Addressing a Difficult Text

He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery” [Mark 10:11-12].

 

I don’t have the pincite handy, but St. Augustine once wrote, “If you believe what you like in the Gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it isn’t the Gospel that you believe, but rather yourself.”

That, in a nutshell, is why both my personal devotional practice and these weekly meditations are built upon the Revised Common Lectionary’s appointed set of Scripture readings. In following the RCL’s three-year cycle, not only am I exposed to a broad swath of Scripture across both the Old and New Testaments, but I’m also forced to take up portions of the Holy Text that I might otherwise try to ignore.

For example, left to my own devices, I wouldn’t touch this week’s Gospel reading—Mark 10:2-16 [the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B)]—with a ten-foot pole. This is the passage, echoed in Matthew 19:1-9 and Luke 16:18, in which Jesus offers counsel on the dreaded “D-word,” the painful subject Tammy Wynette sang about in her number one country hit back in 1968: “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.”

Looking back over my sermon/homily index, I realize that I’ve never preached or written on this text or, for that matter, the companion texts in Matthew and Luke. Over the years, I’ve been critical of the mainline Protestant church for its failure and refusal to discuss a different painful issue within our congregations (if you aren’t sure as to which issue I’m referring, see the meditation I posted two weeks ago). As I gazed at this week’s Gospel, it was as if the Lectionary committee was pressing me to put my keyboard where my mouth is. And so, Mark 10 it is.

The first thing to say about this text is that it—at least at first blush—seems to cut to the quick regarding an issue that is already quite painful for not just a few friends and family members. For those whose lives have been deeply affected by divorce, who have felt abandoned and estranged not only from a former spouse, but from some friends and social constructs based on their matrimonial split, you’re likely thinking,

Do I need yet again to be reminded of failure, of my broken life or broken heart? Does Jesus really need to heap guilt upon the abundant measure of guilt that I already feel?

Well, before we attribute too much negativity to Jesus, perhaps we ought to look as closely as possible at the text itself. I think it’s important to observe first that the entire divorce subject is forced upon Jesus by a group of Pharisees who seek to test Him. Notice carefully the question posed to Jesus in 10:2, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” [emphasis mine].

One might offer two thoughts on this question. First, even within the context of first century Palestine, the Pharisees didn’t have so much a theological question as a “legal” one for the temple lawyers. The question wasn’t, for example, “Does Yahweh allow divorce?” Instead, it was something like, “What does the law allow?”

Second, the Pharisees aren’t, of course, honestly seeking an answer to an important question. They already had their answer [see Deuteronomy 24:1-4]. Their motive was their hatred for Jesus. It’s interesting that the Greek word used by Mark (in 10:2) that gets translated as “tested”—at least in the NIV—is the same Greek word used to describe Satan’s efforts against Jesus when the latter was “tempted/tested” in the wilderness following His baptism by John. Faced with the test, Jesus skillfully bats the ball back at the Pharisees, who quickly respond that “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away” [10:4].

We could at this point launch a discussion about the oppressive, hierarchical, male-oriented society of that time, but to do so would miss Jesus’ important point. Jesus doesn’t scream out a tirade about how unfair it is to give the husband a free hand in ending the marital relationship. What He says is radically different. Jesus emphasizes that while Moses “allowed” divorce, he only did so because “your hearts were hard” [10:5].

Jesus goes on to say that Yahweh had something altogether different in mind for husband and wife. To be sure, Moses—who wrote Deuteronomy—understood the hardness of humanity; yet God intended that husband and wife live in complete harmony. In fact, Yahweh intended for husband and wife to join as one, to be so integrally wound together that a mere human being would never be able to unwind them.

It is at this point, of course, that many of us wish the entire subject would just go away. Moses understood some couples “need” the “D-word,” but lamented that fact. Yahweh not only laments the fact; Yahweh intends for wholeness to be the rule within matrimony, not divisiveness. Jesus explains that the difficulty for two to live as one is a symptom of the brokenness of the world around them. This movement away from what Yahweh wants to what humanity must occasionally settle for is a by-product of humanity’s fall in the Garden.

The text presents us with an unavoidable problem, however. While we’d like to end the discussion with 10:9, we see that as soon as the disciples get Jesus alone in the house, away from the prying eyes and ears of the Pharisees, they want the true skinny on divorce. And so, having first been questioned by those who would seek to trap him, and now questioned by those who wish to learn from him, Jesus adds the painful language that I quoted at the top of the post:

Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery” [Mark 10:11-12].

Notice how Jesus has changed the terms of the marital scenario in his talk with the disciples. He’s moved away from the Mosaic law, which essentially allows a man to divorce his wife for little or no reason (without giving the woman a similar privilege), to a description of the Hellenistic world around Palestine, which rather freely allowed either spouse to divorce the other.

Look carefully—Jesus is essentially saying the following: if one divorces one’s spouse, in order to marry another, one commits adultery. He is not talking about the spouse who did not trigger the break, nor perhaps is he talking about a scenario in which the husband and wife simply cannot continue in their current status. He is saying that the party causing the breach cannot be rewarded with a new union. If one does so, then one commits adultery.

A final word about adultery. Jesus will have something important to say about that in another Palestinian scene. Turn if you would, to the end of John 7 (specifically 7:53) and the beginning of John 8. I don’t want to get sidetracked about whether this story is added by a later redactor of John’s Gospel or whether it is original (check your footnotes). Virtually all scholars say the story happened in Jesus’ presence.

The “G-rated” version is that the Scribes and Pharisees bring in a woman “caught in the act of adultery.” How one would “catch” the woman in such an act and not catch a man is beyond me, but I don’t want to digress too far, so I’ll move on. Referring again to the law of Moses, they tell Jesus that she is to be stoned. Again, it’s a test. Will Jesus be compassionate, yet violate Moses law? Will he stick to Moses law?

Jesus, of course, turns the tables on them—just as he did in Mark 10. He says:

Let anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her [John 8:7].

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus asks her an astoundingly important question:

Has no one condemned you [John 8:10].

“No one, sir,” she said.

Then neither do I condemn you.

Jesus didn’t condemn her. Jesus doesn’t condemn you or me. While Jane has put up with me now for one month longer than 50 years, my list of sins does not include adultery. And yet my list is certainly as lengthy—perhaps more so—than any of you. The Good News of the Gospel is that our level of sin is behind us in Jesus Christ. Instead of condemning us, Jesus chose to die for us on a horrid cross.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us [Romans 5:8].

Thanks be to God. Grace and Peace, my friends.