Hope for the Hopeless? Jesus on Divorce

Below you will find the conclusion to Linda's sermon on Mark 10:2-16.  Without collapsing the tension or avoiding the dilemma that Jesus' teaching poses, she points us to a surprise ending, one that is routinely overlooked when this passage is preached.

The disciples are listening in when the Pharisee’s propose this question: "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" and it appears they are equally stunned by his response to the Pharisees. 

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“What did he say?  Did Jesus just say that Moses was wrong?"  

As soon as they are alone, they ask Jesus the same question again.  This time, Jesus goes even further; not only is divorce not allowed, but anyone who remarries, man or woman, is committing adultery.

Why would he say that?  It sounds like the ultimate sin and Jesus offers, it seems, no way out.  

OUR DISORIENTING DILEMMA

In contrast to Jesus' words in Mark 10, there are other passages where Jesus ministers tenderly and lovingly to the woman caught in adultery.  He rescues her from almost certain death, and after he has cleared the field of her would-be executioners, all he says to her is this: go and sin no more.  

There is also the woman at the well, who Jesus knows has been in and out of relationships over and over again and then living with someone to whom she was not married.  Instead of pronouncing her sin to be unforgivable  Jesus offers himself to her as living water that will wash away her sin and her guilt. 

So how are we to understand Jesus' words in Mark 10?  

MAKING SENSE OF MARK 10

I think two keys that unlock Jesus' meaning are found at the beginning of this passage and at the very end.

The passage begins with a question from Jesus' enemies, a faction of the group known as the Pharisees.  These religious men came for one reason and one reason only. Mark tells us that they came with a question intended to trick him.  They were not after anything real or life-giving.  Their purpose was to find a way to humiliate Jesus.  

Instead, Jesus sees their true intentions.  Even more important, he is able to see something in their question that they themselves have not anticipated. 

You see, the Pharisees where guilty of having made the law into something that effectively blocked the path to God—for themselves and everyone else.  For everyone else, because the 10 commandments given by Moses had been expanded to become 613 commandments that almost no one could keep.

Only the rich and well-educated had a chance at being able to meet all of the rules and regulations.  That is why Jesus repeatedly chastises the religious rulers of his day because they used the law as a battering ram, beating down the people instead of using it to draw the faithful to God.

But, their use of the law also blocked their own path to God—and that is what Jesus saw and they did not—nor in this case did the disciples.  Neither the Pharisees or the disciples saw that the law, turned by human beings into a giant list of do’s and don’ts—also meant that if, indeed, one thought that they were fulfilling the law, they effectively had no need whatsoever of God.  

God was out of the picture—if we can earn our salvation by following all the rules, who needs God—on the other hand, if the rules are so burdensome that we can never hope to follow all of them then our path to God is blocked.

In his response to the Pharisees' trick question, Jesus does what he is so good at; he refuses to be boxed in by the legalism of his questioners.  

Jesus changes the question by broadening the meaning of the law so that it is abundantly clear that no one, no one, can ever meet the letter of the law by themselves.  

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, "You have heard that it is said (in the law) do not murder, but I tell you that anyone who has been angry with his brother has committed murder.  You have heard that it was said do not commit adultery, but I tell you that if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery. You have heard it said, love your enemies, but I say to you to do good to those who persecute you."

Indeed, Jesus' persistent message to to all of us is simply this: we cannot earn our salvation by being good enough to keep the law all by ourselves.

We have all gotten angry, most of us have lusted after someone else, and most of us have great difficulty doing good things to those who seem to hate us.

And so it is in this passage.  "No," Jesus says, "don’t even consider divorce.  It is not allowed. If you divorce and remarry you are still in deep trouble because now you have committed adultery."

So, what a are we to do?  

THE ENDING WE HAVE OVERLOOKED

I believe the answer is found in the very last verses of our reading today.  These verses we read today are rarely included, but there is very strong evidence that they belong here.  

