The Gospel isn’t meant to be gulped down on Sunday morning, but gnawed on through the week so it really becomes a part of us. You’ve got to work at it, like a dog with a good bone! Here’s the Gospel for this coming Sunday — the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost — with food for thought on restoring unity with God and each other in Christ. Gnaw away!
Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost – Mark 10:2-16
Some Pharisees approached Jesus and, as a test, asked, “Is it permissible for husbands to divorce wives?” In reply Jesus asked, “What command did Moses give?” They answered, “Moses permitted a husband to write a decree of divorce and to put her away.” But Jesus told them “Moses wrote the commandment because of your hardness of heart. From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. This is why one person leaves home and cleaves to another, and the two become one flesh.’ They are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has united, therefore, let no one divide.” Back in the house again, the disciples questioned Jesus once more about this. He told them, “If a man divorces his wife and marries another, he commits adultery against her; and if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she commits adultery.”
People were bringing their children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples scolded them for this. When Jesus saw this he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them. It is to just such as these that the kindom of God belongs. The truth is, whoever does not welcome the kindom of God as a little child will not enter it.” And Jesus took the children in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.
The Backstory – What’s Going On Here?
The backstory is critical to understanding this passage, as the Pharisees and Jesus are not engaged in some random “Stump the Rabbi” ethical gymnastics. The Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus. So why use the topic of
divorce? Because it has proven very useful in the recent past to get rid of your enemies. John the Baptist lost his head for criticizing Herod Antipas doing what? Marrying his brother’s wife. The Pharisees are trying to lead
Jesus down the same road.
But Jesus is smart. In public with the Pharisees, he gives an answer that, while true, will not entrap him. He says that Moses permitted divorce (so technically, the answer for the Pharisees is that Herod did not break the
letter of the law), but that the real standard is not the law but God’s word in Genesis. It is only when he is alone with his disciples that he is most clear, and explicitly references Herod’s situation (“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another…)
Like the previous passage where Jesus says if our hand, foot or eye causes us to sin we should cut it off, he is making it clear that just as Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law but to abundantly fulfill it, there is a standard of Kindom behavior that is more than just “being lawful” but that is a narrow gate to enter into indeed.
A few things to chew on:
*One of the ways this passage has become a stumbling block is the gendered language. We have wonderfully grown in our understanding of the diversity of gender and sexuality in creation. We know now that God makes us much more than just male and female. That God makes us across amazing spectra of sexuality and gender. It’s important whenever we read or quote this scripture to make note of that right away. That, like all scripture, it represents understandings of reality that are frozen in time … and that is why we are grateful that we can take scripture seriously without taking it literally. For there is wisdom here. There is wisdom about the mystery of relationship. We are also free to recognize that certain things … like the ability to find joy in intimacy outside of marriage and after marriage has ended. We are free to recognize that the understanding of marriage and divorce reflected in this scripture comes from a time where divorce meant vastly different things for men than it did for women … and that was a reality that forced people to be less than their full selves and strive for less than living full lives. We are free to explore the learnings of love from many different kinds of relationship that we look at and say “that looks like amazing love to me.”
Those freedoms enable us to read this scripture together and not just pretend it isn’t there. Those freedoms enable us to be empowered by scripture, not imprisoned by it.
Scripture is supposed to reveal God’s love to us and help ground us in that which helps us come fully alive. That doesn’t mean there are moments of great struggle in our dealings with it. It does mean that it should always ultimately lead us to places of love and joy.
*”Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.” If we had to rank passages that most of us wish weren’t in the Gospel today, this one would probably be at or near the top.
Where do we begin describing the ways this passage is problematic?
Marriage itself is deeply rooted in a patriarchal history that treated women as property to be transferred from one man to another. It is an institution that historically has been more about perpetuation of wealth and economic survival and prosperity. Marriage has been literally the difference between life and death, between being accepted and outcast. Marriage has often for women been something to be endured because the alternative was worse.
Even the best of marriage – all the wonderful things that can happen and the deep joy that can happen when we give ourselves to one another in love – still in our society has layers added to it that try to tell us (against all evidence) that there should be one perfect person that meets all our needs. The romantic joy of marriage is too often attached to a romantic ideal that can leave us feeling like somehow we’re doing it wrong because we feel attracted to other people or have difficulties in our relationships or aren’t an absolute perfect match … despite the fact that all those things are just about us being human.
Add to that that all of us either know someone who has been divorced or have been divorced ourselves. We have counseled people to get out of abusive relationships. We have seen marriages go through various types of infidelity and even not agree what infidelity is. We have betrayed and been betrayed.
The one thing we know is that marriage, commitment, love, fidelity, betrayal and divorce are incredibly messy. If there ever seems a place for a situational ethic, it would seem like it is here!
