Summer Camp Witness and Christ's Teaching on Divorce

Well, I was explaining at the beginning of my message, if I came off a little scatterbrained today, I feel that way. I’m having a hard time concentrating. I’m suffering from a very special and unique condition which is known as summer camp brain, because I just returned from our Western Diocese summer camp where I had the blessing to serve as the primary chaplain of the kids of week two of our four-week-long diocesan summer camp program. And I not only serve as a chaplain for the week, but I serve as the main chaplain, the pastor, the spiritual director of the summer camp program for the entire Western Diocese, during which 500 to 600 children and young people come to our camp over the course of four weeks, being served by close to 200 volunteers and very few paid staff, if you want to know, to bring the love and the hope of the message of the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the holy traditions of our church into their lives.

And we just returned late last night with a big group of children from the Bay Area. We took a bus from St. John, and we had over 30 campers on the bus with us that were a part of this program, joining their brothers and sisters from throughout the Western Diocese, as far north as Portland as well as the other Western states, and of course many joining us from Fresno and Los Angeles. I love camp so much. I really do. We talk a lot about it here at St. John. Camp has been formative for so many of the faithful of this church and for me as well, a place where I attended as a camper, where I served as a volunteer for many years, and for over 20 years have had the opportunity to serve as a chaplain. It is certainly one of the great joys and prides of my life. But as I get older, it seems to demand of me more than it used to, and I think that that’s not — well, who knows why it is, but I’m getting older, so let’s just leave it at that.

But we come here today still in the recovery phase of this beautiful and impressive experience, and I share with you, as I always like to do on that first Sunday following camp, a witnessing of my experience. And I’d like to connect it to the gospel reading today. As I have in many years in the past, I’ve served as a chaplain for a single week of the four-week program for many years in a row. And when I do that, I have the opportunity to build bonds and connections with the children that return to those weeks year and year again, not only the children from our own parish and community but those that come from around the diocese. And so we recognize one another even though we may only get to see each other once a year, and having done so, we build a rapport and a trust so they feel comfortable opening up. And that makes it so much easier for me to just get right down to it when it comes time to teach a class, to preach during a morning or evening service which are conducted every day, or to spend one-on-one time with the kids, and they can just get right down to their questions.

And I think that after this many years, I’ve gotten to the point where they have no filters, for good or for bad, and they’re just willing to openly express themselves. And so whether it be in a class or one-on-one or in a cabin where myself and the other clergy served as big brothers, spending evening times with them as well when their counselors were having social hours — they went right into it. Walking into one cabin of boys, the older boys’ cabins, before the door even closed behind me, one of the kids raises his hand. He says, let’s talk about why the church thinks homosexuality is wrong. Okay, let’s do it. Okay, let’s get into it. And then another class was sitting down, and what about evolution, and what about the creation? Okay, let’s talk about it. So they have very serious questions, and they don’t want people to talk in circles around them. They want direct answers. And the church has to have direct answers. Otherwise, why are we giving them access to us? They don’t want to be manipulated. They don’t want to hear soft answers. Of course, according to their age group and the world that they understand, we’ve got to give them very clear and straightforward answers.

Another kid raises his hand. How do I stay away from sin? God wants me to be perfect. I can’t be perfect. I don’t understand the badarak. Okay, this is great. Let’s talk about all these things. We have answers for all of these things. Because they see these things in their real lives. They have these conversations with their friends. They think about these things in their hearts. And when we don’t answer them, they think we don’t have an answer.

And there’s certainly one example of that. I was in a class. We had Q&A on Sunday, and a child raises his hand. He says, let’s talk about abortion. Why does the church not allow abortion? Let’s talk about that. I was in a meeting once with a long-serving, dues-paying member of the church that said, yeah, the church doesn’t talk about abortion. It doesn’t want to make people mad. Well, maybe that was his experience, and that’s what he heard. But the fact of the matter is that the church has teachings on this. Let us understand them. The church considers all life sacred. We’re not just talking about one type of life. This isn’t a slice of a conversation. We’re talking about all life, all life at all times. Is this not the teachings of the church? Is this not why Christ gave his life on the cross for each and every soul that exists on this planet, so that it should be loved and should be accepted by him, including those that have not yet been born?

So we talk about this in the class. But the child raises his hand, but why are they forced? They can’t have a choice. That’s not right. And I said to him, do I look like a Supreme Court justice to you? Am I a congressman or somebody that’s going to make your laws, or a police person or a lawyer who’s going to enforce them? That is not me. I’m not a political — I don’t represent a political entity. I represent the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And when we talk about questions like this, we don’t talk about laws. We talk about love. We talk about community. We talk about teaching and support. We talk about giving people the tools, the wisdom, and the support system that’s necessary for them to weather the most hard and demanding and challenging moments of their life, no matter what. This is what the church is about. The church isn’t about those laws, earthly laws, worldly laws.

