JESUS, DIVORCE, FORGIVENESS
Trinity 17 2009: Mark 10:2-16
Many
of you
will be aware that as a church we have been looking at the possibility
of
admitting children to communion before confirmation.
Given
that this topic is around, you can imagine how my eyes lit up when I saw
the
Gospel reading set for today, which includes the words of Jesus “Let the
little
children come unto me do not stop them”, and I was tempted just to focus
on that
text for my sermon. But it would be
wrong I think to ignore the first part of our reading. It
contains some harsh sounding words about
divorce, and divorce is something that directly or indirectly will have
affected very many of us. (There are roughly 150,000 divorces a year,
about
half the number of marriages a year). We
need to look more closely at this passage, because the words of Jesus on
divorce can be used, and at times in the history of the church have been
used,
to condemn or exclude people involved in divorce. Some of
us may have been tempted to condemn
or accuse ourselves, because of those words.
But these words were never meant for that purpose.
Did
you
notice who mentioned divorce first – not Jesus but the the Pharisees,
and their
interest is in the legalities, “Is it
lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”.
That is how divorce was seen in their world as a legal issue, and
as an
issue about the rights of men, not women.
The woman was seen essentially as
property, passed from her father to her husband on marriage.
If a married man’s eye was later caught by
another woman then, provided he had a good enough lawyer working for
him, he
could probably come up with some grounds for divorce [The criterion for
divorce
in Deuteronomy is hardly taxing: divorce is allowed “if a man finds
something
objectionable in his wife”], allowing him to remarry. He
could then hold his head up high in the
synagogue, still claiming to be a respectable married or re-married man.
His unfortunate ex-wife however, would become
almost a non-person, someone with no status, no rights, no property, no
home.
Is
it lawful
the for the man to divorce, the Pharisees ask? Bother the law says
Jesus, look
behind the law to what marriage is
really about – it is about people in relationship, it is about people
opening
up to each other, becoming vulnerable to each other as they enter a
sexual
relationship. It is about realising the
potential God gave us in creation, the potential to relate so deeply
that two
become one. Don’t then separate what God
has joined. And don’t imagine the legal
niceties of divorce, can hide the reality if you wrong your husband or
wife by
leaving them for another. Adultery is
still adultery.
Jesus
takes
marriage very seriously and takes divorce very seriously. Christian
marriage
should never be entered casually or
casually abandoned if it becomes inconvenient. Jesus does not say, and
the
church cannot say that divorce does not matter.
Those of you who have been through divorce would probably agree,
you
know it is painful, messy, it leaves ragged edges. But nor does Jesus
condemn
or turn his back on those who have been through divorce. Even though he
uses
that harsh word adultery about divorce in some circumstances, we also
know that
when Jesus met “an adulterer”, came face to face with a woman caught in
adultery, he would not condemn her. We
have also the example of the Samaritan woman at the well, who has been
through
many husbands and is now living in sin with a man who is not her
husband. Although he knows her history, Jesus
turns to her, asks for her help, and
says if she had asked he would have given her the living water of
eternal
life.
Jesus
does not label us by our marital status
or marital history, he sees us in our messiness, inadequacy and
confusion, and
meets us and offers us healing and a fresh start. If Jesus
will not condemn us, neither should
we condemn ourselves, or condemn each other.
Returning
briefly
to the closing passage about the children, you might wonder what the
connection is between divorce and children.
Why are these two stories placed side by side? I
think it is about the vulnerability of
people without status. The victims of
divorce become non-people. The disciples
say in effect to the children you are non-people, you have no status, we
have a right to be here, but you don’t. It
is an attitude Jesus is quick to challenge.
At this celebration of holy communion, none of us have a right to
be
here whether we are 8 or 80, none of us dare say we are qualified by our
holiness of life, or by our depth of understanding, by our correctness
of
behaviour to approach the Lord’s table.
What happens here is a miracle of grace and generosity, from a
God who
knows we mess up, knows we cause pain to ourselves and to others ,and
who
nonetheless welcomes us to himself.