Defining moments
Commentary
There are many benefits to pastoral ministry. We are invited to share with people their
anniversaries, their successes, their laughter, and their families. Just this morning I
received an email from a woman who calls me pastor, telling me of the thrill she and her
family have in receiving their green cards for permanent residency in this country. We
have prayed often together for this to happen, and have been stymied and disappointed by
so many setbacks and challenges. But now her joy jumps, and she sends it my way as
well.
Of course, pastoral ministry also brings us into the rotten places. Once I stood with a young bride as her husband marched around her calling her every horrible name possible, all the while systematically stripping her of connections with the world beyond their home -- keys ripped out of her hands, locks replaced, even windows boarded up. In another setting, I used my own car as a funeral hearse, bringing three small caskets in as many years to a wind-swept cemetery, trying without success to find words of consolation to share with a couple that was systematically burying their baby sons while medical specialists offered no answer. I have lost sleep in pastoral worry, and I have aged inwardly in empathetic resonance with those enduring tragedy.
Still, while I enjoy baptisms more than funerals, and weddings better than divorces, I also know that the dark times force us to wrestle with the fundamental issues of life more than do days of light and grace. So it is that we must face the texts for this week. As we journey with Job we find ourselves caught in the millstones that grind slowly, and with him we ask whether they are the workmanship of God or machines of torture belonging to the devil. When we turn to the world of those to whom Hebrews was sent, we are sharing their persecution and seeking a road between superstition and spirituality even as their lives are threatened. And Jesus takes us, where he often does, into the defining moments of our lives where we must face our shattering imperfections in the face of divine designs.
This is a Sunday when we must stand with the oppressed and live with the hurting and cry with the weeping. But we must also rise resolutely to declare the firm teachings of scripture's hope and morality. If we do not, we will fail our people and ourselves and our God.
Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Job is a drama in which the prose of chapters 1-2 and 42 gives us an omniscient perspective from which to observe a man caught up in the terrible pain of wrongful suffering, and the poetic dialogues of the intervening chapters explore the philosophic wrestlings of theodicy in a variety of ways. According to today's opening scenes of the book, Job was one of the wealthiest men in the ancient world, with houses and servants and treasures. He had more of everything than any person could covet.
Along with that, Job was also a devout man, careful to renew his relationship with God each day. It seems, in fact, that God was rather proud of Job. When Satan came calling one time, God bragged to him about Job. "Have you seen my servant Job?" he asked. "Now there is a man whose heart you will never own!"
Satan wasn't so sure. He had cracked a lot of tough nuts in his time, and he took on Job as a special challenge. "Sure, Job loves you," Satan said to God. "But that's because you've bought his soul. You give him everything he wants. Why shouldn't he serve you? Even I would do that!"
That's when the wagering began, according to these chapters. God gave Satan permission to take everything away from Job, stipulating only that Satan could not harm Job's own body.
So Job lost everything -- his children, his flocks, his buildings, his servants. He became as poor as a church mouse. Still Job loved God and served him openly.
That's when the wagering in heaven heated up, and Satan got one more shot at Job in round two. He might torment Job's body, but without killing him. Job began to writhe in pain. Satan touched Job's mind so that he could no longer clearly hear God's whisper of love. Job was truly all alone. His wife called him stupid, his friends called him a liar and a sinner, and the world didn't even call him at all anymore. On the outside, Job's horizons have collapsed. Meanwhile inside, he had become an echo chamber of despair. Where is God?
That is the hardest challenge in life, isn't it -- finding God in the aching places of life? I remember sitting with a mother in a hospital corridor, praying for the recovery of her daughter. The young woman was just beyond her teen years, and only a dozen months into marriage to a wonderful man. When the doctor assisted her delivery of her first child he nicked something with his knife. Now she was turning every shade of yellow and gray, and had been flown half-way across the country to get the best medical attention possible.
The mother was unconsoled. When we prayed, she felt no peace and could not find God. And for three hours we watched her daughter's life slip away.
The mother stopped going to church. The young husband grew angry and didn't know how to care for his baby child. Where was God?
Elie Wiesel endured the horror of the Nazi death camps. He watched women and children herded into gas chambers. He cried with men beaten down by cruel soldiers. He saw a young boy hanging on a gallows. "Where is God?" he cried.
