“The servant of the rest”
October 18, 2009, Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Isaiah 53:10-11 Hebrews 4:14-16 Mark 10:35-45

To the churched and unchurched[1]
gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]

Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

Glory to you, Lord.

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do something for us." He asked, "What is it you want me to do?" They answered him, "Grant that when you come into your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left." Jesus said to them, "You don’t know what you’re asking for. Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering from which I must drink? Or be baptized with the baptism of suffering with which I must be baptized? "We can." Jesus answered, “You will indeed drink from my cup and be baptized with My baptism, but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give. Those appointments have already been made.”

When the other disciples heard what James and John had requested they were very indignant. Jesus summoned them and said," As you know, kings and other important people of this world like to lord it over other people. But it shouldn’t be that way with you. Among you, whoever aspires to greatness must be the servant of the rest. And whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all.”

The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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Introduction
A pope who aspired to greatness

On the day of Pope John XXIII’s coronation, Nov. 4, 1958, (popes were crowned in those days), Cardinal Nicola Canali placed a tiara on his head, as he uttered that age-old formula:”Know that thou art the father of princes and kings, pontiff of the whole world and vicar of Christ on earth.” In his homily, however, the new pope carefully pointed out that he had in mind for his pontificate the example of Jesus the Good Shepherd who came not to be served but to serve.” (Jn 10:11; Mk 10:45) The next day John, the "prisoner of the Vatican," put his money where his mouth was and quietly sped out of elaborate Vatican gates to visit prisoners in Regina Coeli prison in Rome, (because, he quipped, they couldn't visit him), and to drop in on aging clergy in nursing homes. Then on his first Holy Thursday, the new pope in the basilica of St. Peter’s revived a long-abandoned ritual: he bent down to wash and kiss the feet of thirteen young priests. With such gestures John announced what would be the tone and tenor of his papacy: he would aspire to greatness by being the servant of all. (Mk 10:43)

A mother who didn’t aspire to greatness

In Mark’s gospel the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, request a favor from Jesus. Some time before, Jesus had promised that when He came into his glory, He would seat his twelve apostles upon thrones, and they would rule the twelve tribes of Israel. (Mt 19:28) Now James and John are taking Jesus up on his promise: ”Lord, when you sit on your throne in the glorious Kingdom, we want you to let us sit with you, one at your right and one at your left.” (Mk 10:37)
In Matthew’s gospel it is not the sons but the mother who’s making the self-seeking request: “Master, my boys have left me to follow You, so be good to us, and see to it that You don’t forget about them when You come into your kingdom." (Mt 20:21) If it is the mother who’s making such a request on her own, then she’s sending a wrong message to her sons. What’s more, she doesn’t have a clue as to where her sons’ (or her own) greatness lies. Jesus puts her and her sons straight: “Among you, whoever aspires to greatness must be the servant of the rest. And whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all.” (Mk 10:43-44)

We recall the insane message about greatness which Wanda Holloway, a Texas mother, gave her daughter. Sorely wanting the girl to get on the cheerleaders’ team, she tried to hire a hit-man to kill the mother of her daughter's cheerleading rival! She hoped that would upset the girl so much she wouldn’t be able to compete successfully. Her insane plot was discovered, she was taken to court, tried and given probation. Her story was made into a 1992 television film entitled "Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story."

The cultural message about greatness exhausts and depresses our kids, drives them to drink and drugs, and even at times to suicide which puts an end to the race for a greatness which they didn’t want to run in the first place. Many sons and daughters, however, just simply grit their teeth, fall in line and join the race to cultural greatness with all the exhaustion, aberration and emptiness it entails. Some wise sons and daughters, however, are impatient with the culture which sends so much message about being a great doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief and cheerleader but so little message about being a great human being by being the servant of others. How utterly counter-cultural that is!

A Samaritan who aspired to greatness

“Whoever aspires to greatness must be the servant of the rest.” That makes no good sense to our me-me-me and man-eat-man culture. That did, however, make sense to a Samaritan. One day a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half-dead. Along came a Jewish priest and Levite who were too busy to stop and serve the poor man. They crossed the street and passed him by. Along came a Samaritan who, though busy, stopped to serve him. He poured the oil of compassion into his wounds, hoisted him on his beast of burden and then hurried him off to the nearest inn where he paid for his care and cure. (Lk 10:25-37)

The sun finally set on that very busy day. The Jewish priest and Levite finally reached home that evening with their important tasks in Jericho successfully accomplished. But the image of the poor man lying by the wayside (whom they did not stop to serve) suddenly flashed across their minds, and an empty feeling came upon them. It was the feeling of one who serves no one but himself. When the Samaritan, however, finally arrived home, though his business in Jericho that day hadn’t gone well at all, a full joyous feeling welled up in him. It was the feeling of one who serves not himself but another.

