Divorce Hearing

Preachers know that different people hear the same sermon in different ways. On several occasions I have heard attributed to me things I’m sure I never said.

"I said that?"

How we listen makes all the difference. It’s a pretty safe bet that, depending on our own experiences and struggles in life, we all heard – and felt – today’s Gospel reading in very different ways.

Those of you who are divorced may have heard in this text a word of judgment and condemnation. Those who are living in deeply unhappy marriages and are contemplating divorce may have felt your already-unbearable burden grow heavier. You who have spent years coming to terms with the your own failed marriage or that of someone close to you may have felt blind-sided by this hard saying of Jesus.

And those of you who are in the midst of a divorce right now, whether adults or children (In any gathering of this size there are likely to be several.) – you may feel like you’ve been kicked in the stomach. It was hard enough for you to come to church today, but you made it. You came hoping to gain enough strength to get you through another week. I fear you have not yet found it.

So I must say from the start that I am aware that many of you find this a painful text to hear. Notice I did not say, "I know how you feel." I can’t know that. But I can say with utter confidence that God knows how you feel. All I ask is that you remain open to God’s Spirit as this text becomes God’s word to you.

One reason we hear things so differently is that we filter what is said through our own prejudices and preconceptions. Such is the case in this story from Mark 10. It appears to begin with a question about divorce, but the people who put this question to Jesus aren’t looking for fresh angles or new insights. They’re hoping to trap Jesus into saying something heretical or self-incriminating. They have an agenda, and that’s to embarrass Jesus while racking up points for their own side.

Here’s what you have to know about the background of this passage: divorce is already the established practice of the Judaism of Jesus’ day. It’s provided for in the law of Moses -- Deuteronomy 24:1 to be exact. Nobody in this story disputes the lawfulness of divorce, or denies that God has made provision for it in the law of Moses.

The question behind the question in the text is this: On what grounds may a man divorce his wife? One school of rabbinical thought argued that the only justification for divorce was the wife’s adultery. (Notice I said "the wife’s," not the husband’s.) The other school of thought accepted almost any provocation at all. According to this line of interpretation a man could divorce his wife for being sharp-tongued, or a poor housekeeper, or a bad cook.

The folks who put this question to Jesus are looking for ammunition against Jesus and against their opponents. It is in this spirit that they ask Jesus, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

Like a good rabbi Jesus answers their question with a question, "What did Moses command you?"

Now, instead of getting into their argument on their terms, Jesus shifts the tables completely. This provision of the law is a concession to human sinfulness, he says. "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you."

Then Jesus takes us back, before Moses, before the law, before human sin had thrown the whole creation out of sync.

Do you see what Jesus is doing? Can you hear it? He has taken a conversation destined to go nowhere but a dead end of argument, guilt, and recrimination, and steered it back to the garden of Eden. These questioners want to argue about how far they can stretch a point of law; Jesus leads them to the heart of God behind the law.

While these men are rearranging the deck chairs on the rabbinical Titanic, the ship of male supremacy and domination, Jesus leads us back to that instant in primordial history when men and women were completely and totally equal. "So God created humankind in his image," says Genesis 1:27, "in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

So, instead of quoting what was no doubt his questioners’ favorite verse in Genesis – the one about Eve being made from the rib of Adam – Jesus skips past that and links Genesis 1:27 with Genesis 2:24:

So Jesus won’t talk about ways to justify divorce. Instead he takes us back to that moment in when Adam and Eve became the first husband and wife. They stayed married, of course, but they managed to break God’s heart anyway.

Divorce is like the clothes God stitched together for Adam and Eve to wear after they left the garden. God provides divorce as a concession to our sinfulness.

Before we hear the good news of this text, we must first hear the bad news. God hates divorce. So said the prophet Malachi, and so says Jesus. Necessary evil it may be, but evil it remains. And, as with every evil, God can bring out of divorce something good.

I know a woman who lived for years suffering mental and physical abuse from her husband. When their divorce finally came, I’m sure it grieved the heart of God, but no more than seeing the precious gift of marriage being used as a pretext for terror. That woman has since blossomed like a late summer flower. God is working in her life to bring good out of evil.

I think of the women who will sleep at the Refuge House tonight, women who have escaped their abusive husbands, taking with them no more than their children and the clothes on their back. Would Jesus condemn such women for getting a divorce? The very thought strikes me as blasphemous.

And yet, none of us would dare to say that God is pleased by the 50% divorce rate in this country. We cannot deny that children are damaged by divorce, nor can we honestly say that the church is doing everything it can to make marriage stronger.

If you could be a fly on the wall and watch a child in our own Preschool go through her day, you could not be blasé about the impact of divorce on young children.

She wakes up in one parent’s home, comes to school to eat breakfast, spends the day with her friends and teachers, and goes home to the other parent’s household. She has a teddy bear for mom’s house, one for school, and another teddy who lives at dad’s with his stepchildren. Some days she wakes from her nap in a panic because she can’t remember who’s to pick her up and where she’ll sleep that night. She’s only three years old.

If these were Jesus’ only words to us, none of us would have a hope of heaven, for we all fall short of God’s intentions for creation. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" – divorced, married, or single. Unless we are saved by grace we will not be saved at all.

According to Mark, immediately after speaking these seemingly harsh words about marriage and divorce, Jesus indignantly shoves his disciples aside and welcomes the children they were trying to shoo away.

People who have been divorced, or who are going through a divorce, need to hear these words of Jesus as well. They remind us that none of us is qualified to be received by him.

Children ranked just below women in Jesus’ day. They had no rights, no credentials, no power. Yet Jesus welcomes them, lays his hands on them, and blesses them. Jesus never turned anybody away. Even at this moment, Jesus welcomes us, puts his arms around us, and blesses us. In the community formed by his embrace there are no married or divorced or single people. There are only little children who ache to be welcomed, who need to be healed, who long to be held and to know that it will be all right.

"Let the little children come to me; do not hinder them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs."

Can you hear these words of Jesus for you along with those other words? Can you accept yourself as a child whom Jesus welcomes? If you can, then you are hearing the whole of God’s word to you.

Draw close to Jesus. It is to you that the kingdom of God belongs.