October 4, 2009:  THE KISS OF PEACE IS THE KISS OF JUSTICE IS THE KISS OF DEATH;
Mark 10:2-16; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Psalm 85:10-13                     
Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater PC

           
              Pastors, more than anyone, get to use archaic language that ordinary mortals would never dream of using.  And no one blinks an eye.  For instance, in the wedding service we still intone “Those whom God has joined together let no one separate.”  I mean, who talks like that?  Speaking of blinking, I’m listening to a book on tape by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink.  In it, Gladwell unpacks the cognitive processes (the ways we think) that make up our blink-of-an-eye intuitive snap decisions.  Drawing on such diverse authorities as tennis coaches and marriage counselors, he explains how we come to “just know” something without being able to explain why.  For instance, marriage counselor John Gottman can predict which marriages will last, simply by observing couples in conversation and assessing the ratio of positive to negative emotions exhibited in their interactions.  Of the 27 emotions Gottman has isolated, the one guaranteed to be the marital kiss of death is contempt—one partner looking down on the other. 
            I do a lot of weddings, and I’ve never had a couple say they didn’t want the traditional kiss at the end of the ceremony.  I always give them a choice, but they always look at each other with dewy eyes and then agree to publicly seal their promises with a kiss.  It’s always the point in the ceremony when everyone experiences a swelling of the heart and mistiness in the eyes, almost as if they believe they are witnessing the kiss of life.  No one, however, has ever remarked about the verse from today’s psalm, “Justice and peace shall kiss each other.”
            This year’s Peacemaking theme is, “Justice and peace shall kiss each other,” so maybe it’s not a coincidence that the gospel lesson focuses so much on marriage.  Most of what I know about marriage in Biblical times comes from Richard Rohrbaugh, who points out that marriage was between families, not individuals.  Two people did not initiate a relationship, but instead relied on parental arrangements, for what turned out to be a complex merger of familial honor codes.  The teaching that “two shall become one” wasn’t about romantic love, but an understanding that, in cultural/religious terms, this was a blood relationship, not a legal one.  Hence, it was a relationship that could not be dissolved.  To divorce meant the likelihood of family feuds, and remarriage virtually guaranteed it.  When Jesus prohibits remarriage (what he calls “adultery”), he is prohibiting causing one of those feuds.
            A broader way of understanding this year’s Peacemaking theme comes from yesterday’s entry in the Mission Yearbook of prayer.  The story is of Geri Eekhoff, from Port Townsend, Washington, who first went on a Presbyterian mission trip to El Salvador in 1999.  The village to which Geri and her group went had never had visitors from another country, so they were warmly and enthusiastically welcomed and invited to work side by side with the villagers.  For Geri, the trip was so transformative that she continues to regularly visit the village.  After one absence a woman told Geri, “Even though it has been a long time since you were here, I remember you and you are in my heart,” to which Geri responded, “I remember you, too, Maria:  wife, mother, and friend.  Though I do not know if I could walk in your shoes, you have made me aware of God’s gift of love that comes from sharing in mutual respect.”
            That’s it in a nutshell.  That is the flesh-and-blood of “Justice and peace shall kiss each other.”  Not the kiss of death, the kiss of contempt.  This is the kiss of life because, even though these two women are from widely divergent cultures, they see each other as equals.  There is no sense of superiority, no looking down on the other.  Equality has got to be the basis of peacemaking in the world we live in.  To behave arrogantly, as if we possess the sole distributorship of good ideas or best practices or economics, to act as if the other has nothing to teach us, is to show contempt.  And just as it is in marriage, contempt is always the kiss of death in peacemaking.  Justice and peace shall kiss.
            Contempt in marriage isn’t what’s at stake when Jesus comes down hard on the Pharisees for asking about divorce.  Jesus clearly sees their sense of proprietorship, of having the sole distributorship of legal opinions and best religious practices.  His answer to their question must leave his disciples as uncomfortable as it does us, because they ask again.  Maybe they hoped for a moderated response, but Jesus pulls out his favorite sermon illustration—a child.  He uses children as the example of kingdom living, and this illustration is to receive the kingdom as a child.  He’s not telling us to welcome the child, as he did a couple of weeks ago. In Jesus’ day, the infant mortality rate was astronomical.  Most babies died.  If a child made it past the first couple of months, only one third of those who survived made it to the age of six.  Obviously, the parents, who hope to keep their children alive to adulthood, are bringing their children to be blessed, just in order to live.  These kids are under a death sentence, they are vulnerable and totally dependent.  Jesus’ illustration is about radical dependence and vulnerability to God’s patronage.  For us.
            And that’s important to know as we read Hebrews today.  Our God is not a disinterested God.  To receive God’s kingdom like a child, we have to be (as Richard Rohr says), like conduits open at both ends.  What we receive needs to coincide with what we pass on.  Having received mercy, we must pass on forgiveness.  It’s a lesson we learn from marriage as well as friendship.  Neither mercy nor forgiveness is ever earned or deserved.  No one owes you mercy, otherwise it’s not mercy.  Nor do you “deserve” forgiveness, otherwise it’s no different than a commodity you could purchase. 
            Unless mercy and forgiveness are these things—undeserved, unearned—they cannot be experienced.  Justice and peace shall kiss each other.  “We become what we have fully received, and even how we have received it” (Rohr).  Receive the kingdom as a child, friends.  But for God’s sake, receive it the way the wedding service tells us to receive the gift of marriage—as a holy mystery, for the well-being of human society and the ordering of life.  Amen.