“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” Words that come directly from Jesus, on a subject that we have to deal with often. Sounds pretty simple … and pretty unequivocal, doesn’t it? “Is divorce allowed by the Law?” is the question. “No” is the answer. If you divorce and remarry, you are committing adultery. That’s tough stuff. Especially for those of us who are not on our first marriage.
The Canons (or laws) of the Episcopal
Church say that if a marriage has “become imperiled by dissension,” the clergy
are to counsel the couple to try to save the marriage. But if saving the marriage is not possible,
the Bishop may issue a judgment calling the marriage a nullity and allowing
either or both parties to remarry with the blessing of the Church[1]. Is it legal to divorce and remarry? The Church says a slightly hesitant
“yes.”
What’s going on here?
Hermeneutics. That’s what’s going
on here.
Hermeneutics comes from a Greek word meaning
“interpretation.” Hermeneutics are, “the
rules one uses for searching out the meaning of writings, particularly biblical
texts.”[2] We’ll get back to that in a minute. But first, let’s look at what Jesus was
saying at the time that this passage comes about in Mark’s Gospel.
As you may remember, throughout the Gospels it is the
Pharisees who repeatedly challenge Jesus on his knowledge of the Law – particularly
the law as set out in the book of Deuteronomy.
Often when this happens, the Pharisees will begin the discussion with
something like, “Teacher, tell us, is it lawful …?” to do things like: pluck
grain on the Sabbath; eat with tax collectors and sinners; eat without washing
one’s hands; pay taxes to the emperor; and my favorite, heal someone on the
Sabbath.
The Pharisees were the keepers of the law. They were the ones who told everyone else
what the “rules” were; what God had OK’d and what had not been OK’d. When it came to the issue of divorce, there
were two very different schools of thought at odds with each other, among the
Pharisees. The “Shemmai” school was the
strict and conservative group. They
believed that what Moses meant was, if your wife commits adultery you may
divorce her. Otherwise, no divorce. The “Hillel,” school though, taught that Moses
meant that men could divorce their wives for almost any reason, including that
they had found someone they felt to be more suitable.
So the Pharisees came to Jesus to try to trap him,
again. They asked about divorce, knowing
that Jesus would have to take one side or the other and then they would have
him. But as usual, Jesus turned their
question back on them.
The Hillel and Shemmai schools of thought in ancient
Judaism were both involved in working out their hermeneutics with regard to
Moses’ teaching on divorce. One side
said, Moses meant to keep Israel separate from the rest of the people of the
world, so our rules must be more stringent than theirs. While the other, looking at the context of the
people around them, said the misery of bad marriages must mean that Moses’ law
should be interpreted broadly. Jesus
though, has a third hermeneutic here – the hermeneutic of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus’ idea of interpreting Moses’ pronouncement was
NOT to interpret it, but to tell the people what was behind it. What CAUSED Moses to write that law was the
brokenness of human beings. Because they
could not love each other as God loved them, rules had to be made to tell them
how to live together. And Jesus lets
them know just how far they are from the hermeneutic of the Kingdom of God.
So how do we get from there – from Jesus’
pronouncement – to Canon I.19? Again, it
is by way of hermeneutics.
The Roman Catholic Church has always interpreted
Jesus’ pronouncement as being absolute.
Jesus said, “what God has joined together let no one separate,” therefore
– under a strict hermeneutic – that is the rule. This unbending interpretation has resulted in
innumerable outcomes that were tragic, if not horrific.
A woman stays at home with her group of stair-step
children while her husband goes out to work and afterward as he goes out with
“the boys” for few beers. He comes home
with lipstick on his collar and the smell of someone else’s perfume on his
clothes. But she must stay with him. What God has joined together let no one
separate.
Another time, he has a few too many at the bar and
comes home angry. She says or does “the
wrong thing,” and he lashes out at her.
She has a black eye and some bruises, but she has to stay with him,
because, what God has joined together, let no on separate. And on it goes. Under this strict construction of the law, even
if a father or mother murders the children, the other spouse cannot get a
divorce.
But it doesn’t even have to be that horrible or
dramatic. It could be as simple and
ordinary as a family that is happy and healthy until one day mom and dad have
an argument that is much worse than the usual.
It’s been building for a while, but no one has talked about it. They don’t speak at dinner. Because they don’t, neither do the kids. Then they don’t speak at breakfast. No one does.
The same with lunch and the next night’s dinner. After a few days, the pattern is set and
there is no more joy in the house. Laughter
is gone. Love is dead or dying in the
house and no one cares enough to try to revive it. A family has withered on the vine. Unless mom and dad both change the way things
are, without divorce, desolation is the only option.
These are widely differing examples of what lies
behind the Episcopal Church’s hermeneutic of divorce. Jesus said don’t do it. Paul agreed.
It is clear from a strict biblical perspective that divorce is not
“allowed” by our Bible. But the
Episcopal Church, as well as many other Protestant denominations deals with
these passages from a hermeneutic of the Kingdom of God, as exemplified by grace,
mercy, and love overriding the law.
Throughout the Gospels, as well as the Epistles of the
New Testament, we hear again and again of God’s love for us. A love that is so deep that God, “gave his
only son so that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have
everlasting life.[3]” A love so great that no matter what we do, we
can never disappoint God to the point that God would forget about us. This God who loves us so deeply would never
want us to live a life of abject misery in a bad marriage. Or worse yet, be subjected to physical or
sexual abuse in the name of staying faithfully married. That is the hermeneutic of grace, mercy, and
love – the Kingdom of God hermeneutic.
Jesus made some harsh pronouncements in the
Gospels. Ones like the one on divorce
that, on their faces, seemed to be quite mean-spirited and legalistic when
measured against the needs of the people.
But almost without exception, when He made such statements it was in the
context of comparing things with the ways of the Pharisees – the religious
leaders of His day – who tried to set themselves up as the ones who judged good
from bad and acceptable from unacceptable.
According to a hermeneutic of grace, mercy, and love, the teaching on
divorce is not about divorce as much as it is about the hardness of the heart
of the religious leaders of Israel.
Hermeneutics.
We all have them. We all hear
these texts and think, “that makes sense to me because of what I’ve experienced
of God.” Or we hear them and say, “that
doesn’t square with what I know of God.
I need to read more and talk with other people about it.” All of that is exercising hermeneutical
principles. Every one of us brings a
lifetime of education and experience to our reading of Scripture, and that
education and experience informs how we interpret what we’ve read or heard.
My hermeneutics, as you have no doubt been able to
tell, run toward the mercy and grace end of the continuum. Every time I have trouble figuring out what
Jesus might mean in a particular passage – at least with regard to how it impacts
my life today – I measure it against what I believe to be some of the most
important words Jesus spoke. Again, they
came after a question from the Pharisees.
“Teacher, which commandment is the most important?” Jesus said, “you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with
all your strength. The second is this,
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these[4].” Or, “on these two commandments hang all the
law and the prophets[5].”
If we will simply love the Lord our God with all our
heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love each other the same way Jesus loves
us, everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – else will be taken care of. The hermeneutics of divorce, or anything
else, will fall away and we will be left with a clear vision of the Kingdom of
God – exactly as I believe Jesus wanted us to see it.
In the name of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
[Proper 22B, Sermon October 3, 2021, Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8 or 128, Hebrews 2:(1-8)9-18; Mark 10:2-9
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