A Man Called Ove Learns the Truth About Relationship: 19th Sunday after Pentecost- Proper 22, Year B
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Swedish author Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove gives a wonderful look at the connections we make in life and the how we can reconcile with one another in the end.
But it isn’t always that way. Throughout most of the book, Ove and his former friend Rune have a deep animosity for one another. Their wives are close, and they try to bring their husbands together in order to spend more time with each other. It turns out the two men have so much in common. Both are sticklers for the rules and principles. They both have their own sufferings in live. They care deeply about their wives, and they are almost, but not quite, as passionate about their cars.
Yet they come into conflict on how certain things should be run for the neighborhood association. They also disagree about what car is best. Rune drives a Volvo until he later gets a BMW. Ove always drives a Saab. At the end when they cannot reconcile, Ove boils down their disagreements to this fact, that you cannot reason with a man who does not drive a Saab.
It’s late in their lives that they finally come back together when Ove works with their neighbors to save Rune from being forced into a home for dementia. It takes realizing Anita, Rune’s wife, has been hiding the problem from him this whole time when Ove could, and wants to, help.
It is so interesting how a disagreement over such a little thing can cause such animosity between people who should get along with each other. Unfortunately we often see this in our own lives and those around us.
That’s not what God intends for us. God’s hope and plan for us is to bring us together in relationship with each other, just as He desires to bring all of us in relationship with Him.
We see God’s ultimate work to bring us all to Him through our Lord Jesus Christ, as shown in Hebrews. We also see God’s plan to bring us in relationship with each other through how we were made. Genesis shows that we were made with the intention that we would be together and that we would knit our lives together. Yet we often let little differences tear us apart.
This leads to Jesus’ teaching on Divorce. Unfortunately we often read this as a simple condemnation of those who we think have failed to live up to a standard that’s been set, like Ove with his thoughts on car ownership. We aren’t meant to condemn one another. Instead, we are meant to help each other, as Ove and his neighbors came together to help Rune in the end. We are called to help our neighbors in the highs and lows of their relationships, just as we are called to make sure that those who come together in marriage are ready and able to make this lifelong commitment.
Jesus isn’t telling us who to hate, as Ove uses the issue of Saab vs. Volvo to mark reasonability of Rune. Jesus is trying to emphasize just how important it is for us to stay together and be in relationship with one another. That is why this passage continues with Jesus telling others not to keep the children from Him. Jesus seeks relationship with all of us, and desires that we do the same.
It is so easy to let little things, like car choices, divide us. We might even let divorce itself divide us from our neighbors and family. We are instead called to not be divided from one another, but to come together in relationship, just as God desires to be in relationship with us through our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not called to condemn, but to help. That doesn’t just apply to cars or divorce, but to all issues. Remember that first and foremost we are called to be together. To do that, we need to not just condemn, but to instead help our fellow siblings-in-Christ pick themselves up so that Jesus can make them whole.