Text: Mark 10:2-16
 
It started out as a routine pastoral call in the first church I served as pastor, in a small town in eastern Arkansas.  I stopped by a department store on the short Main Street to give my greetings to lady in her early sixties, a lady whom I knew to be widowed.  As we chatted, she suddenly turned the conversation to a more serious note when she asked me if I thought divorced people who remarried were committing adultery. 
 
Since I was a young, liberal-minded pastor serving in a very conservative denomination and a conservative congregation, I saw the question as a theological conundrum.  I thought she was trying to trap me on my views on the Bible.  My fear was that she was trying to "out" my liberal views in order to attack me or perhaps even to have me fired.
 
I don't remember exactly what answer I gave to this woman.  I can only remember the quandary I felt as I tried to thread the theological needle of being true to Scripture without condemning people who were divorced.  I must have said something about God being the God of the second chance and that I did not think God would hold our earlier mistakes in life against us forever.  I knew I did not think that divorced people who remarried were committing adultery every day of their new marriage.  When I finally left the store, I breathed a sigh of relief that I had escaped such intense questioning of my views on the Bible.
 
As the weeks went by, I assumed that I had passed this first theological test as a pastor because I never heard any complaints from the church leadership about my position on divorce.  But then one Sunday, I discovered the real reason for this lady's questioning.  She appeared at church with her new husband who had been divorced! 
 
Only then did I realize that she had not been asking the question as a theological test, but as a personal struggle with the hard sayings of Scripture.  I have prayed ever since that my bumbling, defensive response was somehow a help to her and not a hindrance.
 
As I come to this text in Mark, I realize this is the very text that gave this woman such difficulty.  The lectionary forces us to deal with this uncomfortable text today.  It seems that I am often forced to deal with the hard passages in the Bible, and this is certainly one of them.
 
And once again I want to thread a theological and practical needle.  I do want to be true to Scripture.  I do want to wrestle with what Jesus said and try to understand what he meant.  But I also want to say a pastoral word to all of our families who have been touched by divorce.   I suspect that almost every single family in this church has seen divorced parents, divorced children, divorced brothers and sisters, or have been divorced themselves.
 
Divorce is common and comes in many variations.  Some people get a divorce for good reasons; some for bad.  Some have seen divorce as an unwelcome ending to a marriage; others have seen divorce as the best thing that could happen given a set of hopeless circumstances.  Some have divorced because they made a mistake in getting married in the first place; others have divorced because of mistakes made during the marriage.
 
Whatever the circumstances, I want above all else to speak a word of grace, forgiveness and hope.  My experience is that divorced people in church frequently heap too much guilt on themselves, and the last thing I want to do is to make people feel worse about themselves.  I think Jesus had the same attitude.
 
I want to suggest to you that Jesus had two entirely different responses about divorce in entirely different settings.  The text for today deals with a theological test.  Jesus gave a hard answer in that setting.  But we also find that Jesus confronted divorced people with grace and forgiveness.  One is a theological answer; the other is a pastoral care answer.
 
In this passage in Mark, Jesus comes down against divorce in all circumstances.  He gives no reasons for divorce.  In the parallel text in Matthew, he gives some grounds for divorce.  Matthew 19.9 adds the qualification, "Except for the case of unchastity,"  But here in Mark, he gives no grounds for divorce.
 
As with any text, we need to set it in the context of the times.  There were two schools of thought in Jesus' day concerning divorce, one liberal and one conservative.  Rabbi Shammai taught that divorce was only permissible on the grounds of some sexual impropriety.  His was the stricter view. 
 
Rabbi Hillel, on the other hand, had a more liberal view and taught that a man could divorce his wife for any reason.  If she burned his breakfast, put too much salt on his food, showed disrespect to him, spoke disrespectfully of her husband's parents in his presence, spoke to a man on the street, or even let her hair down in public, he could divorce her. The view of Rabbi Hillel was the view that was popular in Jesus' day.  A man could divorce his wife for almost any reason.
 
The scribes came to Jesus and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"  They wanted to know if he agreed with Rabbi Shammai that divorce was permissible only on the grounds of sexual impropriety, or if he agreed with Rabbi Hillel that a man could divorce his wife for any grounds he chose.  Basically, they were asking what the standard was for divorce -- whether Jesus would set the bar high or low or somewhere in between.  It was a test, and we need to see how Jesus escaped the trap.
 
But first we should deal with the gender issue.  Perhaps the most significant difference between their customs and ours lay in the status of the different genders.  A man could divorce a woman on a whim, but a woman could not divorce a man for any cause.  The Old Testament contains a highly patriarchal position that viewed a woman's sexual immorality more as property damage against her husband or her father rather than as a moral issue.  A double standard shines throughout the Old Testament, where it was not uncommon for the male rulers to have many wives and hundreds of concubines.  If you look carefully at the question of the Pharisees, you will find no concern whatsoever about a woman's rights in marriage or divorce.  "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"
 
More than anything else, Jesus' response cuts at the root of the patriarchal assumptions of the Pharisees.  Everything in these words of Jesus points to a radical equality of the sexes.  He first points to the ideal of creation when "God made them male and female… and the two shall become one flesh."  Later in the house, he explains to the disciples that adultery goes both ways - against the woman as well as against the man.  Jesus said, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her."  To my knowledge, this is the first place in the Bible where it is suggested that sexual sin can be an affront to the woman as well as to the man.
 
