Mark 10:1-16
“Divorce”
October 7, 2012 - Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

         Maggie McKinney got lots of support when she separated from her husband. In Newsweek in 1995, she told how people called, wrote letters, and came visit­ing. Some told her she would find a better person to marry. Others felt she was better off single. Almost everyone was encouraging. “Go for it!” they said, “You can do it!”

         Eighteen months later, when she and her husband decided to get back together, the support was much less. People just asked questions or expressed shock. One called, said she heard the two were back together, and hoped it wasn’t true. Another asked if she really wanted to risk it again. Even her minister said, “When something is dead, you ought to bury it.” The overwhelming message was that leaving a marriage is good and courageous, while trying to put one back together is strange and even stupid.

         You and I live in a time and in a country where divorce is so accepted that in many cir­cles it is expected and honored. Divorce may seem more acceptable than the effort it takes to make a difficult marriage work. That’s our culture today.

         Jesus’ culture was not that different. The prevailing viewpoint among Jews was that divorce was acceptable for just about any reason a man might give. For complicated reasons of language, Rabbi Hillel interpreted Deuteronomy 24:1 to permit divorce if a wife was simply annoying or embarrassing to her husband—even if she just ruined supper. There were other views, but Hillel’s interpre­tation was popular. Dissolving a marriage was nearly as easy and acceptable as it is today.

         The minister who told Maggie McKinney to bury her dead marriage shows even church attitudes toward divorce can be accepting. Unitarians and others have created ceremonies to bless divorces like marriages are blessed. Divorce has affected so many of us that we are forced to acknowledge it as common reality.

         Many of us here are touched by that reality. I grew up as the child of divorced parents. Broken marriages are part of our lives. We manage to live with it, but divorce has caused most of us deep and continuing pain. Even if you haven’t been wounded directly, you have family or friends who have. That pain has opened hearts and created compassion for divorced people. In healthy churches like ours, people reach out in love and tenderness to those healing from divorce. It is the Christian thing to do.

         Yet when we turn in our Bibles to what Jesus Himself says about divorce, it’s like being hit with a brick. He seems absolutely devoid of tenderness and understanding about this. Responding to the permissive atmosphere of His day, Jesus is unbending. Citing the authority of God’s original creation of men and women, Christ unconditionally prohibited divorce: “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” And He added the addendum that divorce compounded by remarrying is nothing less than adultery.

         What shall we say? In the name of compassion, shall we all just turn the page and ig­nore what’s here? I would not have chosen this text myself for today, for Communion Sunday. But it’s the lectionary reading. It’s the next text as we work through Mark. It is still the Word of God whether we read it or not. Many of you are here because this is a church that takes the words of the Bible, and especially the words of Jesus, seriously.

         On the other hand, shall we try to rigidly apply Jesus’ words? Should we be a church which regards divorced persons as ongoing sinners? Shall we make divorce illegal by church law, exclude divorced persons from church leadership, and call all broken couples to reconcile to each other no matter what? That also seems wrong. Some of us, at least, are here because the Covenant Church is not a place that shoots its wounded.

         The best we can do is read this text seeking both faithfulness and compassion. This is not a time for superficial reading. It is time to bring every bit of knowledge and wisdom we have into the service of studying God’s Word. Mistakes here have damaged the lives of countless people. The last thing I want is to add to the damage.

         Verse 1 of Mark 10 is not just stage setting. It makes a difference where Jesus was, “across the Jordan,” just east of the River. He was in the region where Herod Antipas ruled and where Herod had John the Baptist arrested and ultimately beheaded. John’s crime was to criticize Herod for marrying Herodias, who had divorced Herod’s brother Philip in order to marry the king. We read about it a few weeks ago in Mark 6.

         Now notice verse 2. The Pharisee’s question about divorce was a deliberate test, a political test. It was not a test of doctrine. Jesus’ opponents were daring Him to take the same stand which cost John the Baptist his life. They wanted to trap Him into bringing down the wrath of Herod, by getting him to criticize the king’s personal life.

         Jesus often answers our questions with a question for us. So He asked them “What did Moses command you?” What do the Scriptures say about this? The Pharisees responded with Hillel’s passage from Deuteronomy 24. To them the only limit on divorce was proper legal procedure. A certificate needed to be written, not unlike what we have now. Anything is grounds for divorce, if you file the proper papers.

         The Pharisees wanted to argue that divorce was permitted as part of the Law. With verse 5, Jesus responded to them out of Spirit behind the law. He wanted us to go deeper than the Law to realize what permission for divorce means. God did not intend or want divorce. God permits it in recognition that human hearts are “hard.” Sin breaks marriages.

         Stop here, and there’s enough to challenge our world’s view of di­vorce. The Lord says the same to us. We take a contingency plan in the face of sin and make it into something ordinary and normal. The same kind of mistake was made regarding slavery. Just because God tells slaves and masters how to behave, we can’t assume that slavery is right or good. If God permits divorce and has rules for it, we still must not accept it as healthy or normal.

         Jesus’ words about divorce take us back to what is originally good and right, healthy and normal. Verses 6 through 9 describe creation. Here is what God intended when He made two sexes. God’s plan for mar­riage was one man and one woman whose bond is so intimate as to be one flesh, one body. They and everyone around now see them not just as two people, but as one new thing, “they are no longer two, but one.” God creates marriages. They are not our private relationships to take apart if we so choose.

         God also created us with free will. He gave us charge of what He created. Our choice, our sin can break a marriage beyond repair. In Matthew Jesus says twice that unfaithfulness will break a marriage. Divorce is permitted only to acknowledge the break that already exists. The Covenant church in Nome has rotten beams under the floor of the sanctuary. Right now it looks O.K., but they will soon have to tear it down. It’s sad, but inevitable. That’s what happens to some marriages.

