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I was thinking about saving this passage for Thanksgiving Sunday because it has a lot in common with what goes on in the kitchen, around the table, and out on the porch when families get together for big holiday dinners. There’s Jesus in conflict with the Pharisees and talk of divorce. There’s a private discussion going on about adultery. There are people trying to keep the children from bothering the adults, and adults who see the children and just want to love them. I don’t know what you think, but this sounds to me like your typical Thanksgiving Day family get-together for many to most families.
What a good many families call normal for Thanksgiving Day family dinners can be quite an explosive powder keg of a situation. It is quite normal at big family dinners that the same argument that’s been going on for years erupts and someone goes storming off only to return next year to do it all over again. Quite a few of the adults are either going through or have been through divorce leaving the rest of the family feeling like there is somebody missing. There is hardly a family anywhere that has not in one way or another been affected by adultery. And then there are the children. They get together and play and yell and scream. They are the grass that gets trampled when the pink elephants in the room fight.
Thanksgiving Day family get-together’s, they are all about families getting together to be thankful, right? Hopefully, but so often it is the case that holiday meals are the times when the pink elephants that nobody wants to acknowledge are most obviously standing there in the middle of the room or they are being dealt with in accordance with the pain they are causing. Brokenness in families, in our families, is a universal norm. It is the way we are.
Brokenness is what Jesus was pointing at when he speaks of hardness of heart in this dispute about divorce. In our reading the Pharisees come testing Jesus with regard to his regard for the Law and family values. If he says “no, it is not lawful for a husband to divorce his wife”, then he is in disagreement with Moses. If he says “Yes” then they will of course test him further on upon what grounds it is lawful for a husband to divorce his wife. Can a man divorce his wife for burning his toast? Please note that it was pretty near to impossible for a wife to divorce a husband in those days in Jewish communities. Jesus’ answer in its entirety seems to say to the Pharisees albeit in an indirect way “how can you know what divorce is or adultery for that matter so as to make judgments about it when you do not understand what marriage is nor do you understand who your God is who has given us marriage?” To them marriage was simply a matter of law, property, and family alliances and God was simply a law-giving judge who determines what is and is not permissible. The Pharisees did not see marriage as the means God has given humanity for us to realize our created purpose as being created in the image of God, the God who is love.
Now, I would not be stepping out on a limb to say brokenness in families arises from our own hardness of heart in that we too have trouble understanding ourselves as being created in the image of God, the God who is loving. God is the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three persons giving themselves so completely to one another in love that they are one and the same. God created humanity so that we would live in community that is in the image of this loving communion. So, God created us male and female persons. Men and women are pretty much the same stuff, but different. Therefore, humanity has one nature consisting of two persons. Marriage unites humanity into one person and if this union brings forth children by whatever means then there is a third person in this thing we call family and, voila, humanity reflects the triune image of God. We become three persons in community; a family sharing a common bond of love and blood. Thus, marriage is a particular relationship given to serve the purpose of bringing to fullness humanity’s created purpose of reflecting the loving communion of God the Trinity.
Indeed, there is something special about marriage. It is not simply a legal relationship, a contract. Nor is marriage is the logical next step in a romantic fantasy. It is more than two people cohabitating. Marriage is a union of persons that is sacred because God has joined these two persons together into one to bring forth family, the basic unit of human community in the image of God. Marriage and family work best when we love one another as God has loved us in, through, and as Jesus Christ – the selfless giving of ourselves in loving service of one another. If we enter into marriage or bring forth children for any other reason than to help each other live more fully in the image of God then marriage and family will with much futility and sadness augment humanity’s brokenness.
So, what does all this mean for Thanksgiving Day get-togethers? We as individual Christians, as Christian persons in the midst of families, we as Christians who form families, and we as Christians who welcome others into our lives as friends who are family, we have a calling to be a certain way in family and amongst our families. We are those who must love and serve our families with the love of God in Christ. Jesus shows us this with a simple hug and blessing given to children.
I often comment on how God in incomprehensible love has adopted us as his beloved children and this should be our foundational and transforming attitude towards ourselves and everyone we meet. We are all children from the dysfunctional family of humanity who need adoption into a healthy family that loves and serves one another, that communicates, and where each person sees themselves as being put here to help others become the image of Christ which God created them to be. We are those who are to go to our family dinners to be there for others, to lift up the brokenhearted, to support the weak, and help the suffering, and laugh and celebrate with the joyous. We are those who take our family members and friends into our arms in the embrace of Christ, the loving embrace of God the Father for his beloved children with whom he is well pleased and be a hopeful, healing blessing to them. If we ourselves have brought family into this world then we carry the responsibility of making sure our spouses and children know this embrace and that as a family we become a welcoming family who embraces the world with the love of God and is a blessing to it. Go to your families this Thanksgiving and extend to them the healing love, peace, and joy of Christ and be a blessing to them. Amen.