The question of Job is asked in every generation: "Where are you God?" And often, as with Job, the only answer is silence. The promises of scripture become dead fantasies. The Holy Spirit leaves and the heart grows chilly. The newspapers report events that make no sense. Where is God? Where is God when a child dies? Where is God when a mother is snatched from her family? Where is God when nuclear reactors melt down and airplanes crash and mines collapse? Where is God?
Satan looks down from heaven with glee. He knows that he has Job now. He knows that we will never get out of this one. He knows the cards in his hand are the winning draw. Can faith remain when God is silent? Can trust carry on when there seems to be no one at the other end of the line?
"No!" shouts Satan. But he doesn't have the last word.
"Yes!" whispers Job. "Even though I cannot see him, even though I do not understand what is happening, even though every human wisdom tells me God's not there, I know that my Redeemer lives, and with these eyes I shall see him!"
That is the deepest level of patience possible. James, in the New Testament, called it perseverance (5:11). Job continues to love God not for what he gets out of it, but because it is the only way life itself makes sense. We trust in God not because we always feel the wonder of the divine presence, but because, even in its absence, there is truly nowhere else to turn.
This is the patience of Job that sometimes gets bandied about in our religious conversations. It is the perseverance at the heart of the Christian faith. It is trust at its most profound level.
No one, of course, can explain it, at least not with words. Those of us who have struggled in that black pit can never really share the experience. We can talk about it later, when God seems closer again. But it is the awful agony of faith when we stand undressed and all alone.
Years ago, Dr. Arthur Gossip preached a sermon he called "When Life Tumbles In, What Then?" He brought that message on the first Sunday he returned to the pulpit of his congregation after his beloved wife had suddenly died. This is how he ended the sermon: "Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely ... standing in the roaring Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of its terror, of its rushing, I ... call back to you who one day will have your turn to cross it, 'Be of good cheer, my brothers, for I feel the bottom and it is sound.' "
Somehow, by the grace of God, the perseverance of patience carries us through, and we know the end of the matter as did Job. God will never leave us alone forever. He will answer our questions in time. He will resolve the problems of life and give us a future that Satan could never manufacture. "The Lord is full of compassion and mercy," says James when reflecting on the story of Job (5:11). And the patience of faith carries us through, until we know that better than we know ourselves.
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Like some of the other literature of the New Testament the "Letter to the Hebrews" is not well named. For one thing, it is hardly a letter, having none of the epistolary literary conventions that might easily identify it as such. Instead this treatise jumps right into the exposition of Old Testament verses and themes, and then continues throughout to weave these seamlessly with applicatory exhortations.
Second, there is no clear indication that the first recipients were "Hebrews" in the traditional sense of belonging to an ethnic Jewish community. It is obvious that those who first read the document were well versed in the Hebrew Scriptures, had an intimate understanding of the ceremonial systems that received their definition in the Levitical teachings regarding the tabernacle, and had at one time shaped their lives by the cultic calendar of the Hebrew festival year. At the same time, most of the Old Testament quotations in the book are Septuagint (Greek) readings rather than from the Masoretic (Hebrew) text. Furthermore, those who are addressed are told that they at one time were outsiders, aliens and heathens, something that would never be said to ethnic descendents of Abraham.
Recent scholarship suggests that those to whom it was initially sent were predominantly Gentile proselytes to Judaism prior to the coming of the news about Jesus. These "heathens" may have been attracted to the moral stability of the Jewish community in Rome, and sought to escape from the social corruption they viewed around them. In their quest for righteousness, the regulated religious system that pervaded the Jewish neighborhoods was very attractive, and these Gentile onlookers were willing to endure stringent initiation rites that would transform them into adoptive Jews.
When the message of Jesus as Messiah breezed in, many of this ilk traveled into the Christian church, caught up in the excitement of the movement. Now, however, great challenges threatened. New persecutions were rumored, and an increasing distinction was emerging between those in the Jewish neighborhoods who trusted in Jesus as Messiah and those who rejected this recent development.
Since many of these Gentile-cum-Jewish proselytes-cum-Christians had originally entered this narrowly defined community because of its ethical rigors and religious routines, they were now tempted to avoid persecution by slipping back into the safe and familiar strictly non-Christian Jewish environment. This treatise we call "Hebrews" was written to argue them into greater allegiance to the new way of Christianity.
