Family: Diversity or Divorce

By Joan Butler Ford

[Ed. Note: the following excerpted sermon was originally delivered at St. Paul's Cathedral in San Diego, California on October 5, 2003 using the following lectionary readings: Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2: (1-8)9-18; Mark 10:2-9.]

Holy and eternal God

give us such trust in your sure purpose

that we measure our lives

not by what we have done or failed to do,

but by our faithfulness to you.

Amen. (New Zealand Prayer Book)

Last Saturday some of us from St. Paul's Cathedral attended the diocesan "Big Event" at St. Margaret's Church, Palm Desert. There were around 600 people there -- a solid representation of all the churches in the diocese. The emphasis of this event was that of being a diocesan family, despite our diversity of viewpoints on theological and secular issues. A sound belief, a belief that suggests that we are so intertwined with God and God with us that we must be intertwined with one another, as a family.

And family is what God is telling us about through Adam who says, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." However we view this story of the creation of Adam's companion, we must be able to see that there is a deep connection there to another human being, interwoven with a deep connection to the Creator. In our time and our culture it would be logical to view the story in purely individualistic terms. There is a man and there is a woman, two individuals. And they unite and carry on with the business of creating a family. We don't need to be concerned about whether this story is a myth, whether it is based upon ancient creation stories, which is what most scholars believe. What we do need to hear from it is the underlying theme of connectedness, with God and with each other. Family.

in the time of Moses the status of women was so low that a man was able to divorce his wife on any pretext whatsoever. . . For Moses to say that a man had to write a certificate of dismissal meant that the wife's status was raised so that she was at least not regarded as a prostitute.

Jesus refers to this theme of connectedness in his seemingly harsh teachings about divorce. In his ongoing battle with the Pharisees, they asked Jesus, " Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Please note the orderÉ may a man divorce his wife, nothing about the reverse. They went on to say, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her." Jesus answers, "Because of your hardness of heart (Moses) wrote this commandment for you." You see, in the time of Moses the status of women was so low that a man was able to divorce his wife on any pretext whatsoever. She had absolutely no say in the matter. For Moses to say that a man had to write a certificate of dismissal meant that the wife's status was raised so that she was at least not regarded as a prostitute. Which she would have been had she just been cast off. So Jesus is saying that the law was made for people like the Pharisees, a rather neat comeback.

Despite Moses' upgrade, the status of women at that time was so low that they were regarded as property, chattels to be disposed of easily and shamed in the process. So when Jesus decreed that the union of man and woman could not be separated, the words, harsh as they may seem to us from our individualistic viewpoint, were really meant to protect the women, a radical idea indeed. Radical because women were so marginalized, so denigrated, that for Jesus to insist that they were equal to men by being 'one flesh' by God's decree was an astounding declaration.

Now when Jesus talks about the dissolution of marriage, he is not telling us that he is talking only about the legal separation of a man and a woman. He is also talking about the shame and dishonor, even battles over property rights brought to the families of the couple. So divorce was not just an individual event, it had ramifications that could reach far into the larger community. Those of us who have suffered the deep grief of divorce, whether our own or of others, know that divorce has a tremendous impact on children, friends, and ultimately the larger family, whether it be church, diocesan or civic community. There is a sense of broken connectedness, of shock and disbelief.

I can remember so well the impact that my own divorce after thirty-five years of marriage had on our grown children, siblings, friends, and of course, me. The sense of shame was profoundÉ I will never forget going to a Stanford football game soon after we announced our separation and literally skulking around the stadium, afraid that I would run into friends and acquaintances that I wasn't yet ready to face. The children unfortunately became estranged from their father for many years, even though the divorce was an amicable one as those things go. Fortunately, the children and Tom reunited, a couple of them very shortly before he died. And he and I always kept in touch, I had a good conversation with him just a week before his unexpected and untimely death. So in this case and by the grace of God, the brokenness of some of the connections were repaired, a very good thing.

When we become hard-hearted about our own ideologies, when we are convinced that we and only we are in the right, we tear at the foundations of our larger family. The things that we need to confront in a loving way we tend to dismiss, often with hateful labels.

In order to get beyond the legal and emotional ramifications of Jesus' difficult teaching about divorce, we need to heed the words of Adam when he says "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." These words are thoughtful and reflective statements of our interconnectedness. And not just ours. When we become hard-hearted about our own ideologies, when we are convinced that we and only we are in the right, we tear at the foundations of our larger family. The things that we need to confront in a loving way we tend to dismiss, often with hateful labels. "That left-wing dolt," we say, "those right-wing fools," we proclaim. Black/white/Hispanic. Poor/homeless/rich. Gay/straight. Thin/fat, tall/short. Labels. Labels which prevent us from being united as "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."

When we use these labels, we, in our hardness of heart, divorce ourselves from our human family, and from God as a result of that. Bless all those who are walking in the AIDS Walk (San Diego) as we speak. I worked with many AIDS patients in San Francisco whose parents/siblings/others had in effect divorced them. I remember several times the parents or siblings of a man with AIDS would not allow his beloved partner to see him in the hospital or hospice. No more "bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh" in that situation, and the effects were devastating to everyone involved.

When a group of us went to South Africa last year, the bishop of the diocese we visited, David Beetge, talked to us at a special Evensong. "Ubuntu," he said, which means roughly, "I become human only as I greet your humanity, as we are part of each other." And he said, "Sumuna" or "we share common humanity in the divine image that is in us all."

He concluded by saying that life together with all the diversity that we find in our churches, the Anglican Communion with its diversity of cultures, even within our own particular cultures is the most precious gift that God has given us. So whatever stance we might take on the grave issues that threaten to divide our own Episcopal Church and the broader Anglican Communion, we must try everything before divorcing ourselves from these bodies, or from those with a different viewpoint.

The Rev. Dr. Joan Butler Ford is Canon for Communications at St. Paul's Cathedral in San Diego, California, and serves on the cathedral's Peace & Justice Committee. She is also a member of the Compass Rose Society, an international network supporting the work of the Anglican Communion. Dr. Ford traveled to South Africa in 2002 to research the HIV/AIDS epidemic among children, and has worked to educate and advocate church people on this issue back in the U.S. She may be reached by email at revjbf@yahoo.com