Mark 10:2-9 -- St. Matthew’s, Austin
Susan J. Barnes -- October 8, 2006
Today we look at Jesus’ pronouncement on divorce. It’s a very, very touchy subject. Why? Because it touches so many of us--one way or another. Who among us has not had our life affected by divorce: our own, our parents’, our childrens’, our siblings’, our closest friends’? If I were to ask for a show of hands of all those over the age of 25, say, whose lives had NOT been affected by divorce in one of those ways, I suspect that very few hands would be raised.
Jesus words on divorce are clear and strong. There don’t appear to be any outs, any exceptions. What do we, as faithful followers do with this?
For many hundreds of years, the church responded strongly to those words, and the two verses that follow. Divorce was prohibited. Divorced people were denied the sacrament of Holy Communion, as they still are in the Roman church. Nor were divorced people allowed to remarry in the Episcopal Church. That has changed in the last forty years. Is it because we decided to ignore Jesus words? No. It is because, through study and prayerful deliberation, we came to believe that our prohibitions in the present day were not a faithful interpretation of Jesus’ intent 2,000 years ago.
Let me cut to the chase and assure you that I am not going to conclude that Jesus would applaud divorce. Divorce remains a tragedy in our day as it was in his. What I want to do is to reference some of the insights from history and scripture that could lead a faithful denomination to this change of heart and law.
First: look at the people to whom Jesus is speaking, as well as his manner. He is responding to hostile Pharisees—not teaching to disciples or crowds. We are in the 10th chapter of Mark. The central issue is the conflict between Jesus and the religious officials, who will eventually conspire to kill him. While Jesus was first teaching in Galilee the religious officials were threatened by his healing miracles, his preaching, and his inclusion of the marginalized. They repeatedly challenged him. They even accused him of demon possession and of heresy.
Then there’s a geographical/cultural context. Mark tells us this encounter happens when Jesus first comes into Judea. Jesus is moving toward his destiny in Jerusalem, the power bastion of the religious establishment. Now the conflict with the religious authorities intensifies; and it takes a new direction. Now the Pharisees want to know where Jesus stands on a critical social practice: divorce. According to the New Testament scholar Richard Horsley, divorce highlights the strong economic and social differences between the Galilee and Judea. In the farming, village culture of Galilee as in all agrarian societies to this day, the integrity of the family was key to survival. Spouses and children worked the land together; divorce was very rare. In the more urban area of Roman-dominated Judea, however, the land-holding elites used marriages to consolidate and expand their power. They divorced when they pleased, to suit those ends. As their power increased, so did their exploitation of their rural tenants—Jesus’ people. Herod’s own divorce and remarriage was a case in point. Like many a royal marriage throughout history, its motive was power and property. John the Baptist denounced Herod’s divorce and was beheaded.
Touchy subject, even then. VERY touchy. So touchy that the Pharisees might have wanted to protect it.
They “put Jesus to the test”—seeing whether he might go along with them--but he won’t play. Jesus challenges them to support divorce with a commandment from scripture. They can only cite passage in Deuteronomy that allows divorce. You remember that divorce was completely inequitable. Women were like property. They had no rights. Only men could divorce. And they did with a simple declaration: “I divorce thee. I divorce thee. I divorce thee.” Jesus trumps the Pharisees with foundational scripture. Instead of going to the Ten Commandments, which he might have (thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife), he quotes Genesis. Note that he refers to both creation stories from Genesis, the one in today’s lectionary and the other story, in which God creates us simultaneously: male and female, in God’s own image. Implicit in this version is the dignity of women, which Jewish divorce savaged.
I hope that you agree that the lessons from history help us see why the church’s earlier response to Jesus words was unfair: it was ill informed. Divorce, which was common in the upper social stratum in Jesus’ day, was a cynical strategy for building power. The abandoned wife was often left impoverished and unprotected. Divorce in Jesus’ own large peasant class was not only emotionally devastating to the spouses and children, it rent the social fabric of the village community, and furthered economic devastation. Even today, divorced women are poorer on average than their former husbands, but women’s rights and opportunities are unfathomably now greater than in Jesus day. Then, divorced women joined the ranks of the “little ones”, the people who could not speak for themselves, and the people for whom Jesus spoke: the outcast, the poor, and the marginalized.
Jesus supported marriage for many reasons that were grounded in his own times. Jesus’ church supports marriage for many of the same reasons today. Through pre-marital counseling we work very hard to help couples recognize the risks and responsibilities of marriage. If they do not, we are free not to perform the wedding. When you come to us with marital troubles we are honored to support you in getting through. Jesus held out a high standard for marriage and the church does, too.
So why has the church “softened” its opposition to divorce? I don’t think that we have. We still do everything that we can to see that it doesn’t happen. We finally came to recognize through experiences that many of you know yourselves, that at times divorce is inevitable.
What has changed? I think that by the grace of God, through our understanding of the gospel itself, we realized that we had been wrong in our response to divorce in the first place. Our response had been and to exclude, to reject, to isolate. That was not Jesus’ way. Jesus’ way was compassion.
Jesus’ ministry was dedicated to healing. From Jesus we learn that healing is not just medical, not just physical. Healing is about forgiveness. It is about reconciliation. When Jesus healed the leper, the lame, the blind, he brought those people back from the margins into the loving embrace of family and society.
As Episcopalians in the Catechism (p. 855) we say “The mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” We do not believe that the mission of the church in the world is to judge and punish people who make mistakes. The church must take responsibility to punish her own officials who do wrong. Judgment and punishment of others is God’s job. All people make mistakes. Some of those mistakes lead to the dissolution of a marriage. All people sin. Jesus did not punish sinners. Jesus forgave the penitent.
When the church shunned, marginalized, and excluded those people who were the victims of divorce, the church punished them. It was never the proper Christian response. Churches are like people. Churches are made of people. Churches make mistakes, too. And when we repent, Jesus forgives.