Mark 10: 2-16
Sometimes our readings take us into the heart of what it is to be human, to live our lives in this complicated old world. Loving and being loved, committing to a relationship or rebuilding ourselves if something hoped for fails, are in the very essence of what makes each of us who we are.
And today our readings take us into that delicate territory of marriage and, more particularly, divorce. It’s surely a subject to tread softly around and to speak with care.
I want to say that the subject of divorce is something like a sacred space, though obviously not a physical one built of bricks and mortar. Rather, it’s a place, a subject, which touches on the essence of what it is to be human and therefore needs to be accorded the greatest sensitivity and respect.
All of us here today come as we are. I’m white, male, straight, married to Frances for quite a few years now. That’s who I am and I’m sensitive that I speak from that place. I’ve enjoyed joy and sorrow bringing up my children. And at the start of my legal career, I worked as a divorce lawyer, and I spent many hours working with many people as they looked to navigate the end of a marriage which hadn’t worked. I’ll bring all of those things to my sermon today.
And all of you will also each bring your own individual lives and histories and perspectives to the way you listen to what I say. There won’t be a single person here today whose life hasn’t, in some way, been touched by divorce. Everyone’s experience particular and specific to them. We’re entering a sacred space and so we need to tread carefully and respectfully around each other. We’re standing on holy ground today.
So, we need to start by remembering that marriage in Palestine, 2000 years ago, was utterly different to what we call marriage today. It was common for girls of 13 to marry. There was a whole period of betrothal before marriage. Marriage wasn’t for love, it was for security and sometimes money. It was different. Different time. Different rules
Let’s look back to our readings, in particular that reading from Mark.
At the start of the reading we see that some teachers of the law have come with a difficult question for Jesus. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” they ask. This is a loaded political question. John the Baptist lost his head over criticising Herodias for divorcing her husband to marry Antipas. It’s a loaded question so it’s interesting how Jesus answers it.
Jesus is a man who knows his scriptures, so he asks them to recite the standard religious authority of the day, from Exodus, which they duly do: “Moses said ...” they say. The quote is clear: a man can divorce his wife. A man. It doesn’t say anything about women, though, and Jesus cites the passage we heard from Genesis to undermine their position.
There are two immediate consequences arising from the way that Jesus uses the Genesis passage (two become one flesh) to undermine the Exodus citation that was used to justify divorce by men only back then. Remember in that reading God makes both women and men in his own image. Each gender is in God’s image: there is an utter equality.
The first thing, back then is that, all of the religious teachers held that it was the law of Moses which set out the perfect will of God. Jesus, though, is saying Moses’ law in Exodus is not the final word on the subject. He says that God’s will is better shown in the picture of marriage which emerges in the garden of Eden story. To the people of the time this would have been a striking attack on what was seen as the perfection of Old Testament law, and it was a completely novel way of using scripture. This wasn’t how scripture was meant to be used in debate in those times. But this is how Jesus used it.
The second thing Jesus is doing here, and it was utterly radical for its time, is to use the passage from Genesis to establish the equality of women in marriage. Jesus frames his rebuttal of the Pharisees in a language of radical equality because that is what is so interesting about the Genesis passage: male and female God created them. And in his subsequent teaching Jesus states that a divorced man in those days commits adultery if he remarries. Adultery back then was just for women. Men just weren’t adulterers. This is a radical rewriting of what was then understood and its core meaning is that there is an equality for men and women in this issue. This idea has been recognised as unparalleled in ancient Judaism. So Jesus did a new thing and said the social conventions about women were wrong.
Now, why is Jesus doing this and why does it matter for us today?
Well, I want to go back to how I started today which was all about being sensitive, as a Christian, when touching on a sensitive subject.
The Pharisees in the story came to Jesus with a set up question to catch him out. A simple reading of the passage might be to say that Jesus sent them away with a flea in their ear, having countered their bible quote with a better one. And perhaps also that this tells us all we need to know of marriage and divorce.
To take that simplistic line, though, would be to do a disservice to what Jesus was doing here. Jesus’ overriding purpose is always to call us to work for the Kingdom and God’s Justice. And that always happens in a context. In the context of this story, women of the time could be cast out destitute on the streets at men’s convenience. Jesus undermines this because of His concern for these women at that time. He affirms their status as equals in the relationship and cuts away the right to cast them off into poverty.
That was the issue Jesus was dealing back then, but the issues for us are really quite different today, so we need to be careful about simplistically applying the standards of a different society 2000 years ago to our own situation. They’re just not equivalent.
What does remain constant though is God’s unfailing love and acceptance of us and His call for us to strive for His Kingdom of justice and joy. And that has to happen in our own context, here and now.
Relationships in today’s society are complicated and diverse. In many ways this is a product of our culture’s Christian heritage where, gradually, over time, a more humane and compassionate approach has gradually come to be the norm in how relationships begin and end in law.
How should we then, as Christians, respond to this changing landscape? Jesus is pretty clear actually about this and he gives us the guidance we need just a couple of Chapters on from our reading today in Mark. It’s the key text which should always guide how we interpret scripture
Mark 12: 30-31: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ …and…: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”
Rather than set out a simplistic rule-based approach, He gives the model which should always be applied: Love God and love your neighbour. Whatever context or what ever century you’re in. Love your neighbour. Do that and work it out from there.
Our context for divorce is very different to that of 1st century Palestine, but Jesus challenged a hard-hearted system back then and we need to apply the same yardstick of love whenever we grapple with similar issues ourselves today.
Jesus didn’t call us to be right about a moral issue. He called us to love our neighbour. Not like them. Not agree with them but to love them. And to serve them. It’s a powerful challenge and one which most of us fall short of at regular intervals. That is the challenge though. So how might we go about it?
Well, aside from the human heartache in every divorce and ending of a relationship, the bigger relationship issue facing the church today is how to move from a historic position of discrimination in relation to gay relationships and marriage to a more welcoming and loving position.
Remember, Jesus requirement is that we love our neighbour. So I want to be able to say to anyone who comes into contact with this Church that they are welcome. Welcome and loved. Not in spite of any particular characteristics but precisely because of who they truly are. I want to be able to say: you’re welcome here. Always. Come and join us and enrich us by being who you truly are. Whatever your sexuality. Whoever you love, are married to or have as your civil partner. And I would want that welcome to be real, not tokenistic, so I would love to see gay people being able to be married in this church
I recognise though that there are a range of views across the Church. I wish it wasn’t so contentious, but it sometimes is. The C of E has a lot of help to offer us though. It has a whole raft of resources from the Living in Love and Faith Resource covering all sides in the debate. Just google it or ask me afterwards. There’s everything from a book to courses to story video’s so we can meet people in a diverse range of relationships and with a diverse range of views and have some excellent teaching to help us grapple with the issue. I would really recommend it.
2000 years ago, some religious folks tried to trap Jesus into an unloving position on a sensitive relationship issue. He didn’t buy into that narrow view and challenged them back with a radically new and inclusive approach for His time. Today, we have different but equally heartfelt challenges to face as the church. My suggestion is that we take the heat out. That we stop trying to be right on these issues and apply the law of love as set out by Jesus and see where that takes us. Will you join me on that journey?
Amen