“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
-from the Illustrated London News, April 19, 1924
Reblogged from NPR:
As a result of Vatican II, the Catholic Church opened its windows onto the modern world, updated the liturgy, gave a larger role to laypeople, introduced the concept of religious freedom and started a dialogue with other religions.
“It was a time of a new hope, when everybody was proud that we are able to convoke such a council, and having a real renewal of the Catholic Church,” says Hans Kung, who was the youngest theologian at Vatican II.
But the changes provoked a backlash, and many Catholics today say the council’s renewal momentum has been stopped in its tracks.
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.
We’ve got a doozy of a gospel reading this week. I call it one of our “damage control” passages because you almost want to apologize for it while you’re reading it. I’m mean seriously: we have a rating system for movies, why not come up with one for the Bible? The parable of the Good Samaritan would probably be rated PG-13 for mild violence. The book of Judges would definitely be rated R for all the extreme blood n’ guts. The Song of Solomon would be… um… well, let’s just say it would only be shown in “select theaters”. Of course, the big problem I can see with that idea is that I can’t think of any sections of the Bible that would merit a G rating.
If I had to give today’s passage from Mark’s gospel a rating, I think I would have to go with either PG-13 or R because of ‘thematic material’. This is one of those passages that are intended for ‘mature audiences only’. Taking Jesus’ teachings about divorce at face-value can be dangerous, especially if you don’t have all the necessary background information at hand.
Unfortunately, Christians have been taking this passage at face-value and applying it indiscriminately for centuries. This has led to a lot of people being hurt by or excluded from the church during one of those times in life when they needed fellowship, guidance, and support more than ever. So, with that in mind, I’m going to begin this morning by stating very clearly what you’re not going to hear from me, today or ever, on the dual-subject of marriage and divorce.
First of all, I’m not going to tell you that, if you get a divorce, you’re going to hell. I don’t believe that. It’s not how I roll. To borrow a hip-hop phrase from the early 90s: “Homie don’t play dat.” Second, I’m not going to tell you that, if you get a divorce, you should be banned from receiving communion or serving the church in an ordained capacity as an elder, deacon, or pastor. There was a time in Presbyterian history when that was the case. In fact, it’s still the case in some denominations. But we in this church developed an awareness during the last hundred years or so that life is complicated and so are relationships. Our ancestors realized that an effective, Christ-like ministry is one that recognizes life’s complexities and leads with grace rather than judgment. Third, I’m not going to tell you that, if you get a divorce, you can never begin another relationship or get remarried and expect that relationship to be healthy and blessed by God. The God I believe in is the God of Plan B and second chances. If that wasn’t who I believed God to be, then I wouldn’t (I couldn’t) be standing in this pulpit today.
Now, there are preachers out there who will tell you differently from what I just told you. They would look at today’s gospel reading and say, “You see? The Bible says right here that divorce is a sin and you can’t go against that without going against Jesus, so you might as well just tear it up and admit that you’re not a real Christian!” If you’ve been told that before, even by a member of the clergy, I want you to know that you’ve been lied to. Let me show you how.
First of all, we have to begin with the definition of that theologically load term: sin. “Divorce is a sin,” or so they say. The word sin, when used in this way, usually refers to a specific behavior or set of behaviors that supposedly angers God because it violates one of the moral rules laid out in the Bible. The implication is that these behaviors (and only these behaviors) can be defined as sinful, therefore those who live their lives according to this list of rules are on God’s nice list while other people (i.e. most of us) are on God’s naughty list.
One of the most convenient things about this definition of sin is that those who talk about it in this way are often able to emphasize the so-called “sins” being committed by other people rather than their own. Whenever you ask these folks about what’s wrong with the world, they can always answer: “It’s those people! It’s those sinners!”