A Franciscan friar who aspired to greatness

Franciscan friar Fr. Mychal Judge was one of the four chaplains for the New York Fire Department, and the story of his death serving others was one of the first to come out of the tragedy of 9/11. He had taken his helmet off to give the last rites to a dying fireman when suddenly debris came crashing down upon him. He died there on the spot. His body was carried off to a nearby church and was laid upon the altar.

Fr. Judge had an absolutely encyclopedic memory for people’s names, birthdays and passions. He knew everyone from the homeless to Mayor Giuliani himself. A recovering alcoholic, he comforted the city’s alcoholics, assuring them they weren’t evil people, but that they had an illness which needed to be cured. Though he was a true New Yorker, born and raised in the City, he lived on an entirely different plain of priorities than most New Yorkers. He wasn’t acquisitive or grabby. He was utterly unselfish and totally uncomplaining. So when shortly after 9/11 a memorial was held for him in Good Shepherd Chapel on Ninth Ave. (an Anglican church) an endless flow of priests, nuns, lawyers, cops, firefighters, homeless people, rock-and-rollers, recovering alcoholics, local politicians and middle-aged couples from the suburbs converged to pay homage to this man who made himself the “Servant of New York City.”

Conclusion
Servant of the rest

A church aspires to greatness when it serves not its institution (which forbids the ordination of women), but when it serves its people who are in dire need of priests. A nation aspires to greatness when it serves not its politics, but when it serves its 45 million people who are in dire need of healthcare. But we are the church and we are the nation, and if those two aspire to greatness by serving, it is because we first have made ourselves “the servant of the rest.” (Mk 10:43)

[1] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church institution has left!

[2] Acts of the Apostles 17:24

A Camel Passing thru the Eye of a Needle
A Rich Man Who Entered the Kingdom of God

October 11, 2009, Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wisdom 7:7-11 Hebrews 4:12-13 Mark 10:17-27

To the churched and unchurched[1]
gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]

Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

Glory to you, Lord.

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a young man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answered him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother." The young man said to Jesus, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth." Jesus looked at him, and feeling genuine love for him said, "There’s one more thing you must do: go, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven. Then come back and follow me."

At these words the young man’s face fell, and he went away with a heavy heart; for he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God!" His words shocked the disciples, but Jesus insisted, “My children, how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." That shocked them even more, and they asked," Then who can possibly be saved?” Jesus looked straight at them and answered, "Without God it is utterly impossible. But with God everything is possible."

Introduction
A camel or a rope?

Some say that the gospel’s “eye of the needle” refers to a small gate at the entrance of Jerusalem and other cities through which camels and their owners could squeeze, when the city’s main gate had been closed at night. There is no archaeological evidence that such small gates existed.
Scholars offer a better explanation. In Greek (the original language of the New Testament) the word for camel is kamelos, and the word for rope is kamilos. Originally the biblical text read kamilos (rope): “It is easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle.…” In the course of time, however, some transcriber of the bible mistakenly wrote kamelos (camel) for kamilos (rope), and that’s how we got a camel instead of a rope passing through the eye of a needle.
Other scholars point to the fact that all early manuscripts and quotations in the church fathers from the 3rd to the 8th century read kamelos (camel) and not kamilos (rope). Only a few later manuscripts after the 8th century read kamilos (rope). Very probably the earlier reading that has a camel (not a rope) passing through the eye of a needle is the correct one.
At the end of the day, it really doesn’t make much difference; the bottom line is the same: it’s easier for a camel (or a rope) to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. That’s quite a scary estimate that the rich have going for themselves.

Farming out the call to discipleship

Scripture says the rich young man's face fell when Jesus invited him (who had kept the all commandments,) to go and sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor, and then come back and follow Him.” My face, too, would fall at such a sweeping call to discipleship, for it’s very difficult in our society to live without possessions. What’s more, I’m not inclined to give up the possessions that make my life both human and pleasant. I love my car. For years it took me and my dog Simeon at early dawn to Lake Michigan. I also love my TV. It keeps me in touch with the real world where the great debate over universal healthcare and the ‘Public Option’ is presently raging. My TV also helps me escape from the real world by watching the Packers play on a crisp Sunday afternoon in October. I also love my computer. It paves for me an incredible super-information highway right through my study. And it enables me (who was dismissed from a church pulpit) to send homilies flying unencumbered off into cyberspace, preaching to a congregation as numerous as the sands of the sea. So I’m simply not ready to sell all my possessions and give the money to the poor, and it’s easy for me to dismiss Jesus’ sweeping call to discipleship as unrealistic and uninviting.

