Sermon for 8 October 2000, Holy Communion 8am, St Mary Magdalen, Sheet, published on www.trikeshed.com

Bible reading: Mark 10:2-16

It would be very tempting to take our Gospel reading today and to talk about the endearing episode of ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’, and to ignore the longer part of the reading, the question about divorce. Tempting, but it’s a fresh morning, nice and early, and we’re up and raring to go, ready for a challenge!

There are many ways in which we could respond to Jesus’ teaching on divorce. We could take the view that Jesus is pointing out the error of the rather liberal law on divorce that was current, which made it possible for a man to divorce his wife if she burnt the supper, or looked less attractive than another woman, or have some other cause to displease her husband! Jesus stresses how special marriage is in the eyes of God, and gives us the words which we use in the marriage service – what God has joined together, let man not separate. It’s clear, it’s unequivocal – so we can be clear and unequivocal too. Remarriage after divorce is adulterous, it’s wrong. But isn’t that a recipe for how to be cold, unyielding, unforgiving, out of touch with people’s feelings?

Or we could take the other extreme. Jesus may have been showing us an ideal, but life’s not like that. Not all marriages are going to last happily for ever – divorce should be allowed and accepted, with all that implies. After all, didn’t even the Jewish law allow divorce? But where does that leave us in our interpretation of the Word of God? Where does it leave our respect for the teaching of Jesus?

Well, the third way to respond to this teaching is not a compromise – not a happy medium. It is to try to hold in our hands – in our heads – the enormously high ideal that Jesus gives us for marriage, and the need to forgive, to care, to accept failure, to allow people to make a fresh start, to rescue couples sometimes from hugely destructive forces.

How can we do this? How can we make sense of it? A perfect answer is not quite possible in the remaining five minutes, but we can at least try. First of all, what does Jesus say about this law of Moses that permitted a man to divorce his wife? He says it was given to the people because their hearts were hard. It was an accommodation to human weakness and frailty, perhaps a necessary one to help society run smoothly. But it was no more than that. It was, if you like, officially sanctioned papering over the cracks. But there is a limit to how much covering up you can do. To take another building analogy, if a wall is crumbling away, there is a limit to how much re-pointing and shoring up and replacing the odd brick can do. Eventually the whole structure needs tearing down and rebuilding. And this is what Jesus is doing. It’s as if he’s pulling down the whole rickety structure of laws which the Pharisees had let themselves get so embroiled in, and starting all over again. At the beginning of creation God made them male and female …[vv6-9]. There can be no doubt as to what Jesus is telling us is God’s way. Whatever we feel about compassion and allowing a fresh start, there is absolutely no room for the idea in some circles that marriage and divorce are consumer choices and that the whole thing can be regulated by mix ‘n’ match contracts or agreements.

But everything about Jesus’ life and teaching says there is more to it than this. Just as we can be sure that Jesus was not half-hearted about the sanctity of marriage, we are also sure of the way he accepted people who have got things wrong. And he showed us some wonderful principles of respect. The complete equality of men and women in the matter of marriage and divorce. The acceptance of children and the need to receive the Kingdom of God like a little child.

But it’s all much closer to home even than that. Divorce is the public, visible face of something going wrong in a relationship. But it’s not as if those of us who don’t happen to have been through it have got anything much to be proud of. Because there is unfaithfulness, deception, selfishness, in all our relationships. What Jesus teaches us and shows us in his life convicts us all of the same sort of failure which is so brazen in divorce. And his way is not to give us laws that allow us to cover up, or that pander to our shortcomings or ‘hardness of heart’. His way is to embrace us with all those failings, to gather them up and to take them with him to his cross of pain. This is the centre of our faith, this is the heart of what it means to be a Christian, and yet this is where our faith is most profoundly misunderstood. He does not give us impossible ideals with get-out clauses. He demands everything but at the same time offers himself as the bridge between what is seemingly impossible, like everlasting, happy, equal marriage, and what actually goes on in this, his world.

© Mike Knee, 2000

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