This passage came around again for Sunday 4th Oct 2015. We wanted to explore the other passage set for the day, but didn't want to duck the issues raised by the Gospel. Here's a sermon preached by Mike Peatman on a previous occasion the reading came up.
Sermon – Divorce. Mark 10:2-16
Today’s
Gospel reading confronts us with a stark challenge on an issue which will be
very familiar to many of us – either in the lives of our friends, of our
families or ourselves. Here, Jesus discusses divorce with the Pharisees – the
purists of the Jewish community – and appears to prohibit divorce altogether.
Yet in our
own experience we will have known, or perhaps are ourselves people who have
been in relationships which have come to an end – for all kinds of reasons,
ranging from unfaithfulness or even domestic violence, through to the
relationship just not functioning any more. What seemed to have promise at the
start has just ceased to be.
If we take
this text at face value, and in isolation, then Jesus’ words prohibit any future
relationship of this kind. A second marriage cannot overwrite the first one,
based on these word alone.
So we’re
then faced with the kinds of choices we always have to make over a moral issue:
- We take it as it stands, and
live with the consequences. The Roman Catholic Church holds this view,
although it does have the option of annulment – effectively saying that
the original commitment was defective, and therefore the marriage never
really existed in the first place.
- We reject the text. Of course,
once you reject one text, it begs the question why you don’t throw out the
rest. Why love your neighbour, care for the poor, or even do this [the
Eucharist] in remembrance of Jesus, if the instruction contained in
Scripture carries no weight.
- We do some more work on it –
that’s the option we’re going to take this morning.
You see the
real problem is that we shouldn’t read the Bible like this [wave reading sheet] It
suggests that this is the complete picture. We should always look at the
setting of the story or the teaching – what happens before and after, who is
Jesus talking to, what issues lie behind this, and crucially what does the rest
of the Bible have to say about marriage?
Well, there
is a problem with the idea of ‘Biblical marriage’. It’s a phrase banded about a
lot by people opposed to marriage being available for gay people. However, the
whole of the Bible shows a very diverse range of understanding what marriage
is. In the Old Testament, men have several wives, often concubines in addition.
Abraham has a child by his servant as his wife is infertile. Women are, in
effect, property of their fathers until they are married when they become
effectively property of their husbands. And so it goes on.
One thing
that lies behind this challenge from Jesus is that we know from other records
that women were often discarded by their husbands on very trivial grounds. In a
society with no proper welfare system, this frequently left them with no option
but to beg or even resort to prostitution to survive. So one issue here is that
Jesus sees women being demeaned and discarded, so he challenges the Jewish men
that they should take their commitment seriously. With our eyes, this text can
seem lacking in compassion, but for women in Jesus’ time, this was quite the
opposite – it represented valuing and respecting women in a horribly sexist
world.
Secondly,
contained within that challenge is a reminder of what their marriages should be
– the vision, the ideal. Men and women made to be one. Joined by God, in a
union to be respected and not attacked.
Now I have
taken probably 150 weddings in my ministry and I’m pretty confident I’ve never
married a couple that weren’t setting off with that intention. Whether they
fully understood what was involved is a different question. They may have been
naïve, over-optimistic, sometimes getting the giggles, and perhaps simply blind
to the harsher realities of working at a relationship, but none of them didn’t
mean it, insofar as they understood what they were doing.
However, I
do know that a number of those marriages came to an end. Statistics suggest 1
in 3 first marriages fail, and about ½ of second or subsequent ones do. I have
had the sad responsibility of writing a copy certificate for someone involved
in divorce proceedings, where I also had previously officiated at the wedding.
So the
question remains: what would Jesus have us do with people where that has
happened? What do we do when someone has returned to the church for a new start
with a second relationship, so that they might seal it by getting married?
This is
where we need to look beyond this passage for clues. When Matthew tells this
story, he includes Jesus referring to an exception, where adultery means
divorce and remarriage is permissible. Likewise St Paul gives us another exception in 1
Corinthians 7, saying that where a Christian is abandoned by a partner who is
an unbeliever, they are not bound by the original marriage.
So even at
an early stage, the Christian community was struggling with what should happen
when a marriage fails.
And it’s
worth pausing with that word ‘fail’. There is often a lot of guilt around the
break-up of a marriage. Once the initial trauma and anger have subsided, I have
often come across an abiding guilt, even where, at least on the face of it, the
balance of wrong seemed to lie with the other partner. For example, when
someone has seen their partner leave to be with someone else, they are bound to
feel angry, but quite often they also feel some guilt – was it my fault, should
I have done something, or just I have failed.
Given that’s
the case, a straight ‘no’ from the church to second marriage in church has
always seemed very wrong to me. It makes divorce a kind of unforgiveable sin,
and can only reinforce in people who have been through a difficult and testing
time, a sense of guilt and failure.
And
crucially we know from the life of Jesus that his ministry is rich in
forgiveness and new starts – prostitutes, tax-collectors, the thief on the
cross, the woman caught in adultery. Is it credible that under all
circumstances, and in all cases, that Jesus would have us turn people away? I
think not.
There will
be exceptions. The national guidance we have from the Church of England on this
issue identifies some problem areas:
- where the relationship of the
couple wishing to marry was materially responsible for the break up of a
previous marriage.
- where issues are unresolved
from the previous marriage – finance, custody, etc.
- where a partner was violent or
abusive in a previous relationship.
An
unwillingness to discuss them can prevent the marriage being booked. (Church of
England clergy and parishes aren’t obliged to carry out second marriages,
unlike first marriages of eligible couples.)
But these
aren’t easy to prove – clergy aren’t private detectives. My view is that we
have to leave it to the conscience of the people involved – in the end it’s God
who knows their hearts. Furthermore, we need to bear in mind that in the case
of people who have not been married, but have been involved in long-term
relationships, these issues might be present, but we can’t subject them to the
same scrutiny.
So Mark 10
is challenging, but it’s for a specific audience, with a particular history,
and it’s not the only word of Scripture on the subject. This passage teaches us
that we should regard marriage as a vital and precious commitment, and we
should do all we can to help people to prepare, and support couples in their
commitment. But the wider testimony of Scripture also affirms that we should be
a place where people can find forgiveness, reassurance and peace, and have the
opportunity of a new start.
