Life in the Family of God          Mark 10:2-16     Pentecost 20b         October 8, 2006

When I hear this text today, I think first of a commercial on television for Win Star Casino. It pictures a beautiful church wedding with an attractive bride and handsome groom standing in front of the preacher who is reading their wedding vows. Then the camera turns to include an attractive bridesmaid standing next to the bride, who is making seductive eye contact with the groom. The bride frowns at her bridegroom, an elder woman in the congregation stands and says, “I’ll bet a hundred dollars that they won’t make it a year.” Then the preacher says, “I’ll take a piece of that,” and then chaos breaks out when everyone at the wedding joins in the discussion.

This commercial is funny, but it makes light of the church and God’s gift of marriage. However, it does illustrate that a marriage will not last if feelings change, when someone else looks our way. It shows that we live in a culture that says our feelings trump our commitment in marriage. I wonder where that belief came from?

Rev. John McCard, an Episcopal Priest featured on the Day One Radio program says he generation learned on Star Wars. You remember Star wars don’t you? What I remember was the greeting they gave one another, “May the Force be with you” it sounded so Lutheran. I felt like saying, “and also with you.”

McCard wrote, “As a highly impressionable 12 year old with a passion for science fiction and fantasy, I had never seen anything like that first <Star Wars> movie. The music was stirring, the villains were scary, and the good guys struggled against odds that seemed overwhelming. .... there was something, something about George Lucas' vision that captured my imagination, and like the secret decoder rings of a previous radio generation, I couldn't wait to buy my first light saber.

Now if you have seen the original movie, you might remember a key scene when Alec Guiness is trying to teach Mark Hamill <Luke Skywalker>to use the force. Guiness' character, Obi Wan Kenobi, says ...  "Your eyes can deceive you, Luke. Don't trust them. Stretch out with your feelings."

I have always been a fan of Star Wars, but I have never trusted Obi Wan's emphasis on trusting your feelings when choosing a partner or mate. Feelings can be taken over by our impulses. If anything, listening to our intuition is helpful in making many decisions, but marriage and dating is not one of them. I’m not sure if intuition is the same as feeling. In either case, our intuition and our feelings are clouded once we feel the heat of our personal desires.

There is a higher moral authority than trusting our feelings when the sacred space of marriage. I first experienced this from watching my parents who remained in their marriage no matter what their feelings were. It also came from confirmation class, where I learned Martin Luther's Small Catechism. Martin Luther wrote, "We should fear and love God that we may lead a chaste and decent life in word and deed, and each love and honor his spouse." Notice Luther didn’t include an escape clause if feelings changed.

I know it might be tempting at times to listen to Obi Wan and trust our impulses feelings. But feelings change all the time, especially in marriage. Statistically speaking, about ½ of the marriages will end in divorce. The sadder thing is, the divorce statistics for committed atheists are better than those for Christians.

Our first reading from Genesis and the reading from Mark’s gospel tells us that from the very beginning, God gave marriage as a gift to humanity to establish families where children could flourish. The gift of being a man and a woman together in marriage is a sacred gift. This is a Biblical principle that Jesus recognized.

When the Pharisees asked him about divorce, Jesus asked them, what did Moses teach them? Moses by necessity offered a process of divorce as a concession in his male dominated culture because of our hardness of heart, and that’s what makes most divorces so ugly and divisive, filled with animosities.

For example, on Thursday, our local news was filled with coverage of a man of nearly sixty years old who held a 4-year-old hostage in a standoff with police SWAT Team. He was angry because she cut off her the relationship with him. Most divorces include bitter divorce disputes over custody and property issues. That’s the hardness of heart that Jesus was talking about. When we do see a civil end to a marriage, it is something rare.

So how can we overcome the hardness of heart that comes with divorce? We can bathe ourselves in the water of God’s love, mercy and grace. Wrap our minds around this principle, Love changes people, and God’s love changes hard, fractured hearts with hearts that are beating with health.

For those of us who are living in a house formed my marriage, there is good news. We can have stronger marriages and better relationships when we return to our roots in the covenant of Baptism. In baptism, God makes a declaration establishing who we are and where we belong. God declares that we belong to the kingdom, and Jesus is our king. He gave himself on the cross to forgive our sins, and sets us free to live in a covenant with God that begins in this life and continues for all time. There is nothing in all creation that can separate us from God’s love.

Because God loves us, God hates hard hearts, divorce and all broken relationships. From the beginning of the salvation story, the evil one is constantly trying to seduce us like the snake in the garden seduced Eve. That snake told Eve that God really didn’t love her or Adam because God was afraid that they would eat the apple and become like God. We can learn from many other biblical stories where marriages are involved.

Now for those whose marriage is not healthy, talk with me or the pastor who married you. If there are issues to work on, he or she will recommend counseling or therapy. Good marriages take work. The work is in listening, clarifying, and forgiving. I highly recommend Lutheran Marriage Encounter for all married couples.

Now for those of us who have lived with the pain of divorce, first recognize that divorce is sin. Sin is any broken relationship between us, which is also a broken relationship with God. But living in a destructive marriage is also a sin. The good news is that repentant sinners are forgiven first by our baptism, and then by daily repentance.

Jesus spoke against those who marry a second or third time because it is very likely that a divorced person will make the same mistake all over again. Repentance in marriage is very rare, but it can happen.

For example, for many years I taught divorce recovery classes. In hearing all the sad stories of divorce, the hard hearts, the sobbing tears. Divorce is painful! I also saw that well over half of them tried to start again. They went back to their estranged wife or husband. One of them had gone back to her estranged husband over 20 times in five years. But almost all of them had to separate again, often after a bitter exchange. The problem was that they feel into the same relationship issues they had before, and it produced the same ugly result. God forgave them, but they didn’t repent.

Repentance means going in a new direction. It’s about an internal change of heart mind and soul about our relationships to God and to each other. A sinner who repents will go and sin no more. They will learn new ways of seeing themselves, and interacting with others. Repentance is an internal change that often leads to the desire for reconciliation.

It’s equally important to understand that reconciliation means a fresh start for those who repent. It’s like going to the bank, and balancing the old account, reconciling all the past deposits and debits. Reconciliation is like starting a whole new account, with a whole new identity as a child of God. We are reconciled to one another by the love we have received in Christ by our baptism.

There was one exception. A couple that had been divorced but wanted to try again for the sake of their children. These two engaged in a arduous process of repentance and reconciliation. They needed put away their old marriage, their old ways of being husband and wife. They both decided to make major changes in their own lives and daily habits. They set new ground rules for their new marriage. They wrote it down in a new covenant, and both signed it. They continued to review that covenant, to confess their sins to each other, and to forgive each other. And their children thrived better in their new marriage.

Repentance and reconciliation is easier for children than it is for adults. That’s because children’s hearts a not as brittle or hard. Immediately after discussing divorce, the disciples tried to turn away those women who were bringing their children to Jesus. In Jesus day, only a man could divorce his wife. That left many women and children out in the cold. But Jesus said, "Let them come," said Jesus. Each of us longs to hear this invitation, but none long for it more than those whose own Father has turned them away.

The good news is that our heavenly Father gave us his own Son Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin and power to live together in the world. Let us approach Jesus’ table like children with our hands held out. When all those promises others have given us turn to lies, when neglect or abuse have rendered our vows meaningless, Jesus invites us to come. When we have good relations and our family is solid, let us come to give thanks to God for the one of the greatest gifts of family. Here we receive forgiveness of sin, and the reconciling power of the Holy Spirit. What God has given, let none of us take away.

Amen