Mending a Broken Heart
A Sermon by the Rev. Peter De Franco
October 3, 2021
Mark 10:2-16
2Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 10Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” 13People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
Weddings celebrate the love of two persons who make a life-long commitment: to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. All the blissful beauty and celebration of the start of a marriage stands in stark contrast with the somber ending of a marriage in a court when a judge declares the marriage ended. Even as so much love and hope are found at the beginning of a marriage, so much hurt and disappointment accompany its ending. The hearts, so filled with love at the start, lie broken and torn at its end.
Marriages involve a life long commitment and person continue to grow and change in the course of a life, or they should grow and change. Yet some relationships fumble that initial stage of falling in love and when that feeling does not occupy every waking moment, when persons fail to grow in a marriage, when people fail to support one another as they mature as persons, marriages do fail. Sometimes marriages fail because of emotional and physical abuse. Sometimes marriages fail because unimagined losses. Sometimes marriages fail because communications faulter, emotional commitments crumble, the partners do not share common interests. Marriages fail for a variety of reasons.
Some people opt out of marriage after their first one. Some people try to pick up the pieces of their heart, discover what went wrong the first time, and try another connection.
You will notice that I have been talking about the emotional dimensions of marriage since for most of us marriage involves a bond between two persons based on their emotional commitment to one another. In the first century world of Jesus, marriage reflected the values of that time. As a world dominated by men, marriage involved the giving of a woman from one man, the father, to another man, the husband. Divorce in that world usually came from a man, the husband, who could reject a wife for whatever reason. We see in Jesus a shift in that world of meaning since by affirming the life long commitment involved in a marriage, Jesus protects women from the whims of a husband who tires of a wife and seeks another.
However Jesus speaks to the institution of marriage in his day and does not imagine the way we, in our day, construct the meaning of marriage. Faithful to Jesus, the Episcopal Church affirms that marriage involves a life long commitment between two persons. We also understand that sometimes that commitment is not honored by one or both persons and the marriage fails. We also understand that marriage brings together not only a man and a woman but also two women or two men.
To understand God’s plan for us, we Episcopalians begin with the Word of God in the Bible and balance the Bible with reason and tradition. Tradition points us to the ongoing teaching of the church and we know that Tradition includes parts which do not change and parts which change and develop. Reason helps us to distinguish what remains unchanged and what develops. Reason allows us to understand that ethics, the standards for human behavior, are connected with our understanding of the human person.
As we deepen our understanding of what it means to be a person, so too our ethics evolves and develops. We see this development happens with some ethical teachings in the bible. The bible allowed for different behaviors which we now consider unethical. The bible allows for slavery but we understand it as unethical. The bible permits men to dominate women but we understand women and men to be equals in work and relationships. We understand both that the bible defines patterns of human behavior to which persons in every time and place must subscribe and other patterns which are conditioned by time and culture. Even in the Gospels, we see in the Gospel according to Mark a very strict teaching on no marriage after divorce, but Matthew allows for marriage after divorce when one partner is unfaithful and Paul would prefer that people not get married at all.
As we look at the Gospels, we are invited to discern broader patterns of behavior, patterns which allow for reconciliation after failures, for developing moral strength, and for the equal treatment of both genders in relationships.
Our passage from Mark includes not only a teaching on marriage and divorce but also one on how we are to treat children, the most vulnerable ones in our society, even as they were vulnerable in Jesus’ society. We see the disciples quick to exclude the children, the vulnerable from contact with Jesus. Too often, Church leaders follow not the example of Jesus who would invite the most vulnerable but the example of the disciples who would exclude those on the margins. At one time the Episcopal church also took that position but we have seen divorced persons as vulnerable and marginalized and sought a way to help them find again in marriage a path of mutual joy, of help and comfort in prosperity and adversity and a society in which to raise and nurture children.
There is hope after divorce, hope that hearts broken can be restored, hope that new spouses can share in the full sacramental life of the church, hope that God offers a future when new beginnings will bring new life. With new life, God mends a broken heart.