In that light, we read today's passages. The first verses of chapter 1 rehearse the progression of divine revelation, showing how the Old Testament and its codes are insufficient without Jesus. Furthermore the exegesis of Psalms 8 and 22 in chapter 2 are the beginning of an exhortation that will increasingly identify the shared path Jesus took with us through suffering and persecution in order that we might find spiritual intimacy with God through him. If Jesus was able to make this pilgrimage and if Jesus was like us in every way except without sin, then we also can stay strong through persecution and chart our course to spiritual maturity on his boat.
This message can attach itself to any one of a variety of challenging experiences within the congregation. All of us, in times of struggle, are tempted to turn back or give up or rail against God without hope. These verses from Hebrews provide a hook into our lives (where and how do we hear God speak during the troubling times?) and a fellow traveler (Jesus) who can share our burdens and point a way of spiritual significance that is bigger than superstition or ritual.
Mark 10:2-16
Here is the tough one. We need to preach about divorce, but few in our gatherings will receive what we say without feeling wounds open and family troubles coming out of hiding. The lectionary does allow us to sidestep the issue, however, if we wish only to focus on the delightful story of Jesus and the children in verses 13-16. By using just those verses we can build a marvelous message about faith and childlikeness and the compassionate heart of Jesus and his church.
Yet, the teaching of Jesus on divorce is still there. But how can we tackle Jesus' words with the passion that Mark suggests was present in the original setting without undermining the message by citing too many exceptions, or otherwise ramming absolutes into the faces of truly hurting people? Here are some suggestions.
First, perhaps we might play for a bit with gender distinctions. Undergirding solid teachings on marriage is the divinely created reality of female-male sexuality. We cannot escape the genetic coding that splits us into two genders. Nor can we run from the given situation of heterosexual attractions that drive society. Often the first question asked when a baby is born is, "Boy or girl?" We are locked into sexually charged relationships from birth to death. This is why the religious leaders come to Jesus with their questions in the first place; marriage and divorce are telltale signs of our pervasive gender awareness and interaction.
Second, in light of that, we might wish to turn Jesus' words in verses 11-12 on their heads, and talk about what it is that we seek in heterosexual explorations (issues related to same-gender attractions can be brought in along the way). Perhaps a comparison might be made to learning a language other than that of our birth -- as we ingest foreign vocabulary and new word order and strange syntax we begin not only to gain tools for communicating in another tongue, but we also become aware of the very makeup of culture itself, including that of our own. So it is, often, in the dating and mating rituals of our society. "Mars" and "Venus" need to investigate each other's makeup and mind in order to meet somewhere on planet Earth. Learning the language of a possible marriage partner helps us understand ourselves even better. But in this comes the rub. To explore is to disclose. To investigate is to become vulnerable. In the interaction between the sexes, all of us are looking for places of safety where we will not be ridiculed for our "otherness," nor denied for our deficiencies. Where it is possible to become "naked and not ashamed" with someone from the opposite gender, we need to find a level of trust with our partner that is not easily shaken or shattered.
Hence, the strong stance of the Bible for marriage and against divorce. Marriage is built on the predication that we are in need of finding a help-meet to our need, a counterpart like ourselves yet different enough to complement, a symbiotic partner who is as incomplete without us as we are without them. This is not a mere convenience that enables us to stumble along through the years; this is an essential part of the equation for exploring human identity to its fullest so that we might become more of the relational creatures God intended would bear the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27).
Thus Jesus' stern words against divorce are not so much a rigid standard of morality against which too many of us crash and burn. Rather they are an insistent reminder that we need to find safety in marriage or we lose something essential to society. Divorce is no more of an option for married people than is cancer a choice for how we wish our bodies to function. Divorce is a statement failure in a once-good relationship, much as cancer is a testimony of corruption in the DNA of our cells. Both happen. But both need to be dealt with as alien and unwanted. Only in that light will we remember what marriage is all about.
Application
If all three texts are used, the message must be one which uses tragedies generally as an opportunity to clarify and console and convince. Each of the passages can form an illustration that explores those defining moments we all face: pain (Job), persecution (Hebrews), and parting (Mark).
