27th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle B 20-21

Genesis 2:18-24 | Hebrews 2:9-11 | Mark 10:2-16 or 10:2-12

 Almighty, everliving God, who in the abundance of your kindness, surpassed the  merits and the desires of those who entreat you, pour out your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

The readings for this particular celebration that takes place on the 27th Sunday in ordinary time is loaded with some wonderful, wonderful images, and my intention, my desire is always to draw from these images and put them together in a way that awakens in you something that you already know, something that you already feel deep inside of you.  When God created us, he created us in a way that enables us to grow and to evolve and to change.  That’s the nature of what it means to be human, and the direction that this evolution is taking always is in the direction of you and I becoming more like the God who created us — like the God who created us.  If there’s anything fascinating about God that I think we don’t always think about, it is why did he create the world.  Why?  This God, this being that is like us, so when we think about who is he, it’s not too hard to imagine somebody like us who has all the power in the world and can do anything.  We don’t have the depth of his understanding, wisdom.  We have a sense of what it’s like to be powerful.  And so he has this capacity to do anything he wants, and so sitting around with nothing, it seems that wouldn’t make a human being very happy.  So he creates, and creativity is one of the core issues that human beings possess.  We want and enjoy doing things, making things, and so this God has that same quality.  And so what he does is he creates a world. 

Four and a half billion years ago, there’s this explosion of some kind, and there’s this material world.  And then slowly, over centuries and milleniums, life is there.  Now, I know there’s some controversy on when did God create human life, but let’s just say it’s up for grabs, in a way, whether it happened in one single moment, where poof, there was — or when God formed clay and then breathed into it in one story.  We have another story of creation in this particular set of readings, but however it happened is not as important as it’s absolutely clear that everything that happened in this world was intended by a divine force, a divine God that is able to do anything.  And what he was doing was creating something that reflected who he is, just like you paint a painting, and you step back and look at it.  You make a piece of furniture; you step back and look at it.  You do a project; you step back and look at it.  So he did that, and then when he created human beings, he took a chance, because what he decided to do is create something that’s going to be enough like God that we were given this one quality that nothing else in creation has — freedom to make our own decisions, freedom to make our own decisions, freedom to say no to God, to reject him, to work against him.  Why would he do that?  Would you want, if you had your choice of a relationship with someone, would you want one that has no control over whether or not they freely wanted to be with you or they freely chose to love you?  No.  No, we would want to know that there was something about us that another person saw that was valuable, and when they see that, it awakens something in us that’s valuable. 

So that leads up then to the main theme of this set of readings.  Human beings are in need of relationship, because the God who created them was in need of a relationship.  He wanted to have a relationship with something like him, more free, freer than the angels, more conscious than the rest of creation.  He wanted someone like him to love him.  If that makes God seem needy, then get over it, because he describes himself as needy.  It’s not that that’s a weakness.  It means that that’s a desire, a longing he has.  So in the very first reading that we have in the Old Testament, we go back to that time when God created human beings, and one of the things we find out about them, which is like God, is that they want a partner.  They want somebody to work with.  God wants a partner in this world.  He created this world and wants to care for it, but he didn’t want to do it just automatically.   He wanted someone who could freely decide whether or not they would work with God.  That’s the plan, God working with human beings, then creating a world that continually evolves and draws more and more people into the fullness of what they’re intended to be, like God. 

So we find this image, and I love — this is the word I want to take from that first reading:  a suitable partner.  Suitable partner, what’s a suitable partner?  Well, if you stick with the story and the images in the story, a suitable partner is somebody like you.  The animals were not exactly like Adam.  The birds weren’t like Adam.  He couldn’t have a conversation with them, didn’t understand much of what they — how they did what they did, but basically God, who then knew what Adam was looking for, realized, “Oh, what he wants is somebody like him.”  So he took something away from him, some part of him, and formed it into somebody else.  And I want you to see if this works for you, because it works for me.  Could it mean, in that very simple action of taking something from man, wo-man, woman, that the partner that God created for human beings is somebody who already is, in a way, a part of them.  There’s already some connection.  Did you ever notice, when people fall in love with someone, they almost will say something like this, “I feel like I’ve known them forever,” or, “I feel so myself when I’m with them,” or whatever.  And maybe that’s in the throes of the beginning of a relationship when it’s all so perfect, but nevertheless, think of it.  You are attracted to people that have something that I think you need, and maybe in a very mysterious way, there’s something in the destiny of you meeting that they need from you.  So then we get to the heart of what it is when we live on this planet together, and that is it’s all about relationships — all about relationships.  The Ten Commandments that were given in the Old Testament, they’re all about relationships, your relationship with God, your relationships with everybody.  So intimacy is the key.  So when we look at this first story, we’re saying, “Okay, intimacy is what God intended to have with his people, and he intended his people to have it with each other.”  Now we’ve got the setting.  That’s existence on this planet. 

