In today’s reading, Jesus says not to divorce. It can be a text of terror to anyone who has gone through the pain of divorce. What we miss is that in the first century, all a man had to do is show up and announce in public that he was divorcing his wife. She, then, would have a very hard life ahead of her. The callousness of that society where women’s lives were being thrown away is what Jesus was speaking out against.

Jesus is all about relationship. He is about forgiveness to the point of death and reconciliation across all that would divide us. He does this because this is what he thinks God is like. God sticks by us in spite of all our sin, infidelity, and abandonment. God sticks by us even though we always seem to be trying to divorce ourselves from God.

We get a diagnosis, we lose faith. We get a flat tire, we curse God’s name. Our team doesn’t make a field goal and suddenly we’re atheists. There are so many stories about how the Israelites stray from their covenant with God. There are so many stories in the Gospels of the disciples straying from Christ’s teachings. Most of Paul’s letters are to remind Christian communities what they are about. We are always trying to divorce ourselves from God.

We’re always trying to divorce ourselves from our neighbor. We divide along any way we can. We harbor grudges and nurse resentments. We grow impatient with one another and are so quick to say, “I’m done with this person.” And there are times to say that, absolutely. I won’t deny that. Sometimes the best way to love someone is from a distance. Absolutely, I’m not denying that. What we cannot do is act like we’re completely disconnected and superior to that person whom we can’t be around or that God loves us more than them. The sacraments simply won’t let us.

I wanted to collect all seven sacraments growing up Catholic. When I was told that I couldn’t, I was very disappointed. Then when I lived my own Reformation and became Protestant, I was shocked that y’all only had two sacraments. Catholics celebrate the sacraments of Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation, Confession, Anointing of the Sick, Marriage, and Ordination. Protestants thought that was 5 too many. Christ only participated in Baptism and Communion, so the rest were suspect. We have no evidence in the Gospels that he was confirmed, confessed to a rabbi, married, was anointed (although he did anoint the sick), nor was he ordained. I like the simplicity of Baptism and Communion.

There are times in our lives that are sacramental. And they are not bound to two or seven sacraments. When we wake up and the light is streaming in and we smile. That’s a sacrament of gratitude at living. When you are stunned to silence when you come upon a deer or another animal in nature, shocked into the sacrament of creation. When you feel small next to a tree, or the ocean, or an animal and you know your size in creation, that is a sacrament.

We celebrated Sam’s birthday on Monday. As with Eve’s birth, I remember everything about that day. It was a holy moment. When my kids were born, they came into the world slimy, and bloody, and blue… and they were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. When they took their first breath and issued their first cry, my heart expanded.

Rob Bell told the story of a photographer that was camped outside a hospital. He was waiting for Prince William and Kate the Duchess of Cambridge, to arrive and have their baby. He was up all night, waiting and waiting because that photo in that moment would land him a huge paycheck. He was tired and decided to stretch his legs. He walked around the hospital and saw a van pull up right beside him. And out popped William and Kate, who they entered through a side door. But he didn’t snap a picture. Before him was not the prince and the duchess about to have the future king of England. Before him was just a couple, frightened and about to go through one of the most holy and bonding moments in their lives. He felt he couldn’t violate that. There was a heavy respect that fell upon him, and it cost him a big pay check, but he felt he couldn’t violate the sacredness of that moment.

I know that heavy respect. Those of us who have become parents know that heavy respect. No one, upon first seeing their child yells, “EW! GROSS!” A part of our brains might think that, but the moment is too sacred. It’s like there’s a boundary we can’t violate. It’s holy.

Rob Bell continues and says that whenever a bride walks down the aisle, no one ever yells, “Whatever!” No matter how jaded, no matter how messed over people have been in a relationship, no matter how ruined some has been by a relationship; no one ever violates that sacred moment. There is something inside us that is filled with a heavy respect and a hope that love can still be born in a world of hate. That a sacred union can still happen in this world of unfaithfulness and disloyalty. We still hold out hope that something good and holy can be born into the world.

Sacraments are holy rituals. It’s where we draw a circle around a moment and say, “Don’t violate this. This has cosmic significance.” Sacraments are where we bump up against life and we give it space. We don’t violate it. I hope this happens more times than you can count in your lives. In our church life, it is good we recognize two times.

To say Jesus is “Lord and Savior” means Caesar isn’t. This confession states that peace is the way. That nonviolence is the way. That inclusion into God’s saving love and beloved community is the way… there’s a heaviness to such a confession. When a family stands up and baptizes their child they are saying to the church they are committing themselves and their children to the way of Christ. Or when an older child or adult decides to be baptized, there’s a heavy respect in those moments. In all the baptisms I have done with babies and adults, no one has ever stood up and said, “Yeah, right! You can’t follow those vows!” And let’s not start that ever.

We know the gravity of the moment. We know how the way is narrow and how we can fall in and out of church attendance and yet that is not a commentary on our commitment to Christ. We celebrate that confession and hold it holy and special and pray that one day everyone hears the words Christ heard, “This is my child, in whom I am well pleased.” I don’t know if Baptism frees us from original sin. I’m pretty sure it’s not a get out of hell free card. What I do know is that it is a commitment and a recognition of the holiness of a life. God thought that we needed this soul in our lives and we should love and nurture this soul into its fullness so they might claim their identity as a child of God.

Likewise, the table and the sacrament of communion is a recognition of God’s love. Jesus was called a drunk and a glutton because he was always around the table with people. He was with the religious who criticized him. He was with the sinner, the outcast, the unpopular. Jew and Gentile. He ate with everyone, and he calls us to remember in this ritual that each of us are inextricably linked together. As Martin Luther King Jr stated, “In a real sense all life is inter-related. Everyone is caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be…This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

God’s love is on everyone and everything for the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. God shows no partiality. God makes the sun to shine on the wicked and the righteous and all are invited to the table.

Two rituals in the church life, two marks to say “This is holy. Don’t violate this. Feel the heavy, give it space.”

We are all tied up in our sacred lives. No life is more holy than another. We are all tied in that garment of destiny, don’t treat your relationships as disposable. Reconcile, be at peace with one another. And notice what follows this teaching. Jesus inviting the children forward. Don’t stop them.

Many churches don’t allow children to take communion until they’re of an age to understand it. Look, I’ve been to seminary, I have a master’s degree and soon a doctorate on the subject and I understand it less than when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I just played with whoever was around. It didn’t matter who their parents were, where they were from, what color or creed or anything… if they were interested in playing, I was game. To such belongs the kingdom of God. They see the unity before the division, we adults often get it backward.

Whoever shows up to this table, don’t stop them.

Whoever wants to commit their life to Christ, don’t stop them.

Whoever wants to share their experience of their one, holy, and sacramental life… don’t stop them.

Don’t wait until you fully understand it, the good news is that you’re invited right now to participate in the mystery. You don’t have to have anything figured out, you’re invited anyway.

My hope for you is that you seek the sacramental times in your day. When the song comes on the radio just at the right time and the day feels a little brighter. When you feel happy for no reason, just glad to be alive. When you laugh. When you find someone you can trust to hold your deepest secret and not laugh or mock you. When someone cries on your shoulder.

My hope for you is that you are reminded that you have chosen to participate in the great mystery of it all, that you are about holy work, and that each of your breaths from your first to your last have all been a gift. May you be gifted by those times of heavy respect for all of God’s people, and all of God’s wondrous work both inside of Church and inside the wild adventure that is your life. Amen.