Sunday, February 16, 2025

Divorce ( & Marriage)

Preached at St Mary the Virgin, Little Burstead @ 10:30 on 16 February 2025

Title: Divorce (and Marriage)

Purpose: To look at Jesus’ teaching on divorce

Reading Matthew 19:1-12; Genesis 2:18-24

Prayer

Introduction

The main reading set for today is from the Gospel of Matthew and is about divorce. Some of the disciples who were with him found what He was saying hard to accept. Some of us may also find what is said hard to accept or difficult to hear – they are not the same thing. Before we can understand what Jesus was saying about divorce, we must first look at what the scriptures say about marriage.

Male Oriented

This whole discussion is very male oriented. That is because women had very few rights in Jesus’s time. A wife was very close to being a husband's possession. It was the man’s responsibility to find a good woman and make a family.

As the old joke goes:

God said a good woman would be found in each of the four corners of the Earth

Then God made the world round.

Marriage

Purpose of marriage

God, did not, of course, say anything remotely like that at all. We heard, in our Old Testament reading what God did actually say. The woman was created as a companion for the man because it was not good that he was alone.

From that and other passages in the Bible, we can see that marriage is more than a social construct; it is a divine institution ordained by God. It serves several purposes in God's grand design:

Companionship: Marriage provides companionship and emotional support, reflecting God's desire for us to experience meaningful relationships.

Partnership: Husband and wife are called to be partners in life, working together to fulfil God's purpose and steward His creation.

Procreation: Marriage is the context for raising and nurturing children, ensuring the continuation of God's creation.

Sanctification: Through the challenges and joys of marriage, individuals grow in character, learning to love selflessly and sacrificially.

Marriage is the expected way to live

In Jesus’s time marriage is still the normal way to live. A young man’s parents would be expected to find him a suitable bride and have him married and let him established in his own household before he became properly mature – say 30 years old.

Bachelor

It is interesting to note that the word bachelor is not found in the Bible. There are however a few references to staying single – and we will look at that later.

Divorce

The basic laws of divorce are found in Deuteronomy chapter 24. These are the words that the Pharisees are referring to:

¹If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, ²and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, ³and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, ⁴then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord. Do not bring sin upon the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

Protect the woman

The certificate of divorce was designed to protect the woman, who would otherwise have been left in a kind of limbo, rejected by her husband and unable to take another husband because she would still seem to be married. She would then have had to rely on charity to survive.

Divorce - controversy

Divorce is a hot topic in 1^st century Jerusalem. What exactly is meant by “displeasing” and “indecent”? There were two schools of thought, each championed by a particular Rabbi.

The school of Shammai, argued that divorce was permissible only in cases of adultery. Now, you will say to me, that the penalty for adultery is death by stoning, and that is true. However, by this time the death penalty was rarely, if ever, used in these cases.

The school of Hillel, held a much broader view—allowing for divorce on almost any grounds, even trivial matters – and some of the grounds that he accepted were genuinely trivial – a burnt meal, or perhaps he just didn’t like the look of her any more and wanted to trade her in for a better looking model.

Pharisees Trap

When the Pharisees approached Jesus, asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” They were really hoping that Jesus would align himself with one of these schools of thinking. That way they can cause controversy among His followers, and hopefully a split. Jesus is, of course, too clever for them and goes back to the purpose of marriage, which we have already discussed. He reminds them that Moses permitted divorce, not commanded it, and that any divorce is not what God intended in the beginning.

One reason only

So, Jesus tells them that there is only one ground for divorce:

⁹“I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Disciples Reaction

The disciple's reaction is interesting. They are mostly young, not-yet-married men. That puts them in their late teens to early twenties. Their reaction speaks volumes about their attitudes.

“If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

Which means they are thinking, ‘If I can’t divorce the woman because I want to, I would be better off not marrying at all.’ It seems that they are not prepared to give up their control over any marriage they may eventually have. To contemplate living without a partner is unusual in our world, but in theirs it is unthinkable. If they were to try it, they would come under a lot of pressure from their families.

