Matches Made in Heaven (?) – Sermon Nov 7, 2010
November 7, 2010
Scripture: Luke 20: 27-38
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
Sermon: Matches Made in Heaven (?)
by Reverend Doreen Oughton
It’s such an interesting gospel reading this morning. The scripture tells us right up front that it is a set-up, questions asked about what happens in the resurrection by people who don’t believe in resurrection. These were not people who truly sought an answer or enlightenment, but who were perhaps mocking the whole notion of resurrection, implying that with such a foolish belief, look at what impossible situations might arise. But Jesus seems to take their question seriously, though as I’ve noticed is typical of him, he doesn’t buy into their framework. And his response is quite interesting to me. He basically says that marriage is something belonging to those “of this age,” not of an age to come. I don’t think when he said “of this age,” that he meant people of first century Palestine, but rather people of the earthly world. When he talks about “that age,” he is referring to the age of resurrection of the dead. And he says something really startling about their questions about marriage in the resurrection age – he says, “They cannot die anymore.” As if marriage is a sort of death. Hmm.
It got me thinking more about just how holy Jesus considered holy matrimony to be. It’s not the first time I’ve wondered, not just about what Jesus thought about marriage, but about marriage in the eyes of God. I thought about it quite a bit when I was going through a divorce. I thought about it as I was preparing to wed again. Hadn’t I made those vows before God and family before? Had the end of my previous marriage let God down, displeased God in some way? According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells people who are asking him about divorce, “What God has joined together, let no human tear apart.” He says this after he quotes the book of Genesis about how a man shall leave his parents and join with his wife and the two shall become one. His disciples challenge him on this difficult statement. They thought what he suggested was so difficult that it was probably best for people not to marry at all. And Jesus agrees completely, though recognizes that a celibate lifestyle is too difficult for most people.
It is also interesting that Jesus quoted Hebrew scripture in describing a life-long permanent commitment to one person. Interesting because the Hebrew bible paints a very different picture of marriage. There, and throughout most of human history in fact, marriage has been understood as a union between one man and several women. Vaughn Roste, a lay minister in the United Church of Canada surveyed scripture for all the passages relating in any way to marriage. He found 800 references, and distilled them into 12 general principles, or 12 biblical rules of marriage. Here is what he found:
1. Marriage consists of one man and one or more women.
2. Nothing prevents a man from taking concubines in addition to his wife or wives.
3. A man can choose any woman he wants for a wife, as long as she is not another man’s wife, or his own sister, or the mother or sister of a wife he already has. Jacob broke this rule marrying sisters Rachel and Leah, but that was with the consent of his father-in-law, which might have made it okay. The idea of a woman giving her own consent to marriage or to a particular partner is foreign to the biblical mindset.
4. If a woman cannot be proven to be a virgin at the time of marriage, she shall be stoned to death.
5. If a man, hmm, physically violates a woman, he must marry her, unless she is already engaged to someone else. And of course she must marry him. But if she is engaged to someone else and lives in the country, the attacker will be put to death. If the attack takes place in the city, however, both attacker and victim are put to death, the thinking being that she could have yelled for help and been saved, so must have been a willing participant.
6. If a man dies childless his brother must marry the widow, even if he is already married.
7. Women marry the man of their fathers’ choosing.
8. Women are the property of their father until married, and their husband’s property after that.
9. The value of a wife is about seven years’ work.
10. Interfaith marriages are forbidden
11. Divorce is forbidden
12. And as noted by Jesus and the apostles, it is better not to get married at all, though marriage is not a sin.
Those are the biblical notions of marriage. Jesus didn’t actually volunteer much of his thinking about marriage. He responded when questioned, as he was by the Pharisees about divorce, and by the Sadducees about marriage in heaven. He does sound pretty adamantly against divorce and remarriage, and against adultery. But he doesn’t tell any long parables or stories or miracles about marriage. Instead he talks a lot about being in right relationship, about looking out for the powerless – the poor, the widow and orphan. His disapproval of divorce seems very consistent with these concerns at a time when a woman had no rights to choose marriage or divorce, and was left pretty much without power or resources if her husband chose divorce.
We have this idea that marriage is a sacred institution, that it had always been a sacred union between a man and a woman. Again, our own scriptures counter that, allowing for multiple wives in the centuries before Christ. There is disagreement as to whether polygamy continued into Jesus’ time. But even apart from our scriptures, the history and definition of and ideas about marriage have been in tremendous flux. Though polygamy usually allows the man more than one wife, marriage has also been seen as a union between one woman and several men. In ancient Rome, marriages between aristocratic males were once recognized by law, and in medieval Europe, marriage between siblings was allowed, which protected valuable property from leaving a family. In China, legally recognized marriages included unions between a living woman and a dead man. In such a ghost marriage, a girl of some societal ranking was married off to a dead man from a good family to secure the bonds between the families. And again in the interest of securing or protecting wealth and position, marriages were arranged between the unborn.
