It’s never a good idea to ask Jesus a question about something that’s a hot political or social issue. It’s also generally a bad idea to ask Jesus a question that’s set up to get him (or someone else) in trouble. You’re pretty much guaranteed to get an answer you don’t want.
And that’s exactly what just happened. Some folks who are trying to figure out all the rules for righteousness try to get Jesus involved in the then-hot issue of what constitutes a righteous religious ground for divorce. (The fact of divorce is not in question, it’s the exact religious standing of various reasons for divorce that’s a hot issue of the time.)
And they get an answer they don’t want.
First Jesus points out that they already know the answer to the question they asked.
It’s in scripture. In the core teachings of the “books of Moses”. Yes, it’s lawful for a man to divorce his wife.
That’s “because of your hardness of heart,” Jesus says. Because human beings do not have the heart and the vision of God, because we do have a basic inclination to self-interest, our compassion and strength have limits, and we fail. So Moses, organizing a holy community, set it up so you’re allowed to acknowledge the failure and end the marriage.
But we shouldn’t. At least, we shouldn’t have to.
In the world as God created it to be, when we make a commitment to join together, to become one, we would become one. We would not fail.
In the world as God created it to be, unity beats out selfishness, and disappointment, and loss, and human beings make marriages that stay whole and healthy and unbreakable (the life-giving commitment we intend with our vows).
If you want to know what God thinks of human relationships, Jesus is saying, don’t ask about the legality of divorce.
Ask how God created us to be.
Focus on the goal, on the whole and healed creation God intended and Jesus is bringing about.
That’s not the answer anyone wanted.
Because the folks who asked Jesus in the first place were looking for a way to prove their own righteousness about relationships and families. Or just to get Jesus in trouble.
And instead they got a law, a standard, of perfect relationship that is actually impossible for any self-righteous human to achieve. Even out of reach for the most humble of us, for that matter.
And we, two thousand years later, aren’t hearing an answer we want, either. We’re left to wrestle with what this perfect standard of relationship means for us, in a world where marriage and divorce are very very different than they were in Jesus’ time. Are we in trouble? Are the people I love, who ended a soul-killing marriage, in trouble? How can anyone achieve an entire lifetime of that perfect union that Jesus insists God intends? Does this picture of re-marriage as adultery that Jesus draws mean that lots of us are going to hell?
I don’t think so. I’ve seen clear indications of God’s healing, renewal, and creativity at work in many new marriages after divorce.
I think that Jesus is being very blunt about the damage that can occur when relationships and commitments are ended selfishly.
And I think Jesus is also talking about how our relationships will be in the kingdom of God, in the time when all of us are so healed and renewed and reconciled that we are living the whole, abundant, generous, unbreakable life that God intends for us, from the beginning of creation.
Because Jesus wants us, in our daily lives, to focus on that goal. On living that whole, healed, reconciled life already, here and now. So he talks about how it is in God’s intended creation, in a world in which, when we fail, we choose our next actions so we don’t injure one another further. It’s only startling or scary when we apply it to ourselves because that world Jesus talks about is so unlike the one we’re used to living in.
The world we are used to living in shapes our daily life with pressure to focus on ourselves, and our own interests. In the middle of that, it can be hard to imagine how it would be to live in a world shaped from the ground up by unity, care and compassion for others as a first instinct, where forgiveness and renewal and generosity are the air we all breathe, and the solid earth under our feet.
It can be hard to imagine living our everyday lives – lives with emails and groceries and being-in-two-places-at-once schedules (or nobody-comes-to-see-me schedules), and all our daily obligations and irritations – hard to imagine living these ordinary lives as perfect lives in the kingdom of God.
But Jesus has no trouble imagining that.
Jesus insists that we can live our lives in the embodiment of healing, renewal, unity, and generous love that God intends from the beginning of creation, that God reveals in Jesus, and that God is building in and around us right now. That our ordinary lives can encompass marriages that never end badly, giving up ALL our posessions, even giving up itself – all these things Jesus envisions for us – as life-giving.
Not because we’re that good. But because God is. It’s not much later in the conversation we heard today that Jesus points out that what is impossible for humans is possible for God. And Jesus has just reminded us we enter God’s kingdom as little children, dependent on God’s power, not our own.
Which is why he directs our attention from “What makes a divorce righteous?” to “In the world God is making, there is no broken relationship, there is only life-giving unity.”
When we get stuck on the troubles and thorns of our lives; when our relationships aren’t working, because we’re human and we fail. When we can’t see the way forward; when we focus on ourselves; even when we want to get one up on someone else and try to get God involved, Jesus insistently, urgently directs our attention to the impossibly healed world that God intends for us. He insists that we start right now to live in the world as God created it to be: life-giving, renewing, generous, hope-filled, and full of possibility.
Jesus insists that we stop trying to solve the world as we make it, and start sharing in the world as God intends it, living as though we’re already in the kingdom of God.
I’ve been so grateful – so awed and delighted and impressed – over the course of this year, in the middle of a present that’s full of unsolvable problems and unsatisfactory solutions, that so many of you have been not only willing, but eager, to stretch yourselves to commit to a future that’s about building ourselves and our physical space into something that’s just a bit closer to the kingdom of God, as we’ve planned and launched our capital campaign.
It’s not that accessible worship and fellowship spaces, air-conditioning, structural improvements, (better and more welcoming bathrooms and classrooms), and investing in new efforts to meet human need are going to turn Trinity into a physical heaven on earth. But it’s true that when we turn our attention to what will build us stronger together, and more welcoming for all God’s people, we’re turning our attention to what the healing, generous, unifying kingdom of God makes possible in our everyday lives. Focusing on the goal of the world God intends.
And choosing that focus, choosing to commit ourselves to building our buildings just a bit more compassionate, loving, generous, strong, and hope-filled, for the present and the future of our everyday lives, is choosing to live just a bit closer to the kingdom of God, here and now.
That’s what we’re celebrating, as we officially close our campaign today.
I’m learning – today, and every day – that it doesn’t matter what question we bring to Jesus. A question of divorce, or of buildings, of physics or ethics or practical detail. The answer we’ll always get isn’t the one we came looking for. It’s the answer God is looking for: the whole, healing, reconciled, forgiving, unbreakable life God has intended for us from the beginning of creation.
It’s an answer that’s startling and uncomfortable, sometimes, when applied to our everyday lives. But it’s always the answer that grounds us in love, and hope, and the confidence that God makes all things possible, not just someday, but here and now and always.
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