We must not miss this note of radical equality, but the difficulty of this passage lies much deeper.  We still must struggle with it even after we find that Jesus uses this occasion to elevate the status of women in such a radical way. 
 
So the question was, "Just how high do you want to set the bar?  Jesus, should a man divorce his wife for burned toast or only for adultery?  Or do you set the bar somewhere in between?  How high do you set the bar, Jesus?"
 
Jesus responded the only way he could.  He set the bar all the way up.
 
Instead of talking about grounds for divorce, he talked about God's ideal purpose for marriage.  God sees marriage as two people becoming one, committed to one another, in a covenant relationship which lasts a lifetime.  Instead of talking about excuses for failure, he talked about the ideal.
 
He first pointed to creation saying that God's intention is for people to be married for their whole lives.  Then Jesus explained that divorce is always a human failure to attain God's ideal.  He explained Moses' provisions for divorce by saying, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you."
 
Jesus doesn't deal with exceptions at all.  He refuses to lower the bar for any exceptions.  I believe Jesus is saying, "Don't even talk about grounds for divorce.  Divorce for any reason represents a failure of God's ideal for that marriage.  God doesn't desire grounds for divorce. God wants marriage to be a joyful, life-long commitment."
 
I think Jesus portrays God as being like any parent today whose children are getting married.  Picture the parents at the wedding ceremony of their son or daughter.  Ask them if there are grounds for divorce.  They will say, “Let’s not even talk about that.  I want nothing but the very best, the ideal in marriage for this couple.”
 
Can you imagine the wedding ceremony of a low-bar couple?  "Do you take this woman whom you hold by the right hand to be your lawful and wedded wife?  Do you promise to stay with her as long as you everything in your married life goes wonderfully, acknowledging that, at any point, if you don't like it, you can always get a divorce?  Do you so promise?  If so, say 'I do.'"  I never met a couple that wanted that kind of wedding ceremony.    I never met parents who hoped their children would get married and then divorced. 
 
In such circumstances, we are like Jesus.  We don’t want to talk about grounds for divorce.  We only want to talk about God’s ideal.  I believe that is what Jesus was doing and, essentially, it was his way of avoiding the trap set before him.
 
We must remember that the setting was a theological contest, not a situation of pastoral care for real people.  Jesus was responding to a theological trap set by the Pharisees, not to the anguished pain of someone actually going through divorce.  This was not a case of pastoral care, but a case of theological speculation.
 
On a different occasion, Jesus spoke to a woman who had been divorced.  In fact, she had had five husbands and the man she was living with then was not her husband.  He didn't heap guilt and condemnation on her.  He didn't hold her past failures against her.  He offered her a spring of living water gushing up to eternal life, and she ran off to tell everyone in the town about the man who was the Savior of the world.
 
On any theological quiz, Jesus would say it is not a good idea to have five failed marriages.  We can be confident that he wouldn't recommend that for anybody.  But when confronted with a real live person who happened to have failed, he loved her and shared living water with her.  He gave her such hope for new life that she couldn't wait to share the good news with her whole village.  From Jesus actions in this case, it is obvious that failure in marriage is not an unpardonable sin.  It is tragic; it is sad; it is heart breaking; but it is not the unpardonable sin.
 
On another occasion the Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman taken in the act of adultery.  It is most instructive that no one seems to care at all about the man involved in the sexual act with this woman.  There is no condemnation for him from anybody.  But the woman is hauled before Jesus and thrown on the ground while the Pharisees stood around and pointed an accusing finger at her.
 
Jesus is clearly against adultery, but in this setting of pastoral care, he says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.  Go and sin no more."  He doesn't lower the bar, but he cares deeply for this one who failed.  He gives her a second chance in life and sends her on her way.
 
In these stories, Jesus reminds us that all this talk about the abstract idea of divorce involves real people.  When people fail, we need to do like Jesus did - love them, care for them, minister to them, forgive them and accept them.  We need to join Jesus in helping people put their lives back together again.
 
So we deal with the issues of marriage and divorce from two different perspectives.  When we are confronted with theological speculation, we should join Jesus in setting the bar all the way up.  If someone asks, "Are you for divorce or against it?"  We stand with Jesus and say we are against it.  We don't want to settle for burned toast as grounds for divorce, or any other grounds for that matter.  We don't want anybody to divorce.  That should never be our hope for any couple.  We want to set the goal at good marriages that last a lifetime.
 
However, in the setting of pastoral concern, we must acknowledge that people do get divorced.  People fail in reaching God's ideal for their marriage every day.  This is a simple fact of life, and that won't change no matter how high or low we set the bar.
 
So our challenge is to lift up the ideal and still be able to minister to the folks who have failed in their marriage.  I pray that we can have both the ideals that Jesus lifted up and that we can have the compassion that Jesus showed when he confronted personal failure.