So much for the idea of marriage as having always been meant to be between only a man and a woman. But likewise the idea of marriage being sacred or divinely ordained and sanctified doesn’t have much weight in history. In the early times of Western civilization, people married mostly for physical safety. It was a hard and dangerous world, and a family was the most effective unit for providing for basic needs – food, housing, guidance, medical care, companionship and defense. To be alone was to be targeted. The more family you had, the safer you were. Extended families stuck together, and these clans became tribes, and tribes became kingdoms.
This was the world in which the Hebrew bible was written. The Israelites were concerned about the safety and progress of their people, establishing their lineage, establishing a homeland, a kingdom. And it is exactly this clan-focus, these family loyalties, that Jesus challenged so frequently. He talked about how those who heard the word of God were his mother and brothers as much as those in the family he was born to. He taught that we were all brothers and sisters, he opened up his message of saving love to Romans and Canaanites, to those his religion said were unclean. He says in this morning’s passage that marriage does not happen in the resurrection. It is not a heavenly state of being. The early church leaders took this to heart, and like Jesus and the apostles ,thought celibacy was the way to go. It was less wicked than having relations outside of marriage, so, as Paul said in one of his letters, it was better to wed than to burn. And wed people did, without any particular blessing or supervision of the church.
It wasn’t until about a thousand years after Christ’s earthly years that the Christian church became more involved in marriages. Prior to that it was strictly a civil affair. As cities and villages replaced the dangerous terrain of the open desert, marriage was less a strategy for safety or clan-building than a matter of managing wealth and creating social order. Marriage was usually a business arrangement, a way of passing wealth, livestock, property and heirs from one generation to the next. There were mergers and acquisition, and titled children were like chattel to be traded and manipulated in the interest of family fortune. There were at times strict rules about marrying only within your social class, but things like plagues, which wiped out spouses and children of all classes, changed that.
There was a looseness about marriage, and about divorce in the first millenium of Christianity, before the church got involved. Couples exchanged vows at home in impromptu ceremonies as part of an otherwise ordinary day. Witnesses were only necessary in case there was a problem later with one person claiming that it never happened. The law, or the government, then as now, was only concerned about marriage in regards to money, property and offspring. When a couple’s union produced something – assets, children, debts, and such, these things needed to be managed, especially if the union dissolved. The government didn’t want to have to raise abandoned babies or support bankrupted divorcees.
Sometime in the eleventh century, weddings began to be held in the doorway or on the porch of the church. At that time all legal contracts were created on the front porch of the church, mostly because the priest was often the only person who could read and write. Again it was a practical matter more than any recognition of marriage as a spiritual matter. But over time the idea that the second coming of Christ was imminent faded away, and the Christian church became more political, more interested in reigning in the marriages, divorces and broken political alliances of European royalty. In the thirteenth century the church took control of marriage, laying down the rules, insisting on having clergy involved to legitimate marriages. Divorce was forbidden, and annulments granted by the church. The practices continued especially in the upper classes of families dictating marriages that increased or solidified their own wealth and standing.
In our reading from Paul this morning, he exhorts the Thessalonians to hold fast to the traditions Paul taught them. Traditions can provide a great sense of grounding, a connection with the generations that came before us. They can be meaningful and moving. But they can also hide the truth that the only thing that is constant is change. Let us not be blind to the reality that traditions started somewhere, at some time, and that there was a different “tradition” before that. Let us not be blind to the truth that within traditions of marriage there has been terrible racism and sexism, terrible discrimination and judgment. It is not so hard, when we face those things, to understand why there is no marriage in the age to come, in the resurrection.
And yet I am also convinced that marriage can indeed be a sacred state of being. And I believe there is much in Christian tradition that supports this notion truly and deeply. Things like Jesus’ concern that people care for one another, that people include those outside of the clan in their sense of care and responsibility. To say nothing of his frequent talk of forgiveness. Marriage gives people the chance to practice loving one another as God loves us. It gives us a chance to covenant with one another as God covenants with his people. More and more the books I read about spirituality question the notion that spiritual maturity can best be achieved in monk-like conditions, no family obligations, nothing but time to pray and chant and commit oneself only to God. More and more people see how living with another person, loving another despite their flaws, making sacrifices for another’s benefit, how these are real spiritual disciplines, and that God is there, that Christ is there, that these things are truly states worthy of the next age. But it is these lived-out virtues of love, sacrifice, care, and forgiveness that I believe matter to God more than the rules or traditions.
I would love to hear your thoughts on marriage, and to share more about my research on the subject. So come join me at the pot-luck lunch before the games begin, and we can have some lively conversation.
