GENESIS 2:18-24

PSALM 8

HEBREWS 2:1-18

MARK 10:2-9

SERMON - 10/08/06

Jesus was asked a lot of hostile questions during his ministry, especially by Pharisees, but I believe that no other answer he ever gave to any question has created as much pain to as many people as the response he gave to the question he was posed in today’s Gospel. And all, I believe, not because of what he actually said, but because of how what he said was interpreted by many churches.

“Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’“ Like any rabbi, Jesus knew perfectly well what the Torah said (that is the religious Law of the first five books of what we call the Old Testament). Deuteronomy 24:1 in the NRSV reads: “Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house...”

That was the Law as given by Moses, and that was the law in every sense of the term as it existed for First Century Palestinian Jews. That is, only a husband could be the plaintiff and initiate divorce, and the only judge who had to rule on it was - the husband! Wives had no right to initiate divorce, no rights to a settlement adjudicated by a presumably impartial judge, no rights really to prevent getting divorced if their husband decreed it was going to happen - and therefore, since the husband had the power to dump her penniless, he had considerable power to exploit her during a marriage, since he could always use the threat to divorce as a lever.

The only debate which raged among first century rabbis was over what the grounds were on which men could use this absolute, unilateral power! The phrase in Deuteronomy is that if a husband found “something objectionable” about her, he could divorce her. In the RSV the words are translated “some indecency.” The strict school of Rabbi Shammai held that the key word was “indecency” and that only the wife’s adultery was grounds for divorce. The permissive school of Hillel held that the keyword was “some,” and so anything the wife did (or didn’t do) which displeased the husband - burning dinner, raising her voice, even being less beautiful than the woman who just moved into town - was a ground for divorce.

Guess which school of thought was more popular with the guys?

Hillel’s victory meant divorce was easy and common. Women under the law were property, not people, and were dumped as easily as used cars are traded in on new ones. Divorce was easy and common in the pagan, Greco-Roman world which had conquered Israel politically as well. Even though women had more rights outside of Palestine, there was nothing like equality.

So, where does Jesus weigh in? In truth, he never really answers the question, because to do so would acknowledge as right the then-current reality that only men could sue for divorce. Instead, in this debate with religious legalists, he cites two other passages from the Torah (the Law) to cancel this law from Deuteronomy 24:1.

Significantly, both passages concern the creation itself. Jesus cites God creating both man and woman (in God’s own image is part of the passage beyond this quotation) and that they become one flesh in marriage, referring to the joining together of Adam and Eve.

Jesus attributes Moses’ allowing divorce to the “hardness of heart” of the people and contrary to the original ideal of God.

Well, guess what: people are just as “hard-hearted,” pig-headed, whatever you want to call it, now as they were in Moses’ day 3,200 years ago. Likewise in Jesus’ time on earth 2,000 years ago. Hard-heartedness, human sinfulness broadly, has not changed, in fact, since the Fall of Man - right after the passages Jesus quotes.

So the ideal state Jesus lifts up refers in reality to the time of Adam and Eve’s joyous innocence, to before the entry of sin into the world! That is the ideal he wants human beings to remember and lift up in their hearts and behaviors: the joyous delight, trust and equality between Adam and Eve before their temptation and disobedience and the inevitable subsequent descent into mutual recrimination, pain, shame – and, only then, into a subordinate role for women.

Are you with me? Jesus’ ideal - what he wants us to remember - is to be remembered first and foremost because it is the ideal, born in trust in God, mutual joy and equality. But it was an ideal only fully possible without the existence of sin - and therefore it is an ideal to look to, but cannot be an expectation on which punitive legislation can be based.

Jesus clearly condemned the law of his own time, which placed all power in the hands of husbands - and he clearly condemned an attitude toward marriage (by men, the powerful ones) which asked (a) what can I get out of a marriage, and (b) if I want to, how can I get out of a marriage?

Wrong attitude, Jesus says: marriage is a bonding together, until two become one flesh. Ending marriage is not like dumping a used car; ending marriage - making one become two - is major surgery, cutting apart one flesh.

And, boy, does that often correspond to the emotional realities: divorce often is major surgery on one’s life. Like some major surgeries it is risky, and not to be undertaken unless other options have been thoroughly explored - though sometimes, due to human hard-heartedness, it is the only option.

