Tag: divorce

The Pharisees ask the wrong question again…

church resources, sermon

A Sermon on Mark 10.2-16, which owes a great deal to Tom Wright. Thank you +Tom!

During the mid 1990’s it was not uncommon for clergy, and especially bishops, to be contacted by journalists and asked, ‘What does the church think about divorce?’  It would generally be framed as a hypothetical question, but of course it was anything but, and no matter how the bishop in question responded, no matter how hard they tried to make it clear that their response was a general and broad statement, or not even a statement at all, the journalist would always end up saying, So you’re saying that in the case of Charles and Diana….’  The question addressed to Jesus in today’s gospel reading is similar.

Consider that the location for this whole argument is just beyond the River Jordan – that’s John the Baptist’s old stamping ground.  And consider that the reason John got into trouble with Herod in the first place and ended up being beheaded was that he had dared to criticize Herod’s marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife. The Pharisees’ question that claims to be a general one about divorce and adultery is in fact a very specific one, designed to trick Jesus into revealing where he stands on the whole subject of Herod’s marriage, and hence where he stands on the question of Herod’s integrity as a leader of God’s people.

Rarely in the gospels is Jesus asked a straightforward question, so he is wise to the trickery.  In public he answers just as he did with the question of whether a Jew should pay tax to the Romans: asking first what the law says and then pointing out what really matters.

But there’s more. Jesus asks what Moses says, and at that time Moses was held to be the author of the whole Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and therefore ‘what Moses says’ is not just what we might think of as ‘the law’ but also the stories of creation in Genesis – and it is small part of these this that Jesus goes on to quote.

It is not the law that Jesus is most concerned with here, but rather the deep desire of God for his people to live in relationship, at one with him, with each other, and with the natural world around them. Those words from Genesis are a way of capturing that desire in tangible form – marriage as a metaphor (albeit an idealised one) for the kind of relational living that is God’s desire for all of creation.

If we turned to Genesis 1.27 we would read, ‘male and female he created them, in the image of God he created them’.  Male and female are but one facet of the diversity of humanity – one could reasonably add into that verse any pair of opposites – introvert and extravert, black and white, and so on – without distorting the sense of what the writer is trying to convey.

And, of course, in Hebrew a pair of opposites generally encompasses the full spectrum of everything in between.  Jesus’ quoted verse is in the context of a passage that is about the radical diversity within the unity of creation, and of humanity in particular.

I would go as far as to say that the image of God that we may find in humanity is not so much in each of us individually (no matter how different we may be from one another) but rather it is in our diversity-in-unity that we are mostly truly – collectively and communally – the image of God. This is hardly surprising, given the Trinitarian God in whose image we are made.

It is relationality – with marriage as one possible concrete example as well as a metaphor – that represents God’s deepest desire for his creation and for us as the crown of all creation.

But we also remember what happened next in Genesis.  The fall of humanity, as Genesis tells it, cascades from simple disobedience and quickly distorts that relationality: Adam blames Eve (and blames God for making Eve), Eve blames the serpent (and therefore also God for making the serpent) and thus every aspect of God’s desire for right relationship is broken.

When relationships broke down in Jesus day, and when they do so in our own day (whether those relationships are marriage, or between parents and children, between or within communities, or even between nations) that is a continuing manifestation of the same brokenness.  And even functional relationships are not perfect – none of us can say that our common life is a perfect expression of the image of God, though we may sometimes glimpse it.

We are fallen people. Every broken relationship is a crack in the image of God that we were created to be, and marriage stands and falls not just by the actions and attitudes of the couple themselves, but all the networks of relationships of which they are part: that’s why the marriage service talks of marriage enriching society and strengthening community, and that’s why the whole congregation is asked whether, with God’s help, they will support and uphold the couple in their relationship.

This is the wider context for Jesus’ response. And when we look at it this way, it shows up the Pharisees’ question for what it is: petty, legalistic, and condemnatory.

Yes, Deuteronomy permits divorce, because of ‘the hardness of our hearts’ – an acknowledgment of our fallenness. But to ask ‘is it lawful’ is to reduce to a matter of legality something which is, or should be, so much bigger, so much deeper. The Pharisees want to talk about laws: ‘What can we get away with before God will start minding’.  But Jesus wants to talk about the deepest desires of God for his creation – it is this desire that the laws were intended to express in concrete form, but too often we forget this.  ‘Is it lawful?’ is a question that condemns, that divides, that reduces human relationships to a line of legal text that takes no account of people as people. In Jesus’ encounters we see the opposite: a vision of what human beings look like in the eyes of God, what we could be.

