Beauty in Brokenness
October 4 / 2015 World Wide Communion Sunday
A few years ago a woman in a
congregation I was serving contacted me to get together to talk about some
stuff she had going on in her life. Although
she was a member of the congregation I had never met her as she did not attend
worship. She came to my office, spent
some time doing idle chit-chat – and then with much hesitation she began to
tell me about how her marriage was falling apart. She had discovered that her husband had been
having an affair and she did not know whether the marriage was going to survive
this betrayal. As we talked, and shared,
it became clearer and clearer that she was not seeking my advice or looking to
me for counselling, or even wanting to enter into a pastoral care relationship
– she came to see me because she was scared, scared that if her marriage ended
in divorce that God would be mad at her.
She came seeking reassurance from the minister that God would not hate
her because her marriage was falling apart.
I find this quite disturbing that this woman who was suffering and sad
and barely holding it together and in her sorrow and pain had to question
whether or not she was destroying her relationship to God because her relationship
to her husband was falling apart. It
seems to me that when we read texts such as the one we just heard from Mark –
for people living a broken relationship, it is hard to feel supported by the
story we just heard.
Let’s look at this from
another perspective – when we read this text we often skip right to what Jesus
is saying about marriage, commitment and relationship. But this story is set in a context – that is
to say – this story is happening in the midst of the whole of Jesus story – and
this story happens in the middle of the story. Jesus has been teaching and
preaching and healing and exorcising demons for a couple of years now and he
has begun to make an impression on those around him. This story continues on from last week, they
have left the house in Capernaum and have moved on to Judea, and when they
stopped Jesus was one again surrounded with crowds of people who have come to
see what is going on. Jesus popularity
is growing but also he is making enemies.
Those who particularly do not like what he has to say and what he is
doing are the religious authorities. The
Pharisees are taking exception to what Jesus saying and they using every
opportunity to challenge what he is say – to question the authority from which
Jesus speaks. They are seeking to make
Jesus look foolish, to make him look like he doesn’t know what he is talking
about so that he will loose his popularity and go back to obscurity. And if Jesus is made to look foolish than those
who are listening may begin to doubt what he is saying to.
This text, though, is not so
much about what Jesus says about divorce as it is about how Jesus is challenged
by the Pharisees as they try to trick him into saying something they can call
him out on – they are trying to make his say something that will alienate from
the people who are listening to him in this moment. And so they challenge him about the law – and
the law they hold up as a challenge is the divorce law.
David Lose writes: “ This isn’t a casual – …,
conversation about love, marriage, and divorce. It’s a test. Moreover, it’s not even a test
about divorce, but about the law. “Some
Pharisees came and to test him they asked, is it lawful” There were, you see, several competing
schools of thought about the legality of divorce. Not so much about whether divorce
was legal – everyone agreed
upon that –that it was legal - but under what circumstances, that was the
challenging question. And with this question/test, the Pharisees are trying to
pin Jesus down, trying to label him, trying to draw him out and perhaps entrap
him so that they know better how to deal with him.” [1]
The
Pharisee’s asked is it lawful, not – ‘what do you think about divorce’ or ‘what
do you believe God wants people to do when their marriages is no longer working’,
or not ‘give us your opinion Jesus on the state of married life in Judea two
millennium ago’ - what the Pharisees are asking Jesus to do is to interpret the
law – But as we know when Jesus is challenged he rarely ever answers the challenging
question in the way that is expected of him – tell us about the law Jesus and
so Jesus starts to talk about relationships
I
think it is really important that we listen to what Jesus has to say next– how
many of us here in this places lives have been impacted by divorce – either
ourselves living in a marriage breakdown – or our parents – or our children, or
others in our families – I bet that everyone here has had someone they love
live through a divorce…we know how painful they are, how much people suffer –
how it hurts to live in a broken relationships…we know…and we also know that
this text has been used to justify bad marriages staying together – to judge
people who have made the divorce choice – so please be careful how you hear the
next words that Jesus says.
Jesus says what Moses said –
Moses who was human, Moses the one that God gave the law to –on the stone
tablets – and then he talks about God’s place in all of it – how we are all
male and female both part of the creation – and so partnerships with another
are entered into on equal footing with both partners on the same ground, no one
better than the other, neither one with advantages over the other. Jesus was talking about healthy relationships
with each other.
David Lose again: “Jesus isn’t speaking to individuals,
you see, he’s making a statement about the kind of community we will be. In
fact, he’s inviting us to imagine communities centered in and on real
relationships; relationships, that is, founded on love and mutual dependence,
fostered by respect and dignity, and pursued for the sake of the health of the
community and the protection of the vulnerable…
This whole passage, I think,
is about community. But it’s not the kind of community we’ve been trained to
seek. It’s not, that is, a community of the strong, or the wealthy, or the
powerful, or the independent. Rather, this is a community of the broken, of the
vulnerable, of those at risk. It’s a community, in other words, of those who
know their need and seek to be in relationship with each other because they
have learned that by being in honest and open relationship with each other they
are in relationship with God, the very one who created them for each other in
the first place….
When we
look at this passage this way, …, not so much as instructions about divorce but
instead as an invitation to see our communities as those places where God’s
work to heal and restore the whole creation is ongoing, not by taking away all
our problems but surrounding us with people who understand, and care, and help
us to discover together our potential to reach out to others in love and
compassion We are communities of the
broken, but we are those broken whom God loves and is healing and, indeed,
using to make all things new?[2]
Which is what we are about
to do and experience when we move in the next few minutes to the table – the
table that is spread in our midst the holds for us this community of faith -
the bread of Christ and the cup of salvation – we come to this table this
morning as individuals who have been broken, people who have struggled, some
who are doubting, some strong in faith, some who are despairing others who sing
with joy – but all of us children of God
It is only in recognizing
our brokenness do we come to the table in truth – it is only when we realize
that this table is about accepting our brokenness, and seeing the beauty. This table that holds the Lord’s supper is
our table of blessing, our table of wholeness where the lost become found and
the weak become strong, and the last is first and a little child belongs to the
kingdom.
This
table is a place of restoration. This
communion an opportunity for the kingdom to come into this place if only for
just a moment. This meal is an
invitation for our community to be place where God’s work is done. This table offer’s the invitation to see our
communities as those places where God’s work to heal and restore the whole
creation is ongoing, not by taking away all our problems but surrounding us
with people who understand, and care, (that would be your neighbour sitting in
the pews beside you right now) the ones that help us to discover together our
potential to reach out to others in love and compassion. We are communities of the broken, but we are
those broken whom God loves and is healing and, indeed, using to make all things
new. Let us share this feast of healing
as a community of the beautiful broken God’s beloved people. Amen.
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