A Sermon Preached at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Mt. Kisco, NY
By the Rev. William A. Doubleday
October 7, 2012
In the name of the One God, Who Creates, Redeems, and Inspires Us.
Those Pharisees just won’t leave Jesus alone. They keep coming back with questions with which they hope to catch Jesus out, trip him up, prove him wrong, or get him in trouble with religious or secular authorities. They were never really interested in hearing the Good News of Repentance and Forgiveness – of Healing and New Life – of Death and Resurrection - which Jesus had come to proclaim. They were dedicated critics – taking copious notes - with an agenda for the failure of Jesus, not seekers and searchers looking for insight into what new words God might wish them to hear.
In today’s Gospel reading from the tenth Chapter of Mark’s Gospel, the latest Pharisaical question is: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
As he often does, Jesus attempts to turn the question back on his interrogators: “What did Moses command you?”
They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”
We might want to ask what the Pharisees are actually saying about the teachings of Moses on divorce. The minority of rabbis in Jesus’ day would have explained their answer to that question by saying, “If your wife commits adultery, you may hand her a note that says something like: ‘Because of your adulterous behavior, I divorce you. Good bye. Good riddance. Pack your bags. Be gone. You’re out of here.’” To modern ears, that perhaps sounds rather abrupt and rather lacking in any sort of due process or concern for individual women. No discussion of reconciliation. No possibility of appeal. No financial provisions.
But the view of the overwhelming majority of rabbis in Jesus’ day was far worse. They would have explained their answer with a simpler and more straightforward understanding of Moses’ teaching on divorce. It went something like this: “If for any reason, at any time, you wish to divorce your wife, hand her a note that says something like: ‘I divorce you. Good bye. Good riddance. Pack your bags. Be gone. You’re out of here.’” No cause need be given, whether it was the burnt toast, the untidy house, the inability to produce children or a male heir, a fading beauty, or the man’s desire to be rid of one wife so that he could more conveniently and with fewer encumbrances seek another. No financial provision was made for the divorced wife. Again no appeal was available. Usually she had to return to her family of origin in hopes of a charitable reception and a safe place to stay. I suppose one might call it a “no fault divorce plan for men.”
I must emphasize that there was no provision in Palestine in the days of Jesus, for women to divorce their husbands at all. Though there would be a time when women would be allowed to divorce their husbands on grounds of adultery, that time had not yet come. Indeed, in the days of Jesus, sexual mores were defined a lot differently than they have come to be in modern times. Polygamy was still an option for men. A married man only committed adultery if he engaged in a relationship with a woman who was in fact married to another man. The lesser sin of fornication, when a married man – or any man - had a non-marital sexual relationship with an unmarried woman was not likely to be punished unless some sort of scandal or serious accusation had ensued. Any sexual sin by a married woman was deemed heinous, and in some instances brought the death penalty either in the courts or in the court of public opinion. You may recall Jesus coming to the aid of the woman taken in adultery who was about to be stoned to death. He said: “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Jesus responded to those curious Pharisees with a challenging teaching that would seem to call them, as well as all of us who would call ourselves his followers, to a higher standard. He says: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Jesus reaches back to the Book of Genesis for his rationale for this teaching, and he is clearly setting a new and higher standard for marriage and a clearer opposition to divorce than had pertained in his day. Many commentators have observed that where the traditional teaching about divorce had essentially cast women in the role of property which could be discarded at will, Jesus upheld and pointed towards the sacramental nature of marriage and the divinely blessed unity of husband and wife. Even if at times our marriages have not lived up to this standard, it is a standard which every married couple in the Christian tradition has been asked to live into. “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
The evangelist Mark tells us that when they got inside the house, the disciples asked Jesus again about this matter. Clearly he had offered a teaching different from any they had ever heard before. Could they have heard him wrong?
But he says to them: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” Here it would seem – and this is where much of the Church has been stuck down through the centuries – here it would seem that Jesus is not so much condemning divorce itself, but the phenomenon of remarriage after a divorce. There can be reasons for divorce that have nothing to do with adultery or sexual infidelity. But when remarriage or infidelity occurs, then the “they are no longer two, but one flesh” standard has been violated.