For in our own day just as in Jesus’ time, divorce – or indeed any broken relationship – is not a subject that can be dealt with either generally or hypothetically, because it’s not an abstract idea but a human tragedy that happens specifically, personally, to real people, one case at a time, to people we know and love, or indeed to some of us. Jesus spent enough of his time with people who had been hurt by life to be very aware of this.

Around a broken relationship there is untold hurt, no matter who might be at fault, and not matter how mutual or otherwise the decision to end it. And a divorce that is ‘by the book’ and legally straightforward is in no way painless. The law at its best may work to protect people from injustice, but it cannot magically make things ‘alright’.

What Jesus says in today’s gospel is really tough. But perhaps it is tough in a different way from how it looks at first.  His condemnation is not of couples who divorce, but on the hardness of heart that characterises fallen humanity, and that characterises the Pharisees’ question in particular; the hardness of heart which mars the divine image, and prevents us from seeking, let alone actually living out God’s deepest desires for us.

Perhaps this is why Mark follows this difficult passage with Jesus’ blessing of the little children: maybe they represent, for the Pharisees’ benefit, an open-heartedness that has not yet learned to ask ‘what is lawful’ but still has the capacity to hold out its hands and ask for all the blessings that God desires to give – this is what it is like to live in the Kingdom, I guess- the kingdom of the blessed.

This side of heaven, the divine image in us will always be cracked and damaged, broken by our own sins, by the damage done to us by other people’s, and by the collective sin in which we collude.  But we can still seek out those glimpses – as Jesus helped the crowd to do when he placed the little children in their midst – glimpses of what God’s desire for us might look like in real life.

Perhaps we might find these glimpses in our worship, in the invitation to stand or kneel alongside one another in our fallenness and participate in Christ at the Eucharist; in our common life as a church, in our other human relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours; in the miracle of forgiveness for deep wrongs, in the work of healing in the midst of conflict, in the willingness to risk everything to enable the love of God and of humanity to transcend the borders that human sin and pride perpetuate; in all the miracles of generosity and sacrifice and love that soften the world’s hard-hearted divisions.

Learning to perceive these as glimpses of the kingdom, to tap into a sense of what God desires for us, to keep ourselves open-hearted – these are habits of holiness that enable the kingdom to take root and grow here and now.  We are broken and fallen, but we are still the crown of God’s creation and what he desires for us and for all he has made is the same as it was at the beginning of Genesis.

Marriage and Divorce

sermons

This is a sermon I wrote last time this passage came up in the lectionary – I’m posting it here in case anyone finds it useful for this Sunday (7th October 2012). I believe that it owes rather a lot to the very helpful, erudite, and generally fab Tom Wright.   And probably some other people too.

During the 1990s it was not uncommon for clergy, and especially bishops, to be contacted by journalists and asked about their view on divorce. Of course, this was not a general hypothetical question, but an extremely loaded one, and no matter how the bishop in question tried to make it clear that what they were saying was a general statement rather than being about a specific situation, the journalist would always end up saying, ‘so you’re saying that in the case of Prince Charles and Diana…’

Similarly when Jesus is asked the question about divorce in today’s gospel reading, it is not, in fact, a general hypothetical question at all.

Consider that the location for this whole argument is just beyond the river Jordan – that’s John the Baptist’s old stamping ground.  And consider that the reason John got into trouble with Herod in the first place, and so ended up being beheaded, was that he had dared to criticize Herod’s marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife.  When  you bear all that in mind, the Pharisees’ question that claims to be a general one about divorce and adultery, is in fact a very specific question, designed to trick Jesus into revealing where he stands on the whole subject of Herod’s marriage, and hence, where he stands on Herod’s viability as a leader of God’s people.

As usual, Jesus is wise to the trick question.  If we needed proof that he understood that the question was really about Herod, then we need look no further than his explanation to the disciples: although it was almost unheard of for a woman to initiate divorce, Jesus includes it as a possibility in his explanation because this is exactly what happened in the case of Herodias.   Jesus undoubtedly knew what the question was about.  So in public he answers just like he did with the question of whether a Jew should pay taxes to the Romans: he widens the question back out again, and (a) asking what he law says, and (b) pointing out what really matters.

So much for the question and what lies behind it.  How about Jesus’ answer?