So let’s have a conversation about that. What are you doing in your community to provide support for people and to make people feel accepted and to make people feel like they’re not alone in the midst of challenges that they couldn’t possibly overcome, such as the challenge of, for example, raising a child who has severe disabilities or Down syndrome, or for whatever reasons that they tell us that it would be acceptable to abort a child before they’re born and things like this? Or culturally, in such cases as we should not be so proud to not note that in past years even in our homeland Armenia, gender-selective abortion has been a serious problem. Are we creating the space for these people to feel like they can weather the storm? Coming back to my Armenian sermon — and do it not alone. That’s the teaching of Jesus Christ. That’s what we need to talk about. Not about naughty, naughty and rules. You are loved, and Christ has told us, the revelation of our Lord and our Creator has told us, this is what we need to do. Let’s talk about how we can help one another achieve that, overcome those challenges.

When I explained it this way to the children, I understood that even though they’d been raised in, in some cases, very liberal and politicized families and communities, they understood the teachings of the church have to be consistent across the board, and they have to be founded in the power and transformative love of our Lord and Savior.

Today, we’re confronted with another example of that. This is Christ’s teachings about divorce. And the passage begins saying the Pharisees, they tried him. But you’ve got to really hand it to those Pharisees. They weren’t shy about asking questions that real people had. Even though their perspective is condemned because they feared and persecuted Jesus Christ, they give voice to questions that are in the hearts of people at that time, just like those kids did to me when I was at camp. They weren’t — some of them wanted genuine answers, but some of them were really trying to gotcha me. They wanted me to get put in a corner to think I couldn’t answer their questions. But of course we have the answers because the gospel has all the answers. And of course Christ has the answers when the Pharisees try him, because they challenged him about divorce because they understood that marital difficulties affect all of our lives, at least all of us that are married. And he reminds us in this passage and in other places that there is such a thing as consecrated singleness in this world. It is not part of the Christian identity that those who are not married are somehow cursed by God. While that is something that exists in other religious cultures, we do not have that. But for those that are married, marital difficulties are experienced by all.

And so they called Jesus Christ to test. They thought they had an answer, or a question that he couldn’t answer. Which is it? If marriage is sacred and it’s established by God, then why did God give us this paper that says we can get divorced? And Christ is telling us, you’re not getting the message. You’re talking to me about laws, and I’m talking to you about love. When the prophet Jeremiah says, I will write my law upon your heart, he’s transforming the nature and the conversation that we’re having around laws and rules such that we have to look at them through a spiritual lens and through the lens of the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He’s challenging them to say you can’t take the easy way out. You can’t find the first easy excuse to give up on a commitment that you’ve made to another child of God and before your community and before the Lord in a sacred institution. You’ve got to try. You’ve got to do whatever you can to make it work if you can.

And yes, Christ would say there are circumstances, because the church has said there are circumstances where divorce is unavoidable. But the question that we have as a church today isn’t to stand back as a third party and to condemn the teachings of the church, but to ask all of ourselves, are we creating the loving and supportive, instructive and welcoming community that gives the framework and the vision necessary for couples who are really struggling? Are we doing that? We established this year as a year of families at St. John, and let’s use at least that theme as an acknowledgement that in families we have challenges. And that’s okay. We should not be ashamed of that. We are fallen people, and we are not perfect. But in the midst of that and despite that, Christ has given the Holy Church to his people to hold them up in the midst of their pain, to provide for them a space where they can find answers to their questions. And yes, there will be moments — let us all understand that fundamentally — that the outcome will be unavoidable. But Christ is calling us always, in this and every other case, don’t give in to your base passions. Don’t use the easiest excuses to dissolve your promises. Because that’s when Christ died on the cross, he was offering us a vision of what the fulfillment of a promise could look like, a sacrifice unlike no other.

So today, I stand before you, not in condemnation of the reality of divorce on behalf of the church, but calling us and all of us individually to community around support in those moments when marriages are challenged. And welcoming you also to be honest with me, just like those kids are at camp, and others who you trust in your parish life to come to for comfort, for insight, for objective reflection regarding the challenges that we face, that may challenge us sometimes, and to know that this is a place that you can come to when you need help in those moments.

So today, I give glory to God. I give glory to God for the wisdom that we gain from asking difficult questions and finding those answers in his holy gospel. And I give thanks to God for the gift of his holy church, which is here to support us through moments like those we’ve discussed today and all sorts of personal, interpersonal crises that we may face. As in doing so, we grow closer to one another and to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for his glory. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.