People were placed into a world prepared for their arrival by a creative and generous God. We were given charge of the plants and animals, the birds and the fish. Everything sufficient for our needs was placed before us. In this first story there is a created order, a rhythm to life and a pattern of natural relationship.

The second story of creation begins halfway through the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis. In this story the heavens and the earth are in place by the first sentence. The focus of the story is not on the lights in the sky, or the things in the sea but on the creation of human beings and their relationship with God and one another.

God mixes dust and water, breathes into it and makes Adam...a human being. Then God makes a garden, and rivers, and puts this human being into the self-watering garden so that the human might take care of it. There is enough to eat, and water to drink and God close by. Isn't that enough for a human being?

God didn't seem to think so. "It is not good that the human should be alone," God says. So God made living creatures and brought them to the man. They came to be named. To name something is to know it, to be connected, to have some degree of relationship with it. In the saying of a name there is recognition, a pairing of sound and image. God sought to find a companion for the living dust and so a parade of creatures came and went. They arrived nameless and left known, but no companion was recognized.

We are different than animals. We are not plants.
Sunlight and water and the presence of God are not enough.

So God took the undifferentiated human and created another being.
When Adam woke he called himself "ish", man, and the other being "ishah", woman.
Even the sounds are related, part of one another, like inhaling and exhaling:
Ish.. Ishah...One breath requires both movements.
Human life is male and female with the breath of God inside.

We may be dust, but we are drawn to one another in ways too deep for words. So we have these two different stories that cast a powder of phrases over the contours of our beings. We are like detectives searching in the dust for the prints of an unseen hand.

We are made in the image and likeness of God whom we understand to hold relationship and unity within God's very self. Marriage is an expression of creation and a reflection of God. "This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh," the man in the garden was heard to say. At its best marriage is a mirror upon which we can see breath, the glistening remnant of God's presence in the "ish" and "ishah" of life.

This is a compelling and powerful picture. But we do not always desire to hold a mirror up to our lives. We cannot always maintain a sufficient grip and we are surround by the shards of things that have slipped from our grasp. Divorce is not the desired order of things. It is a part of our reality, but it is no godly garden. The river that runs through it is a river of tears.

Divorce is not simply a legal understanding between two dispassionate people. It is an act that shakes a community and which creates changes that surprise even those who have initiated it. Although it is certainly lawful, under the civil code of Maryland and the Law of Moses, Jesus was clear that divorce is not the desired state of affairs in creation. This statement may be hard to hear. This statement is certainly hard to say because I know at least some of the pain that washes through families in this community. Some things may be hard to speak about but silence is still not an adequate response. It is true now; it was true in the first century.

The Pharisees sought to trap Jesus by posing a question that had no good answer.
They hoped to give Jesus a choice of two deep pits into which to fall.
Would Jesus controvert the Law of Moses and thereby blaspheme?
Or would he choose to be a religious moralist and run afoul of the Herodians, the Roman's puppet government? Herod and his kin changed spouses rather frequently, so a statement that divorce was unlawful would bring the wrath of the state down on Jesus.

Jesus did not fall into either pit, he simply asked the Pharisees to say what they already knew to be true. When the Pharisees asked Jesus, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" Jesus asked them, "What did Moses say?" "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce," they replied. The letter of the law was clear, then and now. The spirit of God's intent was clear, then and now.

Moses made the allowance for divorce because the alternative was prostitution or starvation. A wife cast out without a certificate of divorce received a virtual death sentence. A woman who had a certificate of divorce had at least the possibility of remarriage, life, protection and food. This did not make divorce a good thing, but it was better that the street.

Divorce is still better than the street but it remains a hard road, especially for women and children. Who would turn someone they love out into the street? Any one of us would if our hearts become hardened.

Half of all marriages end in divorce. Our collective hearts have clearly hardened. How did this happen? When did it become OK for half of the relationships around us to fail? When did we agree to be silent witnesses - to collude in this destruction?

In the rite of Holy Matrimony, those who are present in the congregation promise to do all in their power to uphold the two people in their marriage. After the priest has pronounced that they are man and wife, the priest declares: "Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder." This is the echo of Jesus' last words to the Pharisees. This is the intent expressed in the stories of creation. This is the image to which we aspire and of which we sometimes fall short.

It does not help anyone for us to pretend that it is perfectly natural to divorce. It is false pride to struggle in a relationship without seeking help. It is heartless for a community to turn a blind eye when a couple is in trouble. If we are telling the truth we have to admit to each other that divorce is painful, costly, and destructive and that no one gets out unscathed. When a marriage fails it hurts all of us. When a marriage thrives we all have reasons to rejoice. We see and know these truths. Let us be willing to speak them.

None of us are faithful to God and to one another one hundred per cent of the time. But faithfulness is the desired state. None of us seek and serve Christ in one another with every breath that we take, but such service is the desired state. None of us are perfect, and all of us are broken in some way. But wholeness and perfection is the work of Christ and the cross is the crucible in which our sins and brokeness are transmuted.

That is where we are called to stand. We can stand at the foot of the cross in witness when a marriage is strained. We can stand at the foot of the cross in prayer even if, especially if, a marriage fails.Christ was present at creation and is with us even in the presence of death. But let us choose life while the breath is still in us.

O gracious and everliving God, you have created us male and female in your image: Look mercifully upon all men and women who came to you seeking your blessing, and assist them with your grace.

Grant that the bonds of our common humanity, by which all your children are united one to another, and the living to the dead, may be so transformed by your grace that your will may be done on earth as it is in heaven; where O Father, with your Son and the Holy Spirit, you live and reign in perfect unity, now and forever. AMEN