Now, there’s something else about the Hebrew reading, and that’s this: Jesus, who is the one who comes into the world to awaken us to everything that we are, he’s the model of a human being filled with divinity.  That’s what our destiny is.  That’s who we’re going to be becoming.  That’s who we’re always in the process of becoming.  So the author, and we don’t know who the author of Hebrews is, but he’s saying, “It seems appropriate that this model of who God wants us to be is exactly like us, and it seems appropriate that the one who comes into the world to save us by doing something gives us a model of what we have to do if we’re going to be in relationships.”  And what is it that Jesus did that saved the world?  He surrendered.  He suffered.  He allowed the world to be the way it is, the plan of God the way it is.  He surrendered, and he said, “Yes, if this is the way it’s written — it’s not the way I want it.  It’s not what I looked forward to.  It’s not the way I wrote it myself, but if this is what has to be, and you are the God that I trust, and you wouldn’t allow this to happen unless it was for the reason that I want to accomplish, even though my way of accomplishing it is not to be crucified but to be successful —”  And he gave into that.  Now, if that’s the way we’re made holy, if that’s the wisdom piece that we need to become whole, giving in, surrendering suffering to the things that we can’t change, if that’s it, it’s perfectly in Hebrews, in the author of Hebrews, it’s perfect that the person that came to teach us that was exactly like us.  He calls us brother.  Okay? 

And now I want to go to the gospel, because the gospel is — every time this comes up, I just shudder, because I’m saying, “Oh gosh, we’re going to talk about divorce from the pulpit.”  So everybody in the room who’s had a divorce is going to listen to these words, and it says that anybody that gets a divorce commits adultery and is going to go to hell.  That’s at least the way some people read it.  It’s not what it means, but I always hate it, because should I talk about annulments?  What should I talk about?  Well, I think God gave me an insight unto this reading that’s for all of us that are listening, including myself, because when I say these words, I’m listening to them coming through me as much as you’re listening to them coming out of me.  But anyway, in this reading, what we have is a statement on the part of Jesus that is radical, and it’s not so much about the idea of no longer allowing divorce.  It’s about changing dramatically the value and the dignity of a woman, of the feminine, of the part of all of us that is there that needs to be nurtured, developed, honored.  And one interesting thing about this is, when the disciples are kind of confused and they all say, “Wait a minute,” and the Pharisees are approaching Jesus, and they say, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce a wife,” it’s a setup, because all that was needed in the time of the Old Testament, before Jesus came, was that all a man had to do was write a little note, and the woman was out, and she had nothing.  And so she was like a piece of property.  So Jesus says, “No.  No, the woman has the ability to cause the husband to commit adultery.”  In other words, she has the same rights to the marriage as the man does, and that’s what Jesus is really underscoring when he says, “No, you just can’t divorce for any reason whatever.” 

Are there reasons why husbands and wives should not be together?  Yeah, sure there are.  Of course there are.  The interesting thing about marriage, just for a moment, is that the marriage, the whole notion of marriage is, in the Catholic tradition, and in the Christian tradition, I should say, not just Catholic, but the minister is not the one that makes this sacrament happen.  It’s the intention of the individuals involved in this.  So it’s always considered that the minister is a witness to the sacrament being performed by each of the people engaged in this relationship.  “I give myself completely to you for better, for worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and in health, until death.  That’s my intention.”  And the other repeats it.  So what’s going on is —there’s a line in this that I think is so important.  When Jesus said you can’t have any divorce, what he’s saying is, “Anything that God has joined together cannot be broken, should not be broken — anything that God has put together.”  Well, when you think about the ways that people marry and the reasons that people marry, would that necessarily be the one that you might say, “Well, it’s clear that God really wanted these two people to be together.”  Why would he want two people to be together?  Pretty clearly he’d want them to be together because they have something for each other.  They have a gift somewhere buried inside of them that they don’t even maybe know is there yet, but the other person who needs it, that God has put them in touch with, that other person is going to draw it out of them, because they’re going to need them.   And the person who’s watching this person they love who is in need, they’re going to want to give this gift.  And maybe it’s just in seed form, but they’ll develop it so they have something that they can give to the person that, in a way, they see as part of them.  So when they give to them, they give to themselves.  That’s the beauty of this whole thing called marriage, and it’s so interesting.  When you have somebody that comes to you, someone who has experienced this   — as a minister in a parish setting, I was a pastor for 43 years, been ordained for 55 years.  I’ve listened over and over to the struggles people have in marriages, and I know what they always will come to me and say fundamentally is, “There’s no life in this.  I have no feeling of being fed or nurtured,” or, “I try to feed and nurture someone, and there’s no way in which I feel they’re receiving it or appreciating it or responding to it.”  Is that what God calls into, that kind of relationship?  Of course not.  So there is a thing, at least in the Catholic tradition of annulments where we say, “Well, in a way, if they say it’s not a valid marriage, which is pretty tricky, let’s use another language.  This is not a relationship that it seems that God has been engaged in calling these two people together.  God has not joined them together.”  And that doesn’t mean that marriage doesn’t work, but how can a ceremony bind two people together when they don’t intend to be together?  The sacrament of marriage is a grace poured into a couple to enable them to do the work that we’re here to do, which is to be these nurturing figures to one another. 

