October 4 - Pentecost + 18

God Promises to Love Us Forever
Mark 10:2-16
Pentecost + 18 – October 4, 2009

“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” the Pharisees asked Jesus.
“What did Moses say about it?” Jesus responds
- clever Jesus,
so often answering a trick question with a question of his own.

“Moses said we could do it. Moses said it was legal for a man to divorce his wife.”

“Ah,” Jesus said, “Moses said you could do it, but it's because you have hard hearts.”
You have hard hearts, but from the beginning, from the start, from the moment when God created humanity in God's image, making them male and female, God said it is not good for people to be alone. Because being created in God's image means that people are created to be in relationship, just as the very being of God is intertwined in the relationship between God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a relationship of love that overflows into the creation of the world. People are designed to live their lives in relationships with others – not just with a spouse, but with parents and children and siblings and friends and the community that is the church, any relationship where we are affirmed and challenged and supported and inspired to grow always more deeply into the person God designed us to be.

And marriage is a special subset of those relationships – intended by God to be a blessing, a permanent, exclusive relationship, a place of safety and love, where we can help and be helped, where we can know for a certainty that we are not alone. We need to know that we are not alone.

And along come the Pharisees, asking Jesus for his opinion – is divorce legal? And the underlying questions – when is it okay & for what reasons? Because divorce was an accepted part of life then as it is now. But is it legal, they ask, as if marriages are just business deals, instead of a joining of body, mind, and heart, as if marriages are nothing more than legally binding agreements with about as much emotional investment and weight as a cell phone contract, valid only for a few years, & oh, yeah, Jesus, what is the penalty for early termination?

But close relationships of any kind are so much more than legal agreements, and our hearts know it; our hearts bear the scars of relationships that started out with so much possibility but somewhere along the line went terribly wrong. Our hardened hearts bear the weight of the hurt we cause each other, the promises broken, the dreams destroyed, the relationships damaged beyond our ability or desire to repair.

And so sometimes those relationships end. Marriages too often lead to divorce – sometimes for very good reasons, for life or death kind of reasons, and some relationships need to end, but that doesn't change the fact that divorce hurts. Even when it is the best option, divorce hurts the 2 people divorcing, hurts their children, their families, their friends. All of us have been touched by divorce, if not our own, then the break-up of people we know; we have all seen the hurt is causes.

It hurts because we all long for an ever-lasting love, we long to find the kind of love that recognizes the other as “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” we long to have that “at last” moment Adam has in Genesis, that Etta James sings about in that song Andy & I danced to at our wedding, to know that here, at last, is one who understands us, who will love and accept us, who will stay with us no matter what – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, til death do us part. We want that kind of relationship, we are built that way, to seek that deep, sustaining, intimacy that will last.

And it hurts when divorce happens, when close relationships of any kind break apart, because we start to question if that kind of love is even possible, or maybe if it's just not possible for us.
Divorce hurts because divorce reminds us of just how broken we all are; it reveals how hard it is for us to live up to our promises, to live into our hopes and dreams, to fulfill our expectations for others and ourselves. It reminds us that there are very real limits to our ability to love each other, to be loved the way God intended.

But the good news is that even though our ability to love is limited, God's is not. God, who called us into being, who designed us to be in relationship with each other, God knows how hard we try, and how easily we fail to keep the promises we make. God knows that we wrestle with these words from Jesus, wondering how we can ever measure up, wondering how we will be judged in God's eyes. And God knows how much we long to find that love that will never end, and how much it hurts when that kind of love seems elusive or non-existent.

But that love we are looking for, that love we seek with so much energy, that we put our heart & souls into maintaining, the love we long for, even when we are happy & content and satisfied with our human relationships, even the best relationships, the longest, happiest marriages – that kind of love is just a reflection, an echo of the deep love God holds for each of us. God has made promises to us, promises sealed in the moment of our baptism, promises that we are God's very own people – beloved children, part of God's family forever. Every moment of our lives, whether we recognize it or not, God has walked with us, and laughed with us, and cried with us. God has rejoiced in us, God has put up with us, God has been driven crazy by us – and yet through it all, God promises to love us. For God has promised to take us, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health – til death do us part!

But wait, there's more!
Because God has promised that not even death can separate us from God's love.

And so we cling to God's promises, even when, especially when, we break our own promises, when we know we have not lived up to God's hope & plan for our lives. We hold on to God's love for us, even when we cannot love each other, when we find it hard to love ourselves. For in God's love, there is forgiveness and healing and hope,
because God promises a love that will never let us go.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.