Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 345
"...from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together,
no human being must separate."

When we're caught up in controversies, the Holy Spirit often directs our attention back to the Scriptures and the fundamental principles of human life. In the Bible we find the same perennial questions although parts of it were written in prehistoric times. They were no less wise for being without advanced technologies and a written language.

Jesus, like rabbis, ministers, deacons, and priests of every age, was asked about divorce. "Must I stay with my nagging wife?" " Must I cling to my abusive husband?" He had come to fulfill the scriptures, not to change them; and could only repeat its teaching; "from the beginning, God made them male and female." Men and women need each other and obviously belong together. They do not and cannot exist apart. 

But restless humans challenge even our own human nature; we wonder if perhaps God made a mistake in our creation. They wonder if perhaps, after all this time, we can tweak some things, make a few alterations, repurpose genes, organs, impulses, and energies to serve more practical, attainable ends. 

Recently, in an effort to appease some elements of a troubled society, many people prefer to neutralize God talk. They avoid references to God the Father because it might invoke in some people the memory of a parent who failed his basic responsibilities. "Dad" was absent to his wife and children; and his occasional presence was violent. And so some ministers have neutralized the Father of Jesus, preferring the asexual word god to father and lord. 

Reducing Jesus and his Father to a neutral god suggests there is an antagonism between male and female; as if male and female are not complementary and have no need for each other. In this brave new world, women bear children without fathers as if children are pets one can purchase when the consumer is ready to buy one. They are taken as a parental right and not as gifts from God. But when adorable puppies or kittens age into adolescence they're often dumped into city streets or onto rural farms. And millions of grandchildren are being raised by their grandparents. 

Suddenly the beloved and universally known Lord's Prayer is a Statement about the disputed masculinity of God, and not the supremely generous progenitor who sacrificed his only begotten son for our salvation. 

Medieval scholastics taught that God's nature transcends human sexuality, for only a transcendent Creator could fashion the first humans as "male and female, in his own image." That insight is neither new nor controversial. 

But, injected into Jesus's prayer, god depersonalizes the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph; for we cannot imagine a person who is neither male nor female. God becomes only a principle, impulse, or energy without consciousness or concern. And we are already very familiar with impersonal forces, standard operating procedures, faceless bureaucrats, robotic voices, and thinking machines. They have no compassion; and care about nothing, least of all the sorrows and joys of men and women. 

Neutralizing God talk is intrusive, distracting the congregation from their prayer and its healing effects. I recently heard four verses in 1 John 3:21-24 reinterpreted eleven times in four verses. He became god and his became god's. It was a contortionist's performance without the humor.

The authors of scripture were very familiar with the uncaring, arbitrary gods of earth, sky, seas, and fire; and finally denied their existence: 

"I am the LORD, there is no other,  there is no God besides me." (Is 45:5)

Today we need men and women to represent the beauty, wonder, majesty, wisdom, and authority of God Our Father and his Son Jesus Christ. Marriage will always be the foundation of a stable society. Husbands and wives must demonstrate the irrevocable nature of the LORD's marriage to Israel, and Jesus's irrevocable covenant with the Church. Faithful couples raise their children to know the unearned, unmerited mercy of God. They assure them that God has not abandoned his people. His Spirit remains with us not as a vague idea but as One who directs our freedom. 

Divorce should never become normal; it is a great tragedy for millions of people. Women and children are not safer without husbands and fathers. It has led to open marriage, gay marriage, gay ideology, and finally to the absurd notion that some wicked person assigned my gender when I was born. (Whenever a Red Cross phlebotomist asks about my gender I assure her that I was male the last time I checked.)  

I believe in the Father of Jesus, but I am skeptical of anyone's "god." That was never the NAME of the One who spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush, nor was He the One whom Jesus called Abba.