Well, another thing that’s easy to miss, or misunderstand, with this passage, is Jesus’ reference to Moses.  Jesus asks, ‘What did Moses command you?’  And the Pharisees answer that he permitted divorce, in certain circumstances.

But consider whether this was really what Jesus was asking them.  In Jesus’ day, and indeed for centuries afterwards, everyone believed that Moses was the author of the whole of the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Bible.  So when Jesus asks ‘what did Moses command?’ and then goes on to and then goes on to talk about the book of Genesis, this is what he really wanted them to think about: the initial command of God to Adam and Eve, as Genesis explains it.

This Genesis passage that Jesus refers to is all about the relationship between human beings, and about our relationship with God and with God’s world. Relationships, and marriages that are loving and committed are one manifestation of the image of God in us.  But it’s not hard to look around and see many, many ways in which we, as a species, have fallen short of God’s perfect creation, and marr that image.  Divorce and indeed any relationship breakdown is but one of those ways.  And indeed, all of us, in all our relationships, even when they are working well, are but imperfect and distorted versions of the divine image.  That’s who we are, we are fallen people, and in a sense, we should not seek for our relationships to be perfect – if we do that, then we set ourselves up to see in every marriage grounds for divorce.

Every broken relationship is a crack in the mirror that we were designed to be, the mirror of God’s love for the world. This is not to lay a huge burden of guilt on divorcing couples, but to ask that the whole Christian community should play its part in supporting marriage, relationships and families, because what they symbolise is so essential to our being.  That’s why in the preface to the marriage service, it talks of marriage enriching society and strengthening community.  But that’s also why later in the service, at the end of the declarations, the family and friends of the couple are asked if they will support and uphold them in their marriage, both now and in the years to come.  This is a serious responsibility, and I do heartily wish that more of the people who come to weddings realized how serious the responsibility is.

What Jesus does in this encounter, is point out, in his usual subtle way, that the Pharisees are asking the wrong question.  Yes, he says, in Deuteronomy there is a permission for divorce to happen, because human beings are not perfect and we do fall short of what God intended for us.  We each, individually and in our relationships, contain the divine image, but imperfectly and in distorted and clouded form.  But to ask whether divorce is lawful betrays an attitude to ethics that approaches all dilemmas with the question, ‘what can we get away with before God will really mind?’ rather than, ‘what is God’s deepest desire for us?  Jesus’ ministry is not characterized by a quest for ‘what people can get away with’, nor with condemning others for doing things that are just the other side of that ‘lawful’ line.

This is where we come to the crux of the problem, whether we’re talking about Jesus’ own time, or our own.  For the fact is that divorce is something that it is almost impossible to talk about in general terms, because it isn’t an abstract idea that one can pronounce upon from the pulpit, or from anywhere else for that matter.  It’s a very human tragedy, that happens one case at a time, to people we know and love, and perhaps even to some of us.  Jesus spent enough time in his ministry with those who had been hurt by life to be very aware of this.  A broken marriage is a tragedy, and causes untold hurt, no matter whose fault it was, and no matter how mutual or otherwise the decision to end the marriage.  And doing it all ‘by the book’ and on the right side of the law can never take away that pain and hurt.

What Jesus says is tough; it’s hugely tough – almost so much so that it makes one want to preach on something other than the gospel!  But I don’t believe it is the sort of tough that we have sometimes believed it to be.  I don’t believe that Jesus is saying that a marriage cannot be ended, that second marriages after divorce are not marriages at all, as in the traditional Roman Catholic position, though of course I know that many do believe that, and that many people who have been left by their husband or wife do not feel in themselves that they are unmarried.  As I read Jesus’ response, it seems to me that he is saying, yes, there is a provision there in the law, but know how serious it is to tear two people apart who have given themselves to each other. Don’t get sucked in to asking merely what is legal.  Don’t let society, or the law, or anyone else, tell you that it doesn’t matter.  It does matter.

Jesus says to them, it’s wrong to ask ourselves how and to what extent we can break and damage the image of God in us without God minding too much, because every way in which that image is marred matters, and it all causes pain to us and to others, and to all of God’s creation, and grieves the heart of God.  Each of us, individually and corporately, break that image again and again, every day.  Our energies would be better spent it we stopped thinking legalistically and working out how to justify ourselves before God, asking ‘is it lawful’, and instead concentrated on coming before God in all our brokenness – with the cracks in the divine image that our own sin has made, and the cracks that have been made in us through the sin of others – and asking for God’s healing.