Without missing a beat, Mark moves directly from the discussion of a very difficult topic, to tell us that people are bringing children to Jesus to be blessed.  Whether he did so consciously or unconsciously, the apostle focuses our attention on those who are most often the real victims of divorce.  

The disciples reaction is typical, isn't it?  "Don't bring those kids in here!  We are talking about grown-up stuff."  

Isn't it interesting that these two stories which are jammed so tightly together in Mark's narrative, are so seldom connected to one another? Yet Jesus sees these children not as victims or as intruders into the conversation, but immediately lifts them up as examples and teachers for us.

"Come," Jesus says, "come to God like little children, children who are dependent on God’s mercy and forgiveness."

Those people who think they can make it on their own are living a lie that will suck the life out of them. 

And those of us who have messed up, who failed in our promises to one another and missed the mark badly when it comes to loving and valuing the person we married, well, our only choice is to come to God as the children do.  

We must abandon ourselves to God's life changing forgiveness.  We cannot hope to correct our errors or somehow make up for them.  It is our sin, our need and our child-like faith that have driven us into the arms of God who, as a familiar praise song says, offers rest for the weary and hope for the sinner.

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An Unexpected Invitation to Grace

Today's guest post appears  thanks to my wife Linda Wilkerson.  Linda is director of pastoral care & pastoral education for the Parkland Health and Hospital System, where she has served for 12 years.  She has also served for 6 years as my co senior pastor at Iglesia Bill Harrod. Last Sunday she preached on the subject of divorce, basing her sermon on Mark 10:2-16

We often have the pleasure of celebrating with couples in this church who have been married for many, many years.  Just recently we celebrated with Mary and Tony Diaz and with Rachel and Daniel Alonzo.  We also see it in marriages like those of Debbie and Daniel Solis, Mike and Andie Garcia and many other couples in our congregation.  

Their stories remind us of what is possible when two people stick together to raise a family and to contribute to the health and stability of their churches, their neighborhoods and their cities.

We have also had the painful privilege of weeping with and supporting those who are looking for healing from the death of their marriages.  Divorce is common in our day, as it seems it was in Jesus’ day. We get married making a lot of promises to one another and sometimes we fail to carry out those promises.  And those failures have real consequences.  Everyone suffers—husband, wife, children, in-laws.

Many of you know that I am divorced.  And remarried, thankfully, to Mark.  I know from first-hand experience how painful divorce is, no matter the reason.

I am convinced the vast number of couples who go to the trouble to make wedding vows do so with every intent to stay together.  There are many reasons that people do not stay together.  Some of them are tragically flawed, but some of them are also painfully obvious.

TAKING A STAKE THROUGH THE HEART?

For centuries the Christian religious establishment, while offering grace on other fronts, has commanded women and some men to stay in marriages in which they and their children were grossly mistreated and made to suffer on a daily basis.

So today’s passage, where the Apostle Mark records Jesus as clearly saying that divorce should be prohibited and that men and women who divorce and then remarry are committing adultery, could be for me and many of you, like taking a stake through the heart.

Jesus’s words seem to leave no room for a balm of any kind on the soul of the wounded divorced or divorcing man or woman.  And the church, I think, over many years has been guilty of using Jesus’ words as just that—a sword or battering ram—using them to beat up on the suffering while some of those who have not been divorced feel a self-righteous pride.

One woman wrote that when she reads this piece of scripture or hears it preached, she feels as though a load of garbage has been dumped on her, making it impossible to get rid of the stink of divorce.

And, I want to say clearly—I think that when we take this approach to Jesus’ words, we have badly misunderstood what Jesus was about and what he was attempting to do in his teaching on this subject.

PLACING OURSELVES IN JESUS' TIME

First, though I imagine that the emotional pain of divorce is the same no matter what the time period, in our days or Jesus,’ divorce in Jesus day was a far different matter than it is today, in this respect: wives were considered property.  According to Hebrew law, a man could write a bill of divorce for any reason. 

