Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 140

The LORD God said: "It is not good for the man to be alone.I will make a suitable partner for him."

The Bible's teaching about marriage begins with a comical story about God and his creature Adam. The Creator can clearly see that his poor, bare, forked animal – as King Lear described him – is also lonely. The man has not complained about it; perhaps he doesn't yet feel his discomfort. But he has no one to admire, nor anyone to admire him; and he listlessly drifts about the Garden of Eden, eating whatever is within reach, and whenever he feels like eating; and sleeping whenever he feels like sleeping, wherever he wants to lie down. Whenever he feels up to it he pulls some weeds by way of gardening; or goes swimming with the crocodiles. 

There is no one to tell him when to get up, or lie down, get ready for dinner, eat, or stop eating. If there is something not quite right, something unresolved in his soul that needs resolution, he has no name for it; and perhaps doesn't know it. 

But when the Lord creates out of mud several more creatures, and Adam obediently names each one, the Bible says, "...none proved to be a helper suited to the man." We can imagine Adam saying, "That's a horse, and there's a dog, and that's a camel. Here's a goldfish, a toucan, a wallaby, and an anaconda. That's not it; that’s not it; nor is that; nor is that. I don't know what it might look like, but I'll know it when I see it.” 

And so the Lord created Eve; and Adam, seeing her, whooped in utter delight, “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman."

The Bible immediately says, "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body." 

We find that teaching, beautiful, challenging, wonderful, some say impossible, there in the very beginning of the Bible because marriage has always been difficult and it has always been controversial; and we have to be told what God expects of us from the outset. That is, he demands that married couples must be faithful to one another for life and eager to have children.

But there were problems in paradise; and some time later, Moses had to make concessions when his governance was challenged with troubled marriages and divorce. He permitted the unthinkable; what had become one body could be split apart. Most nations have followed his example, even to this day, even here in Christian America. 

But Jesus insisted, “...what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” The Church believes it, and martyrs have died for it. John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded for protesting Herod’s marriage to his sister-in-law. And Saints Thomas More and John Fisher were also beheaded when they would not condone King Henry’s divorce and to his marriage to Anne Boleyn, whom he also beheaded.

We cannot abandon the words of Jesus; and despite the pandemic of divorce, no one wants to forget the ideal, beauty, and holiness of marriage. Everybody loves marriage. Even homosexuals insist that their friendships are really and truly marriage. They say their adopted children are spiritually conceived between them. 

Millions of people also say their living together without the benefit of a church or civil wedding is just like a marriage. When they separate they sometimes sue each other as if they had been married; and then the judge throws them out for wasting the court’s time. 

Although most people insist upon the right to divorce – as if there is such a thing – they don’t usually get married with the intention of divorce. So almost everyone agrees that marriage is the ideal, even when some of them are morally, psychologically, physically, or legally incapable of marriage.

The Church insists upon Jesus’s teaching about divorce because his covenant with the Church is a true marriage. It is not like a marriage; it is the first and the original marriage in which the marriages of men and women share. 

The relationship of husband and wife is created in the image, and becomes the likeness of that first marriage. Jesus is the groom and we are his bride; and he consummates our wedding to him when he gives us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. Our union with the Lord is more than friendship and more than spiritual; it is very physical. We are in him and he is in us, and that bond is indissoluble and irreversible. He is the head; we are the body. No one can pull him away from him. 

And so the union of husband and wife is also indissoluble and irreversible. 

When I was a boy, I often heard amusing stories about marriage. People joked about it because the sacrament seemed as solid and dependable as death and taxes. Sadly, I don’t hear those jokes anymore; perhaps because people have lost faith in what seemed so dependable. There's nothing funny about failed marriages.

Today we have heard the amusing story of Adam’s loneliness and the creation of Eve. But we cannot forget Adam’s betrayal when he said, “The woman you gave me…!” He blamed God and threw his wife under the bus. That insult to God and betrayal of his wife led directly to Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, just as divorce has traumatized billions of children, leading to drug abuse, abortion, and suicide; not has it stopped violence against women.

The Church also remembers another story of love and betrayal. We remember the supreme confidence the Lord put in Saint Peter, and his most solemn pronouncement – …I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church…

But Peter, like Adam, also betrayed the Lord when he swore that he had never even heard of Jesus. Afterward – and even before the trial was over and the Lord had been condemned to death – Peter regretted what he had said. After the Lord was raised up Peter begged himm to forgive him. “Lord,” he said, “you know everything; you know I love you!” 

Divorce has caused endless grief but, like Peter, we can and do repent of our sins. Everyone must confess their part in this tragedy. We are children of Adam and Eve; we have sinned; we and our ancestors have sinned. But we seek and find forgiveness. By God’s grace and mercy, we find reconciliation and healing, and – like our love for God – many damaged marriages are stronger than ever. 

And for that reason, we still believe that marriage is like Saint Peter the Rock: the gates of Hell cannot prevail against it.