The sixteenth century Reformers said the Roman Church was too pious to dismiss Jesus’ sweeping call. Instead, it farmed the call out to a few `specialists’ -- to monks and nuns. That, indeed, was clever, the Reformers said, but it created a double standard: a maximum standard for a few chosen ‘specialists’ and a minimum one for the rest of God’s people. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer[3] writes, "God showed Luther through the Scriptures that the following of Christ is not the achievement or merit of a chosen few. It is a divine command to all Christians without distinction."

Possessions as stuff in our heads and hearts

Whether we dismiss Jesus’ sweeping call to discipleship as unrealistic or farm it out to `specialists,’ in either case our face doesn’t drop like the young man’s did; with undisturbed consciences we merrily live our possessions-ridden and driven lives. Or we can try to make sense out of Jesus’ statement that we cannot be His disciples unless we renounce our possessions.” (Luke 14: 33)

It’s the materialistic mindset in us which sees possessions only as things in our hands. Believe it with every fiber of our being, there are possessions which are not things in our hand but rather `stuff’ in our head and heart. Believe it with every fiber of our being, there’s `stuff’ in our head and heart which deserves and demands Christian renunciation far more urgently than anything we can possibly hold in our hand.

There are ideological possessions. We remember because we can never forget the Nazi ideology which proclaimed that only the master race (the tall, blue eyed and blond) had a right to live. That ideology unabashedly ignited the ovens of the Holocaust and turned six million Jews into burnt offerings to Nazism. Now there is an Islamic ideology fiercely raging on the world stage, proclaiming that Islam is the one and only way, and every other way has to go. On 9/11 such lethal ideology brought down the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan and three thousand innocent human beings. That was such a horrific event that time is now dated as Before and After 9/11.

There are theological possessions. These are all `final and never-to-be-questioned’ statements about human sexuality, artificial birth control, homosexuality, divorce, celibacy, ordination of women, etc. Human statements are never final and are always to be questioned.

There are also emotional possessions. You can ask almost anything of us human beings, but don’t ask us to give up our anger, which has us talking angrily to ourselves through months and years of our lives. That kills the human spirit. Or don’t ask us to give up our self-pity, which has us constantly licking our wounds, so that they never heal. That immobilizes us, and we can’t move on with our lives.

Some of our worst possessions are in our heads and hearts, and they, first and foremost, are among the possessions which Jesus says we must renounce if we want to be His disciples.

A long built-up conviction

A woman who came one day to a Sunday Mass I was celebrating (not knowing what she was in for) complained in a letter sent with great dispatch on Monday morning. In part it read,

The faithful have a right to have Mass celebrated in obedience to liturgical
rules and regulations. Among many things, I noticed that you did not give the
prescribed absolution at the penitential rite. You did not recite the Gloria
prescribed for Sunday Mass and you did not read the gospel in its entirety [It
was a very hot summer Sunday]. In the reading of the Sunday scriptures, you took
it upon yourself not to use the masculine pronouns of the approved texts, but
instead to use gender-neutral words. You didn’t take Communion before the people
but took It after the faithful had communicated. Etc.”

This is a much abbreviated list of her complaints. Her letter made me exclaim to myself: “My dear lady, what a long list of possessions you have!” After contending with that frame of mind for a good half-century in the priesthood, there has accumulated in me the strongest conviction that our worst possessions are not in our hands but in our heads and hearts, and that they demand Christian renunciation far more urgently than does my Rav or my TV or my computer or any other thing I possess. The thought that I can keep and enjoy these wonderful possessions lifts my human spirit. But the thought that I have to give up some of the stuff that’s in my head and heart (and which I don’t want to give up) makes my face drop.

Flesh and blood renunciation

We must not, however, spiritualize Christian renunciation to death! At the end of the day, if it’s the real stuff, it seeks to be incarnated. It seeks to be given flesh and blood. It seeks to be poor not only in spirit but also in fact.

That’s what Christian renunciation did for Jerry Quinn. He was a well-to-do man who owned a bar and restaurant in Boston. In the morning newspaper one day he read about the plight of Franklin Piedra, an Ecuadorian, 33 years old, suffering from chronic kidney failure. His mother wanted to give him one of her kidneys. The transplant would cost at least 100,000 dollars, and she had no private health insurance, and there was as yet no `public option’ in place to help her in her plight. The Ecuadorian Consulate suggested that he go home and die.

