Genesis 2: 18-24; Mark 10: 2-16
Oct. 3, 2021 at Mt. Vernon Zwingli UCC
They offer hope – God made people to be together – and they get misused to create gender hierarchies – God made man first, so us guys get to rule.
They offer hope – Jesus equalizes the status of men and women in marriage – and they offer harshness – don’t you dare get divorced.
And they conclude with gentleness – Jesus holds and blesses the children.
There’s an awful lot to work with there. So let’s start at the beginning - with the creation story.
We all know the basics of the creation story that is told in the book of Genesis. It’s easy to forget that there are actually two creation stories told in the first two chapters. The people who put together the book of Genesis drew on the various stories that the Jewish people told about how the world – and humanity – came to be.
The one we heard today is from Chapter 2.
In Chapter 1, God said “Let us (note the use of the plural – us) make humankind in ourimage, according to our likeness…male and female he created them.” God blesses them and tells them the whole world is theirs and they should tend to it.
In Chapter 2, before the reading we heard today, God gets a little earthier. God forms the first human out of dust of the ground and breathes life into that first person.
Our story today picks after that first person – Adam, which literally means “the human” – is now living in this beautiful garden but beauty is not enough. Adam is lonely. So God took this first human and formed another one – the person we call Eve, which means “to breathe” or “to live.”
If I had a chance to ask Adam and Eve how they met – you know, was it on eHarmony, in a book group, at a bar - I imagine their response might be “well, God set us up.” Because for those first humans in this story, there really were no other choices. They had to learn to navigate the world – and their relationship to one another – without any role models. So there were stumbles along the way. But that’s not what we are focusing on today.
What sometimes happens with this story is that it is interpreted to create some really restrictive views of humanity.
God created Adam first – yay men!
But did not God make two people of out of one?
Are they not both fully human, both made in God’s image and likeness?
And yes, Chapter 1 says “male and female he created them,” but if God is described in plural terms and we are made in God’s image and likeness, then do we not include the full spectrum of masculinity and femininity that make up the complexity of who we are, a complexity that is not always easily defined?
Can you see how our understanding of this story really informs a lot of the debates we have in our time about sexuality and gender?
I choose this broader understanding, recognizing that God said the humans in God’s image and likeness were “very good.” But I recognize that within our world today’s others take a more traditional reading and so our conversations need to continue.
At the end of the portion of Chapter 2 we just heard, the author says, “a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” This frames the ideal for marriage and Jesus hearkens back to those words in the Gospel reading for today.
For us living in 2021, where we know the fragility of marriage and the heartache of divorce, these words of Jesus can sound awfully harsh. But let’s back up a bit to the context Jesus was in, to the traditions he was addressing, to the style of his teaching.
First, the Pharisees were not just asking a philosophical question. They were trying to trap Jesus.
Just a few chapters earlier in the Gospel according to Mark, we heard the story of John the Baptist being executed by King Herod because John had challenged Herod’s marrying the woman who had been his brother’s wife. Herod was now on the lookout for Jesus, because some people were saying that Jesus was really John the Baptist raised from the dead.
So you can see that the simple question from the Pharisees – “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” – did not have a simple answer. If Jesus says yes, he has to takes side in debates over Jewish law. If he says no, he puts a target on himself for Herod.
That’s why, as he often does, he answers a question with a question: “What did Moses command you?” Now the burden is back on the Pharisees.
They give the culturally appropriate answer – a man could divorce his wife.
A man could divorce his wife. Not the other way around. And once the divorce took effect, the woman was left on her own, facing societal rejection and economic poverty.
And there were debates within Judaism about why a man could divorce his wife. Was it because she had been unfaithful? Or was it because he had simply found someone who might please him more – who made a better meal or was a better sex partner?
In tightening the rules, Jesus is protecting women.
But in our time, these words of Jesus – “what God has joined together, let no one separate” – have often been turned into a trap for women in abusive marriages.
I was deeply involved for several years in working with churches to make clear that when staying married threatened a woman’s health, even her life, using these words of Jesus as a cudgel to keep her from leaving was totally at odds with so much else of what Jesus said about caring for each other.
He was addressing the mistreatment of women under the Jewish law of his time. Surely Jesus would also address the mistreatment of women in our time as domestic violence has become clearer as an issue that needs our attention.
But we know that marriages come apart for reasons other than domestic violence as couples find their lives changing over time.
Here’s how I hear what Jesus was saying, both in his citation of the story from Genesis and his proclamation that what God has joined together, we should not tear apart.
I think that God had a vision of a world where human relationships reflected the love of that divine being we describe as a Trinity – a being where the a dance of divine love has these three manifestations of God swirling around as creation emanates from their love and their energy.
That’s the love God hopes for in our world. That’s the ideal.
Our Jewish ancestors knew they fell short of that ideal. It did not take long for those first humans to find their relationship fraying over who to blame for their shortcomings – you know, that apple that looked so tasty. Then one of their children killed his brother. And on it goes – imperfect human beings who still find their way back to God – and God always there offering redemption.
Yes, marriages in our time start out with that dance of love. Many of us know that sometimes we make missteps as the dance goes on but we find ways to recover. But sometimes, the missteps are too big, that dance of loses the rhythm of the music of love and we drift apart.
There can be anger, there can be sadness, there can be confusion. No, this is not what God envisioned. But neither did God envision unhappiness for those humans made in the divine image and likeness.
Jesus’ words about divorce seem pretty clear cut. But remember, Jesus’ style of teaching often reached for the extremes. If your eye is a source of sin, pluck it out. If your hand is a source of sin, cut it off. He is making a point, not trying to create more business for hospital emergency rooms.
Jesus’ followers want to keep the kids away. After all, children had even less value in their culture than women did. But Jesus says let them come to me – “it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”
Become like children, he tells his followers. Again, he is not saying jump into a time machine and reverse your aging process. He is saying look at the value each human has, even those you think are not worth much.
Then by his action, Jesus shows us what we might do with those we might be inclined to reject, those we think do not have as much worth as us, those who don’t fit the models of respectability or power or status.
He took them in his arms, laid his hands on them and blessed them.
That’s the Jesus who holds out high ideals, who sees God’s image in each of us and who walks with us through the good times and bad.
May we take this gift of God’s creation – our full humanity – may we find love in the relationships that connect us to each other and may we then reach out and bless those around us by living out God’s love and grace.
Amen.
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