Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 128; Hebrews 2:1-18; Mark 10:2-9

 

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

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 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.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.  Amen      Psalm 19:19

It was Saturday a week ago, and I joined other members of this parish in hosting the visiting Bishops as they arrived to rehearse, don their vestments and participate in the Consecration and Ordination of our Diocesan Bishop, Barry Biesner. Since I was scheduled to preach today, I arrived early and took the opportunity to retrieve a copy of the insert of today’s readings. My usual practice in preparing a homily is to carry the readings with me for the week and spend time reading and thinking about them. I have found this to be a way of finding meaning and application of these writings to my personal life. Then, hopefully, I can pass on to you something worthwhile.

So it was early on that Saturday morning that I found the readings in the church office and picked them up and read the Gospel lesson. Generally I like these stories of Jesus’ teachings as the most direct and enlightening for the day. But as I read this lesson I thought “marriage again!!” and not just marriage but a “prohibition on divorce”; very short, very direct and very simple.

My second thought was to look at the Old Testament. Maybe I could just ignore the marriage thing and talk about the ancient stories for Hebrew history. But alas it was not to be – “God making a woman out of the rib!” This just reeks of Fundamentalists and their interpretation of the supremacy of the male over the female which they support from this single early story of creation.

My next thought was, “Is this an evil joke? Am I of being tested by our Worship Coordinator?”  It seems to me that I am always assigned to give the sermon on days that we have readings about marriage.” Of course Rik denies that I am scheduled specifically to talk about marriage issues and he also denies that any of this is deliberate. When I confronted him he told me that he never looks at the lessons before assigning the preaching duties and it is just the way the schedule falls.

OK! So it is purely coincidental! – But what it does prove is that God has a sense of humor. Actually, this is what I do believe. Just look at the evidence--

I am a man who has developed and maintains a family and committed relationship with another man. Our family is not recognized by the federal government of the United States In the sight of the law we have only whatever relationship to one another that can be put in writing, signed, and notarized as a business contract.Our family not recognized by the federal government and it is barely recognized by the State ofCalifornia where we are registered as Domestic Partners. Even here where we have certain recognition as a family, and by state law enjoy many of the rights and responsibilities of a married couple, there is a law that forbids our relationship from being equated to marriage.

I am in a relationship which is controversial in political circles. There are currently 39 of the 50 states (including

California

) that have laws called “Defense of Marriage Acts” which disallow in different ways, recognition of our commitment to one another.

I am in a relationship which is controversial in many parts of the Christian church and our family is strongly opposed in certain denominations. It has even become more controversial in the Episcopal Church with the consecration, three years ago, of a Bishop who is also in a long term committed relationship with another man.

I am in a relationship which may even be controversial in the view of some of you here today. For some reason, though, I still don’t feel like a controversial person. I do feel like a fortunate person because I have a dedication to a person with whom I share values of integrity, honesty, and with whom I have built a spiritual and peaceful home.

As I have stated the last time I spoke before you, “I don’t look at the Bible as a recipe book with cookie cutter answers which can be followed step by step for each situation.”  But how much more specific could it get than the instructions in these readings about marriage?

As I pondered what to do next I decided to look at the Epistle lesson. This may be a way to avoid the whole marriage issue. But when I read the lesson from Hebrews my first impression was “Oh no! Paul wrote another long explanation about some esoteric concept on the relationships between angels, God, Jesus, and human beings.” If I couldn’t make sense of the short simple messages about marriage, I certainly would not be able to easily explain relationships when you throw angels into the mix.

This is as far as I got in the process of trying to discern today’s message when the Bishops began to arrive. Many of them I did not, and still do not, know but I had the opportunity to greet several of them upon their arrival.

I recognized “The Right Reverend Lloyd Allen”, the Bishop of Honduras, who was very warm in his greeting. I remembered hearing him speak at our diocesan convention several years ago. He made a point then that the American Episcopal Church was focused too much on what was happening below the navel. In his country there were many more basic needs and our attention should best be focused on what was happening in our hearts.

Our Presiding Bishop Elect, The Right Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, arrived early, and I remembered that, she as a woman, is the subject of her own unique controversy within the church. I heard her speak, also at a diocesan convention, about her particular desire for the church to be more ready to assist all the less fortunate in concrete, physical ways.

And of course, our own soon to be retiring Bishop Lamb came by – as always thanking those of us there for our small part in the festivities.

These encounters had helped me shift my thought patterns and I was just starting to feel relaxed, when in walked an impressive, self-assured man (obviously accustomed to having his wishes implemented unquestioned). Our conversation though began on a rough note. He started out by asking,” Where do I my thing?”  We were standing in the middle of the nave – which by that time was obviously a dressing room (numerous suitcases were scattered on the seats and hangers with robes were hanging down both outer isles). But I responded with the obvious answer anyway, “This is where all the Bishops are going to vest.” He became obviously agitated and as he looked around was muttering to himself, “this will not do, I need somewhere separate.”

