The great divorce

Great meaning large or immense, we use it in the pejorative sense.

That's right, the teachings from Jesus on divorce.  This is unpopular, isn't it?  I mentioned that I wasn't really looking forward to the readings for Sunday, and I asked my wife to guess what they could possibly be, and she guessed that it was 'wives submit to your husbands.'  Very close.  It was
actually the teachings, obviously from Jesus about divorce, and they're much harsher than we would expect. Especially today.

For you see, these days, folks get divorced at an alarming rate.  That is, they get divorced at the rate of about 50%.  That's not an accurate number, you understand.  That number is purely hearsay, but it's out there now, and we're going to have to deal with it.  Anyhow, let's go conservative, and say that the number is hovering around 40%.  Fine.  The big surprise for us is that the Christian population doesn't show any appreciable increase in marriage survival rate over the outside population.  That is, you're not looking at a massive increase in either marital fidelity, or marital survival over the vast heathen hordes.  And these are people who believe sincerely that Jesus really REALLY doesn't want you to get divorced.  He's quite opposed to it, to the point that he calls remarriage after divorce adultery. 

But you don't see Christians protesting outside courthouses that allow divorces.  You don't see them holding signs saying 'one life, one wife!' or 'Get your patrimony off my matrimony!'  Why on earth
don't you see those same signs in the same way you'd be seeing protests associated with same-sex marriage or abortion clinics?  Probably because unlike those, the people who are protesting might very well be protesting themselves.  Why did furor about divorce die off?  Because people got divorced.  And if a lot of people get divorced, then all of a sudden nobody wants to talk about divorce anymore.

If I've imparted nothing else to you, and I haven't, your one take-away from all of my ramblings should be that everything is a democracy, even when it isn't.  Everything happening in Iraq, Syria, all those places, well, they're all democracies, even if they're dictatorships.  If enough people in the country decide they want Bashar Al-Asad gone, he'd be gone.  Ask how Khadaffi is doing these days.  If you get enough people deciding something, hitting critical mass, then things become that.  The only thing that isn't, and can't be a democracy, is God's word.  We don't get to take parts out based on them being unpopular.

But we want to.  Because so many of us get divorced, we want to edit Jesus, and make it so his requirements on us aren't so high.  We get to thinking that what he demands is impossible, and so knowing that, our job is just to make what he says easier.  Less complicated.  We take his words, and fudge them around, making sure that he doesn't actually put holes in what we do.  We want to make sure that he's not going to bust us up, that he'll turn his attention elsewhere.

But it's not a democracy.  If Jesus says something that gets under your skin, your job isn't to strike out those words.  It's to hear them, and if you need to be made uncomfortable by them, then to be made uncomfortable by them.  If Jesus tells you that you have something to change, don't react to it by changing him.  And if we look at those words of Jesus about divorce, and claim that they're too hard, then that should tell you why you need Jesus.

To be honest, everything he says is too hard.  Have you ever noticed that?  It's not a plan that he gives you that is easy or straightforward.  When Jesus talks to his people, he tells them to be perfect, just as God is perfect.  That's a tall order, and not one that we can realistically attain.  Obviously.  Nobody's perfect. 

But on this issue, we complain and get mad, and when we read the firm, inflexible words of Jesus, we get upset, saying to him 'No, you don't understand!  You don't know what it's like to live with someone who hurts you.  You don't know what it's like to fall out of love, to find out your spouse is unfaithful.  You don't know what it's like to lose your faith and fellowship in someone.  You don't know.'

And to that, Jesus responds by saying 'don't I?'  He's in a relationship with us.  We, as the church, are called the bride of Christ, and we're an unfaithful bride.  A bride who is interested in other gods.  A bride who wants attention from elsewhere.  An unsatisfied bride, who takes and never gives.  We end up not talking to each other for long periods, not visiting, not spending time together.  We end up, essentially, as strangers.  There has been a major breakdown in our relationship over time, and it's on our shoulders.  If there was ever a reason for someone to want to get out of a relationship, Jesus would have plenty of reasons to get out of his relationship with us. 

Here's where the Bible matters though.  Even though we understand that we are a long way away from perfection, this is where Jesus shines.  He's not in the business of telling you what to do, giving you a moral lesson, and then just letting you get on with it, he's in the business of two things
1 - fulfilling the law on your behalf, and
2 - forgiving you when you don't measure up.

Maybe for the first and only time ever, you have time and space in church to quit pretending.  You have time and space in that worship service to say to God 'I haven't done everything right.  My marriage is a shambles that nobody knows about, I'm just barely holding on, I don't think we're going to last even though I post on facebook constantly about how in love we are.  What am I going to do?'  That's what Jesus is all about.  You bring him your weakness, you leave with his strength.  Maybe your marriage is failing, perhaps it's already fallen apart.  That doesn't mean that we need to look at Jesus' words and delete them, or to pretend that he never said them, but to look at them and realize that level of commitment is not just good, it's divine.  And that's the level of commitment that God through Christ has promised to us.  Throughout the Bible, he tells us 'If it were not so, would I have told you?'  In other words, he's been trustworthy and true this whole time.  We believe him because he tells us the truth. 

When he says things that upset us, because he forbids things we do, we have a couple of choices.  We can walk away, saying 'This is a hard teaching, who can understand it?' or we can say with some degree of confidence 'Lord, where else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!'  Essentially, it's not your job to be perfect but to be made perfect.  It is your job to have your sins forgiven, to not hide them or stash them away or to pretend Jesus doesn't say what he says.  He does say it.  He does mean it.  And our faith in his power to forgive, cleanse, and make whole, rests in his promise.  He told us he would draw us to himself, he told us he would forgive and make all things new.  We believe in him as children believe in their parents.

Because they promise.