Last Friday I had the privilege of blessing the marriage of Ben James and Jessica Braendel, two young adults in our parish. When they decided to get married, they also decided to get serious about their faith, so they could build their marriage on a strong foundation. They’ve been in church faithfully almost every Sunday since they were engaged. Ben was already an Episcopalian, but he went ahead and attended the Inquirers’ Class with Jessica, and Jessica was confirmed last May. About four days before the wedding I called Jessica and invited her or Ben to be stewardship ministers this year, and without hesitation she said, “Sure, I’d like to do that, and put down Ben’s name too!”
It was a beautiful wedding, as weddings tend to be. In fact, there are few occasions in life that are as joyous as a wedding. A man and a woman vow before God to live in union with each other until they are parted by death, and that union, if it is God’s will, will issue in the procreation of children, and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. We Christians believe that marriage was established by God from the beginning of creation, as a key ingredient in the making of human society. And the loving relationship between a husband and wife, being the most intimate human relationship that can exist, is the image the New Testament uses to describe the relationship that exists between Christ and his Church, Jesus Christ being the Bridegroom and the Church his Bride.
God intends for marriage to be a model for human community. God wants us to be happy, and he wants marriages to be happy. God wants the family to be a place where a person is accepted for who he or she is, warts and all; a place where forgiveness is a given; a place where a person is encouraged and supported, enabled to grow more and more into the person God created him or her to be; a place of security when everything else is falling apart. In a sense, I suppose, God intends for a marriage to be a little taste of heaven here on earth. I have been very blessed in my marriage to Linda, for that is what I have experienced with her, and hopefully she with me. Not that life in a marriage is perfect in the sense that nothing bad ever happens, but in the sense that whatever happens that is bad can be worked through and persons can be healed.
That’s the ideal. That’s what God intends for marriage to be. Yet marriage isn’t easy. It isn’t easy in the 21st century and it wasn’t easy in the First century. It’s never been easy. The fact of the matter is that a marriage is a covenant between two imperfect human beings and every marriage is going to encounter challenges. In fact, that’s what a wedding is about. You don’t need to vow to one another to stay together when everything’s going well, but when the going gets tough. You need the vows for those times when the only thing holding you together is the vows.
And even then, sometimes even the vows are not enough to keep a marriage intact. The high divorce rate in our society bears witness to that reality, and the divorce rate among Christians isn’t any better than that of the general population.
Obviously, divorce was an issue even in the days when Jesus walked the earth. The Pharisees once again wanted to trap Jesus by asking him a question about divorce. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” was the question. Divorce was widespread. In that day, among the Jews, there were two schools of thought on the issue. There were conservative Jews, of the school of Shammai, who believed that divorce was only justifiable on the grounds of adultery. And there were the liberals, of the school of Hillel, who believed the Mosaic Law allowed a man to divorce his wife for almost any reason: he was attracted to a more beautiful woman, his wife was a bad cook, she talked to a strange man, and so on. The Mosaic Law favored the man in a marriage; only he could obtain a divorce. If the woman wanted a divorce, she had to ask her husband to get it.
The Pharisees wanted Jesus to take one side or the other. If he disagreed with Moses, he would be shown to be a heretic, and the Pharisees most likely expected him to disagree with Moses. So Jesus appealed to a precedent reported by Moses but which preceded Moses: Creation. “From the beginning of creation” Jesus said, “’God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let not man put asunder.” For us to say anything less as Christians is not to appeal to some imaginary law of moral evolution. It is to go against divine law as God set it up in the beginning.
Jesus’ response to the Pharisees stated the ideal. His answer didn’t really deal with the reality of divorce. When alone with his disciples he dealt with that reality when he told them that a divorced person who remarries is committing adultery against the original spouse. Ever since, the Church, of course, has had to deal pastorally with her members who divorced and wish to remarry, while at the same time seeking to be faithful to Jesus’ teaching about marriage.
It has dealt with it in a variety of ways. The Roman Catholic Church deals with it through a process of annulment, where a judgment is reached stating that the first marriage wasn’t really a marriage. If it wasn’t a marriage in the first place, then remarriage isn’t an issue. That’s one way to deal with the reality of divorce, but it takes some real moral gymnastics when a marriage that lasted 25 years and issued in 8 children is judged never to have been a marriage!
The Eastern Orthodox Church sees divorce as a result of human sin. Since Jesus allowed for divorce in one instance, that is when adultery is committed, they believe that the indissolubility of a marriage is the ideal, but that Jesus allowed for human failure. Thus, as in all cases of human sin, it can be forgiven.
The Episcopal Church used to have a method similar to the Roman Catholics when dealing with the matter of a second marriage, in fact. Today, our practice is more similar to the Orthodox. If a second marriage is desired while a previous spouse is still living, permission to remarry must be granted by the Bishop, which acknowledges the moral dilemma, but which also deals with the pastoral reality. Emphasis is placed on the divorced person being penitent and asking for forgiveness for whatever he or she did to contribute to the failed marriage, and relying on the forgiveness of God, and on reasonable assurance that whatever caused the divorce will not be an issue in a second marriage.
That way of dealing with the pastoral reality of divorce and remarriage helps to preserve the high value Jesus placed on the meaning of marriage, while at the same time recognizing and dealing with our fallen humanity.
That being said, let those of us who are married give thanks for that high calling, and each day renew our commitment of love and fidelity to our spouses. May our marriages be a sign to the entire Church of the kind of relationship God wants to have with all of his people. Give thanks for the wonderful marriage last Friday of Ben and Jessica and pray that they and all married persons may will to love and cherish one another, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health, until they are parted by death.