Our reading from Mark today could seem pretty uncompromising: he or she who gets divorced and then remarried, Jesus says, is committing adultery. Now divorce in the first century was a generally accepted part of life, both among Jews and perhaps more so within wider Greco-Roman culture. So the Pharisees ask Jesus if it’s permissible for a man to divorce his wife. There are several passages within Genesis, Deuteronomy and Leviticus that they would have been drawing on in asking the question. But what becomes clear if we know these passages from the OT is that their question here is in fact intended to test him and show that he’s a threat to established order, even, to the Law of Moses given by God.
So Jesus replies by asking them: “what did my servant Moses command you?” The Pharisees reply that Moses allowed a man to give a certificate of divorce.” But right here Jesus undermines their intent: stop looking for a loophole that allows you to get away with sin. He explains, “the only reason God allowed Moses to provide this to you is because you often treat one another terribly, even in marriage. You yell and scream, throw temper tantrums when you don’t get your way, manipulate, coerce, envy, covet and even abuse and this is unfair to anyone with whom you’re in a relationship, especially someone who lives with you and has children with you, so you need a way out, a certificate of divorce.” Yet this is not what God intends.
So Jesus continues: “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 … Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."” The intention is that those who join together in marriage will stay in that marriage, working hard together to sustain that relationship through time. That is, marriage brings with it the requirement to live in a way that allows both you and your partner and perhaps your children, to flourish. But this isn’t about flourishing in order to meet some sort of social standard. Rather marriage is both literally and metaphorically used throughout Scripture to provide us with images of God’s self-giving and willing submission to us, and the call to submit to him so that we might be reconciled in our union with him, to God our Father. And in this reconciled life with God working in and through us, we might form relationships where others can encounter Christ and receive adoption into God’s family. Marriage then isn’t simply a worldly custom; it is a sign that contains a very worldly relationship which points beyond itself to its very origin in God’s design.
In responding to the Pharisees’ questions about marriage and divorce as he does, Jesus simultaneously overthrows the idea that we can use Scripture, or manipulate it to achieve our own desires; and in doing this, he expands beyond the issue of marriage to a much deeper claim: do not confuse or conflate your own desire, girded by an incomplete or twisted reading of Scripture, with God’s will. Pursuing your own desire rather than God’s will - something he accuses the Pharisees of doing, along with anyone who leaves their spouse for another person - has the consequence of harming other people. In the case of a marriage in the ancient world, divorce could have severe consequences for women and children in terms of survival and safety; and it still can have this today. We can think of all of the implications of divorce in our own world today.
But in using the specific example of marriage with all the social, personal, and familial vulnerability - tied as marriage is literally and by way of analogy to God’s very being in relationship with people - Jesus extends his teaching to all relationships where there is a vulnerable exchange of giving and receiving.
This is no longer only a teaching about married couples. Through the literal and metaphorical analogy of marriage, Jesus is actually asking all of us - married or not - about how much we are willing, as married couples must ask, to give ourselves over to him as he has given himself to us. Or will you persist in ways that allow you to maintain what you desire: your way, your right, your comfort, Will you give yourself to me, Jesus asks, as I seek to work through you to nurture my children, your brothers and sisters or potential brothers and sisters in Christ I have made in my image.
Will you give yourself to me as I question and challenge you to grow in relationship with me, being called out of sinful flesh and transformed into the Person you were intended to be so that you might be a light for others to see me? Will you seek to learn and grow with me as must partners in a marriage or a child coming to sit before a teacher? “Let the two become one flesh: sustained in time and transfigured in Christ to show the fullness of God. “Let the 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 he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” AMEN
Comments