Few experiences in life make a person so aware of his or her own brokenness than divorce. Few experiences in life can so often bring out the worst in people as divorce. Few experiences in life leave more people - the couple (or un-couple), any children involved, especially, other family members and friends - feeling more wounded and hurt. And since divorce sometimes means that the person you once trusted and depended on most you now find you can trust and depend on least, few experiences in life leave people needing God more than going through divorce.

Yet all too often, churches have used this very passage as a stick with which to attack the wounded, tell them they’ve failed (as if they didn’t know), tell them they have broken God’s commandment, that they are second class at best, and imply, at least, that they no longer get to sing “Jesus loves me” because he doesn’t.

Obviously, I’m taking a different position, but am I just “blowing off” Jesus’ teaching? Not at all.

Jesus was responding to a hostile question from someone who was a supporter of the then status quo which put absolute power in the hands of husbands. He voided that law by appealing to a higher law, the intent of God in creation. Jesus’ aim in doing that was to raise the status of a marriage certificate far above that of a Kleenex tissue, which is how some 1st century men regarded it - use it and throw it out.

Jesus did exalt the status of marriage. But - if his pronouncement was turned into an actual law prohibiting divorce on any grounds, the effect would be not to exalt the status of marriage but almost to abolish it. If divorce were absolutely impossible, many people would simply never get married in the first place and faithful, long-term, monogamous marriages of joy, equality and mutual commitment (the ideal Jesus was lifting up) would, instead of becoming more common, be the rarest of curiosities.

That reality was realized even in biblical times. In Matthew’s version of this story, Jesus allows divorce in the case of adultery (an exception which formed the basis of matrimonial law in New York State in living memory!) and Jesus’ disciples are described as responding to Jesus’ strictness on divorce and remarriage by saying, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

Jesus’ response in Matthew makes it clear that he is being idealistic, not legalistic: “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given...let anyone accept this who can.”

The second reason I don’t see Jesus as establishing an absolute law against divorce is his general stance against death-dealing legalisms (notably in his ignoring of Sabbath prohibitions against healing) and his espousal of mercy, grace and second chances - most dramatically in the case of the woman “caught in the very act of adultery” in John 7: 53-8:11. The Law clearly said she should be stoned to death, but Jesus memorably declared, “Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone.” And then he said to the woman, whose life literally was saved by his words, “Go and sin no more.” If that isn’t the Gospel of second chances, what is? Would such a man padlock every marriage and through away the key? I don’t think so.

And the clincher is how he treated the only person in his ministry (that I can think of anyway) who he met who was clearly identified as divorced. Yes, the woman at the well in John 4. And she had been divorced five times and was then living with yet another man without being married - way beyond the pale even in the First Century.

How does Jesus treat this social pariah, who lugs her water jar to the well at high noon in a semi-desert sub tropical country so as to avoid the whole rest of the village?

He converts her.

He turns her into the first Christian evangelist - and she draws the whole village to meet him.

Would such a man, who saw hope for and affected a U-turn in the most well-traveled and maligned divorcée in town padlock every marriage and throw away the key? I don’t think so.

This Gospel passage is indeed Gospel, not law. And in fact, how many churches have treated it as law? Jesus doesn’t say anything about annulments here. Human frailty and sin in reality makes it necessary to permit divorce, but that does not stop Jesus from holding up the original purpose of God in Creation - a profound and permanent bond of unity with equality and mutual joy - as the ideal by which all marriages should be measured.

To help the faithful come closer to experience such a glorious reality, he does not lock them in but lifts them up, offering forgiveness and a second chance, guidance, strength, wisdom, hope, and most of all, his awesome love.

And for those who have experienced the devastation and relationship death that is divorce, he renews his offer of forgiveness, guidance, strength, wisdom and love to make possible a resurrection in that person’s life.

For that is the ultimate reality of Christ: for what seems like the end of life, or of life as we could imagine it, is not the end of life to him, and therefore not the end of hope for us. For those who have gone through the death of a marriage, he can raise up to new life as wiser, stronger, humbler, more loving single persons who may or may not marry again, but who can in any case reflect the glory of God.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church