Proper 22, Year B: Mark 10:2-16
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
October 3, 2021
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first Sunday together at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. My name is Jonathan Hanneman, and I’m honored to be a part of the impressive history of service to Las Cruces that this congregation has built.
Before we really get going, I’d like to begin by thanking the Search Committee and Vestry for all their hard work and discernment in bringing us together as parish and priest. The calling process is often long, complicated, and stressful for everyone involved, and I can only hope to live up to their trust in me. I’d also like to thank the variety of people who’ve welcomed Shannon and me here and helped us as we transition to this beautiful place.
For a bit of my background, I grew up in Wisconsin, went to school in South Carolina, and have lived in Seattle (more or less) since 2003. I say “more or less” because I spent one of those years teaching conversational English in China and—more recently—three years studying for the priesthood at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. Prior to seminary I spent more than a decade working in nonprofit administration and communications. Shannon and I just closed on a house here on Tuesday and began moving in on Thursday. Things are still pretty messy, but our two rescue dogs are very much enjoying having a yard for the first time.
I’ve been actively attending church all my life, worshipping and serving in a variety of congregations and denominations. When I was still quite young, I became interested in church leadership, but I never really felt comfortable accepting that role until we joined the Episcopal Church.
One of the things I like about the Episcopal Church is how we follow the Lectionary, working through most of the Bible over the course of three years. Unfortunately, while the Lectionary is great for planning, sometimes the chosen readings can be a bit of a bummer, and today just happens to be one of those days.
The first half of our Gospel has caused a huge amount of pain in the history of the Church. For centuries, people have taken Jesus’ statement about divorce as a way to control, shame, and even abuse others who are already hurting. Some denominations combine these verses with others to deny leadership roles to certain members of their congregations. In others, longstanding tradition also partially built on this passage means that faithful Christians have been denied access to communion. But rejecting people has never been part of the call of Christ, so if you’ve been through or are currently in the midst of a divorce, please know that God still loves you. No one in Heaven or on earth is trying to bar you from either the Eucharist or God’s presence, and you are fully welcome to serve with us here and to join us at the Lord’s Table.
One problem we have in approaching this passage is that divorce in the ancient world doesn’t carry a one-to-one relationship with divorce as we understand it in the modern Western world. In the United States, marriage is generally focused around the formal, legal relationship between two independent individuals. We sometimes talk about marriage as the joining of families, but in our highly mobile culture, that’s far less true than in was in Jesus’ day. Shannon and I have been married for 12 years. While her parents and my mom get along fine when they see each other, they live on opposite coasts and have met maybe half-a-dozen times since our wedding. If something were to disrupt our marriage, they would undoubtedly be upset, but it wouldn’t really affect their relationship with one another—they barely have one in the first place! The worst that would happen between them would probably be on the level of not sending each other Christmas cards anymore.
But ancient marriage was significantly more complex. The focus was less on the two individuals beginning a life together and more on the restructuring of relationships among families and the broader community. It involved financial issues far beyond the negotiation of dowry, sometimes entwining or disrupting wealth and generational inheritance among whole clans. Marriages were sometimes arranged to prevent further conflict between families or to cement political and military-type alliances among nearby people groups. So in Jesus’ day, divorce didn’t simply disrupt the connection and commitment of two people. It could completely shatter the political alignments, economic wellbeing, and long term stability of anything from a neighborhood to a broader region.
So there’s a lot more going on behind this conversation than we’re likely to hear or read with modern ears. When the Pharisees stop to ask Jesus about divorce, they aren’t simply focused on the challenges that arise between two people. They’re questioning the foundational structures of society, openly wondering whether the desire or whim of an individual should take precedent over the needs of an entire village, town, or even a country.
Jesus’ response, then, has nothing to do with our modern understanding of dissolving an interpersonal covenant or contract. It’s focused on maintaining the safety, stability, and harmony among entire groups of people. His answer has little to do with divorce as we understand it. What he’s talking about is the submission of the self’s desires to provide for the health and unity of the whole. It’s about an individual setting aside personal interests in order to faithfully and lovingly commit themselves to the good of all those with whom their lives connect.
That said, please note that I’m not suggesting anyone remain in a harmful or unsafe relationship simply for the sake of maintaining a veneer of peace or harmony. In real life, bad things happen, and sometimes one or both partners genuinely need to escape what has become a bad relationship. If you find yourself in that type of situation, please do seek help, both physical and emotional.
Coming back from that aside, in some ways, you could say we’ve been watching this individual versus group conflict play out in real time over the past year-and-a-half through worldwide responses to the pandemic. Which is more important: my rights as an individual or the safety of everyone around me? As Americans, we do have certain rights and freedoms, and we tend to hold those privileges very dear. But as Christians, our responsibility to respect God’s image in one another will always override individual comfort, preferences, or desires.
Please note that I’m not interested in promoting any particular group’s political agenda here. My responsibility as a preacher is to apply the Gospel to our current lives as best as I can, and not everyone will agree with me at any given time. And that’s okay. Frankly, it may sometimes be your responsibility to disagree! Many of the churches I attended before coming to the Episcopal Church demanded uniformity of thought and action in all areas of life: religious, philosophical, social, and political. So one of the things that intrigued me when I first started becoming involved in the Anglican tradition was the freedom I had to think differently than the people sitting beside me. Previously, I had always been taught to approach the Bible in a strictly literal fashion, and that way of reading didn’t necessarily match up with the way the Holy Spirit was actively leading that parish. However, although I sometimes questioned what my fellow parishioners might say or do, I was still able to worship alongside them, singing the same songs, praying the same prayers, and honoring the same God.
My hope here at St. Andrew’s is that we can provide that same type of safe space. No single person can claim to have the fullness of God’s perspective, and the things that make us different—the same things that sometimes threaten to divide us—are exactly what allow us to more fully explore and implement the Reign of the Heavens. We’re each different people coming from different backgrounds. But if we can approach our differences with an attitude of curiosity and love, trusting the Spirit to direct us not only as individuals but as a church community, hopefully we’ll be able to maintain unity of purpose within diversity of interest, thought, and action.
As Christians, we strive for unity not simply because of tradition or to maintain a fragile peace in a volatile society but because unity is a core aspect of the Gospel itself. Jesus repeatedly encouraged his followers to maintain harmony and to keep working together, and the epistles echo that same theme time and again. As I said earlier, Jesus isn’t responding to the Pharisees’ question about divorce in regard to the legal relationship of two individuals. He’s using the opportunity to talk about people’s responsibility to one another within a broader society. The Pharisees are asking whether or not one person should pursue their individual interest at the expense of the safety and unity of the entire community. Jesus responds with the encouragement to stick with one another despite difficulty and disagreement, to voluntarily set aside one’s own desire for the good of the others.
God has brought all of us here together today through common yet miraculous ways. Whether your family has lived in Las Cruces and attended St. Andrew’s for generations or, if like me, you’re just getting to know the town, your fellow parishioners, or even the building, God has determined to connect us as family in Christ. So within our combined hopes and dreams and through our differences and diversity, let us strive for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
“…what God has joined together, let no one separate.”[1]
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.