Divorce Was a Justice Issue

a sermon based on: Mark 10:2-12 (NIV)

given at Palm Bay, FL October 4, 2009

by Rev. Scott Elliott

On a cold winter night before the second half of my law schooling began I decided to walk a couple of miles and catch a movie before the tension of the semester began.

We had just one child back then, Tristan who was three and my wife Nancy stayed home with her. I grabbed a jacket and a collapsible Tote umbrella and off I went.

When I got back from the movie I found our door unlocked and the pull string light in the apartment off. As I went to close the door I simultaneously pulled the light on. I was so surprised by what I saw that the door never got closed. Illuminated in the light was a bearded man with a t-shirt and absolutely nothing else on.

The first words out of my mouth as I raised my collapsible tote umbrella and moved toward a huge knife in the kitchen was something along the lines of “What the ‘heck’ are you doing in my house?”

The nearly naked stranger shivering in cold from the open door seemed more afraid than me so I didn’t go for the knife. But I used the tote umbrella to signal he go sit on the couch. A strange woman then walked out of our bedroom clad only in underwear.

At that point I was totally befuddled . . . alright I was actually freaking out. I got the woman to also sit as I looked for my family.

“Where is Nancy? Where is my daughter?” I yelled. They both tried to answer me from the couch, but I couldn’t hear as I bellowed even louder “NANCY? NANCY?? !!!”

Nancy didn’t respond. I banged on our daughter’s door and Nancy mumbled a sleepy “What? What’s going on?” I opened the door saw she and Tristan were alright and then to her utter confusion I said “Stay in here” and closed the door.  

Only then did I hear what the now shivering couple was saying with visible breath. They’d been traveling, were supposed to stop and use our neighbor-on-vacation’s apartment. As I lowered my umbrella I told them the obvious; that they had the wrong house. The couple got dressed, apologized and left.

When I got back to Nancy I learned that she’d fallen asleep with Tristan reading her a story, so she didn’t lock up and didn’t hear the strangers come in.

I have always been glad I did not grab that knife and no one got hurt. I don’t blame myself for going a bit crazy, but I have always felt sorry for that couple who drove away into the night having been frightened by the umbrella-toting man whose home they accidentally invaded.

For a few frightening moments, nothing was what it seemed and some pretty scary confusion ensued. I didn’t understand the context of the couple’s presence in my home and, at least at first, they did not understand the context of my presence in what was supposed to be an empty apartment.

The reading today can be scary and confusing too. We enter the text and it seems to say divorce as we know it is forbidden, and that remarriage is adultery.

We get in the room with this verse and we get kinda crazy. We want to say “What the heck is this doing in the Bible?” Read in our time and place it’s upsetting. But it was not written in our time and place. It is not addressing divorce as we know it.

So if the lesson reading has got you huffing and puffing with your umbrella posed for battle like a stressed out law student, take a deep breath, put the umbrella down and let’s look at the text in its context for some probable meanings that may surprise you.

I am not sure if you noticed but Jesus has two conversations in the text. The first is in public with the religious elite. The second is in private with the disciples.

Let’s begin by putting in context what Jesus is addressing. This is about Jewish law and culture in first century Palestine. Jesus was Jewish. The religious elite questioning Jesus are Jewish. The disciples are Jewish. The state Jesus lived in was Jewish and it was run by the Jewish Roman agent Herod.

The Jewish law being discussed between Jesus and the Pharisees (what Moses commanded), indicated that men – and only men – could write a certificate of divorce from their wives and for the most trivial of reasons. (Deut. 24:1).

While the men could, and apparently did, divorce women with relative ease, women could not themselves seek and obtain a divorce under Mosaic law.

Not only that, but once divorced an ex-wife had very little right to property, money, care or claim to status from her former husband.

Divorced women were actually often discarded with no hope for support outside of begging and what they could get away with on the streets.

In the patriarchy women were little more than chattel to be used and lawfully abandoned through divorce on virtually a whim. 1.

Furthermore, under Jewish law adultery was something that could only be committed against a husband. It was only when a wife, as property of her husband, was defiled by a third party that adultery occurred. It was a property offense, the wife’s damaged property, and the third party is the damage doer.

Husbands on the other hand were not property that could be damaged by extramarital affairs, wives were not considered harmed by their spouses’ affairs.

Under Mosaic law, then, a woman had little right in her marriage. She could be severed from it by divorce at the whim of her husband, and only his rights and honor were affected by extramarital relations.

In short, women had no recognized right in a marital relationship. This is what Jesus is addressing in his time and place. This is not divorce as we know it. Divorce today can rescue spouses from unloving relationships, even dangerous ones. Modern divorce laws recognize the rights of both the husband and the wife and allow both to have input in dissolution proceedings and disbursement of property. 2   

In sharp contrast divorce in first century Palestine was at its heart about male domination, and it often ended with a tragic abandonment and even death in the streets for the cast-off wife.   

Now you may recall that John the Baptist criticized Herod for marrying his brother’s wife Herodias (Mk 6:17). Under the laws of Moses, marriage of a living brother’s wife or ex-wife was forbidden (see, Lev. 20:21). John’s beef was Herod broke this law.

You may also recall that, while her marriage is being questioned by John, Herodias conspires to have him killed – to have his head delivered on a platter. One motive could have been to avoid divorce and being tossed out on the street with her daughter, perhaps to die.  

Jesus was known to have once been a follower of John. The religious elite in today’s story may have been trying to get Jesus to, like John, criticize Herod’s marriage and so face imprisonment himself.

Okay, now we have the context, the background for today’s text.

We’re told Jesus talks to the religious elite first:               

       Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"  

"What did Moses command you?" he replied.

They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away."