Quinn, however, had a better idea. “I’m not a very wealthy guy,” he said. “I’m comfortably off, but I got this thing in my life—you can use only one car, you can use only one kitchen, you can use only one bathroom, you can only eat so much. That’s my theory of life. So what more do I need?” Quinn was saving his money for a major down-payment on a two-bedroom apartment in a suburban part of Boston with a river view and all. But another thought kept popping up, and it wouldn’t g away. He called the reporter at the New York Post who wrote the story. He said he wanted to help. She asked, “How much do you want to donate—a hundred bucks? A thousand bucks?” He replied, “I’d like to do the whole thing! The whole $100,000!” After a successful operation Piedra and Quinn met. Quinn said, “He hugged me and kissed me and told me I was an angel. As I thanked him I could feel the shivers going up and down my back.”

Conclusion
A rich man who entered the Kingdom of God

The article doesn’t say much about Quinn himself. Who knows – he might be a devout Catholic, as many Irishmen are. He might be even a `roaming’ Catholic, as many Catholics are these days. He might even be some kind of a `rounder.’ We don’t know. But, at the end of the day, we know for sure Quinn was a true disciple, for he sold his possessions and gave the money ($100,000) to a poor man. It might, perhaps, be more difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel (or a rope) to pass through the eye of a needle, but it’s not impossible, as Quinn luminously proves.

[1] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church institution has left!

[2] Acts of the Apostles 17:24

[3] A German Lutheran minister and theologian put to death by Hitler in 1945

“Not to Condemn or Condone but to Help”
(Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, MI)

October 4, 2009, Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Genesis 2:18-24 Hebrews 2:9-11 Mark 10:2-12

To the churched and unchurched[1]

gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]

First reading :Genesis

The LORD God said: "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him." So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all wild animals; but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man. So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said: "This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called 'woman,' for out of 'her man’ this one has been taken." That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.

The word of the Lord
Thanks be to God

Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark
Glory to you, Lord.

The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked, "Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?" They were testing him. He said to them in reply, "What did Moses command you?" They replied, "Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her." But Jesus told them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate." In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this. He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."

The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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Introduction
October 4 -- Feast-day of St. Francis

Today, October 4, is the feast-day of St. Francis of Assisi, father of a multitudinous family of Franciscan brothers and sisters. Earnest Renan needed an exaggeration to characterize Francis: "He was the only perfect Christian since Christ." Oscar Wilde also needed an exaggeration: "There were Christians before Christ, but there haven't been any since; I make one exception: in 1182 was born St Francis of Assisi." Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo in his keynote address to the National Democratic Convention in 1984 in the city named after the saint, San Francisco, called Francis “the world’s first true Democrat.” To commemorate the 800th anniversary of Francis’ birth the US government issued a 20c stamp in 1982 bearing the image of Francis surrounded by birds. But today being also the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (cycle B) the readings direct us not to Francis (sad to say) but to a much less inspiring but an important subject: divorce.

Divorce: everyone’s problem

Today’s scripture readings are painful and embarrassing. There isn’t a single family among us who hasn’t had to deal with divorce. Either we ourselves are divorced or we have sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, relatives and friends who are divorced.

Today’s scriptures are particularly embarrassing for my family. My sister and her husband were married for sixty long years. They were selfless parents who placed their three sons before themselves. They worked hard and eventually managed to move to the other side of the tracks. Despite such a good hotbed for seedlings, two of their three sons divorced and remarried. I try to explain their failed marriages to myself by saying that my nephews had such a wonderful mother and father that they weren’t really ready and savvy enough for the real world, which is full of right and wrong partners.

The church’s ”marriage business”

Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, Michigan (b.1937 – d.2004) once said, “I wish the churches would get out of the marriage business.” What in the world did he mean by that?
If a Catholic marries an un-baptized person without getting a dispensation from the church, that marriage is considered invalid. If a Catholic marries with the intention of excluding children, that marriage is considered invalid. If a Catholic marries before a justice of the peace and not before a priest, that marriage is considered invalid. Is that what the bishop meant by the church’s “marriage business”?

Catholics in invalid marriages were characterized by the church as “living in sin.” Through years of priestly ministry I recall how that “living in sin” verdict haunted many Catholics twenty-four hours a day through the length of a second marriage right up to the very moment of their death. That moment, already burdened with the pain of one’s illness and the grief of saying good-bye, was further burdened with the urgent need to make a death-bed confession to a priest. Is that what the bishop meant by the church’s “marriage business”?

