"Marriage Story" Academy Award Nominated Film

January 19, 2020 Psalm 34

Deborah Laforet Colossians 3:1-17

“Marriage Story”

The Academy Award nominations for 2019 are out.  There were nine nominated for best motion picture.  They are: “Ford v Ferrari (Apple TV),” “The Irishman,” “Jojo Rabbit (Apple TV),” “Joker,” “Little Women,” “Marriage Story,” “1917,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” and “Parasite.”  For each of these movies I checked the parent advisory on IMDB, which is where I go for information on any and all movies.  The parent advisory rates movies on sex and nudity, violence and gore, profanity, drug use, and intense and frightening scenes.  The grades are severe, moderate, mild, and none.  Unfortunately, most of the movies nominated have severe violence and gore, severe profanity, moderate drug use, and moderate to severe intense and frightening scenes.  Most are mostly unsuitable for a church audience.  So, of the nine movies nominated, I have chosen to preach on four of them: Marriage Story, Ford v. Ferrari, Little Women, and Jojo Rabbit. If anyone would like to watch any of the other five, and would like to share a minute or two on a Sunday morning and talk about the movie and how it might relate to our faith, come see me and we’ll find a time.

Let us pray.  Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O God, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14) Amen.

Every marriage has a story.  Every marriage has a beginning and an ending.  Every marriage has ups and downs, easy times and difficult times.

Noam Baumbach, the director and writer of Marriage Story, last received a nomination for “The Squid and the Whale,” which also had marriage and divorce as the main theme of the movie.  Marriage Story is a powerful tale about a couple going through a divorce and all the challenges and the emotion that goes with that. Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver do an excellent job of expressing those emotions.  I’m going to show you the trailer.

Every marriage has a story.  Some marriages end after a lifetime; while others end with intention.  Some end amicably; while others end passionately.  Marriage Story tells the story of a divorce and how it affects family members and friends, how the law and lawyers add their spin to the situation, and how two people try to figure out their lives after being together for ten years, practically and emotionally.  

As part of a church community, with many families, we have many marriage stories.  Everyone here could tell a story about a marriage, whether it be their own, their parents or grandparents, friends.  Marriage is a norm in our society.  For some, it has become a right.  For others, it’s a state driven action that is to be avoided at all costs.  Most in our society assume though that if a couple has been exclusive for an amount of time, they eventually will get married. 

In our Judeo-Christian context, ethics and morality surround the institution of marriage.  For years, sex was only an option within marriage, especially for women.  Children born outside of marriage were labelled as bastards and found it hard to escape this stigma their entire lives.  Marriage was only allowed for heterosexuals, and was seen as a lifetime commitment.  Divorce was seen as wrong, except in extreme circumstances.  It wasn’t that long ago when divorce was seen as a sin, having a child outside of marriage was shameful and sinful and usually hidden away somehow, and marrying a divorcee, especially a female divorcee, was scandalous.  There have been so many taboos around marriage over the years, and although, our society is beginning to abandon some of those taboos, the stigma is not as easy to discard.  

We here at St. Paul’s do a great job at caring for each other, but it’s not easy to support someone whose marriage if falling apart as it’s not usually something that people share.  In my previous role of Christian Education Minister, I encountered a number of marriages that were struggling and always wondered what my role was in that.  How do you care for a couple who is splitting up?  There are times when one is coming to church and the other is not, so how do you care for both?  How do you not take sides?  There are also times when both stop coming because they feel ashamed that this marriage has fallen apart, or they feel awkward coming to church alone when they used to come as a couple.  The falling apart of a marriage is still seen as a failure rather than a healthy step in a relationship.  Imagine if divorces and remarriages were just seen as a natural step in some relationships.  How might the removal of this stigma make divorce less divisive and less traumatic, for the couple and for the rest of the family.  I think society is heading this way, but we still have a long way to go, especially in churches, where there is a history of judgement and condemnation. 