The list of sins identified is usually pretty limited in scope. For example, people in our culture tend to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on sins related to “the pelvic issues”: divorce, abortion, homosexuality, pornography, adultery, teen pregnancy, etc. North Americans are fascinated by sex, although we don’t want to admit it. You can find sermons and political ad campaigns on these sex-related topics all over the internet. But think about this: when was the last time you heard a sermon on greed or gluttony? When is the last time you heard about a church-sponsored, multi-million dollar, anti-gluttony lobbying campaign? Celebrity sex-tapes make lots of money, but who would ever pay cash to download a video of Paris Hilton eating a bag of pork rinds? We’re just not interested in that. As a culture, we’re obsessed with sex. We really want to know all about who is doing what with whom, even though sex itself is just as natural and just as prone to disorder as our appetite for food. But people in this society tend to fixate on these “pelvic issues” because those “sins” are less socially acceptable than other behaviors.
I call this tendency in people “The Jerry Springer Phenomenon” (although I could probably also call it “The Jersey Shore Phenomenon”). Jerry Springer and Jersey Shore are TV shows that people watch in order to feel better about themselves. No matter how dysfunctional one’s life currently is, chances are that it’s not nearly as messed up as the people on the Jerry Springer Show. It’s a convenient way to feel self-righteous and superior to other people.
Whenever Jesus encountered that kind of attitude, he called it hypocrisy. He would often butt heads with a religious group known as the Pharisees. These folks, like so many fans of Jersey Shore and the Jerry Springer Show, had a very precise definition of the word sin that they applied to people outside their religious in-group. They were the guardians of morality and family values in their culture. They were upstanding citizens who attended worship regularly and knew the Bible inside and out. If anyone had a trustworthy definition of the word sin, it was them.
These Pharisees approached Jesus with a question on the topic of divorce. Rather than genuinely seeking advice from Jesus, they just wanted to put him on the spot and figure out whether his definition of the word sin was as accurate and comprehensive as theirs. But Jesus, as usual, is onto this little game of theirs and isn’t having any of it. He takes their question and raises it “to the next level”, so to speak.
Let me show you what I mean:
The Pharisees come to Jesus with a question about the legality of divorce. Jesus reframes the question by placing it within the much larger context of human and divine relationships. He immediately starts talking about the story of Adam and Eve in the Torah. He talks about who God is and what God is doing. He takes this conversation about the technicalities of human relationships and turns it into a conversation about the meaning of human relationships.
Jesus is arguing here that the Pharisees, with their very precise and thought-out conception of morality, have essentially missed the point. They thought they had this question of divorce already figured out. They thought they already had all the right answers, but Jesus shows them that they haven’t even begun to ask the right questions.
Their definition of the word sin left them feeling pretty self-righteous and superior. It allowed them to place the blame for all the world’s problems on the shoulders of “those other people” whose lives did not conform to socially acceptable norms. But then Jesus comes along and hits them right between the eyes with some hard truth. Even though all their legal ducks were in a row, he told them, they were still not free from the bondage of sin. Jesus was working with a far broader and deeper definition of the word sin than the Pharisees were.
The word sin, I think, has surprisingly little to do with legal requirements and moral laws. I think it has a whole lot to do with the quality of our relationships. Sin is a tendency that exists within all of us, regardless of moral, legal, or religious status. We all have an inner drive toward selfishness. Therefore, none of us has any right to feel morally or spiritually superior to anyone else, no matter how socially unacceptable or dysfunctional others’ lives may appear to be.
When we try to identify the presence of sin in our relationships, it’s not enough to simply label some behaviors as “sins” while others are “okay”. Even the most apparently righteous actions can be tainted with sin. Just look at the Pharisees and you’ll see what I mean. If you look at what they were doing from a legal standpoint, they came away looking squeaky clean all the time. But if you look at how they were doing what they did, their self-righteous and judgmental hypocrisy becomes clear. They came to Jesus with a loaded question about a legal contract but left with even bigger questions about the nature of human relationships.
With this broader and deeper understanding of sin in mind, I would like to revisit that initial question: is divorce a sin? To begin with, I would have to say no, because that question assumes a very limited and narrow definition of the word sin that I doesn’t apply to the real world, where that kind of question is usually used to shame and exclude the very people who need friendship and support the most.