A very personal experience

I had a very personal experience of the church’s “marriage business.” My parents fleeing the poverty of the Italian peasantry migrated to this country at the turn of the last century. They married in 1922. A clipping from the Manitowoc, WI, newspaper for Dec. 18, 1972 (37 years ago) entitled "50 Years ago Today" reads, "Pasquale Luzi, a native Italian and naturalized American citizen, was wed to Euphemia Lucchesi, also a native Italian, at the Manitowoc County Courthouse." A Catholic marrying in a courthouse! Peccato!

Imbued with the anticlericalism typical of the Italian peasantry, and not finding an Italian-speaking priest in their new land, my parents married not in front of a priest in a church but before a judge in a county courthouse! That made their marriage both invalid and sinful before the church.

Years later when I had the opportunity to secretly look up my baptismal record in the parish books, I came across a startling entry before my name (in Latin, of course): “Illegitimus!” (Illegitimate!). In the space asking for the name of the infant’s father was written “Pater ignotus!” (Father unknown!.) Everyone but the church knew my father’s name was Pasquale Luzi! Not only was my parents’ marriage considered illegitimate, I, too, was illegitimate! (Italians would have called me “un bastardo!")

But the church’s “marriage business” did not stop there. Years later, before I could be advanced to priestly ordination, the invalid marriage had to be “fixed up in the eyes of the church” (for no bastardo was allowed to be ordained a priest). “Fixing up the marriage” could be done only by my parents expressing matrimonial consent to each other in front of an authorized priest (which they later did under incredibly painful circumstances).

That, I believe, is what Bishop Untener was referring to when he said, “I wish the churches would get out of the marriage business.” By no means did he mean that the church should get out of the serious and joyful business of uniting her sons and daughters in holy matrimony with a bond lasting until death.

Divorce: a failure

Matters have changed in recent years. Now the path to marriage annulments is wide open. Some Catholics whose marriage failed consider that path as dishonest and choose not to take it. Instead, they quietly solve the problem of their divorced status for themselves: refusing to be excluded from the table of the Lord they simply continue to participate in Catholic life. They are of the same mind as Fr. Hans Küng, Swiss German theologian and prophet. In a little volume entitled Why I am Still a Christian he writes, “I cannot believe that he, who particularly invited failures to his table, would forbid all remarried divorced people ever to approach that table.” (Mt 9: 9-13)

There’s something honest and even compassionate in Küng labeling divorced people as “failures.” It’s more honest than a church annulment which declares a marriage which took place on such and such a date as magically never having taken place at all! Annulments bypass the idea of failure: if there was no marriage to begin with, then there was no failure, and if no failure, then no need for tears. Then we are free to merrily move on to the next marriage. An annulment is “divorce without tears,” while labeling it a failure is “divorce with tears.”

Not a law but an ideal

The gospel is quite clear: divorce is a failure of God’s plan. The Pharisees approach Jesus and ask, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” Jesus replies, “God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Mk 10:6-9) Jesus says marriage is a life-long commitment, and when a marriage ends in divorce that’s a failure. Bishop Untener also insisted that marriage is a life-long commitment. “Look,” he said, “I preach life-long commitment. No mistake about that. I preach life-long commitment. But,” he asks, “what if, for some reason, it fails?”

Over the years I’ve tried to hone an answer to that vexing question. It goes like this: One man to one woman until death do they part – that’s not a law written on stone; that’s an ideal written on the heart. But an ideal is not a shabby or wish-washy matter. It’s not something we’re free to take or leave. It’s a shining star that stands before us to guide us. An ideal inspires us to soar to the heights we promised on our wedding day when we vowed “to forsake all others” and to love our partner “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death do you part.” But an ideal also convicts us when we’ve failed. That conviction of failure is not just a painful negative, it’s also a positive. It leads to growth and makes us wiser for the rest of the journey before us.

Conclusion
Not to condemn or condone but to help

Bishop Untener said, “I like the distinction Jesus carefully used upon the woman caught in adultery. He said, `I don't condemn you.' But some people think the opposite of `condemn' is `condone.'” Untener said it wasn’t his job to condemn or condone divorced people but to help them.

We want a church which neither condemns nor condones divorced people but simply wants to help them pick up the pieces, and with a lesson learned get on with the rest of the journey before them. We want a church which in the spirit of Jesus invites failures to the table of the Lord. (Mt 9: 9-13) We want a church which will insist upon the indissolubility of marriage not as a law written on stone commanding people to stay married but as an ideal written on people’s hearts commanding them to stay in love.

[1] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church institution has left!

[2] Acts of the Apostles 17:24