Mark 10 - Never Divorced

This is one of those Sundays where preachers of the Revised Common Lectionary look at the Gospel lesson for the day and say "Ya know, I haven't preached on the Old Testament in a while..." If you're wondering why, it is because Jesus gives his harsh word about divorce in this upcoming text. And he doesn't even provide an out clause like he does in Matthew's Gospel (Mat. 19.9) to at least give some ground for acceptable divorce. Here the word comes down hard, like a sledgehammer sized gavel upholding the law against the greatest of resistance.
Let's take a look at the text:

2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" 3 "What did Moses command you?" he replied. 4 They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away." 5 "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,"Jesus replied. 6 "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 7 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." 10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11 He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

Perhaps the first thing to note here is that Jesus was not running around simply condemning divorced people. The notion that this text is a weapon against those divorced misses actually what it really is: a weapon against Jesus. It comes out of an attack at him, not us.
But that does not change what he said about those divorced, does it? It does not make it easier to be remarried and hear Jesus telling you that you are now in adultery. While I myself am currently quite happily married, my own parents divorced. My own father remarried. So what of this do we say?

It says that like us, Jesus values marriage. Any person who chooses to get married does not do so with the intention of getting divorced. We come to it with expectation and value, the same perhaps as Jesus. We may not always have much of an opinion of others who get divorced in our increasingly autonomous society, but we all get into marriage with a similar view. Even if those who flippantly think "I'll just get divorced if it does not work out" they rarely assume that is the case. Martin Luther in his teaching on the Ten Commandments regularly saw that for every negative imperative by God ('You shall not') it implied a positive aspect. If we are not to kill our neighbor we are then to help preserve his life, if we should not misuse God's name vainly then we are to use it properly. Likewise, if we are not to be divorced, then we are to seek the value of marriage.

It should also be said that Jesus reveals that there is a place for divorce. Namely, within the history of God's people, sometimes it has been necessary to permit this because of the hardness of the human heart (has that ever changed?). But what that means, is clearly that divorce ultimately arises out of sin (which I'm sure most divorced couples would agree, even if they debate as to who's sin caused such) and it means it is counter to God's creational intention. Considering how Jesus notes particularly the story of creation and the new household formed (which is then the place for offspring as well - the continuing of this new creation) we can see why divorce itself would be counter-creational. And since the places in which it happens declares the presence of sin it is counter to the will of God.

But Jesus does not stop at saying sin is only in what leads to divorce. His words to his disciples explicitly speak against remarriage, which is in my mind the most difficult part of the entire text. But there is also a cultural piece to speak of here. Myself and most if not all my readers will acknowledge that we enter into marriage by our own will, and courtship and reasoning for choosing our mate differs greatly among ourselves much less among those in Jesus' time and place. I note this because the marriage provided there an important place for many women, who relied on parents or husbands in the far more patriarchal society. It is worth noting this because divorce then could mean life or death. A previously married woman has a hard time remarrying. As such she would be dependent on family. Even in today's world, as Donald Juel (Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday's Texts ed. Roger E. Van Harn) notes, women and children - those who would be most vulnerable in the patriarchal society and most affected by the divorce - are still in most cases the most vulnerable people in our society. We've come far, but yet the issue of what one will do after divorce can be a real one. If you doubt that one only has to see legal disputes over property, child supports, and so on after a divorce. One of the ways abusers trap the abused is the threat of losing everything. The abuser tries to make or convince the spouse of total dependence to prevent the ability to leave. When Jesus speaks of this, he therefore is not only affirming creation, and noting the presence of sin in divorce, he is speaking against an act that would have a negative societal role towards the vulnerable. In a culture where one can be sent away and replaced, and such an act has dreaded consequences on the one replaced. Such an understanding may help us then give credence and support to those engaged in the legal system, and uphold the vocation of lawyers who assist in that process and to give a theological eye to what is often only viewed in light of who earned what, how to hurt the divorcee, how to maximize one's assets, and the utter pain associated with the whole process. Yet Jesus names the real pain and wrong being a process that leaves one destitute.

