The readings for the recent Sunday, Year B Ordinary 27/ Proper 22, included a lot about gender, marriage, and divorce. Sidestepping these would have been a copout. My sermon is in the video (above). The full service (at the Cardboard Cathedral, Christchurch NZ) is here.
Here are the readings I focused on:
Genesis 2:18-24
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”
So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field, but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.
So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.”
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Mark 10:2-16
Some testing him, asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
He answered them, “What did Moses command you?”
They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”
But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.
But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’
‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter.
He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,
and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
People were bringing children to him in order that he might touch them, and the disciples spoke sternly to them.
But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.
Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
Some pieces of my prayer and study that ended up on the cutting room floor are here.
And this (slightly adapted) is what I put into the “pew sheet”:
I have been left with one of the more difficult passages to preach on. The temptation, of course, is to abandon our agreed readings and find, instead, an easy passage, maybe something about being nice to each other.
C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Screwtape Letters (Chapter XVI), writes of a devil who rejoices about a vicar: “In order to spare the laity all ‘difficulties’ he has deserted both the lectionary and the appointed psalms and now, without noticing it, revolves endlessly round the little treadmill of his fifteen favourite psalms and twenty favourite lessons. We are thus safe from the danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should ever reach them through Scripture.”
*****
I’m just back from a couple of months away (Australia and Vanuatu). In snorkelling and walks in the wild (etc), we encountered clownfish (and other fish, including wrasses), bearded dragons, and green sea turtles. All of these (and other animals) change gender depending on temperature, the population dynamics of their species, or other factors. From the readings today we have, “God made them male and female.” We now know it’s often more complicated, and controversies around the recent Olympics highlight the complications.
In 1984, NZ Anglicanism added “male and female you created us” to one of our Eucharistic Prayers (NZPBHKMA page 420). Anglican Churches in other countries similarly added a line like this. We were trying to be inclusive. The Church was trying to move from very male-dominated language to highlight that females have equal status before God and in our community. But, four decades on, some people feel excluded rather than included by such a line. A more recently authorised Eucharistic Prayer (yes, I did have a hand in this one) tries to be more inclusive. It can also be prayed by people with a more conservative approach.
Whatever our perspective and opinions, let us be open and welcoming, holding together difference. The intimate union of male and female is a God-given parable for such holding together of difference in unity.
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