"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."
(Mark 10: 11-12)
Well that sucks, doesn't it?
The biblical injunction against divorce is a pretty tough law. And, speaking as a divorced and remarried guy myself, it makes a lot of Christians feel uncomfortable--as well it should. Divorce is a messy business. If there are kids involved in a marriage, it does a number on their emotions. If lawyers get involved, it can get really costly and complicated. Divorce not only splits up families, but it splits up communities of friends. I mean, you have to ask yourself: to which member of a divorced couple will I remain loyal? And then there's the question of who gets the church in the settlement. In my experience, when a couple in the congregation splits, both partners disappear from the pews. Understandable, I guess, if you don't want to deal with those overly sympathetic stares or run the risk of being the source of coffee hour gossip.
Worst of all is the overwhelming sense of failure. There's a crushing sense of self-defeat when you look back over the wreckage of a relationship and see something which started out so beautifully and ended up so toxic.
Face it, marriage is hard, too. It's not for kids. It requires a daily effort of self-examination and confession, an endless capacity for forgiveness, and a genuine desire to understand another human being and his or her needs. I grant that you can love another person without really understanding them (Do any of us really understand or know our own parents?), but how glorious it is when you know you have truly been understood and appreciated for who you really are!
So what does Jesus say in the 10th chapter of Mark's gospel concerning divorce? I think it's key to understand that Jesus is being tested by the legal-minded Pharisees. These guys tend to be pictured as the bad guys in scripture who are trying to get Jesus jammed up at every turn. But, in fairness, let's remember that the Pharisees were really intent on being observant to God's law, a law with which they were in constant dialogue, always trying to discern which course of action was the most righteous. You can't really hate them for that. You can only get annoyed with their overbearing sense of legalism which so often became obsessed with detail at the expense of human compassion.
Jesus directs them back to their own law books. In this case, Deuteronomy 24:1-4, which indicates that a husband had the right to divorce his wife if he presented his reasons for disliking her in written form. Unfortunately, Deuteronomy does not enumerate what reasons would be construed good reasons. Remember, too, that a woman in biblical times only had identity in relationship to a man. She was either her husband's wife or her father's daughter. If she lived long enough, she might be her son's mother. Nevertheless, a single woman who was no longer a virgin faced a very difficult life in the ancient Near East. If there was no household to take her in, she became a beggar. It may have been perfectly legal for a man to cast a woman out of his house, but we have to ask if such an action was really moral.
Jesus makes his appeal not to the law book of Deuteronomy, but to the creation story of Genesis:
"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." (Mark 10:6-9)
It is not God's will that we be alone (Gen. 2:18). We are created to exist with and for each other. If we sin against one another, we have sinned against God and ourselves. Because a thing is legal it is not necessarily right if it breeds harm or enmity. And the fair and just decision of a judge cannot erase heartache. Our failures need to be acknowledged and mourned. And such human failures can take so many forms.
I had an uncle,now, alas deceased, who would have made an excellent Pharisee. He was a staunch member of the Lutheran Layman's League and a faithful husband to my aunt for over fifty years. Unfortunately, for many of those fifty years he couldn't stand the woman. In the end, they slept in separate bedrooms and avoided each other as much as possible. But they didn't get a divorce. I wonder how much pain thy could have avoided had they been determined to do the moral thing for each other, and not just the legal thing.
So what's the bottom line? We are called into relationship. We are sinful, so we mess it up. So we ask for forgiveness, and we try to do better.
Thanks for visiting, my friends. God bless you.
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