The Affirming Committee, in the first part of their working vision statement, has stated that as a community, “We are seeking to be a safe and inclusive faith community for people of all gender identities, sexual orientations, marital status, family configuration, abilities, ages, races, ethnicities, faiths, and socio-economic circumstances.” Churches are known for coming down hard on people who look different from the marriage norm of man and woman and children.  Therefore, if churches are open to more than that, they have to explicitly say so.  But, once we’ve said so, what then?  

How do we show support and compassion for couples who are struggling to either maintain or dissolve a marriage.  Are there programs we can offer?  Are there ways we can connect with the couple?  Are there ways we can let couples know that they are not alone, that they have a whole church family that loves them and cares for them, and that God loves them no matter what.  

In Psalm 34, we hear words of consolation, especially for the ashamed, the brokenhearted, the poor souls who are crushed in spirit.  These words sound like anyone gong through the end of a relationship.  Near the end, the psalm focuses on the righteous, which is a word that I think most hear as self-righteous, someone who things they are better than others.  Walter Brueggemann, who is one of my favourite theologians, writes the following in describing the righteous in this psalm:  

“The righteous may or may not be the good, but they are the socially marginal, who no longer expect the dominant society to succour them, and so they look to Yahweh as the alternative source of help.  Thus the cry of the righteous is an act of delegitimizing the primary structures that have reduced people to helplessness.  In verse 21 the righteous are not hated because they they are marginal or because they are good, but because they look to Yahweh.  Yahweh’s peculiar inclinations are with the brokenhearted and the ones with crushed spirit.  That is, Yahweh’s solidarity is not with the ones who go from success to success, but the ones denied success.”

This concept is not new.  Yahweh’s solidarity with those “denied success” or God’s preferential treatment for the poor and marginalized are ideas that hold some weight.  If we want to be closer to God,  we also need to be in solidarity with these people.  But again, what does this look like?  I think as a community of faith, a community of Spirit, we need to explore this very question.  How do we connect and engage with those people who are in need of some extra care, whether that be physical, mental, or spiritual.  

The letter written to the Colossians gives us some guidance.  The author talks about who we are as people of Christ.  He writes, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”  Now, I’m not a big fan of the separation that is made between things that are above and things on earth.  I’m an earthly being and I think there is a lot of good on this earth, but I think the idea is a good one.  The author says that we have died and that we are now in Christ.  When we give our lives to Christ, it means that we strive to put aside things like greed, deceit, wrath, malice, slander, etc., and we strive to live in Christ by clothing ourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  The author writes that we strip off our old self and clothe ourselves with this new self, and that in this renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, slave or free, and we might add: straight or gay, rich or poor, young or old, able or disabled, married or divorced or single, one parent or four.  It all melts away because Christ is all and in all!

As followers of Christ, our goal is to be able to erase the divisions.  And to be clear, I’m not talking about erasing diversity.  We are richer in our differences and richer when we accept one another for those differences, but when those differences divide us, that’s when we have problems.  

All of this is to say. we need to accept and love each other in whatever shape or form we come.  Sometimes we emphasize our individual differences, like the colour of our skin, our gender identity or sexual preference, our abilities, our age.  But as that vision statement names, we want to also be inclusive of all marital statuses and family configurations.  It’s not up to us to judge.  It is only up to us to be non-judgmental, compassionate, supportive, invitational, and, above all, loving.  After all, Christ is all and in all!  Loving it all is to love Christ and to be one with Christ.  

The blessing I’m going to close with is from the end of this reading that we heard today from Colossians, but I am reading it from the Inclusive Bible.

15 Let Christ’s peace reign in your hearts since, as members of one body, you have been called to that peace.  Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness. 16 Let the word of Christ, rich as it is, dwell in you.  Instruct and admonish one another wisely.  Sing gratefully to God from your hearts in psalms, hymns, and songs of the Spirit. 17 And whatever you do, whether in speech or in action, do it in the name of Jesus our Saviour, giving thanks to God through Christ.

May it be so.  Amen.

Deborah Laforet