Sermon 10/8/06
Childish - Mark 10:2-16
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Preparing for this sermon this week was a difficult task for me. Should I address this passage of Jesus about divorce? If I talk about it, how do I talk about it? As I was mulling over in my mind where I would go with this passage, I took a look back at the sermon I preached on this text three years ago. My thoughts this time around were heading in the same direction. But, as I’d like to believe, I’d like to humor myself in thinking at least that you would realize if I just preached the same sermon today as I did three years ago, I felt I needed to dig deeper. If the Bible is the living Word of God, I should be able to dig deeper every time I really study a text.
Let me be honest with you. This is a hard text to even read together and talk about together, much less learn from and be guided by. My mother always knew when this text was coming up in the lectionary cycle, and sometimes she would actually stay home on that Sunday, because she felt pain and guilt over her divorce, and didn’t feel comfortable hearing about divorce from the pulpit. It is not my desire to offend either, and more than that, it is never my desire to cause you pain. So what can I say about these words Jesus has about divorce? I want to try to put you at ease right now, and let you know that I hold your feelings, your experiences, very carefully in my mind, just as I hold my own experience of parents divorcing in my mind, and hold my mother’s experiences and those of others very dear to me in my mind and heart.
Like we do with other stories we read in the Bible, I think we must pay attention to the context, the specifics, the situation that causes Jesus to say what he says in this passage. If we don’t look at it carefully, we’ll assume Jesus is saying something he isn’t really saying at all, or we’ll let ourselves feel upset by Jesus’ words when really we are misunderstanding his point. Some Pharisees come to Jesus, to test him, we read. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Jesus asks them first what Moses has commanded about divorce. Moses’ teachings at the time would be considered the standard in all things, so Jesus appeals to what he knows they will consider the best source of right information. “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her,” they answer. And then, Jesus tells them that Moses only made this the law because of their “hardness of heart.” But from the beginning of creation, God made people in such a way that two would join together and become one flesh. “So they are no longer two,” Jesus says, “but one flesh.” Jesus concludes, in the words that are still used to conclude marriage ceremonies today: “Therefore what God has joint together, let no one separate.”
To understand what Jesus has said, and how the Pharisees might have reacted to his answer, we must ask: what was the state of marriage and divorce in Jesus’ day? There were two schools of thought on the subject at the time. One allowed divorce for almost any reason, while the other allowed divorce only if adultery was involved. But for the most part, men were the only ones who could initiate divorces, or at least the only ones who would initiate a divorce. Women and men in marriage had much different positions. For women, a divorce meant “perennial poverty, prostitution, and early death.” (1) A divorced woman who was not accepted back into her home of origin, which would be questionable, would be considered an immoral woman, a loose woman, and a valueless woman. For a man to divorce a woman in Jesus’ day would be essentially turning her out onto the streets, penniless and homeless. That may sound dramatic, but it was indeed! So, in part, Jesus’ teachings here about divorce are extremely liberating. Jesus reminds the Pharisees that God created both male and female, and that marriage is about two becoming one, not one becoming absorbed into the other. Jesus, when it was not yet very cool to do so, was speaking of protecting women in marriage.
But, what he says is deeper than that. We have to ask ourselves, why is Jesus talking about divorce in the first place? Is it because this is the topic that he feels so passionately about that he just can’t keep silent about it any longer? This is really the only place in the gospels where Jesus addresses divorce. If left to his own choice, Jesus most often talks about money and possessions, riches and giving up, and what following God will require of us. But in this case, he is approached, once again, by the Pharisees, who are forever trying to ask Jesus a question that will somehow trip him up. They ask him this to “test him” we read. So Jesus says what he says in direct response to a question. But what he says isn’t what the Pharisees were expecting to hear. Jesus was asked a straightforward question: “Is divorce legal?” But instead, Jesus answers the question, "What did God intend marriage to be?" (2) This way that Jesus reframes the conversation is not just about marriage and divorce. It is about the way that Jesus teaches us on every subject. He makes it a matter of the heart, and a matter of the relationship between humans and God, and humans with one another. How Jesus answers is actually quite different than what the Pharisees are expecting. The right answer about divorce, in the minds of the Pharisees, is the one that they give to Jesus when he turns the question back to them, the one that Moses gave. A man could write a certificate of dismissal and with that, the marriage would be ended. But though Jesus prompts that answer from them, it is not the answer he gives when he extrapolates for them. Instead, Jesus refers to the Genesis story of the creation of human beings. They expect his answer to come from Mosaic law, and this is the kind of law that is important to them – the details, the nitty-gritty of what specific actions and behaviors are allowed by religious custom.
It’s not the kind of law Jesus is interested in, however. Jesus takes us back to the Garden of Eden, back to the creation of human beings, back to the creation of a covenanted relationship. From this setting of paradise, Jesus answers that divorce is not what was intended, that instead God intended the joining together of two lives in the relationship of marriage. “What God has joined together, let no one separate,” Jesus concludes. Yes, Jesus discourages divorce, but more importantly, more essentially, Jesus discourages our human tendency to separate what God has purposefully brought together. And people, human relationships, are definitely God’s purposeful creation of bring together. More than that, in Jesus’ reference to the time of humans dwelling with God in paradise, in Jesus’ quoting from Genesis, he brings to mind the even greater separation than that between spouses – Jesus turns our attention to a time before we human beings were separated from God. Our human separateness, our brokenness that comes from relationships with one another is small in comparison with the greater separation we’ve created: we’ve separated ourselves from our very Creator. For Jesus, this isn’t a question of the right and wrong nature of divorce. It is a question about what kind of relationships God intends, hopes, desires for us to have.
From this conversation about divorce, Jesus transitions to once again talking about children, holding children up as a model. People were bringing children to Jesus so that he could touch them. Remember, children were considered non-entities in Jesus’ day, persons with no status. The disciples speak sternly to those bringing the children, but Jesus, no doubt frustrated that the disciples don’t get it after his repeated practice of using children as an example, Jesus we read is “indignant.” I do believe this is the only time when we read of Jesus being indignant! He says, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And Jesus takes the children in his arms, lays hands on them, and blesses them.
Perhaps this teaching about children doesn’t have much to do with Jesus’ response about divorce. But I think their juxtaposition is telling. For the Pharisees, the only way they seem to want to strengthen their own faith is by trodding on the faith of others, and so they test Jesus, hoping to make him look bad, apparently so that they can make themselves look better. Even the disciples seem to take great comfort in their closeness to Jesus only by trying to separate others from him, even children. But both groups go about it the wrong way. How do we draw closer to God? How do we come near God’s promised kingdom? Jesus says to do this, we must be more childlike. We must be like children who are not constantly trying to play word games and trip others up in order to get ahead. We must be like children who are vulnerable and open, and who need and accept direction and teaching, like children who are willing to learn. We must be like children, whose motives for asking questions about faith and about God are straightforward and honest.
Jesus reminds today us that God’s vision for humanity is one of relationship, one where we are brought together, connected to one another and to our Creator. After all, how many times do we hear in the scriptures that our most important tasks are to love God and to love our neighbors. Yes, in Jesus’ day and in our day, sometimes marriages fail, sometimes children do not find a safe place, sometimes we cannot fix our brokenness with one another. But Jesus reminds us that the living Christ comes as an agent of reconciliation. So let us approach God, not in fear of condemnation for the ways our relationships with God and one another have failed, and not ready to condemn others in order to secure our own position, but let us gather before God like the children Jesus called before him. We, too, can find a place in God’s arms, safe, and showered in loving blessings. Amen.
(1) Pandf
(2) Sermon Nuggets