“Go back to the
beginning… how did this all start?” When
something that was meant to be wonderful starts to taste bitter, that can be
just the question to ask. What was it
that so exited me and led me to begin this course of study, to play on this
team, to take this job… to marry this person?
How can I bring that initial fervor to life again, in the more mature
way that’s needed to deal with our more seasoned problems or our creeping
ennui?
“How did
this all start?” That’s the question
Jesus answers even though it’s not the question the Pharisees are asking. They’re out to trick him by making him give
his controversial answer to a legal question.
We think of divorce as a modern phenomenon, but it was reasonably common
at that time, amongst Jews as well as Gentiles.
We’ve found the bills of divorce he’s talking about. The rabbis debated what possible grounds for
divorce could be, and the criteria ranged from very broad, pretty much divorce
on demand, to very narrow, but none of them ever said divorce was never to
happen. Jesus cuts across all these
arguments, not by discarding Deuteronomy (in fact, he explains how it reveals
God’s compassion), but by going back to the beginning, to God’s original
creative act.
He takes
us back to the beginning when all there was, was love. Can you imagine life without time? I certainly can’t, it’s just such a part of
how we process the world that we can’t even think without it. But time was created, time is slightly less
foundational to the really real than love is.
Love is more fundamental than time.
Can you
keep good news secret? If you’re good at
that, I congratulate you, because it’s difficult. We had a saying at university, “a secret in
the Oxford sense,” which meant that you could only tell one person at a
time. Good news seems to have a will of
its own in wanting to get out and it takes well-developed will power to stop
it. God didn’t keep the secret of His
own love; the telling of it was creation.
In a
particularly beautiful way, marriage is part of the original creation, part of
God’s telling of His love. A man and a
woman committing to live their lives as one gives testimony that can be
properly sacramental to the spousal intimacy we’re all called to with God. The love that God is in all its facets is
made visible to the world in marriage: God’s fiery eros that burns for us; God’s familiar friendship that sits ever at
our side; God’s self-giving sacrifice that went to the cross for us. The giver is the gift.
Jesus
brings us back there, because we’re not still in the garden. We do need to be brought back. We get wrapped up in ourselves, in our loftiness
or in our lowliness, and lose sight of that love God longs to sing to us
of. He brings us back, and not just with
words. He doesn’t ‘merely’ remember the
beginning, he re-members the beginning, re-creates, restores. The victorious victim of the cross, Jesus
triumphs over sin and death and restores creation, bringing us back to that
original vision of love. In that
restored creation, marriage can never be broken off because God’s love can
never be broken off.
But maybe
marriage doesn’t feel like a garden to you right now. Maybe it feels more like that cross. Problems or struggles in your marriage, or
that of a loved one; a divorce; or maybe you’d love to be married but despair
of it ever happening. God’s love can
never be broken off. The battle is won,
but we see by dawn’s first light and still long to witness the fullness of
day. It’s not here yet. The road of discipleship Jesus calls us to
walk is hard, and while we don’t all do a good job of showing it, the Church
has compassion for those for whom it’s harder than others, for those for whom
self-sacrifice feels very real and not all that life-giving.
If that’s
you, know that that self-sacrificing Love is there with you; He’s there, on the
cross; He’s there, holding you and loving you; He will bring you home.
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