Of course, I was the only person from

St. Paul

’s there at that moment and could not avoid the conversation which seemed to be heading the wrong direction, so I responded, “We do have this old kitchen area and there are two restrooms at the back of the church.”

The man only seemed to become more agitated. Then a woman, obviously his driver, leaned around where I could see her and said, “This is the Canon from the National Cathedral.” Well, that explained some things but not all of what was happening. The Canon next said, “I need some place where I can do my wax.”

Several images flashed through my mind in quick succession. What sort of vestments was this man going to wear that required him to do waxing? If he needed to remove hair from his legs, why was it left to do on a last minute basis? We must truly be transforming into a liberal church. How am I going to get into the Auditorium to see this procession?”

Wisely, I decided not to ask those questions, but instead asked, “Exactly what do you need?” “A table like we used for church dinners and set up in the narthex under our bulletin board would be perfect. The Canon would there be able to heat up the sealing wax for the certificates of ordination. With that resolved, I and others host of our congregation, were able to observe an ancient tradition not witnessed by those who attended the public ceremonies in Memorial Auditorium.

Let me read from the program of the ordination of a Bishop, The Gifts of Office, The Bishop’s ring is a gift from the clergy of the Diocese of Northern California. It is an official part of the bishop’s insignia of office dating back to the 7^th century. The ring is a symbol of unity, in the Faith, in the Diocese and in the Church. It is also a symbol of affection, showing the bishop’s faithfulness to the people of his or her diocese. In the past, the ring was used to make an imprint of the bishop’s seal in hot wax to authenticate official documents. I am here to tell you that this process of sealing official documents is still done today. The imprinting of each bishop’s ring in sealing wax is the tradition that we were able to witness.

The sealing of a promise occurs in many ways in our Episcopal tradition. It was witnessed here in the ordination of our bishop. It is witnesses in this parish with each baptism as the priest concluded the ceremony with these words, “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” And it is witnessed in the vows of marriage with the words, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

This convoluted process takes us back to the lessons for today. I came to an understanding of this message, not by looking at marriage under a microscope, as a unique relationship different from all other relationships. The broader understanding to which I came, is that all human relationships are special and all our commitments are to be made and maintained with integrity and purpose.

By reversing the process and using a telescope not a microscope – we can understand the events of the creation story. Humans are created to be social beings. The message in this story begins with our relationship with God. God has given us use of all creation and is concerned for our wellbeing. In this sequence of the creation story, God said, "It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.” So God formed from the dirt of the ground all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air....Whatever the Man called each living creature that was its name. The Man named the cattle, named the birds of the air, named the wild animals; but he didn’t find a suitable companion. We can have all the material possessions of the world and still are lacking without the relationship with other people. We are social beings.

By reversing the process and using a telescope not a microscope – we can more clearly understand our relationship with God. In our reading from Hebrews, (Reading from the Message) “Since the One who saves and those who are saved have a common origin, Jesus doesn’t hesitate to treat them as family, saying, ‘I’ll tell my good friends, my brothers and sisters, all I know about you; I’ll join them in worship and praise to you. Again, he puts himself in the same family circle when he says, ‘Even I live by placing my; trust in God.’” This reaffirms that not only are we are social beings related to all other people, but also, we are spiritual beings living in awe of our connection to God and all of creation.

By reversing the process and using a telescope not a mocroscope – we can also understand the events depicted in the short paragraph from the Gospel of Mark.

First by looking at the situation presented we can see that the Pharisees came to “test” Jesus. We see time and time again in Jesus’ travels that one group or another – usually they are identified as the Pharisees or the Sadducees (differing sects within the Hebrew community) – would ask questions to “test” Jesus. Often their purpose though was more accurately to “trap” Jesus into taking sided in their differing interpretations of Jewish law and life. The questions were worded so that no matter what the answer one group or the other would be offended. For their larger purpose, they were really asking, “Is it OK for us to make a pledge and then back out of fulfilling that promise?”

Understanding the situation, Jesus gave, as he often did a multi-part answer, which can be explained this way: First, if you make a promise or a vow you have a duty to keep it (What God has joined together), secondly, those on the outside of the promise have an obligation to support the promise (let no one separate), but thirdly people can be insensitive (hard hearted) and we are not able always to fulfill our pledges and promises so Moses (representing human rather than divine reality) allowed laws to dissolve unsustainable relationships.

Dedication to a marriage can be seen is a central template for all our social relationships. It is not set aside simply as a unique relationship different from all other relationships but is a prime example of all the patterns of life. All spiritual and human relationships are unique and all our commitments are to be made and maintained with integrity and purpose.

Amen