Digging Required

Genesis 2:18-24

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Mark 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test him 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.

Last week was millstones around the neck and cutting off body parts.  This week it’s gender and divorce.  Bishop Jack and I laughed about these kinds of weeks last week at coffee hour but in the end we both agreed that even in these sorts of weeks, there is Good News to be found.  It’s just that in weeks like this, a lot more digging, a lot deeper in the mine, is required!

So the first bit of digging we need to do this week is into the word “man” in that Genesis text.  Dig into the original Hebrew and you’ll first find that the word Adam is NOT best translated as “man” as in a gender.  The Hebrew word A-dam best translates into English as, something like, Earth Person.  In my mind I imagine the A-dam 1.0 model as a sort of proto-human, a person containing the entire spectrum of human gender but without a specific gender or sexual expression.  Why did God create the A-dam this way?  Because, God thought that was the way to go!  So what happened?  The A-dam turned out to be lonely.  Loneliness was not God’s intention.  God had made a mistake!  Gasp!  So what did God do?  The Divine worked out a fix!  And God’s fix for loneliness was and is… relationship!

To do that, God took a rib out of A-dam 1.0, right?  Actually, the Hebrew implies that God cut A-dam 1.0 right down the middle and therefore made two, completely equal “flesh and bone” beings to be in relationship with one another.  Humanity 2.0 was created to have multiple beings, which together would make a fully equal, not lonely, relational whole.  This wasn't about sex or gender.  Let me say that again... This wasn't about sex or gender!  It was ALL about creating a fix for the human problem of loneliness.  How beings should or shouldn't be mixed or matched with regard to sex and gender in the future in these equal, mutual, loneliness-fixing relationships isn’t addressed here at all.  Worth the digging, right?

The next digging to be done is into Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees.  What you find with just a little shovel work there is that divorce in their time was like Trump vs. Harris in our time... An all consuming political issue filled with fear, anger, rage, and divisiveness.  The pharisees knew if they could get Jesus to commit to one side or the other, (they didn’t care which) the other side might just rid them of their Jesus problem.  The pharisees were picking a fight but Jesus chose not to show up for it!  Jesus told them, “It is your hardness of heart” that has you asking this question!  You are trying to use the wonderful, divine gift called “RELATIONSHIP”… God’s fix for humanity’s loneliness… and twist it into something that does the exact opposite!  You’re trying to use it to divide and conquer!  That, Jesus says, is some heard hearted nastiness right there!  

The last bit of digging we need to do is into the conversation Jesus had with the disciples about divorce.  In Jesus’ day we need to remember that women had no legal status.  Without care from a man… father, brother, son, or husband... women could be left literally homeless and destitute.  That gender inequality is NOT how God created humans to live (we learned that digging in Genesis) but it WAS the reality in Jesus’ day, SO that’s the reality Jesus had to address.  Therefore what Jesus was forbidding in this lesson was a man (who in that culture held all the power) FORCING the fate of homelessness and destitution on a woman (who in that culture had absolutely no power)!!  That’s it! 

Now, here’s what Jesus was NOT saying:  Jesus was NOT saying people should stay in intentionally or unintentionally abusive or irreparably broken marriages of any sort.  He was NOT saying that people should stay in a relationship when, for whatever reason, that relationship is no longer able to DO what God created relationships to DO... to cure loneliness and help one another toward becoming the fullness of what God created them to be.  Jesus is NOT saying people must stay in a relationship, when for millions of different reasons, that relationship is no longer able to build one another up in an equal, mutual, and jointly beneficial way, but instead (intentionally or unintentionally) is tearing one or the other, or both, down.  Divorce is always painful but that does NOT mean it is always the wrong thing to do.  Sometimes, one of the hard facts about being human is that doing the painful thing is sometimes the absolutely RIGHT thing to do.  

Relationship and every sort of Gender expression was created as a Divine GIFT from God!  God created those things as tools to move all human beings toward the wholeness and abundant life God created us each to live!  They were given and meant to be shared equally with one another.  They were NEVER meant to be used as a means to denigrate or to dominate the other.  They have always been meant to be tools to lift one another up!  Never were they meant to be used to tear one another down.

These are very hard texts.  Mostly because they have been badly misused for thousands of years.  Undoing all of that damage and pain will take a very long time.  Much longer than one Sunday sermon can possibly last, so with that... let's call this sermon done for now, and say... Amen.