If, on the other hand, one were to ask me whether I think divorce is a product of human sinfulness (i.e. our inner tendency toward selfishness), then I would have to say yes, divorce can be and often is sinful, but even that depends on the relationship. To give one extreme example: I can’t think of anyone who would dare to pass judgment on a mother who ends her marriage to an abusive partner in order to protect the safety of her children. To be sure, human brokenness and sinfulness are involved in the situation itself, but we would have no right to pass judgment on that mother or accuse her of “committing a sin” just so we can feel morally superior to her. That would be beyond cruel.
This way of defining sin has significance for all of our relationships, not just marriage and divorce. Why don’t we take a look at the famous Ten Commandments as statements about the quality of our relationships (marital or otherwise)?
Here is a list of the last five commandments as they appear in the book of Exodus:
“You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.“
Instead of seeing these “thou shalt nots” as legal statements, let’s reframe them as questions that have to do with the quality of our relationships. In your relationship with X…
As you honestly answer those questions, you’ll start to get a general sense of how healthy your relationships are or are not. As I said before, this can be applied to all relationships, not just the ones between spouses or partners. It works just as well for relationships between parents & children, bosses & employees, siblings, coworkers, friends, you name it.
You can even ask these questions about your relationship with yourself. Who else do we try to hide from more? I think there are a lot of people walking around this world right now in a state of being divorced from themselves. They feel alone and exposed, hiding their deepest fears and covering up their insecurities, even as they’re looking into their own bathroom mirror.
At the heart of every moral question, as Jesus understands it, is a question about human relationships. And the heart of every question about human relationships is the ultimate question about our relationship with God.
Far more important than particular legal questions about divorce is the question of human relationships, in whatever forms they may take. We selfish and sinful people are all reaching out to connect with the whole, hoping that we will be able to discover through it the meaning of our existence.
As you go back out into the world this week, I want to encourage you to be mindful of how it is that you conduct your relationships with others. Don’t get caught up in these squabbling debates about legalities, technicalities, and who is better than who. Instead, do like Jesus did in today’s gospel reading and raise your own level of awareness in order to ask the harder questions about all your relationships.
May you find on that difficult journey a sustaining sense of connection and meaning in your life that draws you ever closer to the sacred source of all life: the living, loving God in whom we live, move, and have our being; the All in All from whom, through whom, and to whom all things come.
Four years ago today, I became a priest.
It was a big step in a long journey. It wasn’t the first step, for years of prayer and hard work had led me to that moment. It wasn’t the last step either, for things didn’t turn out exactly as I’d planned.
I served the denomination that ordained me for a grand total of three and a half years: first as a lay chaplain, then as a deacon, and eventually as a priest. I wish I could say that I was still serving there. That church’s commitment to servant ministry among marginalized people is amazing. It’s what first drew me to pursue my calling with them.
Unfortunately, there were problems as well. In a group that small with a hierarchical structure, there was no accountability for people at the top of the chain of command. Church policy was determined by the bishop’s bad temper. My bishop was particularly prone to manipulative and abusive behavior. When that behavior was eventually directed at my wife, I decided that I’d had enough. I left my position in that denomination on the ides of September 2010.
My bishop made the process as difficult as possible. In spite of the fact that their church constitution recognized the indelible mark of ordination (i.e. “once a priest, always a priest”) and the validity of holy orders without apostolic succession (a rare belief among sacramental churches), my bishop insisted that I wouldn’t be given my walking papers unless I officially renounced my holy orders. In other words, I could only leave once I had declared that I was no longer a priest.
This was not strictly necessary, as the Presbyterian Church had already stated their willingness to receive me as one of their own. Asking me to do this was my bishop’s way of twisting the knife into my back one last time. In terms of my career, this was not a tremendous setback. The Presbyterians told me, “Just give [the bishop] what [the bishop] wants. We’ll ordain you again, if we have to.” And that’s exactly what happened. I started serving one of their congregations immediately and was eventually ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament on Pentecost 2011.
