The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY (Retired)
God said, It is not good for man to be alone. The problem was
to find a fitting companion or partner for the man whom God had formed out of
the dust of the earth, and breathed God-life into. The man was not, of course,
God; but because God had breathed some of his own life into the man, he shared
to a limited extent in many of God's characteristics. He could think, instead of
simply reacting to a situation or acting on an in-bred instinct. He could plan,
as God did. He could invent and create, as God did. And, as God is, he is
capable of love, love that surmounts the bare instinct of survival, the lust of
possessiveness.
And so God created numerous types of creatures, and brought them one by one
before the man, the Adam*, to see if any would be suitable. Adam named them as
he looked them over, but none of them seemed adequate to be a partner and a
companion through life's ways. Finally, God realized that the only companion
that would be suitable would be a feminine version of Adam, and so he put Adam
into a deep sleep, extracted a bone, and formed it into Adam's female
counterpart: woman.
When Adam woke, he exulted: Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh...woman!
At last!
The two new humans carried a huge responsibility, although they did not know
it. They had to live into it in order to discover exactly what that
responsibility entailed. It was to show or examplify God's love to the world.
They would find out, in the process of living together, what that meant.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says that God has crowned
humankind with glory and honor, and put them in a position of stewardship over
all creation, a little lower than the angels, responsible to God alone.
That glory and honor is directly related to the fact that God breathed his own
breath, his God-ness, into them, and made them able to create on a limited
basis, and love (which, you recall, is another name for God!) as God himself
loves. But, again, humans are not God, and while we have been gifted with the
attributes of God himself, we do not have the capacity to exercise these
attributes on the same grand scale that God does. We can do so only insofar as
our limited abilities, minds and bodies permit. Sometimes we mis-use our
God-given gifts, including the power to love.
The Gospel shows the Pharisees trying, once again, to entrap Jesus. They
asked a very simple question: Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
You or I might have thought a simple Yes or No
would be a perfectly adequate answer. But Jesus was not fooled. He knew what
they were up to.
If Jesus had answered with the word Yes, he was risking losing many of his
disciples and other followers. John the Baptist had been preaching against
Herod's action of marrying the former wife of his brother. Jesus therefore would
have been seen as going against John's preaching...and about half of his
disciples had come to him from John.
If Jesus, on the other hand, had answered with the word No, he would have
been seen as contradicting the Law of Moses, which permitted divorce.
He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.
And so he turned the question back to the Pharisees: What did Moses
command you?
Both they and he knew the answer. But he had to make them say it, and show
them that what God had joined together (the opposite of taking a bone from Adam
to make a partner for him), man should not divide apart. Man and woman joined
together, you see, demonstrate the glory of God and the love of God, the love
that gives us people to love and to companion with throughout life. And while we
are on the subject, it's worthy to recognize that that word companion
comes from two Latin words that mean to share bread with. Each
time a married couple sit down to eat together, they are showing forth the glory
of God...three times a day, for years and years! They carry on that process of
giving glory to God by living in harmony, revering one another, sharing their
lives, and, if God permits, creating other humans to carry on that love and
companionship with spouses of their own, later.
One of the sad things about our modern cultural ideas about marriage, is that
we usually marry for all sorts of reasons other than that of giving glory to
God. We marry for greed...hoping that the marriage will improve our finances one
way or another; for bodily lust; because all our friends are getting married and
we don't want to be the only unmarried one in our crowd; to gain others'
respect, or envy, or approval; to make someone else jealous; because our parents
nagged us into getting married and settling down to take over the family farm or
business. Most of us, when making the decision to marry, and the equally
important decision who to marry, never give a thought to our
ability to give glory to God through those choices we are making. But making
those decisions gives us an opportunity to do exactly that.
Later on, the Apostle Paul used human marriage as an example to help people
understand the connection between God and the Church...the immense amount of
love that is involved, the mutuality of working together for the common good,
the way we grow together into a stronger and stronger bond simply by loving and
partnering one another in a great work. The Book of Revelation speaks of Jesus
as the Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride, coming to him with joy and love,
to be his partner and his spouse. These are high ideals which the Bible holds up
for us. Perhaps more marriages would be stronger and longer if we thought of
these things when we are making decisions as to whether, and who, to marry.
I think now we see a little more clearly the great responsibility we
undertake when we say those simple words: I do, I will. The Church
is perhaps the only body that will take a man and a woman seriously when they
propose to bind themselves to each other for all eternity, for their own human
companionship, and even more importantly, for the glory of God. Amen.
*adamah is the Hebrew word for man.
