Legal Separation [Proper 22B - Mark 10:2-16]
The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Mark 10:2-16
Legal Separation
St. Andrew’s, Scotia
Then why even ask? The Pharisees who approached Jesus, the ones
who asked this question, this question about what is, and always has been, an emotionally
fraught topic, they already knew the answer, their answer. They could even cite chapter and verse. Deuteronomy, the book of Moses, is fairly
clear: “Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not
please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes
her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his
house.” Write a certificate and move
on. That was the answer. So, why even ask?
I’m not sure what these
inquisitors were hoping Jesus would say, but Mark’s Gospel tells us that the
question was not an honest inquiry. It
was a test – Holy Scripture as a trap.
And not the first time folks came at Jesus with a test. And not the last time. At this point in Jesus’ life, everything was
a test – every question, every quotation, every gaze. On this final trip to Jerusalem, Jesus faced
test after test until his opponents gave him a failing grade and condemned him
to a cross – a horrific act that was lawful.
And Jesus was well aware. John the Baptist, his friend, his forerunner,
fell on this same sword. He said the
wrong thing about divorce and it cost him his life. The Pharisees understood, because history
proved, that this question, this trap, was effective. So why not try it again?
When the trap is set, Jesus goes
back to the beginning – all the way back.
In the beginning, there were no laws.
There were just people and God.
But early on things started falling apart. And so, in response to our human failures and
our inability to hold it all together, God created the Law. And offered it as a gift to a people of
hardened hearts. That Law was intended
to protect those who were most vulnerable to the worst impulses of our species. Because of hardened hearts, there was a law
that allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her. Because God knows if something more humane
were not allowed, “objectionable” wives would have been killed instead, or
abandoned to margins, to die a slower death.
And I know that is true because in India, still today, experts estimate that
each year around 2500 wives are burned to death by their husbands when the
dowry doesn’t come in.[1] And not just in India. “Because of your hardness of heart Moses
wrote this commandment for you.”
Which was Jesus’ manner of saying,
“But it was never meant to be this way.”
And at first it wasn’t. But the
cracks emerged quickly. And, sadly,
broken people find it difficult to hold relationships together. And so, sadly, divorce happens. But also, sadly, children drift from their
parents. And friendships dissolve. And churches are split. And none of it is how it is supposed to be,
but all of it is how it is on this side of Heaven. And nobody loves it, but we cannot seem to
stop the breaking.
Which is what makes the Pharisees
question so cruel. It is a trap; that is,
in and of itself, a cruelty. But also,
the question makes light of something heavy.
It attempts to make a cold and calculated math problem out of cascading
series of human heartbreaks. It was
political maneuvering with people’s pain.
It was cynical. And it was
cruel. Because cruelty dressed up in
self-righteousness and biblical citation is still cruel.
Jesus refused to engage in their
cynical exercise. He knew the answer to
the question as well as they did. He knew
chapter and verse. But in life, it is
rarely enough to simply know the answer.
And in faith, one rarely unholsters a verse of the Bible with purest
intentions. And the rules were never
God’s vision for eternity; they were always just a way to keep us from
destroying each other.
And so Jesus transcended the question
and went back to the beginning. And in
the Garden of Eden, Jesus uncovered God’s original intention for the world. And it was a world in which things don’t fall
apart and people stay together and love never fades. It is what God has always wanted.
And it is what we can never quite
seem to grasp. And so in this world,
divorce does happen. And it hurts. Or it happens because the marriage hurt. And Jesus, unlike these Pharisees, is gentle
with that – even as he acknowledges that broken relationships are not the
ideal. God doesn’t want people to carry
those scars or feel that pain. God
doesn’t want the fallout that falls on the entire social network, and
especially on the children.
The Pharisees came with a trap and
Jesus answered their question, to some extent.
But on his way to the cross, as he is in today’s lesson, he was not as
interested in debating legal matters; he had a more primary agenda. And that agenda was to proclaim the ways of
the coming Kingdom of God. For those who
seek the Kingdom, the Pharisees’ question was thin and insignificant. Of course, it was lawful for a man to divorce
his wife. That was not in question. It was written down in black and white.
But the Kingdom of God is not
drawn in black and white; because God dreams in colors. Whether something is lawful is far below
God’s standard. And measuring one’s life
in what one can get away with is not God’s true hope for our lives. And so Jesus was not interested in the
question, that, remember, was really a just trap.
Instead, Jesus was interested in a
garden: an ancient vision of the future, one in which our old scars are finally
healed. Jesus talked about Paradise –
what God has always wanted for us. And
what Jesus promises awaits us in the future.
In that Kingdom, hard hearts grow soft.
In that Kingdom, the Bible is no longer used as a weapon. In that Kingdom, the pain and the tears are
put to rest. In that Kingdom, all of our
broken pieces are put back together. In
that Kingdom, in the future of God’s dreams, we all move together, forever, in
the irresistible direction of love.
Comments
Post a Comment