Alternative Application
Job 1:1; 2:1-10. The Job text is a good springboard into explaining the various causes for suffering in our lives: 1) willful sinfulness which breaks the laws of morality (infidelity); 2) carelessness that violates nature's designs (substance abuse); 3) tragic happenstance in a broken world (tsunamis); 4) demonic oppression (certain forms of possession or addiction); and 5) divine chastisement (guilty conscience). All of these are expressed at one time or another in the book of Job. The goal of the message would be to raise people's awareness of the complexity of suffering so that care and empathy can go beyond simplistic reductionisms, while at the same time helping those who are currently in pain because of specific reasons to find an answer that brings healing and hope.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 26
Integrity is a precious thing indeed. Upon its firm foundation is built a life that counts for something. If we lose our integrity, we lose a great deal indeed. A person of integrity is trusted. A person of integrity can be counted upon. A person of integrity follows through on commitments.
A good self-examination every once in a while is the one that looks at personal integrity. It can be done quite simply with a few earnestly asked and honestly answered questions:
1. Do you tell the truth in as far as you are able?
2. Do you do the things you say you'll do?
3. Do you speak up or take a stand in the face of injustice?
4. Do you act in ways that would find approval in God's eyes?
5. Are you gentle, caring, and compassionate?
There are, of course, a host of other questions that could be asked. But these five give a good beginning.
The trick in all this is to be able to maintain integrity when things go south. As the psalmist appeals to God, reminding (him) of integrity kept, we ourselves are reminded that good behavior is not always rewarded with a pat on the head.
Indeed, our faithfulness may well cost us dearly. Taking a stand for someone or something could cost us a job or a friend. Being clear about love can raise up resistance from all kinds of locations. The graves of the martyrs the world over can attest to this.
And yet, this integrity is a thing worth keeping. In fact, when the smoke clears and all is said and done, integrity may be all we really have. Maintaining integrity, of course, is not merely a personal, private matter. We must maintain integrity in our communities. Primarily, we must maintain integrity in our churches. In what ways does the church have integrity? In what ways does it not? Do we worship a God of forgiveness on Sunday and fail to practice that forgiveness in our community life? Does our church confess its sins on Sunday and then reap the profits from monies invested in businesses that harm and hurt people? What does the integrity of a church look like? Can the church "wash its hands in innocence"?
And, like each one of us as individuals, a church with integrity is not promised wealth and prosperity. A church with integrity may well encounter the cross. Yet it is this integrity, if we can maintain it with authenticity, that will save the church. It is faithfulness -- nothing more; nothing less -- that God desires.
Of course, pastoral ministry also brings us into the rotten places. Once I stood with a young bride as her husband marched around her calling her every horrible name possible, all the while systematically stripping her of connections with the world beyond their home -- keys ripped out of her hands, locks replaced, even windows boarded up. In another setting, I used my own car as a funeral hearse, bringing three small caskets in as many years to a wind-swept cemetery, trying without success to find words of consolation to share with a couple that was systematically burying their baby sons while medical specialists offered no answer. I have lost sleep in pastoral worry, and I have aged inwardly in empathetic resonance with those enduring tragedy.
Still, while I enjoy baptisms more than funerals, and weddings better than divorces, I also know that the dark times force us to wrestle with the fundamental issues of life more than do days of light and grace. So it is that we must face the texts for this week. As we journey with Job we find ourselves caught in the millstones that grind slowly, and with him we ask whether they are the workmanship of God or machines of torture belonging to the devil. When we turn to the world of those to whom Hebrews was sent, we are sharing their persecution and seeking a road between superstition and spirituality even as their lives are threatened. And Jesus takes us, where he often does, into the defining moments of our lives where we must face our shattering imperfections in the face of divine designs.
This is a Sunday when we must stand with the oppressed and live with the hurting and cry with the weeping. But we must also rise resolutely to declare the firm teachings of scripture's hope and morality. If we do not, we will fail our people and ourselves and our God.
Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Job is a drama in which the prose of chapters 1-2 and 42 gives us an omniscient perspective from which to observe a man caught up in the terrible pain of wrongful suffering, and the poetic dialogues of the intervening chapters explore the philosophic wrestlings of theodicy in a variety of ways. According to today's opening scenes of the book, Job was one of the wealthiest men in the ancient world, with houses and servants and treasures. He had more of everything than any person could covet.
Along with that, Job was also a devout man, careful to renew his relationship with God each day. It seems, in fact, that God was rather proud of Job. When Satan came calling one time, God bragged to him about Job. "Have you seen my servant Job?" he asked. "Now there is a man whose heart you will never own!"