I’m glad to have found a home in my new denomination, but I have missed being a priest. Liturgical and sacramental worship feeds my soul in ways that few things do. Being disconnected from it feels like spiritual suffocation. I continue to be a voice for high church renewal in the reformed tradition, but many Presbyterians still resist liturgical worship and weekly Eucharist on the grounds that such practices are “too catholic” or “too much work”. Ugh. It’s just not the same.
When I last met with my spiritual director, I mentioned that I have now been an “ex-priest” for as long as I was a priest. My director (a progressive Roman Catholic) gave me a confused look and reminded me of the “once a priest, always a priest” theology. My bishop had no right to ask that of me. In ordering me to un-ordain myself, my bishop was asking the impossible. I might as well have written a letter stating that I would no longer submit to the law of gravity. A priest can resign (or be removed) from actively functioning in an official capacity within the organization, but one cannot be un-0rdained anymore than one can be un-baptized.
It is as my bishop said to me at my ordination: “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”
Something funny happened at church on the very Sunday after I met with my spiritual director. During the Prayers of the People, there is a spot where the layperson leading the litany offers prayer for “Barrett our pastor”. But on this particular Sunday, the liturgist misspoke and accidentally prayed for “Barrett our priest”. John Calvin must have rolled over in his grave.
It was an accident, but I think it was a holy one. I take it as God’s way of reminding me about who I really am and what I am called to be:
A priest forever.
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes get a bit discouraged when I read the stories and poems of the Bible. It seems that people back then had a much more immediate sense of God’s presence than we do today. On almost every page, there are tales of visions, voices, angels, and miracles. Meanwhile, even the most spiritually-inclined of us today have to rely on powers of reason, conscience, intuition, and imagination when forming our ideas about who God is and how God relates to us. It’s easy for us to feel left out when we read the Bible because most of us haven’t had the kind of direct and intense mystical experiences described in its pages. After all, who here has ever walked on water or seen the ocean part in front of them? My guess is that not many of us have. If only there was someone in the Bible whose experience of God looked more like ours! Well, as it turns out, there is just such a person: Esther.
This morning’s first reading comes to us from the book that bears her name. As a matter of fact, this week is the only week in our church’s three-year lectionary cycle that makes use of the book of Esther, which means that I’ll have to give you a lot of back story in a short amount of time.
The story of Esther takes place during a rather dark period of Jewish history. In 587 BCE, the kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonian Empire and its elite and aristocratic inhabitants were taken off into slavery, where they lived for the next several generations. During this time, they struggled to preserve whatever tattered pieces of their culture and religion that they could. A little while later, the Babylonians themselves were conquered by the Persians.
It is during the Persian occupation that the story of Esther is set. It’s a story of struggle and survival in the midst of powerlessness. Esther represents the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. She was a Jew in a Persian culture, she was a woman, and she was an orphan. In the ancient world, you really couldn’t get much lower on the social food chain than that.
Through a series of unlikely circumstances, Esther found herself being recruited into the personal harem of the Persian king. This position would provide her with a modicum of security and comfort, but it came at the price of being an object of desire to be used by someone else.
As the story unfolds, Esther eventually becomes the king’s wife around the same time that a plot is being hatched to commit genocide against the Jewish people. Due to her position as queen, Esther is in a unique position to save her people. However, doing so would involve a great deal of personal risk to her. In Persian culture, it was a capital offense to approach a king without being invited. This particular king, Ahasuerus, had already demonstrated his willingness to deal harshly with any kind of insubordination, even from his wife.
Esther has a hard choice to make: she can keep silent and allow her people to die in order to save her own life, or she can risk her life in order to save the lives of her people. It was her cousin and caretaker, a man named Mordecai, who gave her this advice: “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”
After hearing these words, Esther decides to take the risk. Approaching the king unannounced, Esther pleads for her life and that of her fellow Jews. The king has compassion on her and punishes Haman, the mastermind behind the genocide plot, but is too late to stop the plan from being carried out. At the last minute, he makes provision for the Jews to defend themselves against their attackers. The day is saved.
All in all, the book of Esther makes for a great story. It’s full of intrigue on the one hand and irony on the other. There are some outright hilarious moments as Haman, the villain, repeatedly sets himself up for failure and humiliation. This is a story of underdogs winning out over powerful forces of hatred and evil. Just like it happens in the movies, trust and faithfulness are enough to beat the odds.