The religious elite want to know if a man can get a divorce. Jesus asks what the law is and they tell him that the law lets a man write a certificate of divorce.  Jesus doesn’t deny or try to change the law. But rather takes on the purpose of the law noting, "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law.”

We can hear “hearts were hard” not only as an echo of Pharaoh’s heart as Moses tried to lead his people – the people Pharaoh treated as property – out of Egypt, but also as a reference to the patriarchy’s similar hardness of heart in treating women as property. 3

Jesus is directly challenging scripture here. He does not find it infallible, but rather written to satisfy a cultural fault, as Moses’ nod to the hardness of the heart of the patriarchy’s leaders.    

Jesus knows what the law of man, is. He does not deny it allows divorce at a man’s whim, but appeals to a higher law, the law of creation, God’s law. Relying on scripture in Genesis Jesus says   

       But at the beginning of creation, God ‘made them male and female.'  'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

I chose to use the New International Version translation today because the NRSV says “let no ONE separate.” The Greek actually refers to not letting “MAN” do the separating.  

While I could find no commentaries that rely on that distinction, it is interesting that “let man not separate” can be read to not preclude a woman, or even a couple together from deciding to divorce.  

Certainly God can undo through human action what God has done through human action, but divorce - laws allowing the whim of one partner acting as property owner of another partner - is anything but Godly.      

Marriage in Jesus’ view is grounded in creation. 4 God is not only in charge of love and marriage, but has made it so that the two in love become one. One means neither is better than the other. Husband is equal to wife. Wife is equal to husband. God’s ideal is that coupling creates oneness that at least “man” alone ought not to be able to separate.

We can hear this as Jesus taking on a law that lets men treat women as property. Lets men have unequal power in the relationship and mistreat their partner – which is exactly what was going on in the context of Jesus’ culture. In this first conversation with the religious elite in this text, Jesus publicly opposes the one-sided male dominated misogynistic divorces of the status-quo in first century Palestine.

Jesus does not deny the law allows divorce. He does not say “Don’t get divorced.” He is certainly not saying that unloving couples must stay together or tolerate abuse.

What he seems to be claiming is God’s law trumps hardness of heart and human law that promotes oppression and misogyny. To Jesus, women are equal to men in marriage. The two become one. He claims that no MAN ought to be able to separate what God put together.

Under God’s way there is no alpha male with all the rights and woman with a much lesser non-human property-like status. This is a huge, huge and liberating thing to say in first-century Palestine. If you follow God’s laws you don’t let men willy-nilly dump women on the street. You don’t let men make one-sided decisions in disregard of women’s inalienable rights which God provided.

Now I don’t know about you but hearing Jesus’ arguments in this way does not sound scary, rather it sounds like another effort on his at justice, of bringing love to rule where hardness has ruled.      

After publically challenging legalisms that defy God’s plans, Jesus has a private conversation with the disciples:  

              When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this.  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."  

While Jewish law did not provide that a man committed adultery against his own wife, Gentile laws did. It’s likely this saying was added after the movement had begun to grow in the Gentile sectors, probably years after Jesus’ death.

But believe it or not, this saying seems to show that the equality of women continued to be just as important in the early church.

How?

By recognizing a woman’s rights in the marital relationship. Women’s rights are placed on an equal status with men’s rights. To the early church wives are no longer seen as property, but as humans with feelings and interests in the relationship. Women are seen as having dignity and honor that can be harmed by affairs and the break-up of a marriage.  

The saying “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her” grants that women have recognizable interests in marriage which can be harmed. These are the very same rights men have.

This is mind-boggling big. Christianity at its earliest stages understands women to be fully equal to men in marriage. It’s not new Jewish law, but how the church understands marital relationships.

The Interpretation Bible commentary concludes its discussion of the text like this:

       A divorce may revoke a legal contract, but one cannot un-live the vital ties created by life together in marriage, however painful they may be. Jesus does not legislate by saying “No remarriage,” but recognizes what divorce and remarriage do to the residual relationship with a former partner and insists that his disciples understand that the problem cannot be avoided by legal means. The answer was – and is – shocking . . . It set the early church counter to easy selfish views of the marriage relationship in the surrounding culture . . .” 5

The Jesus’ sayings in today’s reading can be heard to mean marriage is not to be taken lightly. That love is a Sacred relationship which touches both parties deeply and intertwines them together as one, making them equal. That relationship can never be fully un-entangled and divorce hurts both parties in the same way. Human laws cannot diminish that fact nor alter the harm.

Accordingly while the divorce laws of Moses day may treat the matter lightly, divorce should not be taken lightly, as it deeply affects couples for life, the husband as well as the wife.

That’s true today! Anyone who has been involved in divorce knows that while the law claims to separate the couple, reality at one level or another keeps them tied together for life with children, in-laws, obligations, memories, even continuing care and love.   

So the bottom line is that this text is not something to fear or feel guilty over.

It’s proof that Jesus was willing to challenge scripture written in deference to the hard hearts of men.

It’s proof that Jesus and the early church saw women as more than property – as fully human beings.

It’s proof that laws that allowed women to be treated unequally and thrown out on the street are not only manmade laws, but are laws trumped by the laws of God and opposed by the love of Christ.

It’s proof that God sides against oppression of all types – and sides with love all the time.

We don’t have to be afraid of today’s reading it can be heard to indicate Jesus is all about equality and justice, righteousness and love.

And that’s always good news!     

AMEN!

ENDNOTES

1. Crossan, John Dominic, The Historical Jesus, San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, (1992), 301

2. Ibid.

3.Cf,  Fiorenza, Elizabeth Schussler, In Memory of Her, Crossroad, New York (1984),143

4. Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, Mark,  176

5. Ibid., 178. 

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED