Here in this church today there are single parents and divorced people. There are also couples in their second marriage - some with an annulment others with no annulment. There are well-married couples and there are some who have never married but are living together. As we all listened to the readings I wonder how will those who are divorced and or remarried, hear today’s gospel? Will Jesus sound harsh and unbending? Will the gospel stir up past or present guilt; a sense of failure or inadequacy? Will the well married couples be moved to a sense of superiority, “Marriage is hard, but we made a go of it, why couldn’t they?” It is a day one might be tempted to avoid the gospel altogether!

The author, Rabbi Harold Kushner, tells how a young couple came to see him just weeks before their wedding. At one point the young man said , “Rabbi, would you object if we made one small change in the wedding ceremony? Instead of pronouncing us husband and wife ‘till death do us part,’ could you pronounce us husband and wife ‘for as long as love lasts’? We’ve talked about this and we both feel that, should the day come when we no longer love each other, it would not be morally right for us to be stuck with each other.”

The rabbi replied, “I do object, and I will not make the change. You and I both know that there is such a thing as divorce, and we know that a lot of marriages these days don’t last until one of the partners dies. But let me tell you something. If you go into marriage with an attitude of “If it doesn’t work out, we can always split,” then I can almost guarantee you that things won’t work out for you. I appreciate your honesty. But you must understand that a marriage commitment is not just a mutual willingness to live together, but a commitment to accept the frustrations and disappointments that are an inevitable part of two imperfect human beings relating to each other. It’s hard enough to make a go of marriage even when you give it everything you’ve got. But if only a part of you is involved in the relationship, then you have virtually no chance.”

Rabbi Kushner’s words are painfully true. In the past 40 years, the face of the American family has changed profoundly. Andrew Cherlin’s landmark new book called, The Marriage-Go-Around: ‘The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today observes that what is significant about contemporary American families, compared with those of other nations, is their combination of “frequent marriage, frequent divorce and the high number of short-term co-habiting relationships. Taken together, these forces create a great turbulence in American family life, a family flux, a coming and going of partners on a scale seen nowhere else. There are more partners in the personal lives of Americans than in the lives of people of any other Western country.”

What has happened over the past 40 years is that marriage has become an increasingly fragile and tentative relationship depending less and less on the idea of sacrifice and obligation and respect and more on the expectation of romance and happiness, the expectation that marriage will make your life pleasurable all the time. And so when marriage offers pain and conflict, I’m not talking about abuse, physical or emotional, that is a completely different story, but when difficult times arise, so often people want out. There is that American hope for greater happiness, for changing the hand you dealt yourself. And yet despite the growing number of divorces motivated by a search for happiness, all statistics make it clear that there is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers’ financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation’s underclass.

In the gospel today Jesus presents the ideal: marriage is a loving and permanent union between a man and a woman based on an unconditional love for the well being of your spouse. The whole community benefits from such a permanent commitment. Such marriages challenge the partners to be faithful, loving and self-sacrificing for one another. When people get married they bring to it, not only their strengths, but also their weaknesses. All of us are wounded by sin and selfishness. To enter marriage is to enter a school of love, a school in which all are slow learners. The bond which two people seal on their wedding day is not made of unbreakable material, but of human, and therefore breakable material. Relationships have to be worked on. They suffer from neglect just as surely as a garden does. People should not be afraid to seek help if they experience difficulties in their marriage. Relationships which have weathered some storms are the deepest. Couples must be determined to put their marriage and their children above all else.

It is a challenge to our Church to consider how we are to deal with sincere and wounded people who have gone through a divorce. While our laws are meant to protect the institution of marriage for the common good, still, Jesus has taught mercy and forgiveness. How do we raise up the ideal of marriage and also minster to those wounded by a failed marriage? When the ideal cannot be realized, let us never forget Jesus’ insistence on compassion, forgiveness and unconditional love.

May I end with a story you may well have heard about an elderly gentleman arriving at the doctor’s office at 8:30 to have stitches removed from his thumb. He tells the nurse he is in a hurry - he has a 9:00 appointment. Seeing him looking at his watch she moves right along and redresses the wound. She asked him if he had another doctor’s appointment at 9. The gentleman said no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. After inquiring about her health the nurse learns that the wife has been ill with Alzheimer’s for years. As they talked, the nurse asked if she would be upset if he was a bit late. He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him for a few years now. Surprised, she asked him, “And you still go every morning, even though she does not know who you are?” He smiled and he patted her hand and said, “She doesn’t know me, but I still know who she is.” Holding back tears as he left, the nurse had goose bumps on her arm, and she thought, “That is the kind of love I want in my love.” True love is neither physical nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be. Life is not about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.