- Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her." But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 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 10:2-9
So Jesus said that about divorce. That to many people raises all kinds of problems for our church.
But they are mistaken. And I wish to explain this in a kind of oblique way.
As some of you will remember there is a character in Hamlet who has this to say: to thine own self be true. Also neither a borrower nor a lender be and give every man thy ear but few thy voice. And several other such bits.
Sometimes this is printed separately as a speech full of wisdom. I have seen this anthologized as that.
But in fact it is nothing but cliche heavy hot air, providing some comic relief much needed in this grim play. Think about it: to thine own self be true? Sounds like something deep but what in the world can it mean? What is he saying? Nothing at all. He’s not speaking, he’s mouthing. Polonius is a silly old fool, and what he says is rubbish. But apparently people fall for his rubbish.
Polonius is just the most egregious example I could find for what can happen when words are ripped out of context.
Now this has very often happened in Scripture. What many do is to quote Jesus out of context. And that is an insult to the Gospels. They are careful narratives, not collections of Jesus sayings. Of course Jesus is the very opposite of an old fool. He’s a young and very intelligent man. But take him out of context and he begins to seem a bit foolish: that is when he seems to contradict and make no sense. But in the context of the Gospels, everything he says makes perfect sense and is perfectly consistent.
One way to honor this, one important key is always to ask: to whom is Jesus speaking?
To a Sick person? The he will be all simple compassion.
To the disciples? The he will be quite the contrary: all challenge. Remember, for the disciples he was always raising the bar.
To the Pharisees? In that case, you will probably find offer witty answers and veiled insults.
Rather like Oscar Wilde. They are always trying to trip him up, and he is always too nimble for them. But what he says to them is hardly to be taken for his teaching on much of anything. The Pharisees treat bits of scripture like pieces on a game board. Jesus doesn’t scold them; he beats them at their game.
Now this is all hardly a difficult thought but many, many have read all words of Christ as the same. As though all he did was deliver plain teaching no matter whom he was addressing.
So today Jesus quotes Moses about divorce–since Moses was thought to have written the Torah. But to whom is he speaking today? Check [read]: Pharisees.
This is not about marriage, it’s never about what they tempt Jesus with. The Pharisees aren’t interested in the Sabbath, or the greatest commandment, or taxes, or marriage. They are setting traps.
And Jesus will not step into the trap until the right time. What Jesus is doing here is not setting everyone straight about marriage. He is beating Pharisees at there game, that’s all. They want to have him say divorce is no good, then they will quote Moses, or it’s okay, then they will quote Moses again. But he answers with a question, then out-quotes them. He is better at Scripture than they are.
So to guess that what Jesus says here is Jesus’ opinion, or teaching, about marriage and divorce is about as mistaken as taking old Polonius’ warmed-over maxims as a fount of wisdom.
So this is of course the answer to anyone who asks why our Church has always allowed divorce to happen despite what Jesus says here. I have heard that often, along with the preposterous and simpleminded idea that Henry VIII started this church in order to get one. Which is simply false.
We are not contradicting him because Jesus is not stating his position here. He is not teaching here. He’s debating. Because since he is fencing with Pharisees, we can be almost certain this is not his final word on this subject.
Actually he never pronounces anything on divorce. He lays down principles for treating humans, not specific laws: that’s very basic. He also says nothing about abortion, nuclear warfare, inflation, technology, euthanasia. What he does is give us ways of thinking about those things–ways that make sense given a certain wonderful view of God and of ourselves.
I think Jesus’ answer about divorce would all depend on who asked the question. Since it’s Pharisees, he gives them the answer they deserve. If it were someone looking for a convenient way out of commitment, I think his answer would be about the same. But I strongly suspect that if a hurting person in an injurious marriage asked him about divorce, his answer would have a good deal to do with such matters as forgiveness, renewal, healing, and the love of God the Father. That would be most consistent with the Jesus we know.
And it is the stance of this Church.
But the story does point us to something which really is about marriage, and about even bigger things. Jesus directs their attention, and our attention today, to what Genesis, the great foundation volume, has to say. That was what we heard first today, and it is one of the richest and best passages in all of the Bible.
But it too has been misread. Or rather, read very sloppily.
