Mark 10:2-16
Some Pharisees came, and to test him 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.”
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
This is a doozy of a lesson and if you read this thing without regard to context or perspective you'll just see Jesus being an unfeeling poop and taking one terrible sounding law and swapping it out for something worse. While that’s an option many unfortunately take, that’s not what Jesus intended.
The Pharisee’s were out to trap Jesus by getting him to take a side on the hot button issue of the day. In Jesus’ time, divorce and remarriage had the equivalent political heat of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings of today! Jesus knew the Pharisees really didn’t care what Jesus thought. They just knew that if they could get him to take a side, ANY side, a big group of people would start hating Jesus and THAT would be a “win” for the Pharisees.
Jesus wasn’t about to do something that would further help the Pharisees divide people. Jesus was about building up loving relationships, not tearing them down! So, Jesus did his Biblical Aikido and took the Pharisee’s attack and turned it until they were suddenly talking, not about the law, but about people… real life human beings… and the real life human need to care for one another. Jesus forced them to see that God’s desire isn’t so much for people to spend a lifetime in marriage, but for marriage to be a loving human relationship filled with joy, commitment, equality, health and wholeness that lasts a lifetime!
Turning that trap on the Pharisees revealed God’s truth: that loving, mutually uplifting human relationships were what God cared about way more than a legal contract called marriage. Jesus turned that trap from a focus on paper to a focus on people. People who live real, messy, beautiful, horrible, wondrous, tragic and lovely lives! THOSE are the people Jesus cares about! People are who Jesus came to lift up!
You see, Moses put the original law in place as a way to try to care for the most vulnerable in the midst of the inevitable broken relationships that happen in our messy, wonderful lives. In Moses' time, women who were cast aside in a divorce would suddenly be without resources, without legal standing, without a home. The original law was an attempt to care for people who had become the victims of human failings in a male privileged world. While the old Law recognized that brokenness, Jesus simply couldn’t allow the Pharisees to twist something, which was created to CARE for people, into something that would allow people to ignore the reality that when people are divorced, for whatever reason, there is always a real, profound, and life changing pain.
After dealing with the Pharisees abruptly, Jesus goes to talk with the disciples privately... to try and get them to really understand. Jesus knew that because marriage involves humans, marriage would always be both a wonderful and imperfect thing… mostly because we humans are both wonderful and imperfect. So, when marriage for a lifetime doesn’t work out, Jesus insists this is not something to take lightly. He wants us to remember there are beautiful and broken people involved, above everything else. Jesus used that over-the-top analogy with adultery because he really wanted the disciples to understand the pain involved. No matter WHY divorce happens, divorce hurts, even when it's the absolutely right thing to do… it hurts. It hurts the couple, the families, the community… it hurts. Remarriage too, Jesus wants us to remember, will inevitably carry with it into the new relationship, some of the pain and hurt of the past. That must not be ignored or the pain of the past will be carried into the new relationship. Jesus isn’t saying, “No remarriage!” Jesus simply won’t let the Pharisees or any of us just blow this off as no big deal! Jesus won’t let us hide behind legal technicalities and pretend we can skirt the pain of broken relationships with legalese. People are involved… REAL, LIVE, people… and NO law has the power to erase the people who have been a part of our lives, either for the good they brought or the difficulties they brought. So when relationships break, Jesus is telling the disciples that what they need is our unconditional love. That’s what Jesus was telling them with the last bit of this lesson.
It’s not a coincidence that this lesson ends with Jesus telling the disciples to let the children come. That bit's not here by mistake. It’s here to help us interpret this doozy of a lesson. As kids grow into the gift of life they’ve been given by God, they don’t ever do it flawlessly. You’ve been a kid. You know! We all too often have to learn the hard way that our parents aren’t as dumb as we thought and that often consequences involve some sort of pain. But regardless of how we screw up childhood, our parents open their arms to us, tell us to come in for some love and then tell us to get back up and live life. God’s love is like that… Unconditional… and no matter what we do along the way of life, God loves us, forgives us and sends us back out into the world to give life another try.
So it is with God’s gifts of human relationships and marriage. As we grow into those gifts we don’t ever do those flawlessly either. You’ve been in a relationship. You know! We all too often have to learn the hard way that relationships are challenging and difficult, along with being beautiful and wonderful. Often we need to learn the hard way that the consequences of broken relationships involve some sort of pain. But regardless of how we screw up a relationship or have a relationship screwed up on us, our God opens wide the Divine embrace, just as Jesus did for the children, and tells us to come in for some love and then to get back up and go again.
God’s love is unconditional and no matter what happens in our relationships with husbands and wives, partners and exes… God loves us, forgives us and sends us back out into the world, to give loving, caring, mutually uplifting, compassionate and joyful relationships and even marriage another try. Because it's in relationship that God shows us the best of living life. Amen.
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