And then that gets us to the heart of really what I want to say.  How is it that we can be these agents, this flow of life flowing from us to one another?  How does it work?  Well, the minute you think that it’s up to you to come up with all the things your partner needs or to expect them to come up with all that you need, it’s not going to work.  So what works?  Well, the last part of this gospel is perfect.  Unless you become like children, you have no idea what I am talking about.  Unless you have the imagination of a child and the openness to things you can be told that you will believe in but you don’t have to be told how it happens or why it happens, you might be able to understand all these things that God is trying to awaken you to seeing about him, about you, about the relationship you have with each other, but primarily, the heart of it all, the foundation of it all is the relationship you have with God.  It’s all based on that, your relationship to God.  Jesus is the model, as I said earlier.  What is he?  A fully human being, and don’t confuse this with the idea, yes, he was also God, but no, he was fully human and fully divine.  Now, that’s not going to happen to you and me, but what is going to happen is that we are human, a human being filled with shame, fear, anger, sin, all this stuff.  We’re imperfect, but into that imperfection comes this incredible generous gift of a God who says, “I want to dwell in you.  I want to be in you.”  Jesus says it so beautifully, so powerfully.  “Eat my flesh.  Drink my blood.”  What?  “What I’m saying is, unless you take me, this image of me, this truth of me, unless you take it in and understand it like a child and listen to it and can believe in it — wow, if you can do that, you can experience my presence inside of you in a way that will be the source that you need for the things that you require to be for one another and the relationships, not just in marriage but in friendship, in family, everywhere.”  That same principle that belongs in marriage is in every friendship and every relationship.

It’s interesting.  How many people do you think in the United States are married versus those that single as adults over 18?  Half.  Half of the people that are potentially over 18 listening to me right now are living a single life, and so we can’t take this image of marriage as the model of the perfect way in which life flows between people and make it too literal, saying your life is not complete, because you’re not married.  That would be a horrible thing, yet that’s what it used to be like when I was growing up.  There was even a derogatory name for a woman.  I think it was spinster, that she wasn’t married.  At least it sounded derogatory to me.  No, the wisdom in marriage is the wisdom that we need to embrace and take in that has to do with every relationship that we’re engaged in. 

So back to the image of a child’s imagination.  I want to close with one little story.  There was a movie that I love called Crash.  Many of you maybe saw it.  It was a couple, I don't know, four, five, six years ago, won the Academy Award.  And there was a little girl in it that was terrified and scared, because the neighborhood she lived in, there were gunshots, and her father found her bed one night, scared to death, and he went to see her.  He found her under the thing, and he said, “Why are you down there?”  And she said, “I’m scared.  Those sounds scare me.”  And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what.”  He said, “I have something for you.  Come out, and I’ll show you.  I found — I have a cape.  I have a little cape that I was given by a fairy princess, and she gave it to me to protect me.  She said, ‘Whenever you wear this, you’ll always be protected.’”  And the little girl said, “I don’t see any cape.”  He said, “No, no, it’s invisible.  It’s an invisible cape.”  He said, “Let me give it to you.”  And she thought, “Okay.”  So he unties it carefully and takes it off slowly and puts it on her and ties it and said, “Now you’re going to be safe.”  Well, later in the film, there’s a horrible experience where this man is holding his daughter, and a man has a gun pointed at him, and the gun goes off, but there’s no bullet.  But the man thinks the bullet went off, and he thinks his daughter was hit, and he screams and screams, and he thinks she’s dead.  And then he realizes all of a sudden, no, no, it didn’t harm her, and he’s so sobbing, happy that he realized that the man missed her if it was a bullet.  It really wasn’t a bullet, but nevertheless, the point was the little girl says to her dad, “Daddy, you shouldn’t have been worried.  I have the cape on.  Nothing can harm me.”  That’s what I child can understand about something as mysterious as divinity inside of you, protecting you from everything that might harm you by keeping you from being who you need to be for other people.

God, in the response of a Psalm we acknowledge your power to bless, to bless us, to consecrate us, set us apart as instruments of your grace.  Bless all of us with this great gift, and let us feel the strength and the wisdom and the power that we do not possess but can flow through us whenever it’s needed. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.