Divorce and Remarriage

The whole issue of marriage is very topical these days as various parliaments in Australia are giving consideration to the issue of Marriage Equality — but that is a topic for another day.

We in the church have been grappling with the issue of divorce and remarriage for much longer, haven’t we'?  First of all it was an issue for general society and then for the church in particular. 

As I think about my own history with this issue I am reminded that as a young person, whose father was a minister in the church, I saw my dad move from a general opposition to the idea of divorce, to an accepting understanding of it – all in the context of the issue of divorce entering into the lives of his children.  My brother was first divorced and then remarried and is now divorced again.  One of my sisters married a divorce man, and then my other sister was divorced and is now remarried.  By entering into my close family experience, the opinion of my whole family about this issue shifted.

Perhaps this has happened in your family.  When we are confronted with difficult issues in real life — not as a theoretical reality — we often end up with different views in the matter.

THE TEXT - Mark 10:1-12

In this story, the discussion that follows between Jesus and the Pharisees it appears at first glance that Jesus utterly forbids divorce.  Jesus said that Moses only allowed divorce because of the hardness of men’s hearts.  He went back further to the beginning of the Bible, to Genesis, where it is written that man and woman "shall become one flesh," and "They are no longer two but one. What God has joined together let no man put asunder.”

From this, some churches have totally forbidden their members to undertake divorce.  Others have tried to side step it by the device of "annulment" instead of divorce.  Other churches accept divorce as an unfortunate but necessary option where a marriage has irretrievably broken down.

If Jesus utterly forbids divorce, on what grounds can our church tolerate divorce and remarry divorcee’s?  I will attempt to make this clearer in what follows.

THE SITUATION IN JESUS’ DAY

I invite you to keep in mind two things when this passage from Mark’s Gospel is read.

First, it’s a man’s game.  The conversation started with the Pharisees asking if it were lawful for a

man to divorce his wife. It was a question about men’s rights.  In that era in Jewish culture, divorce was largely the prerogative of men, not women.

As far as I am aware there were only three grounds on which a woman could divorce her husband:

1.     lf a Jewish man wanted to leave the holy land and go an live in a pagan country, she could refuse and seek divorce.

2.     If the man embraced another religion, the wife could divorce him.

3.     The third ground for divorce l think was if the man committed blasphemy.

On the other hand, men had numerous grounds.  Women had no right of reply. If a man found anything "unseemly" in his wife, all he had to do was to write out a statement of divorce, listing the grounds, get it witnessed by another man, and then send the wife away.  This put a woman in a perilous situation.  She was disgraced in the community; her family were not likely to take her back.  lf she could not quickly find another husband, her options were either to become a servant, a beggar, or turn to prostitution to keep alive. So when Jesus speaks about divorce in his social environment; it should be heard as a vigorous protest against a grave social injustice.

Secondly, back to basics. Jesus immediately drives the Pharisees back to basics.  They wanted to have a discussion about their rights under the regulations of Moses; their right to divorce a woman.  Jesus pushes them back to Genesis and the basic intention of God: From the beginning a woman and man were intended to stay together in mutual respect, trust and love.  Basically marriage was meant to be a life-long commitment.

Jesus takes us away from the compromises and confusions that happen when relationships do not work well, and he moves us back to God.  That is the only valid starting point as far as Christ was concerned. 

What does God see as the best possible way of life?

Togetherness: an ever-growing love through a life of mutual cherishing. That is the goal.

SO WHAT IS OUT OF PLACE HERE?

This text is a bit like the story of Jesus refusing to heal the story in Mark 7 where Jesus refuses the request of a Gentile woman to heal her daughter.  There Jesus speaks in uncharacteristically racist language.

Here Jesus speaks in uncharacteristically legalistic language.  His words seem to echo what you would have expected the Pharisees to say; but do they?

There is a yawning gulf between Jesus and legalistic religion.  The Pharisees came asking ‘Under what circumstances is it right for a man to divorce his wife’?"

Like their imitators in today’s world, these Pharisees just wanted to be in the right - always.  They expected to get from Jesus a list of conditions under which they could divorce their wives and feel very righteous about it.  That was their thing; the thing that gave them a buzz. They had to be in the right.  It was not only in matters of divorce that they saw things this way.  It applied to every other moral and religious issue.  They were fanatical about justifying themselves.  Therefore they were continually looking for ‘mitigating circumstances’ – excuses that were deduced from the laws of Moses that allowed them to maintain their high and mighty self-righteousness.

There we have it.

In a society where marriage was in a mess, and where men were divorcing their wives for trivial reasons, these paragons of virtue wanted to talk about rights. Jesus stumped them by in effect retorting:  "It is never right to divorce your wife."

The only thing that God intends and the only thing in God’s eyes that can bear the load of being called "right," is a life-long relationship of committed love.  Such can only happen in an environment of shared grace, where forgiveness and respect is ever present.

So, Jesus is not so much forbidding divorce as driving us to recognize our inability to fulfill the perfect law of God, and then offering us grace.  Grace is the remarkable alternative to legalistic self-righteousness.  In matters of marriage and divorce, as in all other ethical issues, we fail often, yet can gladly avail ourselves of the liberating grace of God, through Christ Jesus our Saviour.

Let me quote from one of my favourite New Testament scholars Eduard Schweizer:

"A legalistic requirement forbidding divorce does not help...but also a freedom in which a man can avoid the confession of guilt is even less beneficial.”

He then goes on to say:

“Divorce can be a sign of repentance by which two people face up to their failure. It can be a confession that they have not succeeded in living according to God’s will.  Divorce can therefore set one free to experience the mercy of God."

SUMMING UP

I believe that at one level, Jesus was confronting the male arrogance which had made divorce primarily a male privilege.  He was angry with their treatment of women.  His words about divorce and the hardness of men’s hearts are fundamentally a social justice protest.  Jesus was not putting a ban on divorce.  He was putting a ban on self-righteousness.

At a basic level, all of us has have committed adultery.  That is, we have watered down the perfect, beautiful, loving will of God on a dozen different moral issues.  Every one of us has compromised thousands of times.  Only when we stop trying to put ourselves in the right, when we cease asking "when is it lawful to do less than the best?" do we open up our minds and hearts the renovating mercy of God.  Then we are enabled to get on with life, gratefully and gracefully.

   

This is the Good News.