There’s only one thing missing from the biblical story of Esther. Its conspicuous absence sets this story apart from all others in the Bible. Can you guess what it is? It’s God.
God is never mentioned in the book of Esther. Not even once. This is so unusual for the Bible, where visions, voices, angels, and miracles abound. All we see here are human beings, caught in a difficult situation, and trying to make the best of it.
I like that. It gives me hope. It reminds me of my own spiritual life, where I often have to ask hard questions and figure things out for myself. It would be most convenient if I could get a visit from an angel every time I had a question or a problem, but that just doesn’t seem to be how God works in my life. The God I believe in is one who encounters people on the journey of life and gives them the gifts of reason, conscience, intuition, and imagination. These are the God-given tools with which we all must chart our own course in life, trusting that the path we take will lead us home to our true selves and the Mystery of Being, which we call God. There are no easy answers or quick fixes in this life. There is only the journey and the hard choices we must make along the way.
For me, the book of Esther is a brilliant illustration of this principle in action. God does not show up in any immediate way. God’s presence is implied. Mordecai expresses the divine trait of wisdom. Esther embodies faith and courage. In the end, the implication is that God has been present and active all along, even though the heavens have been silent and apparently empty.
In the book of Esther, God is the presence in the absence and the voice in the silence. So it is, I think, in our lives. Faith, for most of us, grows gradually as we learn to trust in that absent presence and silent voice. We find God in ourselves and in the people around us. We feel a tug in our hearts that leads us in the direction of faith, hope, and love. Those who follow the leading of that tug discover for themselves where that mysterious road goes.
Just like Esther and Mordecai, we can’t tell where the road will take us or whether our efforts will be successful. All we have in our possession are bits and pieces of some larger puzzle that may or may not be solved at some point in the future. The best we can do is lay our individual puzzle pieces down onto the table and try to see where they fit into the larger picture of the whole as it gradually comes together.
If you’re here this morning and your experience of faith has largely been an experience of doubt, silence, and absence, I want to encourage you with Esther’s story. You’re in good company. Your experience of absence does not necessarily amount to an absence of experience. God is present and active in your life, whether you realize it or not.
As you struggle along in life, trying to walk by your own inner lamp of reason, conscience, intuition, and imagination, remember that you are not alone. Others, like Esther and Mordecai, have gone this way before. More importantly, there is one who walks with you, beside and within, who first gave light to your inner lamp and has promised to keep it burning through all eternity.
Here’s a link to an NPR review of the new Mumford & Sons album that, while critical, manages to tap into deeper questions about spirituality, the creative process, and dealing with reality. Worth a read…
In a world where too much ugliness happens every day–much of it on the internet for millions of eyes to see–let’s take a moment and celebrate how one young woman has transformed a moment of ugliness into one of beauty.
It all started when this photo, taken without the subject’s knowledge, was posted on a website that invited mocking and cruel comments.
Then this happened:
“Hey, guys. This is Balpreet Kaur, the girl from the picture. I actually didn’t know about this until one of my friends told on facebook. If the OP wanted a picture, they could have just asked and I could have smiled 🙂 However, I’m not embarrased or even humiliated by the attention [negative and positve] that this picture is getting because, it’s who I am. Yes, I’m a baptized Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realize that my gender is often confused and I…
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I never know how to answer the question:
Are you pro-life or pro-choice?
My views on this serious and complicated subject do not fall squarely into the category of either ideology. It seems to me that the politics involved don’t deserve the attention they receive while the people involved don’t receive the attention they deserve.
I finally found a picture this morning that echoes some of my sentiments. I can get behind this one. Re-posted with the artist’s permission.
Wise words reblogged from my denomination’s website:
With the fall election campaign heating up, a group of religious leaders has released a “Better Angels Statement,” pledging their commitment to a ministry of reconciliation in a shared effort to promote civility and peaceful conversation, according to a press release from The Faith & Politics Institute (FPI).
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 