Approaching Issues Pastorally

The Gospel for this week (Mk. 10:2-16) has always troubled me.  When I was young and my parents had recently divorced, I found it very painful to hear.  I learned two important things from that.  One is that Jesus was more interested in truth than what might hurt someone’s feelings.  The other is to listen more carefully to what Jesus was actually saying. 

I have listened a lot to this particular passage in the last decade because it bears heavily on the pastoral responsibilities of a bishop, one of which is to approve remarriages after divorce.  In that context, too, I have found it troubling as I tried to be a mediator of holy living in difficult and very personal contexts. 

How to handle this particular problem has been problematic to the Church for a long, long time.  Indeed, it seems to have been a problem for the very beginning.  Anglicans, if anyone, should know a little about this.  It has its fair share to do with how we came to be.

Approving of remarriage after divorce is something of a problem because Jesus seems to make reasonably clear that he didn’t approve of it at all.  Speaking to his disciples, he said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”  (Mk. 10:11-12)  The teaching is unequivocal, no exceptions.  And it is harsh.  The law’s penalty for adultery was death according to Leviticus (20:10).  That’s a quotation from Leviticus we hardly ever hear even when we might be quick to turn to it regarding sexuality in other ways.  It is not too surprising that it wasn’t long before the Church began to find the no remarriage after divorce to be a little too tough a standard to live by and start to make some exceptions.  Take a look at Mt. 19:9. 

We have been struggling with this one ever since.  The Episcopal Church began struggling with whether divorced persons were allowed to remarry in 1809.  It became an increasing pastoral problem as divorce became more common and affected more families.  Finally, but not until 1973, remarriage following divorce became universally permissible in the Episcopal Church with a bishop’s permission.  It was entirely a pastoral motivation presented by a new understanding of the pastoral needs of real people for whom divorce was becoming an increasingly more common part of life.  The Church made a pastoral exception to what appears to be the unequivocal teaching of Jesus.  It is very Anglican.  Practically pastoral.  And facing reality with honesty. 

Now, it seems to me, the Church is being called to make another pastoral exception to its theological understanding of human sexuality and marriage.  This time the issue is a little different and has to do with same-gender couples, gay and lesbian couples for whom marriage in the most traditional understanding has not been a healthy or completely honest possibility.  The question before us, I think, is an awful lot like remarriage after divorce.  Will we make a pastoral exception to the traditional teaching?  We can’t pretend we aren’t willing to make exceptions.  We most certainly are, even officially, to say nothing about unofficial actual practices.  In fact, we have been doing it since the very beginning.  Straight people have made a giant exception, directly contradictory to Jesus’ teaching in the New Testament, to benefit ourselves.  The question before us is whether we will have a similar pastoral sensitivity toward others.  It seems to me there are some other teachings of Jesus that might apply to that. 

Peace,

+Stacy