Prayers for the Brokenness

 

Are you still reading Morning Meditations this week?  I fully understand if you are thinking, “No thanks, Wes.  I’m watching adorable cat videos”.  Afterall, we would rather see Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as good advice for someone else, than a gospel medicine we need to take to heal our wounded, broken souls.   But since we are still slowly trying to trudge with the holy messiness of this Sermon, let’s turn to the next two verses:

 

³¹ “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ ³² But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

 

Take a deep breath.

 

Pray with me: Too often, O God, we have taken Your wisdom and buried Your love with our human bias.  We have used Your words of liberation as a way to keep people in bondage.  I pray especially for my sisters in faith who have been told to stay in abusive relationships because of these two verses.  I pray for people who have left the church because pastors have quoted these words as justification for pouring salt in heartbroken, honest woundedness.  I pray for the ways we idealize marriage like it is supposed to be some Hollywood movie rather than the messy, human-size relationships that take our heart, souls, minds, and whole lives to explore.  For those who ache because of these verses, I pray for Your love to be felt in real ways.  For those who are angry, help me hear the hurt with open heart.  For those who have left the church behind because of these verses, I ask for forgiveness and openness.  God of healing, hope, and love let my words be inspired and infused by You.  Amen.

 

I don’t know why Jesus said what he said above.  I mean I could tell you about the two Jewish traditions/interpretations in Jesus’ day ~ one that was more conservative on divorce and one that was very lenient (saying that if a wife burnt her husband’s bread, he could divorce her).  But information doesn’t automatically lead to transformation.  Whatever emotions these two verses stir up, whatever is in the cobwebbed corners of your shy soul is part of your experience and needs expression.  I cannot resolve or reconcile the hurt you absorbed from church in the past.  I can’t rewind time.  I know that in twenty plus years of ministry, never has a couple come to me before a divorce.  I could again point out that the onus and obligation is on the male here, but sometimes the brokenness (like Humpty Dumpty) is too much.  I feel grief for the damage done to couples who are struggling in relationship.  I grieve those who will never come to church because of these two verses.  I pray that God’s grace and love might help us as a church, as a people, start to find ways to both shine a light on the harm and start to discuss what the sexual ethics are in these days.  May the light of God’s love surround and sustain and saturate all our human-size lives.  Amen.