Are you related? Are we related?
We each have our own stories of people to whom we are related—our relatives. For example, I have a distant cousin who played for the Chicago Bulls — with Michael Jordan! And my middle name is shared with two uncles – my mother and father’s eldest brother.
Today’s scriptures are difficult. Though they hold up the gift of relationships—especially marriage and how we relate to creation—some zingers seem archaic, hurtful, or simply irrelevant.
Take the wonderful story about the creation of animals and birds, and the man giving names to them all, but needing a partner—bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. So God performs ]surgery one night on the man, creating a woman from his ribs. Certainly, one gets the sense that marriage is divinely instituted. And the text enforces that God desires that we are not alone. But what about single people? People who wish they were married, but aren’t? People unhappily married or in toxic relationships? Same-gender couples? People who face deep loneliness or live buried in their hidden shame and pain? How are we related to this text?
Psalm 8 talks about human beings having dominion over all creation. Over the centuries this text has been abused. Rather than exercising stewardship of the earth, we have acted as if natural resources, the environment, birds, and animals, are there for our benefit alone. How are we related to this text?
Then there’s the gospel about divorce. One of the hardest passages to read aloud in church. Questions of divorce linger in essentially every family learning that there is no other choice and left with big lingering questions of what about money, custody, housing, and the emotional hurts. We hear the shock, the negative, and the judgment, and can certainly miss any good news or deeper meaning.
In a world where 41% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages divorce, and 73% of third marriages, where questions of gender and sexuality in cultural constructs change across time and geography, in a world of our loneliness and questions of place, we question why even read these Scriptures?
After all, it was the Surgeon General of the country a year ago who declared a public health crisis in our epidemic of loneliness. These difficult texts remind us how challenging us to read the Bible as the Word of God in a context so far removed from its original setting. In biblical times, women and children were seen as property. The family was about economics. There was no such thing as finding a soul mate in marriage. Or sexual orientation as something given rather than an abomination. How many wives have been counseled to stay in abusive relationships because of Jesus’ words about divorce?
Some scholars point out, though, that Jesus is a bit of a feminist, not allowing only men to divorce their wives because they burnt the toast. Or reminding us that other books in the Bible have different takes on marriage and divorce. Or suggesting that though human relationships fail, God’s intent is for us to take seriously our vows and commitments. Or perhaps most helpful, noting that follows the divorce passage is Jesus blessing children, also seen as vulnerable in his time. Jesus is for those weakest in society.
In the news this week was Nibi, the two-year-old beaver who was to be released into the wild this week from a Massachusetts wildlife rescue requiring Massachusetts Governor Maura Healty to set in with a permit to the Newhouse Wildlife Rescue that Nibi could stay at the rehabilitation facility. While returning to the wild was the state protocol, the Governor and state permitting can understand that as the Governor said in the press conference: “We all are social and need our relationships to survive including Nibi”.
Are we related to these texts? Do we relate to them? Does the church, Scripture, and God have anything to instruct or help us in our relationships today? We cannot brush away the hurt, anger, guilt, confusion, or other strong reactions we have to some of these words. Perhaps all we can do is set them next to larger guiding principles of our faith. Such as this: no one enters marriage expecting or hoping for divorce. But sometimes it is the better path for healing. All relationships get strained at times and require forgiveness, grace, practice, and work. Faithfulness comes from God who is ultimately the source of grace and healing.
Women now hold positions of authority in nearly all professions, including ministry. And in the past decades, same-gender couples have been given the right to marry. Our bishop has written a statement of support for the California ballot proposition rewriting the state constitution regarding the definition of marriage.
Are we related? Perhaps that is the best question for the day. The African philosophy of “ubuntu” means we have a shared humanity or translated: “I am because we are.” We are all connected.
We are related. We are one with the earth. We are one with the plants and animals—including the pets in our home. All creatures great and small, especially and sadly those named as extinct in the past week’s news. Saint Francis thought of creation as kin, as family. Mother earth. Brother sun. Sister moon. Christians go so far as to proclaim a Triune God who is relational their very nature.
We are related. It may seem a cliché to say that human beings are made of stardust. And we are meant to be in a relationship—to relate to one another, to the earth, to creation. Though we all face loneliness from time to time and harsh divisions and ending of relationships that we miss, the drive to be in a relationship seems to be wired in us. To be in the community. To find our identity as spouses, lovers, friends, colleagues, parents, children, and relatives. God desires that we not be alone. And despite the failings and hurts that we experience in relationships of all kinds, they are the greatest sign of God’s grace in our lives.
You and I are perhaps not blood relatives or third cousins. But we are related even despite the deep divisions in our country. Perhaps you’ve had the moments too to realize it is a small world in many ways and we are more connected to one another than we realize. We are related to a vast humanity and the stars in the sky. And the wonderful diversity of animals and plants. So let’s bless children and pets and plants and people and families in all kinds of life-giving relationships. For through God’s grace and mercy, they are all blessed kin.