But I think this is more than just a justice issue, Jesus himself to his disciples names adultery - not murder, poverty, robbery or other sins that might speak more of the injustice of such a putting away of a person. And he looks both ways when he speaks of this: not just the man putting away the woman (which would have had the larger social impact) but of the woman divorcing, remarrying. Especially since it would be important for a woman to perhaps do so, why is it a sin, notably a sexual sin related to marriage fidelity?

Jesus within the gospels at other times seems to upset family orders, choosing those who listen to his words as brothers and sisters over his kin, saying son will act against father and daughter against mother. Yet here instead of crying out for some form of anti-familial upsetting of the world's order he decries upsetting this order as adultery and declares "what God has joined together let no one separate". What is different about this creational joining from other ones? When it is by our hands the answer is nothing. And perhaps that is precisely what Jesus is pointing out. The act of divorce is as parents disowning a child: one cannot change the fact that this is their child. They can choose to no longer acknowledge it, but they cannot change it. A boy who grew up without a father will never know him, but that man still is his father. And the way we look at said fathers, the way we say shame on those who pretend it is not so, that is what God sees in the relationships we break. Permitting divorce because of sin is like removing a child to protect him from his abusive or neglecting parents, it happens, but it does not change the created order. Sin upsets the law but it does not undo it. This is why acting as though the separation has undone it is a transgression of the law. Divorce stands in opposition to this order but is convicted under it, in fact the only thing that stands truly outside the law is Christ. Thus it is those who listen to him who are his sisters and brothers (apart from the created order), the gospel does pit child against parent. By the gospel Jesus clearly names a reality that is apart from this order. Our own hands, our divorce, we cannot remove the accusation that rests by the voice of the law. Only Christ can.

We must therefore turn to Christ. When he gives the answer to 'lawful' divorce he ultimately responds with a word apart from the law - forgiveness. Remember I began by saying this entire text was a trap not against us, but against Christ. That is where the attack must ultimately land, upon the cross. Often the divorced person is seen as outside the church, because of the law Christ gives on marriage and divorce. But one must rather have it the other way: the church is the one place where the lawbreaker - the adulterer - finds rest from the accusation. Divorce has legal, emotional, and social implications. It tears families apart. But Christ is the place where instead of being divorced from a family we are drawn into one. It is the place where the table is filled with tax collectors and adulterers, and they can meet this title with the knowledge that it is true, one has sought to separate what God put together, one has sinned, one is an adulterer. But then this is precisely where I go. Sometimes we think repentance entails making the marriage all better instead of the adulterer seeking the cross where the sin is actually taken away and forgiveness is actually bestowed.

My last thought on why Jesus is especially firm on marriage is because God stands quite in contrast to us when it comes to covenants. Marriage is a covenant, it is a binding promise. God makes those too. In fact, the relation between husband and wife become the illustration for God and Israel, Christ and Church. Adultery is often the sin of the people of God, when they seek to turn to other gods, turn away from our Lord. Why would God insist, that even in matters of broken marriages the covenant stands? Because that is what our relationship to him has always been: broken oaths; adultery. Yet while we often think our relationship with God has ended, been divorced (maybe we make it "official" and drop our church membership) he still considers us his bride. He refuses to send us away vulnerable. He won't let sin upset our marriage, instead he gives us a law we can transgress but not remove and a cross in which neither the law nor sin have the last word - instead "It is finished" does. What we don't need to do is soften the power of the law which even in places where divorce must happen, has a word of demanding care for the vulnerable, and even still a word of transgression - a word that demands that divorce has not broken the family. No we don't need that word softened, what we need instead is a cross where the adulterer, the divorced, the broken can lie down with the rest of us and sing "My faith looks up to Thee"

Donald Juel on this also writes:
"That some will experience the words as hurtful is not surprising. The law works by punishing disobedience and transgression. A proper response is not to define the problem away by trying to explain Jesus' words as somehow appropriate to an ancient culture or as a patriarchal bias. It is to ask how God deals with brokenness, which is of course the main theme of the Gospel story."

And of this story we shall never be divorced. Instead it shall always call us home to dinner again.

For those interested I had a follow-up blog on this text which can be found here.