Satan wasn't so sure. He had cracked a lot of tough nuts in his time, and he took on Job as a special challenge. "Sure, Job loves you," Satan said to God. "But that's because you've bought his soul. You give him everything he wants. Why shouldn't he serve you? Even I would do that!"
That's when the wagering began, according to these chapters. God gave Satan permission to take everything away from Job, stipulating only that Satan could not harm Job's own body.
So Job lost everything -- his children, his flocks, his buildings, his servants. He became as poor as a church mouse. Still Job loved God and served him openly.
That's when the wagering in heaven heated up, and Satan got one more shot at Job in round two. He might torment Job's body, but without killing him. Job began to writhe in pain. Satan touched Job's mind so that he could no longer clearly hear God's whisper of love. Job was truly all alone. His wife called him stupid, his friends called him a liar and a sinner, and the world didn't even call him at all anymore. On the outside, Job's horizons have collapsed. Meanwhile inside, he had become an echo chamber of despair. Where is God?
That is the hardest challenge in life, isn't it -- finding God in the aching places of life? I remember sitting with a mother in a hospital corridor, praying for the recovery of her daughter. The young woman was just beyond her teen years, and only a dozen months into marriage to a wonderful man. When the doctor assisted her delivery of her first child he nicked something with his knife. Now she was turning every shade of yellow and gray, and had been flown half-way across the country to get the best medical attention possible.
The mother was unconsoled. When we prayed, she felt no peace and could not find God. And for three hours we watched her daughter's life slip away.
The mother stopped going to church. The young husband grew angry and didn't know how to care for his baby child. Where was God?
Elie Wiesel endured the horror of the Nazi death camps. He watched women and children herded into gas chambers. He cried with men beaten down by cruel soldiers. He saw a young boy hanging on a gallows. "Where is God?" he cried.
The question of Job is asked in every generation: "Where are you God?" And often, as with Job, the only answer is silence. The promises of scripture become dead fantasies. The Holy Spirit leaves and the heart grows chilly. The newspapers report events that make no sense. Where is God? Where is God when a child dies? Where is God when a mother is snatched from her family? Where is God when nuclear reactors melt down and airplanes crash and mines collapse? Where is God?
Satan looks down from heaven with glee. He knows that he has Job now. He knows that we will never get out of this one. He knows the cards in his hand are the winning draw. Can faith remain when God is silent? Can trust carry on when there seems to be no one at the other end of the line?
"No!" shouts Satan. But he doesn't have the last word.
"Yes!" whispers Job. "Even though I cannot see him, even though I do not understand what is happening, even though every human wisdom tells me God's not there, I know that my Redeemer lives, and with these eyes I shall see him!"
That is the deepest level of patience possible. James, in the New Testament, called it perseverance (5:11). Job continues to love God not for what he gets out of it, but because it is the only way life itself makes sense. We trust in God not because we always feel the wonder of the divine presence, but because, even in its absence, there is truly nowhere else to turn.
This is the patience of Job that sometimes gets bandied about in our religious conversations. It is the perseverance at the heart of the Christian faith. It is trust at its most profound level.
No one, of course, can explain it, at least not with words. Those of us who have struggled in that black pit can never really share the experience. We can talk about it later, when God seems closer again. But it is the awful agony of faith when we stand undressed and all alone.
Years ago, Dr. Arthur Gossip preached a sermon he called "When Life Tumbles In, What Then?" He brought that message on the first Sunday he returned to the pulpit of his congregation after his beloved wife had suddenly died. This is how he ended the sermon: "Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely ... standing in the roaring Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of its terror, of its rushing, I ... call back to you who one day will have your turn to cross it, 'Be of good cheer, my brothers, for I feel the bottom and it is sound.' "
Somehow, by the grace of God, the perseverance of patience carries us through, and we know the end of the matter as did Job. God will never leave us alone forever. He will answer our questions in time. He will resolve the problems of life and give us a future that Satan could never manufacture. "The Lord is full of compassion and mercy," says James when reflecting on the story of Job (5:11). And the patience of faith carries us through, until we know that better than we know ourselves.
