Marriage
is much in the news these days. Whether the bachelor or bachelorette
shows, mail-order marriage, gay marriage, polygamy in Utah, Ben and
Jen-marriage is in the news, and the news is not good. As the divorce
rate hits 50%, we realize how difficult it is to sustain a lifelong
commitment that only mirrors how difficult it has become in our culture
to make any commitment. And why do we laugh at episode after episode
of Seinfeld when four selfish, shallow characters fit the description
of "loving things and using people" as opposed to "loving
people and using things?" Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer are
incapable of making a commitment of any consequence, and perhaps we
laugh because the alternative is to cry.
The news
about marriage in Jesus' day was also not good. In today's gospel the
Pharisees ask him whether or not it is lawful for a man to divorce his
wife. Actually the Pharisees were well aware that it was lawful when
the law of Moses states, "When a man takes a wife and marries her
and he has found some indecency in her, he writes her a bill of divorce."
And then
Jesus asks the Pharisees, in essence, "Why would Moses do this,
knowing that in the Creation stories God had created Adam and Eve as
equals? What about a woman's right in this equation? Where is the commitment
when a man can divorce his wife for burning the toast?"
And so
while Jesus does not deny that Moses established a procedure by which
a husband might divorce his wife, he insists that its existence resulted
from the hardheartedness of humanity. And so he appeals to what God
intended in the Creation before the establishment of laws and the development
of cultural injustices, that it is not right for us to be alone, that
the two shall become one flesh.
Quite
apart from the statistics, quite apart from the fact that marriages
do die-many times between couples who have tried hard, who have been
well-intentioned for years even-and cognizant that the Church views
marriage and the dissolution of a marriage as a pastoral rather than
a legal issue, the human spirit longs for the Garden of Eden-like experience
of being loved alone and exclusively by another forever, that we thirst
for a relationship that will last, that we yearn for a partnership in
which we are not judged day by day or year after year, as being "adequate"
or "inadequate."
Deep down
I think our instinct is to long for permanency as much as we like to
think we love novelty. Deep down, the desire for marriage is the longing
to be loved unconditionally, and to love unconditionally, as much as
is humanly possible. One wonders why so many people who divorce seek
remarriage. I believe that despite the bitterness and hurt and alienation
that often accompany divorce, that to love and to be loved is our hearts'
desire and that God will bless us in our repentance, relationship and
commitment.
Jesus
said, "God is love. And the one who abides in love abides in God
and God in them." As we love one another, so it is that we both
experience and reveal the love God has for us, a love displayed in Christ's
life as the ultimate sacrifice.
There
is a poignant scene in Richard Selzer's book, Mortal Lessons: Notes
on the Art of Surgery, which embodies for me a Christ-like relationship
of love when he writes,
The young
woman speaks. "Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks.
"Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut."
She nods and he is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it,"
he says. "It's kind of cute." The surgeon writes, "All
at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is
not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends down to kiss
her crooked mouth, and I so close I can see how he twists his own lips
to accommodate hers, to show her that their kiss still works. I remember
that the gods appeared in ancient Greece as mortals, and I hold my breath
and let the wonder in.
Amen.
