A Sermon preached on October 4th (Proper 22) at
St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Job 1:1; 2:1-10, Hebrews
1:1-4; 2:5-12, Mark 10:2-16
One of the
greatest sins of a preacher, apart from bad jokes and talking too much about
him- or herself of course, is something called Eisegesis (and perhaps I had
better add using incomprehensible Greek terms to my list of sins). Eisegesis
means reading something into a text rather than what a preacher is supposed to
do, which is Exegesis, reading something out of the text. So the sin is to have
a fixed idea or theme and to preach on it regardless of what Scripture actually
says. As we are celebrating Harvest Festival and the Blessing of the Animals
today and as I want to talk about creation, you might think I am going to be
guilty of the sin of Eisegesis. After all where is that theme in the trials of
Job, in Hebrews’ hymn of praise to Jesus’ divinity and humanity, or in Jesus’
prohibition of divorce in Mark? It is in there, I promise, though it’s not the
only theme, I will admit.
So, let’s look at
the headline topic of divorce for a moment. One thing I will say, playing off
what I said last week, is that I find it more than a little ironic how many churches
and church leaders accept divorce and allow for remarriage, while at the same
time condemning homosexuality and loving, committed homosexual relationships.
They manage to ignore what sounds like a very clear prohibition of divorce by our
Lord in Mark, and in Matthew, and a similar statement by St. Paul in
Corinthians (with some exceptions) and yet manage to find and hold to a
doctrine against homosexuality based on a few verses that are considerably more
obscure – and do not include any teaching by our Lord.
Anyway, in the
passage from Mark, Jesus does his own Exegesis based on Genesis 1:27 “God made
them male and female,” leading him to conclude with the well-known phrase –
which is part of our marriage ceremony - “What God has joined together, let no
one separate." This is a wonderful ideal and it is one we should all strive
to achieve. We should certainly not give up on what God joined together in the
marriage ceremony at the first hint of trouble.
Relationships are worth
fighting for – but not fighting over. In the end however we are human and not
perfect – there is also that little episode of the Fall and the loss of
innocence in Genesis - and so in this as in so many other ideals we fall short
and need forgiveness. Some relationships just can’t go on as they are and need
to be put on a new footing – which may have to include separation and divorce.
And if Jesus’ teaching about adultery sounds harsh – I think we can assume that
it was at least in part a criticism of king Herod’s and Herodias’ marital
relationship, that’s the one that cost John the Baptist his head when he
criticized it.
What is
interesting about Jesus’ high view of marriage, and also relevant for my main theme,
is that he doesn’t base it on the Law, but on the story of Creation. God not
only created things, and creatures, and people, he also created them, Jesus
says, to be in relationship(s). The first human needed a companion, humans are
not solitary individuals. And to be created in God’s image is to be created in
the image of the Trinitarian God, a God of relationships.
Many churches have
started to celebrate not just Harvest Festivals at this time of year – with
their focus on agriculture and on nature mainly as a source of products for us
to use and consume. Instead they celebrate Creation or Creationtide – a whole
season from the 1st September until the 4th October (St.
Francis’ Day). You might have heard that this year the Pope declared Sept. 1st
to be a Day for celebrating Creation. The German churches have done this for
some years now – with a central ecumenical service on the first Friday in
September – next year not far from here in Bingen. And as I was chairing the
meeting at the time, I remember well how all the Anglican churches in Germany
agreed to this initiative, which came from our Orthodox brothers and sisters,
who have always had a high doctrine of Creation. The purpose of Creationtide is
not just to celebrate and give thanks for God’s Creation, without which we
would not exist, but also to remember and remind ourselves of our
responsibility to act as stewards of God’s Creation, most famously described in
Genesis 1:26 as “to have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds
of heaven … and over all the earth.” Psalm 8, from which the author of Hebrews
quotes today, also describes this role:
“You have made
them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have
given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under
their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of
the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”
The translations
“to have dominion,” “to put under their feet,” or in the version we heard in
Hebrews, “subjecting all things,” are all phrases that do not give full justice
to the concept better described as stewardship. According to Genesis 2:15 God
put Adam in the garden to till and to keep it. That’s a much better description,
as unfortunately the words dominion and subjection have proved to be dangerous.
They were and still are used as a justification for the claim that we can do
whatever we want to the environment, to the atmosphere, to the oceans, to the
genetic make-up of plants and animals as long as it serves that other god we
seem to love so much: economic growth and the increase of wealth. Yet as the
Pope rightly pointed out in his recent speech to the UN that is both against
our own long-term self-interest and is wrong theologically:
“Human beings are
part of the environment. We live in communion with it …. Any harm done to the
environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity” “Second, because every
creature, particularly a living creature, has an intrinsic value, in its
existence, its life, its beauty and its interdependence with other creatures.
We Christians, together with the other monotheistic religions, believe that the
universe is the fruit of a loving decision by the Creator, who permits man
respectfully to use creation for the good of his fellow men and for the glory
of the Creator; he is not authorized to abuse it, much less to destroy it.” [1]
This is not a new
criticism. Two thousand years ago the author of Hebrews also noticed and noted that
humanity was not doing a particularly good job with the responsibility for the
world and for one another that God gave humanity at Creation: (Hebrews 2:8) “Now
in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it
is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them,” or being looked after
for with due care and reverence.” No we don’t, the world is still full of
chaos, destruction, exploitation, and injustice – much of it human-made.
So, is all is lost,
must we give up and go home? No, because as the author of Hebrews makes clear, while
humans in general have not done well, one human being did, one human being lives
up to God’s ideal of stewardship, one human being saved the world, and one
human being has empowered us to do likewise: Jesus. “But we do see Jesus, who
for a little while was made lower than the angels,” that is human, “now crowned
with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of
God he might taste death for everyone.” (2:9) Jesus has already attained the
status that God has marked out for humans in general. As our representative he
has done what we could not do for ourselves. This does not relieve us of our
responsibility. When Hebrews says that we have been sanctified by Jesus and
have the same Father, and when Jesus calls us brothers and sisters that means
that our status as sons and daughters of God has been revived and renewed. And
not only has our status been renewed by Jesus, but also our role as stewards.
He is the “pioneer” of our and the world’s salvation and he calls us to love
God and to love, to care for, to respect, and to rejoice in everything and
everyone God has created. Amen
[1]
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/full-text-pope-francis-speech-united-nations-150925174945079.html
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