         But Jesus wants us to shorten our list of what breaks a marriage. We let the bond between husband and wife become too fragile. God planned marriage to last for a lifetime and offers us the help to make it work. He wants to save our marriages as He saves our souls.

         The only way any human relationship can work well is for it to be redeemed in Christ and live out that redemption. God forgave us through a great sacrifice on the Cross and made us new by His resurrection from the dead. Marriage only works when we forgive each other and let God raise our relationships from the dead.

         Forgiveness takes the fragility out of marriage. Someone once told me he did the kind of thing we all dread. He broke a crystal bowl he and his wife received as a wedding gift eighteen years earlier. She was at work and he called her to ask forgiveness. She said. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry, I won’t divorce you.” It was a joke to deal with her pain, but it was exactly right. Marriages should not be made of crystal. They should not break easily. A marriage created in Christ is to be stronger than that.

         God never meant for marriages to be broken easily by small and selfish reasons like, “There is no passion in our relationship,” or “I had to find myself,” or “I was not in love any more” or “Someone else made me feel so alive.” If we let them grow, those are little cracks that will fracture our homes. But when we seek and give forgiveness to each other, God can heal those breaks before they split us. Our Christian faith is what Colossians 3:13 says, “Bear with one another… forgive each other as Christ has forgiven you.”

         Christian marriages, though, are not indestructible. We may want to forgive, but our spouse will not repent. We may repent and ask forgiveness, but our spouse is too wounded to forgive. Marriages crack and break and divorce is the result, the visible evidence of sin, like tearing down a building makes the rotten foundation visible. Divorce reminds us how much we all need the forgiveness that God offers us in Jesus Christ.

         Let the church be as clear as Jesus was. We do not “believe” in divorce. It’s not what God wants for us. That what Jesus taught the disciples later in the house where they were staying, beginning in verse 10. Willful divorce is wrong, especially wrong, says verse 11, when a man’s intent is to marry someone else. He might as well have committed adultery. It is committing adultery to divorce for that reason.

         Verse 12 adds something foreign to that culture. Jesus imagined a woman divorcing her husband and applied His warning about adultery in both directions. What we call “serial marriage,” Jesus calls adultery. Divorce is permitted as a way to deal with a marriage already broken but it’s not to be used to pretend that one has not been unfaithful.

         Divorce is the evidence of brokenness and sin. We do not condone it. But we still practice compassion. It is not always the case that both people have sinned. Even more, we acknowledge that we are all sinners and that all sin may be forgiven by the sacrifice of Jesus. Right here among us is the best gift that may be offered to those healing from a broken marriage, the grace of the Lord and the love of His people.

         Let us especially be compassionate to the children. I’m not at all interested in painting myself as a victim, but I do know personally a little of what divorce does to kids. It’s maybe no accident that in our text, right after Jesus strongly warns against divorce, He says in verse 14, “Let the little children come to me.” He may have been thinking especially of children whose parents don’t live together anymore.

         As gently, tenderly and compassionately as we can, let us try to help each other and the culture around us hear what Jesus says about divorce. Let it not just be accepted as normal among us, but let it break our hearts like it breaks God’s heart. But spreading that sad word is not all we can do. God gives us a positive message to share. The healing power that raised Jesus from the dead can heal and redeem our marriages.

         Ben and Julie (I changed their names) started coming to the church I served previously. They were very young, both of them on their second marriage. Soon they asked me to counsel them. I discovered their lives were a mess. I met with them several times, but I couldn’t say I offered much help. If you had asked me to bet on them staying together, I would not have risked fifty cents on their chances.

         Yet five years later, when I came here, Ben and Julie were still married. They went through enormously rocky times and were stronger than ever before. They became leaders in the church and they had a heart for youth. I’m not sure how it happened but let me share a little statistical information.

         An older woman in our church started taking attendance for everyone, two or three hundred people. After a couple years, she made up a list of members ranked by how many Sundays they came out of the year. I would never have guessed it, but Ben and Julie were at the top of the list. They came fifty out of every fifty-two Sundays! No one else even came close. The rest of the list dropped to the low forties or below.

         There is no guarantee. Human sin can always walk away from grace. However, when you avail yourself of God’s provision in Christ and His church I believe the chances are im­proved that your marriage will not break every time it hits the floor. Jesus said that He came to bring us abundant life. He meant that for our families as well.

         I would never promise you that coming to church will save your marriage or make it bet­ter. But I do promise you there is no better place to try. We will offer you counsel. Friends here will give you support. Keep worshipping the Lord who forgave you, and you will learn forgiveness which makes a difference at home. Remember the price that Jesus paid for your sins and you will want to turn from the sins that can crack your marriage. To stand together at Holy Communion gives the hope of renewed communion be­tween you as a couple. Jesus Christ is here and ready to offer grace and strength to your family.

         If you are hurting, if the break has already happened, whether recently or long ago, well then God forgive me if some misspoken thought just now has added to your pain. But look at the love Jesus had for the little children. In verse 15 He invited us to come like they did, to be gathered in His arms like they were. If you are alone, if there is discord in your home, or an old wound in your past, if your heart is breaking, then hear this. In Jesus, God loves you as His dear child. His forgiveness and grace and healing is enough for all that hurts you.

         This was a hard text, but there is comfort here because Jesus is here. Comfort and hope and love overflow out of the person who meets you here now at His Table of grace. Jesus spoke harsh words for our own good. But He only wounds so that He can heal. May you find yourself and those you love being carried in His loving arms right now.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj