Delight Makes You Better

There are a few pericopes in the Gospel of Luke where we need to recognize the author, we need to see Luke. The passage we read just now, and the one to follow, the story of Lazarus and Dives, each one is like a signature, or a cameo of the artist. They are Luke being Luke. He has inserted himself into the gospel. Michelangelo did this on the Sistine chapel, he painted himself into the last judgment fresco. Valazquez does the same in his most famous painting, Las Meninas. Luke has, in a fashion, painted himself into our reading today, and in the next.

              Without recognizing Luke there is no way to navigate our reading.  What we just read is four teachings of Jesus Luke has smooshed together.  Or you could say, he has taken four teachings like you take four ingredients to a dish and combined them.  Each is something on its own, but if you combine them, they become altogether different. Like guacamole.  Avocados, jalapenos, onions, cilantro.  Those are the core ingredients.  Separate each is fine but combined with a little salt and lime juice and tomatoes you have something quite wonderful.

              Luke has four ingredients.  God knows your heart; the kingdom of God is taken by force; you can't change the law; and don't get divorced. Somehow these four all hang together, work together and somehow they come as a response to Jesus being ridiculed by the Pharisees and somehow this has to do with loving money.

              If you are confused, this is good.  This should feel like we are in a pinball machine.  We are supposed to be confused, bounced around.  The confusion is how we stop and say, "hey, these things don't go together.  How do you get from God knowing your heart to divorce?"  This is the question of the passage, and it comes from Luke.  I say this because this is Luke's choice, his intent.  These teachings do not hang together, combine, in Matthew and Mark. In one form or another each of the four teachings occur in Matthew and Mark, but only Luke smooshes them together, hence it is his signature as it were.  We find Luke's voice here.

              The best way to navigate this creation of Luke is to work backward.  Don't divorce.  Probably one of the most abused and misinterpreted teachings of Jesus.  And, more importantly, the teaching whose misinterpretation has caused the most pain and suffering.

              One of the most painful moments of ministry for me was listening to a parishioner who went through a messy divorce being asked by her former husband to agree to an annulment so he could be in good standing in the Roman Catholic Church. The request was so awful, so dehumanizing and it came only to satisfy a church and the continual misunderstanding of Jesus' teaching.

              Let me start over here.  I am not for divorce.  I don't rejoice in divorce.  It happens.  Marriages fall apart, marriages should never have been come to an end, people find their soul mate after they marry someone else.  Got it.  But this is not what Jesus is prohibiting.  Again, not any of the above are ideal or a goal we should aspire to.  They happen.  But when Jesus says, don't divorce, you should read, don't discard people.  You should because this is something we all do, sometimes do frequently.  We discard people all the time.

              Divorce in Jesus' day was a discarding of women.  A man, husband, when he divorced a woman, discarded her.  Hence, Jesus is saying, don't throw people away.

              A teaching of Jesus must be about something everyone lives, experiences, and struggles.  Even the serial monogamist who has multiple marriages and multiple divorces, in the bigger scheme of things, will only face the challenge of divorce a few times.  Although divorce is not uncommon, it is not an everyday occurrence.  Doesn't happen twice a week.  And for the unmarried, it is not really an option.  But discarding people, casting them aside, treating them with disdain or derision, or at the very least being ambivalent, this happens a lot, to all of us, sometimes twice a week.

              I remember early in ministry after a worship service, a woman came through the line.  She shook my hand and thanked me for the service and the sermon.  Then she said, because of your sermon today I have decided to divorce my husband.  And then she said, have a good day.

              You can imagine, I panicked.  Spent a good part of the day figuring out who this person was, how to contact her, and get her on the phone all to ask, how did my sermon, which had nothing to do about marriage, how did my sermon convince you to divorce your husband?

              After presenting my frantic question she responded.  You preached about joy.  I realized I don't have any.  My husband and I have grown apart.  We don't love each other.  We cohabitate.  We don't have children.  We share a house not a life.  I don't believe we will ever find joy together.  If I want to find happiness, I need to start my life over.

              I remember thinking, okay.  That is a truly profound, lot of wisdom, courage.  Courage because she said, I don't believe either of us have the energy or strength to start over.  But we need to start over just not with each other.

              Through the years as I have listened to a fair amount of people getting divorced.  Each time I listen to the divorcing, I remember the words of the woman saying, I don't believe we will ever find joy together.  I measure the intent and reasons of others considering her wisdom and courage. 

