Divorce
is a difficult thing. Rosie and I have
been together for sixty years and the times have not always been smooth. When, after a twenty year career in radio and
television, I decided to enter the priesthood and we moved to Alexandria,
Virginia where I began my seminary training, it wasn’t easy. Rosie went to work, our three kids went to
new schools and I engrossed myself in my studies and in seminary life. There were many moments when we wondered what
we were doing and if we were going to make it. But we stayed together, worked
most of it out and after three years of this, I graduated, was ordained and we
began a new life as clergy and wife with a constellation of new problems and
totally new identities.
Love and marriage don’t always work
out the way that we hope. Neither does
life. How many people do you know who
have problems? The older that we get it
seems that there are more problems. There
are always ups and downs and sometimes the downs get the better of us. Also, how many people do you know who seem to
cope with the difficulties that they face?
It is amazing to me how coping seems to work, particularly in a
community of people where love seems to be the norm. That is what church is supposed to be
about. It is a community of care where
people can share their faith, their joys and their sorrows. When we lean on our Lord and keep our faith
alive in our hearts, the down times can have a way of giving us hope that can
bring us back to joy.
When I look back on it all, I am
amazed that we were able to do it. I
thank God for the means and the ability to make it all work, and in all
honesty, I would do it all again. I love
my wife and my new career and I know that we have thrived in it.
Our youngest daughter was involved
in a divorce that I welcomed. When I
first met her husband to be, I didn’t like him at all. I tried to have
conversations with him, but they went nowhere.
He seemed to be on another planet.
I really couldn’t say anything
about my feelings to my daughter, she was a kid in love and my words would have
only hurt her. So I kept my mouth shut,
walked her down the aisle at Christ Church and we had a glorious
celebration. We hoped against hope that
everything would work out, but after several kids, it really didn’t work at all
and she decided that enough was enough.
She left him and her life was much better. She is now engaged to a man whom I like who
lives in San Diego and eventually they will be married. I feel good about her life and what she has
been able to do.
In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus talks to the
Pharisees and to his disciples about divorce.
He emphasizes the harshness of the commandment, how God created us male
and female and wants us to be together until death does us part, as the marriage
service says so eloquently. He tells his
listeners that Moses gave them the option of divorce because of what he calls
the “hardness of their hearts”, but says that the commandment stands.
In recent times there has been an
attempt to make those statements about divorce and family absolute; almost a
part of the Ten Commandments. Jesus
continued his discussion with his disciples when they tried to keep children
from coming to him by setting a child in their midst and telling them to let
the children come to him and going on to say that one must accept God as a
small child accepts. There is a beauty
to that that I can’t emphasize enough.
What Jesus is speaking about in this
passage from Mark are the commandments that he left with his disciples. His command to love God with all of our heart,
soul and mind and the corollary commandment to love our neighbor as we are loved
ourselves are the cornerstone of what our Lord brought to this earth. What these commandments offer us are the essence
of inclusion; the inclusion of everyone within the fellowship that we have with
each other and with our Lord. Setting the
child among them emphasizes that. Include
the children; include everyone. That is the
message that Jesus has for all of us. Our
politics sometimes become a message of exclusion. Exclude the immigrants, exclude the gays or those
who are divorced or incarcerated. We climb
on our high horses much too easily, including ourselves always, but failing to understand
our responsibility to make sure that everyone has a part in this world.
I think of the Pope travelling through
Washington, New York and Philadelphia going to visit those in prison, and
stopping his motorcade to receive children held up by their parents. Those children were important to him and they
are important to you and me. Remember
when you were a child and your parents told you about Santa Claus or the Easter
bunny? For at least some of your life
you believed in those things. I remember
when my oldest daughter asked me in the car if Santa was real. She had heard from a friend that it was only
a story. I told her that Santa was a
symbol of our need to give and receive and that she needed to hold on to Santa
in that way. She cried because the
wonder of Christmas lost a bit of its sparkle for her after that conversation,
but she certainly kept it alive for her own kids.
Keeping that story alive in our
hearts is what our faith is all about.
Knowing God as a child knows God is what we are called to do by our
Lord. The stories about Jesus and his
life are not easy to hold onto.
Resurrection is a wonderful hope that none of us can know on this side of
death’s door. We hold onto it because
our faith gives us a certainty that is impossible if we simply rely on what
some people call “facts”.
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