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Like some of the other literature of the New Testament the "Letter to the Hebrews" is not well named. For one thing, it is hardly a letter, having none of the epistolary literary conventions that might easily identify it as such. Instead this treatise jumps right into the exposition of Old Testament verses and themes, and then continues throughout to weave these seamlessly with applicatory exhortations.
Second, there is no clear indication that the first recipients were "Hebrews" in the traditional sense of belonging to an ethnic Jewish community. It is obvious that those who first read the document were well versed in the Hebrew Scriptures, had an intimate understanding of the ceremonial systems that received their definition in the Levitical teachings regarding the tabernacle, and had at one time shaped their lives by the cultic calendar of the Hebrew festival year. At the same time, most of the Old Testament quotations in the book are Septuagint (Greek) readings rather than from the Masoretic (Hebrew) text. Furthermore, those who are addressed are told that they at one time were outsiders, aliens and heathens, something that would never be said to ethnic descendents of Abraham.
Recent scholarship suggests that those to whom it was initially sent were predominantly Gentile proselytes to Judaism prior to the coming of the news about Jesus. These "heathens" may have been attracted to the moral stability of the Jewish community in Rome, and sought to escape from the social corruption they viewed around them. In their quest for righteousness, the regulated religious system that pervaded the Jewish neighborhoods was very attractive, and these Gentile onlookers were willing to endure stringent initiation rites that would transform them into adoptive Jews.
When the message of Jesus as Messiah breezed in, many of this ilk traveled into the Christian church, caught up in the excitement of the movement. Now, however, great challenges threatened. New persecutions were rumored, and an increasing distinction was emerging between those in the Jewish neighborhoods who trusted in Jesus as Messiah and those who rejected this recent development.
Since many of these Gentile-cum-Jewish proselytes-cum-Christians had originally entered this narrowly defined community because of its ethical rigors and religious routines, they were now tempted to avoid persecution by slipping back into the safe and familiar strictly non-Christian Jewish environment. This treatise we call "Hebrews" was written to argue them into greater allegiance to the new way of Christianity.
In that light, we read today's passages. The first verses of chapter 1 rehearse the progression of divine revelation, showing how the Old Testament and its codes are insufficient without Jesus. Furthermore the exegesis of Psalms 8 and 22 in chapter 2 are the beginning of an exhortation that will increasingly identify the shared path Jesus took with us through suffering and persecution in order that we might find spiritual intimacy with God through him. If Jesus was able to make this pilgrimage and if Jesus was like us in every way except without sin, then we also can stay strong through persecution and chart our course to spiritual maturity on his boat.
This message can attach itself to any one of a variety of challenging experiences within the congregation. All of us, in times of struggle, are tempted to turn back or give up or rail against God without hope. These verses from Hebrews provide a hook into our lives (where and how do we hear God speak during the troubling times?) and a fellow traveler (Jesus) who can share our burdens and point a way of spiritual significance that is bigger than superstition or ritual.
Mark 10:2-16
Here is the tough one. We need to preach about divorce, but few in our gatherings will receive what we say without feeling wounds open and family troubles coming out of hiding. The lectionary does allow us to sidestep the issue, however, if we wish only to focus on the delightful story of Jesus and the children in verses 13-16. By using just those verses we can build a marvelous message about faith and childlikeness and the compassionate heart of Jesus and his church.
Yet, the teaching of Jesus on divorce is still there. But how can we tackle Jesus' words with the passion that Mark suggests was present in the original setting without undermining the message by citing too many exceptions, or otherwise ramming absolutes into the faces of truly hurting people? Here are some suggestions.
First, perhaps we might play for a bit with gender distinctions. Undergirding solid teachings on marriage is the divinely created reality of female-male sexuality. We cannot escape the genetic coding that splits us into two genders. Nor can we run from the given situation of heterosexual attractions that drive society. Often the first question asked when a baby is born is, "Boy or girl?" We are locked into sexually charged relationships from birth to death. This is why the religious leaders come to Jesus with their questions in the first place; marriage and divorce are telltale signs of our pervasive gender awareness and interaction.