              Sometimes the measure reveals reasons like betrayal or disdain, sometimes there is abuse and brokenness, sometimes there is just a sense of ending.  This marriage was for a time.  The circumstances are different, but the intent of joy, joy in the future is in there some place.  I am miserable; I don't want to be miserable.  Maybe ending a miserable marriage will help me find joy.

              In 1987 I was terribly confused by the new album of Bruce Springteen, Lucky Town.  It wasn't my Bruce.  I knew the Boss as bombastic and wild and forlorn and, on the run, hungry, sorrowful, sure, but ready to fight, to proclaim.  The Bruce Springsteen of Lucky Town was afraid.  Best example was a song called "Cautious Man."  He sings, On his right hand Billy tattooed the word love and on his left hand was the word fear
And in which hand he held his fate was never clear.
              I knew all the words and sang them quite loudly to The River and Atlantic City and Born To Run and Hungry Heart and Little Girl I Want a Marry You.  These new words were full of caution, trepidation, worry, indecision.  These were not Glory Days Born in the USA. 

              I found an interview he gave about this album and the ones that followed and it was quite shocking.

              He told the journalist, I didn't know what love was.  I got divorced.  And now I do; I found a real love. The shocking part was how much I sang of love with Bruce.  To have him say, he had never really known love made me wonder, do I, have I, am I all wrong like he was?  Made me wonder if I knew my own heart. 

              Jesus teaches, God knows your heart.  I hear people talking about knowing God's heart, or God's will, God's love.  But Jesus doesn't really talk of such.  He does say, God knows your heart and infers, it's not good.  We love the wrong things, trust the wrong things, desire the wrong things.  I believe this is what surprised the Boss, he wasn't the boss of his own heart.

              To truly grasp the middle teachings, the kingdom of God is taken by force, and you can't change the law, I believe we need to remember who Luke was and how he came to write his gospel.  The legend is Luke was Paul's protege, traveled with the least apostle, hung out with him in Ephesus where they met Mary and John.  Luke's gospel is sometimes referred to as Paul's.  I don't think it is.

              One of the first things I did in ministry was to preach through Paul's letters.  Here I discovered the arc of his life, evolution of his theology, but mostly I discovered a strange truth.  Paul really only spoke of and claimed freedom and joy for himself at the end of his life.  He worked and struggled, strove; he was passionate, beaten, mocked; he endured, prevailed, fought and won.  Yet, it wasn't until he was in prison that he found freedom.  I remember being taken by the idea: once incarcerated he was liberated.

              The middle two teachings in this guacamole sort of passage, are about force and power and enduring.  It's all the things Paul did.  Where Luke fits in here, how this pericope is his creation, is how such a way of life leads to disdain, divorce.  Being the one who strives, the ardent voice Paul offered, this way of living leads to broken relationships.  I believe our reading today is the moment where Luke is saying, not a great way to live.  Saw it; don't want it.  Even more, following Jesus, living his teachings should lead you to take delight in life, lead you far from disdain.

              Discovering this as a young pastor was quite liberating.  Came to see how much I equated faith with seriousness, certainty, a willingness to fight and endure and strive.  We just spent nine years keeping our head down, working and working, just barely prevailing.  And then we came to the church, to a parish outside of Columbus, in a farming village, where folks made great pies and loved the Buckeyes and playing euchre.  Here I came face to face with the truth: life is to be lived in delight; joy was the path not the goal.

              In the years following I came to see how important, how necessary it was to know your heart.  God knows your heart, do you?  Do you know what it is you truly desire and is it profoundly good or far from what God would admire?  Is your heart about fear or love? 

              I came to see how much of life was wasted trying to make things go my way, determine how life will be.  The kingdom of God is taken by force, but it is not kept by force.  You can get your way, you can win, but in the end lose all that is good.  The same goes for the way life is.  The law.  Trying to change it; redefine it, make it your will?  This was a path of misery.  The law of the kingdom of God is love.  Love changes you.  You can't change love.

              Yet the greatest truth, why the fourth teaching is such a powerful conclusion, the greatest truth is when you not only resist the temptation to discard people, when you stop throwing them away, when you stop this, but then also start taking delight in people, this is the greatest because to truly take delight, you must know your heart, you must love without coercion, you must love without seeking to change people.  You simply take delight in them.

              Of all the moments in the life of the church when such delight is so clear, so transparent, the greatest moment must be the baptism of a child.  Here we remember, this is my son, my beloved, in him I am well pleased.  In him I take delight.  This is what we are saying of little Peter, you are God’s beloved, you are our beloved, in you we take delight. 

Is this not how we are called to live with each other?  Is this not how we become the image of God?  Amen.