What God has joined together no human being may separate. I say these words at every wedding I do. They were probably said at your wedding. Like many words we hear all the time, we tend to take them for granted. Today, we get the context of where they come from, though, and it’s possible that hearing the context they will make us a little uncomfortable. Because today we are back in touch with a Jesus we don’t know how to deal with — the uncompromising Jesus.
He is asked a question about whether divorce is possible, since under the law of Moses it was very possible, especially for a man, and what he seems to be doing is doubling down, raising the standards impossibly high. He makes it sound as if there can never be recovery from divorce, it’s a permanent ongoing failure, and maybe if you’re sitting here having been through a divorce, that’s not something you can sit and listen to impersonally. In fact, there are probably plenty of people who aren’t here today who have gotten that message on what Jesus or his church think about their divorce. So today we have to decide, what do we do with this uncompromising Jesus who seems to be so inflexible and even unforgiving about something so many of us deal with?
The first thing we need to remember is that marriage was not the only area in which Jesus gives us what seem like impossible and uncompromising standards. Just last week, he told this that nothing can stand in the way of our relationship with God, that anything that keeps us from seeing that we belong to God needs to be cut off, even if it’s our hand or our eye. There’s more. He asked us to distance ourselves from all money and possessions, he said there is no way to serve both God and the things we own, ever. He told us that every time we neglect anyone that the world has cast aside, anyone, every single prisoner or refugee or victim, we are neglecting him. And even forgiveness itself there is no compromising on, Jesus says there is never a place where you can draw the line on forgiveness and say, sorry, not again, or not this.
We can’t take all these impossible assignments and just write them off, and say that’s the way people spoke back then, Jesus was exaggerating just to make a point. But he was making a point. And the point is this: Christians shouldn’t live like other people. We should have a different standard for everything we do, and let’s not call that standard perfection, because too often perfection means to us a life avoiding getting your hands dirty. It’s a standard centered on other people and the relationships we’re supposed to have with one another. That is the Kingdom of God Jesus keeps talking about, where relationships among people are completely different from the way most people manage them. In that kingdom, married couples have a vocation to one another and to their children that when it breaks does so much damage, is so harmful to people, that we and they need to do everything we can to preserve it. It isn’t always possible, but that’s why we want it. Because it protects the vulnerable. Before Jesus, under that law of Moses, women could be divorced by a man for almost anything, without regard to the relationship or the woman or the children. Instead, God wants us to live in environments that provide support and protection for people who are the most vulnerable, to never put ourselves in a situation where we are harming that. Their needs come first. Otherwise, we’re just in a world where the strong win and the weak suffer, the way they always do. That is what Jesus can’t stand. That’s why he can’t compromise.
And all this list of things that Jesus wants us never to give in and compromise on, not just marriage but all of it, we have to admit that we all have our own way of failing at one of them, or maybe more than one. That’s what unites us together here, is that fact. Maybe it’s even the reason we need to come here. Even those of us who have been married successfully for decades probably have something else in our lives that is not measuring up to what we’re called to. We fail for all kinds of reasons, due to circumstances we can’t control, and we fail because we forget, or we put other things first. I mean, putting the vulnerable first always? Most of can’t accomplish that. Even our church needs a rebuild because of how poorly it has done in this area.
So what do sinners like us do with this uncompromising Jesus? There are two ways we can respond. We can let this bring out the worst in us. We can give up since we feel like failures, we’ll never meet the standard. Or we can sit in judgment of others who we think have failed at something that is clearly much more spectacular than what we’ve failed at. I’m sure you’ve seen that one in operation.
But the alternative is to let these high standards Jesus sets bring out the best in us. Because we fail is no reason not to begin where we are. Because others have failed is no reason not to meet them where they are. Despite the way Jesus sounds to us in these readings today there is a depth to the relationship we have with God, there is a depth to the desire God has for that relationship, that just overcomes everything, even our failure. Our failures and imperfections don’t do anything to God’s love for us. The child that Jesus invites forward at the end of this gospel reading and says “be like this child,” that child is us, too, the way God might see us, free of baggage, ready to begin, knowing that we’re protected by a God who loves us. And in the end, don’t we really want this world Jesus is offering us, where people of privilege and status are not always the winners, where the people who need help and protection are the ones who come first? If that’s what we all want, it only works if every day, we all decide, in our own way, to ask God to be with us, as we start again.