Second, in light of that, we might wish to turn Jesus' words in verses 11-12 on their heads, and talk about what it is that we seek in heterosexual explorations (issues related to same-gender attractions can be brought in along the way). Perhaps a comparison might be made to learning a language other than that of our birth -- as we ingest foreign vocabulary and new word order and strange syntax we begin not only to gain tools for communicating in another tongue, but we also become aware of the very makeup of culture itself, including that of our own. So it is, often, in the dating and mating rituals of our society. "Mars" and "Venus" need to investigate each other's makeup and mind in order to meet somewhere on planet Earth. Learning the language of a possible marriage partner helps us understand ourselves even better. But in this comes the rub. To explore is to disclose. To investigate is to become vulnerable. In the interaction between the sexes, all of us are looking for places of safety where we will not be ridiculed for our "otherness," nor denied for our deficiencies. Where it is possible to become "naked and not ashamed" with someone from the opposite gender, we need to find a level of trust with our partner that is not easily shaken or shattered.
Hence, the strong stance of the Bible for marriage and against divorce. Marriage is built on the predication that we are in need of finding a help-meet to our need, a counterpart like ourselves yet different enough to complement, a symbiotic partner who is as incomplete without us as we are without them. This is not a mere convenience that enables us to stumble along through the years; this is an essential part of the equation for exploring human identity to its fullest so that we might become more of the relational creatures God intended would bear the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27).
Thus Jesus' stern words against divorce are not so much a rigid standard of morality against which too many of us crash and burn. Rather they are an insistent reminder that we need to find safety in marriage or we lose something essential to society. Divorce is no more of an option for married people than is cancer a choice for how we wish our bodies to function. Divorce is a statement failure in a once-good relationship, much as cancer is a testimony of corruption in the DNA of our cells. Both happen. But both need to be dealt with as alien and unwanted. Only in that light will we remember what marriage is all about.
Application
If all three texts are used, the message must be one which uses tragedies generally as an opportunity to clarify and console and convince. Each of the passages can form an illustration that explores those defining moments we all face: pain (Job), persecution (Hebrews), and parting (Mark).
Alternative Application
Job 1:1; 2:1-10. The Job text is a good springboard into explaining the various causes for suffering in our lives: 1) willful sinfulness which breaks the laws of morality (infidelity); 2) carelessness that violates nature's designs (substance abuse); 3) tragic happenstance in a broken world (tsunamis); 4) demonic oppression (certain forms of possession or addiction); and 5) divine chastisement (guilty conscience). All of these are expressed at one time or another in the book of Job. The goal of the message would be to raise people's awareness of the complexity of suffering so that care and empathy can go beyond simplistic reductionisms, while at the same time helping those who are currently in pain because of specific reasons to find an answer that brings healing and hope.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 26
Integrity is a precious thing indeed. Upon its firm foundation is built a life that counts for something. If we lose our integrity, we lose a great deal indeed. A person of integrity is trusted. A person of integrity can be counted upon. A person of integrity follows through on commitments.
A good self-examination every once in a while is the one that looks at personal integrity. It can be done quite simply with a few earnestly asked and honestly answered questions:
1. Do you tell the truth in as far as you are able?
2. Do you do the things you say you'll do?
3. Do you speak up or take a stand in the face of injustice?
4. Do you act in ways that would find approval in God's eyes?
5. Are you gentle, caring, and compassionate?
There are, of course, a host of other questions that could be asked. But these five give a good beginning.
The trick in all this is to be able to maintain integrity when things go south. As the psalmist appeals to God, reminding (him) of integrity kept, we ourselves are reminded that good behavior is not always rewarded with a pat on the head.
Indeed, our faithfulness may well cost us dearly. Taking a stand for someone or something could cost us a job or a friend. Being clear about love can raise up resistance from all kinds of locations. The graves of the martyrs the world over can attest to this.
And yet, this integrity is a thing worth keeping. In fact, when the smoke clears and all is said and done, integrity may be all we really have. Maintaining integrity, of course, is not merely a personal, private matter. We must maintain integrity in our communities. Primarily, we must maintain integrity in our churches. In what ways does the church have integrity? In what ways does it not? Do we worship a God of forgiveness on Sunday and fail to practice that forgiveness in our community life? Does our church confess its sins on Sunday and then reap the profits from monies invested in businesses that harm and hurt people? What does the integrity of a church look like? Can the church "wash its hands in innocence"?
And, like each one of us as individuals, a church with integrity is not promised wealth and prosperity. A church with integrity may well encounter the cross. Yet it is this integrity, if we can maintain it with authenticity, that will save the church. It is faithfulness -- nothing more; nothing less -- that God desires.
