Pentecost 18, October 8, 2006:

     A dietician was addressing a large AARP convention in Chicago.  She said, “The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago.  Red meat is awful.  Soft drinks erode your stomach lining.  Chinese food is loaded with MSG.  Canned vegetables can be disastrous with loaded sodium and none of us know the long term harm caused by germs in our drinking water.  But there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have eaten or will eat it.  Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?”  A seventy-five year old man in the front row stood up and said, “Wedding cake.”

     I suppose Adam and Eve are the only two people to have had an ideal marriage.  He didn’t have to hear about all the other men she could have married and she didn’t have to hear about how well his mother cooked.  On TV’s Desperate Housewives, the narrator said that the only truly happy couple is the one found at the top of the wedding cake.  They remain happy, said the narrator, because they never have to look at each other.  It is said that love is blind and marriage is an institution.  Does that make marriage an Institution for the Blind?  This could go on all day! 

     Few things in life have been written, debated, and talked about, are now written, debated, and talked about, and probably will be written, debated, and talked about in the future as marriage.  We now face the question of amending our Constitution to show our commitment to and support of traditional marriage.  I would only suggest that every voter read the proposed language carefully and vote your conscience.  I do hope that the next big effort in support of our overall wellbeing will be a constitutional amendment to ban “All-You-Can-Eat” buffets across the land.  As St. Paul said, “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.”

     That portion of the Gospel of Mark appointed to be read today talks about human bonds, about breaking those bonds, and about God’s intentions for us.  Most of us have experienced life as bonding, breaking, and beginning again.  That cycle seems to be a part of who we are and seems to be widely shared in this highly mobile world in which we live.  How we handle bonding, breaking, and beginning again goes a long way in determining our feeling about ourselves, those around us, and the created order.

     So, what bonds do we have?  Of course the first bonds we experience are with the world around us.  The world of hunger, uncomfortable wetness, and the need for physical comfort appear to be the first things to which we bond.  When those things are not met we instinctively let our loud howls.  Modern childbirth methods talk about the importance of the initial bond with mother and father.  It is rather amazing that this crucial step in child development is discussed as if it were a new creation.

     We become aware of our bond with the physical environment.  It is one of our first partners.  Gravity and physical boundaries become allies as we struggle to explore and become comfortable with that physical world.  Those boundaries can pose real dangers if we explore too close to the steps or climb too high on furniture.  But all of those first positive bonds that are a part of our lives are intended to give form and structure, as they provide us a sense of security as we journey through life.

     Those of us in the Christian tradition also become aware of our bonding with Jesus the Christ in our baptisms.  We learn, when we are properly taught, of Christ’s unbreakable bond with us in his obedience to death on the cross.  No doubt, we may very often break the bond but Jesus the Christ, the Good Shepherd, looks for us, finds us, and carries us home again.  On Secret Shepherd Sunday we agree to be the prayer partner with our younger ones and pray that the bond will hold.

     It also seems to be the case that breaking certain bonds is a part of life.  It also seems to be true that pain is always involved in breaking those bonds.  Breaking bonds always carries some corresponding consequence.  Breaking the bond with the natural environment comes with a price.  The continuing pollution of air, water, and land continues.  It will not continue indefinitely without a corresponding consequence to health and life.  It seems a shame that we have allowed partisan politics to enter into efforts to reestablish a bond with our natural world.  We really do have generation yet unborn who must depend on our sense of stewardship.

     The breaking of the bond between parents and children is oft times filled with pain.  Sometimes the child feels that in order to mature and use their God-given wings the bond must be broken.  The reconciliation of such estrangement often occurs when the child becomes an adult and the parents begin to recognize that the relationship must now be between adults if it is to continue.

     We are also bonded as man to woman and woman to man, as “adam” (man) to “adamah,” (woman), as “ish” (male) to “ishah” (female).  It is a bond that appears to be central to our ongoing created order.  It seems to be embedded in the very nature of our created, God-given being.  That bond is what God wants for us, I believe, as the ideal.  The bonding is to be one between equals.  That is true even in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood, where some are fancy on the outside and some are fancy on the inside.  The bond is broken when we attach degrees of human legitimacy to the things that make us different.  God is Christ never allows us to see another human being as an object and less than an equal human being.

     Jesus talked about that intentional bonding that occurs in marriage in today’s Gospel from Mark.  Part of the reason for what he said in answer to the Pharisees was because he was quite aware that women were viewed as objects, as property, in the culture of the day.  Only the man was allowed to divorce and all he had to do was announce in the market square that he was divorced.  Divorced women were very often reduced to a life of begging in order to survive or they were driven to prostitution.  Jesus said what he said precisely because you will find very few people in the history of the world that hold women in such high esteem as Jesus the Christ.

     We know that there are those who have taken this bond, this covenant seriously and still are faced with the fact that a serious mistake has occurred.  We also know that we live in a time when, for many people, divorce is the first option taken at the first sign of conflict and not the final recognition that some living organism has died.  Even after every avenue of possible reconciliation has been exhausted, after two people have given the marriage the best shot they can, the ending is painful.

     I want to be sure not to be misunderstood on this.  There does come a time in some relationships where divorce is the recognition that something has died.  It is not an unpardonable sin.  It is a sign of our brokenness and it does no one any good to say it is painless and right.  The intention of a lifelong union remains and must be held high.  As bad as the breaking of the bond may be, there is healing.  God’s infinite capacity to love and forgive must be shared and assured anytime there is the breaking of a bond.  There is no brokenness that cannot be healed.  Our breaking of the bond with nature, with each other, with basic human dignity, with justice and equality, with freedom itself, are all subject to redemption.

     That redemption means that we may begin again.  Only God’s grace and mercy makes that possible.  The table is set this day with the bread and wine, with the broken body and shed blood of the only one who can mend the broken hearted.  Those elements are to serve as a symbol of the healing that can and does take place in this sinful and broken world.  That cross that God sat in the middle of history can be set in the middle of our broken hearts.  It is precisely that brokenness that allows him to understand ours.  It is what he has done for us that bonds us to him.  He aligns himself with our hopes and fears, with our dreams and nightmares, with our broken places.  It is only by the gift of God in Christ that the broken places are made strong again.  Accepting that truth means we can live power-filled, positive, joyful lives.  Make no mistake!  We are not worthy.  We have been made worthy by his brokenness.  It is an amazing gift. 

     When you come forward this day to receive that broken body and shed blood remember that the bond holds and beginning again is a profound gift of God’s grace.  And this spiritual food is much better than wedding cake.  Amen.