in a way only God can do, so that we can be raised up to new life beyond all of our pain and death. Jesus makes with us a new marriage covenant, with his own blood and body given and shed. 

And, somehow, Jesus does this knowing how many ways we will throw him away, again and again. God bleeds for us over and over while we draw blood from each other, while we deny life in our very midst, and yet life grows despite ourselves. God can be awfully annoying like that, refusing to be tied down by our rules, refusing to be limited to our expectations, refusing to stop loving anyone just because we’ve deemed that person unlovable. Even when we consider ourselves unlovable, God will never throw us away. 

That’s why Luther said the most important words we hear at the Table are “given and shed for you.” It is not good for a person to be alone, and so God comes among us in the flesh, to feed us with God’s own flesh and blood, so we never need be alone again. And like an apple tree grafted onto ancient roots, we are connected by that sacred bloodline of Jesus to all the other beloved of God, because even when we don’t love each other, we are loved still by the God who first formed us and put us all together in this fragile and beautiful world.