Sometimes a Gospel text kind of sticks in the throat of a pastor. Jesus will say something and the preacher will have to choose to preach on that topic ... or ignore it. This is one of those mornings and I've decided to tackle the tricky subject head-on. I've got a measure of job security so I can speak boldly about things that might ruffle feathers. And so out on the limb I climb as I proclaim, "A man or a woman must never, and I emphasize never, must never stop the children from coming to Jesus!" You know this is a lame attempt at humor. The key issue of our text - in addition to children - is marriage. Jesus is clear. Darn it: Jesus is clear. From the very beginning of Creation, it was the intention of God that marriage is a 'til-death-do-us-part proposition. For obvious reasons, it is a Gospel text that can stick in the throat of a preacher. For where two or three couples are gathered together, chances are that one of the marriages is foundering.

I've mentioned before one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs; the tune and the words are hauntingly beautiful, "Flesh and blood need flesh and blood, and you're the one I need." It's a love song, reflecting a very basic human need: the desire for love, companionship, and sexual fulfillment. I have to admit when I first heard the words, my mind went into sermon mode. I heard the words and thought of the Eucharist. Holy Communion. The flesh and blood of Jesus. "Flesh and blood need flesh and blood, and he's the one we need!" This is World Communion Sunday, and today Christians throughout Christendom are receiving the flesh and blood of Jesus. However, when I re-read the Creation story in Genesis 2 in preparation for this morning's sermon, the refrain fits equally as well. Flesh and blood yearn for love, companionship, and sexual fulfillment.

This is powerful poetry, this second chapter of Genesis. I call it is the Poetry of the Potter. God scoops up clay from the garden, and like a potter creates a vase or goblet ... our God creates a man. In Hebrew, you can hear the play on words. From the ground - adumah - God creates the man - Adam. In English we might say that God scooped clay from the earth ... and created earthling. In a real sense, Adam's name means mud! His name is mud, but the Psalmist says of humankind: "You have made them little less than divine; with glory and honor you crown them."

"With glory and honor you crown them," the Psalmist says. You see, when God is finished with Adam, God is not quite finished. Creation has yet to reach its flesh-and-blood pinnacle. To put it another way, while God recognizes that Adam is finished - God knows Adam is not quite complete. Flesh and blood need flesh and blood and God creates for Adam a partner. Not a slave; not a servant. God creates a partner. God takes a bone from the side of Adam - and the result of God's handiwork is Eve. A bone from the side of Adam, with the intention that the man and the woman would go through life, as equals, side by side. The punchline of Genesis is this: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh."

This is how things were intended; how they were meant to be. God unites. This is what our God does. We humans tend to build walls and barriers. God unites. We untie. We live in a world where the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, "But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you ...," where the words of Jesus sound as foreign to us as Hebrew. We say we want to learn from Jesus. But c'mon ... "love your enemies"? We say we want to follow Jesus. But gosh, "do good to them that curse you"? Holy cow, "care for the least of these my children"? We tend to be very selective about the words of Jesus. We listen to some and dismiss others as impractical. However, when we dismiss the words of Jesus at our own peril - and the peril of those around us!

That being said, I know a lot of people who are divorced. And though it might sound at first strange, these divorced people have never been married. In fact, I'd say that most of us are divorced. Divorced from former friends. Divorced from certain members of our families (our own, as it were, flesh and blood). Are there many things more tragic? Any relationship is risky, because any relationship can end up in divorce. The workplace can become a living hell. The classroom, just as bad. People even become estranged from one another in this community called church.

Yes, most of us are divorced. But obviously, the breakup of a marriage just intensifies the pain to the Nth degree. The family is the heart of any society ... the relationship between husband and wife is the most intimate of all relationships. To know someone's mind, and heart, and body can be paradise ... and then for that relationship to be over is just awful. The undoing of Eden. How awful it is when marriage partners celebrate so joyfully in the banquet room - only to have it come apart in the court room.

When the Pharisees - the self-righteous, self-proclaimed religious elite - when the pharisees push Jesus on the question of divorce, they are doing it to trap Jesus. They know that divorce is acceptable under certain conditions. The law of Moses allows for it. They also know the fate of the divorced woman ... she is shunned by her own family, dismissed from the household of her husband. She will have no means to support herself except prostitution or begging. No wonder, considering everything that is at stake, no wonder Jesus points out what God intended so long ago at Creation. God separated Eve from Adam - and then joined them together once more ... in a joining that was to last to the last - when death separated them once more. Those times when it all comes together in marriage, well even Adam and Eve knew no greater Eden. But those times when it all falls apart, Satan knows no deeper Hell!

But the bottom line of Jesus is always the bold line of forgiveness. forgiveness for we who have suffered from divorce. Divorce from spouses. Divorce from other family members. Divorce from former friends and colleagues. From the cross of Golgotha to the cross of every divorce, the words of Jesus ring out, "Father forgive them." Not words of judgment. Surely disappointment, but not judgment. The Potter, our God, forgives the clay - we who have been created a little less than divine.

Whatever we do in life, whatever happens, our God has refused to divorce us. Surely there are grounds - but our God has promised to love us. The cross of Jesus is the price of reconciliation between the Potter and we the clay. Because of the Cross, God promises to love and forgive us, through better and through worse - all the way into eternity. A sign of God's gracious forgiveness, enphasized on this World communion Sunday, is the Table of the Lord.

Yes indeed. Flesh and blood need flesh and blood, and he's the One we need! As we come to the table, picture the welcome of Jesus himself, even as he welcomed those precious little children, in long ago Galilee.