It has as the sad result of that sloppy reading been the source of lots of bad morals, bad manners, and bad cartoons in the New Yorker. And some good ones too.
So let’s try to read it with clear eyes. And without kidding ourselves.
First, it tells us what the first bad thing was. What was that? The first bad thing that ever was. Not what you are probably thinking. Not pride, or disobedience. Not lust, or murder. Not any vice and not any breaking of a commandment.
The first bad thing is for the human being to be alone. God says it: it is “not good.” In other words , Bad. In contrast to all the other things God has called good, remember, light and sun and moon and seas and trees and beasts and humans, at last here is something that is bad. It is bad for the human to be alone. As the early medieval Rabbi Benno says, the human being needs company–after all the Adam –which means the human, not the name of some male– is God’s image, and God always says “we” and “us.” The Adam needs to be able to say “we.”
God always finds a remedy for bad. In fact the basic Bible principle is God takes bad and turns it into opportunity for good. The remedy here will be an eizer, which is usually trans by a odd word “helpmate.” The word is “suitable companion,” or “equal partner.” That is what God determines to make.
Here’s something else I guess many do not notice. God makes the animals–the birds and the beasts–as a kind of first stage, an experiment in finding a suitable companion for the human being. That gives us a kind of kinship with them we would not otherwise have. That is why so many of them become our friends: because God made them to be exactly that. I have heard and read all sorts of scientific explanations but this makes the most sense to me–as Genesis myth so often does. It promotes animals from where most people rank them. They are higher than that.
And this story also promotes the woman. I know it has been read very often in just the opposite way, but I will guess that you have not heard the explanations the rabbis and the fathers and the modern scholars have given it.
The first thing to be clear about is that God does not take the female from the male. The Rabbis and the Undivided Church were agreed on this: Adam is humankind in one. Androgynous. Neither nor or both and. What God does is to create the male and the female simultaneously, from the human. They support this with the statement, God made humankind; male and female created he them”: two stages.
First, the woman is the solution. She is the suitable companion, the equal partner the HB needs. Some say since she was a rib she is necessarily smaller but that overlooks: God built her up from there.
But it is the equality that is important. God does not create a servant for Adam. Nor a subject. Nor a pet. Nor one more thing, and we shall get to this in a minute. God makes the Adam an equal partner. That’s what the word says, not a “helpmeet,” which sounds like servant to me.
And notice this. What does the male do? The man “clings to “ the wife. Just think about that verb for a moment. There are many words for holding onto something, and many of them do suggest dominance, control, mastery. But “cling”? What does that suggest? Reliance. Dependence. Even desperate need. As in “cling for dear life.” We cling to what is stronger, not weaker. Phyllis Trible, the contemporary reader of the Old Testament (UTS teacher) sums it up: “superiority, strength, oppression, dominance, and power to not characterize man” in this story. No, not when Adam clings to Eve!
And they are one flesh. Flesh in Scripture does not refer to this envelope that holds the tissues together. It is a much, much larger word than that. Flesh is human life: everything we experience, the whole weight and texture. This is not Plato’s idea that we are all half and half, and women and men have to have each other to get integrated again. The woman is made so humans can live joyously together, says the Talmud.
And finally one thing is conspicuous in this story of the making of Eve by its absence. Procreation. And sexuality. That’s odd at first–the first male and female not being about sex? But it’s true. It is not the reason for another human being to exist. Eve is not a baby machine. Not a helpmeet and not a sexual playmate. There is of course a theology of sex in Scripture: but it isn’t here. This story is not about sexuality. Or even really gender. It is about companionship. Anyone who read this story with innocent eyes would not even think about sexuality.
Some people might object and say this is not the traditional understanding. To that I reply, yes it is. I did not make up any of it. I found it in the ancient Christians and the Rabbis. And I find it stronger than that other interpretation, which sounds to me less of an interpretation than an excuse.
As a teacher I often say that Scripture is a quarry not a blueprint. I believe that very strongly. But as a priest here in the pulpit today I wish to go further and say what Origen, that great 3rd century teacher, says. The Bible is like the ocean. There some fish, some swim, and some sail. Just so. When reading the Bible some get simple belief. Some learn morals. And some get the truth. I like that very much. Its fun to swim in the scriptures and pleasant to go fishing. But what joy when they let us sail.