Jesus answers them by talking about eunuchs. Here eunuchs refers to men that cannot, or will not be able to father children. So, some are made eunuchs by others – like those who look after the king's harem. Some are born eunuchs and are unable to procreate, and some choose that lifestyle. Although they could father children, they choose not to. This may be because they are, for example, dedicating their lives to building the church of God.

Divorce Today

Let’s get back to divorce, as that’s the main topic of this sermon. Divorce today is very different from divorce in Jesus’s day. Here the sexes are on an equal footing. Either a woman, or a man, can petition for divorce. While we should not presume to go beyond scripture, some other grounds for divorce in a Christian marriage are often suggested: spousal abuse (emotional or physical), child abuse, addiction to pornography, drug / alcohol use, crime / imprisonment, and mismanagement of finances (such as through a gambling addiction).

There were 80,057 divorces granted in England and Wales in 2022, down almost 30% from the previous year. The most common reason for the divorce is ‘unreasonable behaviour’.

Conclusion

So, as I finish, I’d like to remind you all that the perfect marriage does not exist. Difficulties will always arise. Life throws curveballs, and sometimes couples face immense challenges. But the ideal, the goal, is a lifelong commitment, a reflection of Christ's unwavering love for the church. The practical application for us today lies in understanding the gravity of marriage vows and striving for reconciliation and forgiveness within the marriage. Before considering divorce, we must exhaust all avenues of seeking God's guidance and support, including prayer, counselling, and seeking wisdom from trusted mentors within the church. Divorce should be a last resort, not a quick fix for marital difficulties.

Let us remember that God's grace is sufficient, even in the midst of brokenness. He offers healing, restoration, and hope, even when our circumstances seem insurmountable. Let us approach marriage with reverence, commitment, and a willingness to work through challenges with God's help. Let us pray for strength, wisdom, and understanding for ourselves and especially for those facing marital struggles.

Amen.

Monday, January 27, 2025

The Nazareth Manifesto

Preached at Christ Church, Billericay on 26 Jan 2025 at 10:00

Recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaHtGFPbsS8 from 18:25 to 34:25

Introduction

Well, that’s a very odd place to stop. It’s as if there was a second part of the drama coming tomorrow. Here’s what happened next:
21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. 23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your home town what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his home town. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30, But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Reaction: Good, then bad

As you have heard, the initial reaction was good – everyone was amazed at his gracious words. Then Jesus notices a change in their mood, they start to question who He is – “He’s Joseph’s son isn’t he?”. Jesus’s response is to tell them that a prophet is never accepted in his home town. Then, to make it worse, He uses two examples where prophets were sent to foreigners. Both Elijah and Elisha, two of the greatest prophets, were sent to people who were in the pagan nations around them. That, I suspect, was too much for the crowd. They are very happy to receive God’s blessings from the prophet speaking in front of them, but they cannot accept that the gentiles would also receive God’s blessings. Those people, after all, are supposed to receive God’s wrath.

The Nazareth Manifesto

These few verses, where Jesus reads selectively from Isaiah, are often called “The Nazareth Manifesto”. That’s because they sum up very nicely what Jesus will do in the rest of His ministry. In a moment we will look at each of them individually, but first it's worth going to the passage that Jesus selected and to read what’s there for ourselves.

What’s Out - vengeance

The reading is from Chapter 61 verses 1 & 2.
1 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
… and it goes further, but Jesus has already stopped quoting this part of the scripture. It is interesting to note that Jesus didn’t talk about vengeance at all, that he stopped, part of the way through verse 2, before that phrase. He’s preparing them, very subtly, for a change in the way that God will deal with them. He knows, that He will, after some time, give up His life for them and take the vengeance that they are due, on Himself. So, here, He doesn’t have to bring it up.

