A North Star In New Places--August 26, 2022

A North Star In New Places--August 26, 2022

"To the rest I say--I and not the Lord--that if any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. And if any woman has a husband who is an unbelieve, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. It is to peace that God has called you. Wife, for all you know, you might save your husband. Husband, for all you know, you might save your wife." [1 Corinthians 7:12-16]

Look, here's the truth:  sometimes we don't have a direct answer from Jesus [or from the Bible] for the specific questions we bring.  When that happens, we don't have to panic, and we certainly shouldn't pretend we have the certainty of a clear command from Jesus to guide us.  Rather, we trust that even without a bible verse to give "THE ANSWER" [in red letters, no less], we are not alone to figure out how to navigate complicated situations.  Even when we don't have a roadmap from Jesus, we do have him as our North Star, and his way of loving people where they are at gives us our bearings.  Jesus' own peaceable presence becomes a compass for us to be peaceable people in our own relationships.

This passage from First Corinthians is a case in point.  The folks in Corinth have asked Paul how to handle situations where one spouse in a married couple has come to faith in Jesus but the other hasn't.  What should they do--get a divorce?  Force a conversion? Ignore the elephant in the room and just pretend the difference of faith doesn't matter?

Well, when we have questions about how we live the Jesus way of life, a good place to start is to ask, "What does Jesus say about this?"  And sometimes, we've got a really clear answer, to be honest.  

Should I love my enemy?  Yes. [That isn't always easy or fun, but at least we are clear what Jesus says.]  

Are people more important than possessions for Jesus?  Again, another clear yes.   

Should I forgive the debts others owe me?  Again, it's pretty hard to claim Jesus doesn't have a clear answer on this one, too--yes, we are called to forgive as we have been forgiven by God.  [I'm pretty sure those words from the Lord's Prayer are on our lips at least every week, even if we struggle to get them to take root in our minds and hearts.]

But sometimes, the questions we bring arise out of situations that the historical Jesus was never asked to weigh in on, and we just don't have a definitive "word from the Lord" to give us a rule or regulation.  And when we are dealing with questions like that, it's worth recognizing that we are doing our best to try and figure out what it looks like to walk the way of Jesus through those new settings.  Here in the question about marriages where one spouse is a believer and the other is not, Paul makes it clear that he doesn't have a clear teaching from Jesus on this, so he's giving his best to think in a Jesus-like way for those circumstances.  Paul doesn't, by the way, say, "Well, this letter that I'm writing is going to end up as part of the Bible, so therefore whatever I say here is as authoritative as a teaching from Jesus."  But rather, he acknowledges that Jesus himself is the center of our faith, and that it's Jesus who embodies for us the fullness of God's Reign and God's love.

Okay, so instead of pretending he has a quote from Jesus to give a definitive answer, Paul does some practical theology on the fly here.  If Jesus is our North Star for how we relate to other people, what might the way of Jesus look like in a situation where one spouse is not a Christian but the other is?  Since we don't even have a real-life example from Jesus' own relationships [to the best of our awareness, Jesus was never married] for dealing with a spouse, Paul has to do some deeper thinking.  And the bottom line here seems to be that Jesus can live with difference, and even maybe that Jesus would intentionally go out of his way to reach out to those who were different or "other" from him.  

The Jesus we meet in the Gospels has a way of crossing social lines, political borders, and religious boundaries to meet people, engage with people, and love people right where they are at.  You see it every time Jesus invites himself over to a party at a "sinner's" house, crosses into Gentile territory for deep and holy conversation with outsiders, or engages with people who do not share his own Jewish faith.  Paul can see that pattern in Jesus and trace out the trajectory for what that might look like in marriages or families where one person is a Christian and the other is not.  So rather than forbidding marriages where one spouse is a follower of Jesus and the other is not [or insisting that these marriages must dissolve], Paul says, "Don't bail out on someone just because they do not believe in Jesus right now."  Paul seems convinced that Jesus himself wouldn't abandon a spouse on account of that difference, and so we don't need to, either.  

And if you think about it, that's a pretty decent way of sketching out what the way of Jesus looks like in new situations even when we don't have a proof text, stack of Bible verses, or commandment from Jesus to dictate our policy.  Paul has shown us that we don't have to make things up or feel totally lost and adrift in those circumstances, but we can still think and pray through the question, "What does the way of Jesus look like in this situation?"  That doesn't mean we get to try a shortcut of saying, "Well, this is what I was always told by religious people that Christians should do," because we don't always get it right--and sometimes we have gotten it terribly, terribly wrong [maybe slavery, the Crusades, or Christian nationalism would be a few obvious examples].  And neither does it mean we get to say, "Whatever I already want to be true, I can claim as the 'Christian' response, because I am a Christian."  We have to do the work of getting to know Jesus more fully and deeply, and together we discern together how to walk in new territory in a way that has the distinctive cadence of the resurrected rabbi with wounded feet.  But we are not left alone to our own devices to do that.  The One whom we follow also walks with us.

So while maybe you're not doing a lot of wrestling on this particular day with whether you are, or are not, allowed to be married to someone who doesn't share your faith in Jesus, these verses do make for a good case study of how we address new questions, new situations, and new territory while we embody the love of Jesus and walk in his way.  And whatever the particular challenges of this day, that is ultimately our calling: to be people striving as well as we are able [even when we get it wrong... and we will] to embody the way of Jesus for the world to see.

That's a calling that will take a lifetime.

Lord Jesus, shape our lives in the form of your love, and guide our feet in the way you walk.