By now, some of you may be wondering why I am taking so much time to try to explore what Jesus most likely said about divorce and remarriage. Let me be quite clear, as a pastor I know that there are many times when divorce is in fact painful, grief-ridden, tragic, necessary, ultimately life-giving, and even life-saving for one or both spouses and whole families. As a pastor, I know that there are many times when remarriage is a matter of divine and human love, the restoration of hope, the experience of grace, and the occasion of blessed new beginnings for all concerned.
Though many are, as a pastor, I know that all divorces do not need to be marked by extreme rancor, acute hostility, permanent animosity, or perpetual contempt. As a pastor, I know that with time, many spouses, many children, many families, even many congregations come to recognize that as painful as divorces may be, as challenging and uncertain as remarriages may be, they in fact sometimes give us glimpses of Good Friday and hints of Easter Morning in our very own lives, families, and communities.
Though many Americans still seem to think of the Bible as a sexual rule book, except in the Holiness Code found in the Book of Leviticus and related texts, the Bible says relatively little about sex or even marriage – it is a book far more concerned with economic and social justice and care for the widows, orphans, and strangers in the land. Jesus says even less about human sexuality or marital relationships. John’s Gospel tells us that early in his ministry, Jesus and his disciples attended a marriage in Cana with his mother, Mary, and that in the face of a wine shortage, with his mother’s delighted encouragement, he turned water into wine and thus prolonged a very good party. John tells us nothing about Jesus’ thoughts on that occasion or about his thoughts about marriage more generally.
There are five or six places where in the Gospels – as is the case in today’s reading from Mark - where Jesus touches on issues of divorce and remarriage, and at least in his time and place he appears to have been opposed to both, though in at least one place in Matthew’s Gospel he does allow for divorce and remarriage, presumably for the so-called “innocent party” in a marriage that ended for reasons of adultery.
During much of the Christian Church’s history, divorce was generally taboo and remarriage was forbidden or frowned upon. Protestant churches, earlier than Catholic and Anglican Churches ones, came to an understanding that sometimes marriages fail, sometimes love dies, sometimes people grow dramatically apart, sometimes domestic violence destroys lives and families, and sometimes marriages for very good, if often tragic reasons, need to end. Very often it is far more an occasion of grief and sadness than it is somehow a matter of sin or a reason for judgment.
Today, Roman Catholics still contend with marriage tribunals that annul marriages, effectively saying marriages never existed, though inexplicably there are large numbers of children who were legitimately conceived. Many Roman Catholics who have left that Church for this or other reasons have been able to find sacramental homes in the Episcopal Church, for which I give particular thanks.
I am sorry to say that until the Canons of the Episcopal Church were drastically revised in 1973, the Episcopal Church canonically forbade clergy from officiating at most remarriages. Clergy who read the marriage canons severely, often even excommunicated parishioners who had gone elsewhere for remarriage and then had come right back to the Episcopal Church. Fortunately those days are now behind us – and by most of us completely forgotten – alas I did my curacy in a parish in Western Massachusetts where that was a still very painful issue in 1980.
Whatever Jesus may actually have intended for us in marital relationship today, the reality is that our life spans are immeasurably longer than was the case in New Testament. The social, economic, cultural, and religious settings of our lives, our relationships, and our families are separated by eons from the realities of Judaism three thousand years ago, or the realities of 1st century Palestine where Jesus lived and taught. What we do know is that marriage is a blessed sacrament. What we do know is that we are called to lives of faithfulness. What we do know is that God is a God of Love.
The Anglican theologian, Norman Pittenger, called God a Cosmic Lover – who created us to be lovers, who might both know and reciprocate God’s love, and who might love one another – even in life giving – life sustaining - life creating situations of marriage and family. The shape and parameters of those marriages and families have evolved and changed over the past two centuries and will undoubtedly continue to do so.
My prayer for us today is that God may yet – God may still – God may always bless us – in our lives – in our loves – in our friendships – in our relationships - in our marriages – in our families – in our brokenness – in our healing – in the new beginnings which God offers us – no matter who we are – no matter where we may have been – no matter what we may have done – no matter how we may have failed.
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