That’s why it’s so important for us to look at Jesus’ words … and particularly his words about “hardness of heart.”
We absolutely mean the words we say when two people are married: “Until we are parted by death.” and “Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder.” We mean them, and if the world were perfect that would be that. But that isn’t that. We are human. We are gloriously imperfect. Our hearts are sometimes beautifully soft and our hearts are sometimes a little or a lot harder. That doesn’t mean that we’re evil, it means that we hurt each other and we get hurt. It means that our lives and relationships get fractured. It means that things aren’t they way they should be.
And so we have divorce. Not because it’s good. But because no matter how much we strive to have hearts as soft as God dreams for us, we’re not there yet. Because even though we might enter into marriage with the best of intentions and even for a long while might be able to live into that life-giving sacrament, sometimes the sacrament doesn’t outlast the lives of the people in it. There are times that the death in “until we are parted by death” is a marriage that dies … and divorce is the way we call the patient. We should have a really high bar to reach before it gets to that point. We should work for and dream of the day when our hearts will be so soft it
isn’t necessary. But we should also realize that until that day, one thing we know about God is that God doesn’t avoid the messiness … but loves us right in the middle of it.
Try This:
Jesus talks about divorce being lawful as an accommodation to our brokenness, but holds up faithfulness and unity in God as the ideal. This fits right in with the mission of the church “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” God’s dream for us is for “all to be one as Jesus and the Father are one.” It is a dream of reconciliation and unity.
What relationships in your life are in need of reconciliation? What relationships are making your heart feel hard instead of soft? What relationships tempt you — no matter how justly you feel about it – toward anger instead of love? What does that anger have to teach you about where you have been wounded? Where you are afraid and sad? Where you need healing?
This week, take 2-3 minutes each day and pray for someone in your life from whom you are estranged. Give the relationship to God. Ask God to come into the relationship in a way that is healing for both of you. You don’t have to reach out to the person (though you certainly can). This week, just lift that person and your relationship with them to God in prayer and ask God to heal. Pray for their well-being. Pray for their peace. Pray for them to feel God’s love.
Just pray for them. And see if your heart gets a little softer, too.
Wonderful.
I hope my Mom and I hope my Dad
Would figure out why they
get so mad.
I hear them scream.
I hear them fight.
They say bad words that
make me wanna cry
I close my eyes when I go to bed
And I dream of angels that
make me smile
I feel better when I hear them say:
“Everything will be wonderful someday.”
Promises mean everything
When you’re little
and the world’s so big
I just don’t understand how
you can smile with all those tears in your eyes and tell me
everything is wonderful now
Please don’t tell me everything is wonderful now.
– Everclear
The band Everclear’s “Wonderful” is a brutally honest song about divorce from the
point of view of the ones who have the least amount of power -children.
(You can watch the video by clicking here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUfgAbFY4CA)
The song’s gift is its honesty.
It isn’t about a child saying “don’t get divorced” or “I don’t care how much it hurts you, I want you to stay together for my sake.”
It’s about a child saying what many children caught in the hell of divorce are feeling:
“I don’t understand.”
“I wish things could be the way they used to be.”
“I want to cry”
and mostly,
“Please don’t tell me everything is wonderful now.”
I don’t think it’s an accident that Mark follows up Jesus’ teaching on divorce with Jesus saying “Let the children come to me” … and then showing us Jesus “taking them in his arms, laying his hands upon them and blessing them.”
Just as Jesus acknowledges that divorce is an accommodation because we aren’t perfect, he lets us know that his love is particularly there for those who have the least control over their lives … children.
Jesus’ promise to children is the same as his promise to adults. Not that God will magically make everything OK, but that through all the messiness and the pain, God will be with us, embrace us and somehow blessing — goodness — will come.
Jesus doesn’t hang on the cross saying “this is wonderful!” He cries out in pain and betrayal, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” The Jesus who says “if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off.” doesn’t sugar-coat things and say “Everything is wonderful now” … but promises never to leave us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death …
and promises that there is no death that isn’t followed by resurrection.
As we struggle with divorce and broken relationships in all our humanity as individuals and as a community, don’t forget that. Don’t forget that we aren’t supposed to give one another — and especially our children – easy answers that nobody will believe anyway. We’re not supposed to smile through the tears and say “Isn’t it wonderful?”
We have something much better than that. We have the cross and the empty tomb. Not a denial of pain but a promise of God’s love and faithfulness to us through it.
Not “Everything is wonderful now” but “I am with you always, even until the
end of the age.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Check out the rest of Sunday’s readings
The Lectionary Page has all of the readings for this Sunday and every
Sunday – click here for this Sunday’s readings.
Collect for Sunday
Pray this throughout the week as you gnaw on this Gospel.
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to
pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the
abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience
is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to
ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and
ever. Amen.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
