31. The Divorced Person Who Was Shunned

The Christian Statement

Person who left: I was a deacon in my church for twelve years. My marriage fell apart. My wife left. I did everything I could to hold it together. When the divorce was final, I was removed from the deacon board. People stopped returning my calls. I felt like I'd contracted a disease. I haven't been back.

The disciple acknowledges before engaging:

Disciple: The community failed you at the moment when you needed it most. The pattern you describe - withdrawal, silence, removal from ministry - is the opposite of what Jesus modeled with people who were failing. He moved toward people in their worst moments. What happened to you was an institutional failure and it was deeply wrong. I am sorry.

The conversation can then move to what the community should have been. Not what it was, but what Jesus modeled: the presence of the community in the worst moments of a person's life, the sustaining of relationship through the failure, the honest engagement with the pain of the broken marriage without the withdrawal of the community that the person most needed precisely then.

The deacon who was removed from ministry following a divorce he did not initiate is a person who encountered the institution at its most Pharisaical - maintaining the appearance of faithfulness by excluding the person whose life was the messiest. The Jesus who ate with tax collectors and sinners would not have removed this man from the deacon board. He would have gone to his house for dinner.