Every once in a while we get a set of scripture reading for a Sunday that make it really hard to croak out that \u201cThanks be to God\u201d at the end of the reading.\u00a0 It can be a real challenge to search out some good news in a set of readings that seem so rigid and unbending.\u00a0 But that\u2019s where we are today, so here goes.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with Genesis.\u00a0 Today\u2019s reading is the creation story from Genesis 2.\u00a0 You probably already know there\u2019s a different account of creation in Genesis chapter 1.\u00a0 In Chapter 1, humanity is created last, as the crowning achievement of God\u2019s creation.\u00a0 In chapter 2, much of creation is brought into being in response to the needs of humanity.\u00a0 In Genesis 1, male and female are created at the same time; in Genesis 2, man is created first, and woman second.\u00a0 That might seem, at first, to be establishing a hierarchy of some sort, with the man in charge because he was created first.\u00a0 But look again.\u00a0 In the beginning of the story, the man names all the creatures as they are created. They are unsuitable companions because they not his equal. The woman, who is made from the same stuff as the man, is a suitable partner, specifically because she is his equal.\u00a0 It is only after the Fall, when their relationship has been disrupted, that he gives her a personal name.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look next at this Gospel. It\u2019s hard to understand what Jesus is getting at here, without a little background.\u00a0 Until the time of Moses, the Israelites had no formal divorce.\u00a0 There was no possibility of terminating a failed relationship.\u00a0 And so, because of the people\u2019s stubbornness–their refusal to reconcile– Moses let them divorce.\u00a0 By the time of Jesus, divorce was easy.\u00a0 The man would say I \u201cdivorce you\u201d three times, and the woman would be put out on the street. In a culture in which women had no economic possibilities and no social standing apart from her husband, this easy divorce was terribly abusive of women.\u00a0 And so, Jesus appeals to the story of creation– Genesis 1, by the way– and tells them that marriage isn\u2019t something they can dissolve.\u00a0 It is forever. Furthermore, in the time of Jesus, because women had no legal standing, your could only commit adultery against a man.\u00a0 So for Jesus to say that a man commits adultery against a woman was a whole different way of thinking.\u00a0 The context of this Gospel makes it clear that Jesus is talking about protecting the marginalized.\u00a0 In his society, and in ours, that means especially women and children.<\/p>\n
This saying prohibiting divorce introduces a whole new set of problems.\u00a0 We still have to deal with the fact of failed relationships, and how to resolve them.\u00a0 The way the church deals with this is through the annulment process.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty widely misunderstood and misrepresented, so let me say a few words about it.\u00a0 We have these difficult words from Jesus in the Gospel about in permanence of marriage.\u00a0 So, the church reasons that what he is talking about is sacramental<\/em> marriage.\u00a0 If we can determine that what a couple had was not a sacramental bond, then we can declare the marriage annulled.\u00a0 The only way we can say the sacrament didn\u2019t occur, is if there was something wrong with the form of the wedding– basically a technical problem of some sort– or if there was something that prevented either or both of the parties from making a full and complete commitment at the beginning.\u00a0 An annulment, when it\u2019s granted, doesn\u2019t say there was never any relationship, and it doesn\u2019t make children illegitimate.\u00a0 It just says that this was not a sacramental bond; not what we mean when we say \u201cmarriage.\u201d \u00a0 The purpose of an annulment process is to make a pastoral response to a difficult situation that will allow someone to try again.\u00a0 It\u2019s an imperfect response to a difficult situation.<\/p>\n My mother once proposed a different approach.\u00a0 She reasoned that since Jesus told his disciples \u201cwhat you hold loosed on earth is loosed in heaven,\u201d we need to have a ritual in which we can say \u201cwe\u2019re declaring this one loosed.\u201d\u00a0 Yet another reason, I guess, why my mother will never be elected pope.<\/p>\n These words of Jesus about marriage are one of the few places in the Scriptures where the Church takes him quite literally.\u00a0 Oddly enough, other churches, who claim to take the whole of the scriptures literally, don\u2019t seem to have as much of a problem with divorce.<\/p>\n All of us have promises to keep; many of us have relationships that challenge us to fidelity and permanence.\u00a0 The hardest thing for us is to remain faithful– to our relationships and to the Gospel– without buying into closed systems. All of us fall short of the ideal of perfect loving relationships, so it\u2019s not a huge surprise that even the Church struggles to respond to these issues.\u00a0 Our ultimate goal is still the building up of God\u2019s reign as an inclusive community that acknowledges the gifts, and the beauty, and the presence of God\u2019s Spirit in every human being, especially the marginalized.\u00a0 The Gospel establishes the ideal of marriage as a commitment to love, for life.\u00a0 The fact that many of us fall short of that ideal isn\u2019t a reason to change the ideal, but it does challenge us to respond with compassion, and to see marriage as part of the Gospel\u2019s call to live his love in ways that draw all people closer to Him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every once in a while we get a set of scripture reading for a Sunday that make it really hard to croak out that \u201cThanks be to God\u201d at the end of the reading.\u00a0 It can be a real challenge to search out some good news in a set of readings that seem so rigid and unbending.\u00a0 But that\u2019s where we are today, so here … Continue reading Homily for Oct. 7, 2012.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homilies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5FUlW-33","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}