When Jesus is asked about divorce in Mark 10:2-16, we act like he’s given us an answer. What he’s given us is a whole new question.
Again Jesus pushes us to see the forest, not the trees.
Proper 22B | Mark 10:2-16
Let me say at the top that Jesus doesn’t condemn divorce. Let’s first get that out of the way.
Second, Jesus doesn’t write new laws by which we can judge each other.
Third, Jesus demonstrates the danger of getting stuck in the weeds: it means we’re likely to miss the greater point.
So if anyone walks out of this room this morning thinking Jesus condemns anyone for divorce, then they aren’t seeing what Jesus is really trying to show them.
I say this at the top because I have to dig into this messy subject and sometimes, in the hearing, we can all get a little lost. And on this matter, I want us all crystal clear. God loves you.
The question of divorce is too narrow
In a way, this is like so many other stories in Mark. The Pharisees come to confront Jesus. Perhaps it’s genuine and straightforward. But usually, by the end, they’re trying to trick him. So I’m not sure the benefit of the doubt is in order. However, we also should not get hung up in motivation. Because there’s value in acknowledging their concern for the law.
And so this question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” is strange. In any context. Because the most honest and direct answer would be “yes.” But while this may be the most direct answer to that question, Jesus wants to show why that question is too narrow. He doesn’t want to answer that question; they’ll get lost in it.
It’s so narrow that it still prevents us from seeing the nature of God. It confines us to the order, to obey the law for the sake of the law. Jesus exposes, not the problem with the question, but how it frames the conversation and takes God out of it.
We’ve seen this play out time and again with Jesus. The point isn’t the point. The rules-lawyers are obsessing over this one thing to the exclusion of everything else and Jesus is saying, no you’re missing my point completely.
To open your heart
Jesus responds to their question with one of his own, sending them back to the law. What did it say? A man can divorce a woman.
Not the other way around, let’s note.
And Jesus doesn’t get into motives or fault or reasons for the divorce. Not with the Pharisees. He responds to their question of divorce by pushing them to instead look at marriage.
He rejects the frame, the trap, this way the Pharisees are trying to restrict the story and Jesus takes it back to God. What God wants.
Virtually his whole argument to the Pharisees can be summed up as:
Moses gave you divorce because of the hardness of your heart.
God gave you marriage to open your heart.
That’s it. There’s no hour-long sermon or guide book. Just that.
And bring us together
When the disciples get Jesus alone, they ask for more. Clearly this wasn’t enough answer for them. Come on, Jesus, go on the record. Good or bad? (Certainly they’re still jockeying for who is the greatest)
And Jesus pushes the point one more time.
Divorce isn’t what God sets out to do with us. And that ‘s why this is in the territory of sin, remembering that sin is separation. Sin is disunity. Bringing an end to unity is not the dream.
But then he also shows how the law gets it wrong. How the law only allows a man to divorce a woman. An act which completely disenfranchises her and steals her entire place in society and leaves her with nothing.
The cruelty of the divorce law is only matched by the cruelty of the system itself. A system which considered women no better than property. Valuable only in a woman’s ability to expand a man’s property.
Jesus upends that expectation by defying that cruel separation of men from women by patriarchal power by suggesting women can divorce men. Even though Moses didn’t allow for that, Jesus is driving us deeper, past the surface question. Past the legal question. Down to the God question.
Answering the Pharisees’ question doesn’t reveal the truth about God. The point is much bigger than divorce.
It’s about the Christ Project – building love and connection and commitment to one another, not separation.
For the building of the kin-dom
This is why our passage keeps going. This isn’t some disembodied, random teaching about the law. This isn’t some collection of words we write into stone and then debate for 200 years.
Remember, he’s teaching about the Kin-dom. About the children being the source of God in our midst. About the lowest in society being first in the heart of God. He’s warning them not to be a stumbling block to each other, preventing them from knowing and feeling the love of God. And that we are all part of this Christ Project.
This teaching comes in the midst of that, so when Jesus is talking about women divorcing men and the very next line says
“They were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them;”
We can know this is all part of it. This is the deeper point. Not some universal rule about divorce which solves our momentary problem. Phew! Now that we have that solved we can get back to ignoring God’s purpose in the rest of our lives!
Jesus isn’t an answer man.
The Bible isn’t an answer book. This all is a journey. A journey in which the purpose isn’t merely about following the rules of a faceless God. It’s all: love God and work on loving God more.
So who are “they?” By now, we should know. Mothers and fathers, married, divorced, and single; cast-offs and nobodies; immigrants and refugees, centurions and Samaritans. Any whose kids are sick or in desperate need.
But it isn’t just the men. It isn’t just the powerful. Jesus opens the door to these women when everyone else is closing the door on them. Shunning them and morally abusing them. But not Jesus.
They all come to Jesus and because we just read it a few verses ago in this gospel, we can affirm Jesus’s point once again.
This is how we know God in our midst. These children speak to the followers of Jesus, revealing the very voice of God better than we can speak to one another.
For the love of God
See? The point isn’t the point. Answering the Pharisees’ question straight gets us no closer to the Kin-dom. It gets us no closer to the blessed mercy of Jesus.
Instead, it gets us closer to excuses and justifications, splitting hairs and judgments. It causes us to punish ourselves and condemn the very weaknesses which should invite mercy.
The point isn’t divorce. And, honestly, it isn’t even marriage. The point is the Kin-dom. The point is our connecting with the love and mercy of God.
This is why we strive to not be stumbling blocks to one another and seek a life-long connection with another human being; why we don’t just love children when they are quiet and unnoticed, but when they’re loud and rambunctious; and why we give so generously to those who could never in their lives repay us.
Because this is the Christ Project.
We are the Christ Project.
And these are the ones to whom the Kin-dom belongs. The children of divorce, of infidelity, of drug abuse, of dysfunction, just as much as the children of marriage and love and support.
This is our Kin-dom. Our project.
Blessing and caring and loving. Making sure every child is fed their daily bread. Making every school exceptional and every home more loving.
This is our Kin-dom. A world of blessing and caring and loving.
A place where all our children and children’s children and children’s children’s children can wonder how we ever let a single child go without food. How we let a single child ever fall victim to gun violence. How we let a single child be the victim of evil.
And they can thank God we loved them enough to give so much of ourselves, to make God’s dream real. That we built the Kin-dom with them. Not just for them. With them, alongside them. Honoring what all could offer to the Christ Project.
Our Kin-dom. Their Kin-dom. With these future generations of disciples just like those first ones.
“And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.”