The manifesto is for us too

The manifesto is not just for Jesus’s ministry, it is for ours too. As His followers, we have to find ways to put the manifesto into practice in the world we live in today. As we look at these 5 points, try to think of other or better ways that we can make this manifesto work.
Here are the 5 main points:
    1. good news to the poor
    2. freedom for the prisoners
    3. recovery of sight for the blind
    4. set the oppressed free
    5. the year of the Lord’s favour

5 Manifesto points

1. good news to the poor

Good news to the Poor.
The poor are those who don’t have enough, they are the helpless, who have to rely on the rich and powerful, or the government, for their existence. The poor can also be the poor in spirit, as Matthew 5:3, tells us. These are those who have to rely on God for their spiritual well-being – which I might suggest is all of us [Get Agreement?]. The good news is God’s message of redemption and forgiveness of sins through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The root word in the Greek for good news is where we get our word evangelism. Jesus though went further than simple proclaiming the good news, he fed the poor, - for example in the feeding of the 5000.
As His followers, we are called to help the both the physically poor and the spiritually poor. Can you think of ways that we do that, or could do that better than we do now?

2. freedom for the prisoners

Freedom for the prisoners.
This seems to go against justice, and I can’t think of any prisoners released by Jesus. Except Barabas, but that wasn’t strictly by Jesus, more because of the crowd and the Romans. We wouldn't want someone like him on the streets, would we.
There are two possibilities. Firstly, it was common practice to throw people into prison if they could not pay their debts. We don’t do that any more, but we do have charities like CAP that will help people in debt to pay a reasonable amount of what they owe in a structured way.
The other possibility is that Jesus is being metaphorical. If that is the case, the prisoners would be those enslaved to sin in various ways – through substance abuse, addiction, bad habits, selfishness – the list goes on and on. We know that the Holy Spirit can release people from addictions – read “Chasing the Dragon” for a good example of that. We know that God can release people, and that He uses us to help with those changes.
Can you think of ways that we do that, or could do that better than we do now?

3. recovery of sight for the blind

Recovery of sight to the blind.
We know that Jesus cured blind people, there’s an example in John 9:6-7. So this part of the manifesto can be taken literally. There is also a spiritual component. Many in our world today cannot see the gospel for what it is. It is becoming harder for them as we hear of more and more cases of abuse perpetrated by church leaders who should be able to be trusted. Jesus frequently said that He is the light of the world.
Can you think of ways that we help people to see, both physically and spiritually? Can you think of ways that we could do that better than we do now?

4. Set the oppressed free

Set the oppressed free.
Jesus’s hearers would, no doubt, immediately have thought about their Roman occupiers, and being freed to rule themselves. Oppression is defined as being “governed in an unfair and cruel way and prevented from having opportunities and freedom”. We know that there are many people in the world today that live in those circumstances. Many Christians around the world, work for Human Rights, freedoms and human flourishing.
People are also oppressed by sin, and Jesus can provide freedom from that, just as He will provide freedom from unfair government.
Can you think of ways that we bring freedom to the oppressed? Can you think of ways that we could do that better than we do now?

5. the year of the Lord’s favour

The year of the Lord’s favour.
Every fiftieth year was a jubilee year. The rules for jubilee are set out in Leviticus 25:8-55. In summary any land that is sold is recovered, and anyone sold into slavery is freed. It’s an economic reset because everything they have – the land and all that is on it and all the people belong to the Lord.
Jubilee is clearly impossible while the Romans are in charge.
The jubilee teaches us that the constant acquisition of wealth and the establishment of a super-wealthy class is not a biblical concept. Instead, we must try some form of re-distribution. In the past, this was achieved to some extent by the super-wealth building hospitals and libraries. That doesn’t seem to happen today.
This is perhaps the hardest of the 5 ideas for us to enact. Can you think of ways that we can bring jubilee?

Conclusion

Jesus announced his manifesto in his home town. The announcement was well received until he stated that God’s love and healing power is available to the gentiles as much as it is to the Jews. The manifesto is revolutionary in its own right, and it is our manifesto too. As we have declared ourselves His followers, we have no choice but to follow where He went. So let me leave you with some summary questions.
Can you think of ways that we are implementing the Nazareth manifesto? Can you think of ways that we could do that better than we do it now?
Amen.