One Jewish interpreter of the law made the famous, or infamous, statement that a bill of divorce was allowed if the wife burned the toast.  A woman’s life was never secure. If she lived with a tyrant she was always one step away from a life of poverty because without being in a relationship with a man she was an outcast in the community, with no way to earn a living a survive. 

Jesus knew that.  When he was asked whether Moses allowed divorce, he went right to the heart of the matter, calling out the hard-heartedness of men who would divorce their wives and leave them destitute. He took a step further when he said that no matter what Moses allowed, this despicable behavior that allowed one person to ruin another was never what God intended.

Pictures of the Happy Couple
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

That’s good news for everyone in a relationship who has been abused, demeaned or made to feel worthless.  God created every one of us in God’s image.  Divorce cannot cancel out that essential fact. As the Psalmist said in the reading from Psalm 8 which Mark just spoke on, we have been created just a little lower than the angels.  We are each a priceless, beloved creation of God. 

No one can ever take that away.

Also, for most of history marriage was not about romance or fulfillment; it was viewed primarily as a legal contract, the lawful exchange of property.

So Jesus, quotes Genesis saying, ‘God made them male and female.’ ⁷‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, ⁸and the two shall become one flesh.’ I think that by linking marriage to creation Jesus intended to retrieve and to elevate, marriage as something more than just a legal obligation. He may have wanted to assure men and women that, in fact, God blesses our marriages and wills for them to flourish, and that any time a marriage ends in ruin it grieves the heart of God, not because some legal standard has been broken but because of the damage done to Gods' beloved children.

Come back tomorrow to read the conclusion of Linda's sermon taken from Mark 10:2-16

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This Bud's For You: A Blessing For Your Weekend

Photo Credit: Mark Grace

Linda was walking down one of the hallways at Parkland when one of her chaplain colleagues, Stacy Merlin, stopped her.

"What is this?" Stacy asked as she gently pressed her thumb on the spot right between and above her eyes.

Startled, Linda, said something like, "What do you mean?"

"This wrinkle in your brow," said Stacy.  

I've seen that wrinkle in Linda's brow before and I know what Stacy was talking about.  It is usually accompanied by a distinct down turn of the corners of her mouth and it usually means that she is wrestling with a particularly difficult issue.  Life is pretty intense at Parkland these days, so none of us are surprised to see a Parkland employee walking down the hallway wrestling over problems that need solving.

"I was startled out of my worry by that encounter," Linda told me later.  "That small gesture brought me back to myself."

Later she came into the office to find the rose in its vase with the note that you see in the picture above.  "For all you do, this bud's for you," says the note.  You can imagine how much those small gestures meant to my wife, and how much it helped to relieve unnecessary burdens.

For all you do, my prayer is that you find someone to smooth the wrinkle from your brow, to encourage you to pause mid-stride and to gift you with friendship and support.

Then maybe you can do it for someone else- either way, you are bound to be blessed.

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Choosing the Best Part, Part II: Women and the Call to Ministry

PREPARE YOURSELF: THE THIRD ASPECT OF ANSWERING CHRIST’S CALL

“Well, that is the life of our church this week . . . I hope you have enjoyed the changes we made in our morning service in order to give us time to discuss the announcements in an informal, conversational tone before we engage worship.”  Linda was impressed by the way the young Lutheran minister used the time to banter with his congregation as he informed them.  It set an open, comfortable tone for the liturgy that was to follow.

Basking in the moment, perhaps a little reluctant to move away from the connection he seemed to have made with his congregation, he asked, “Does anyone have anything they want to share with the rest of us?”

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Sarah’s hand shot up and before the young minister had a chance to acknowledge her she was on her feet.  She was an imposing woman, tall and “big boned,” as they used to say when I was growing up.  Her size was balanced, however, by the complete eagerness with which she beamed at the minister. 

“Yes, thank you!  What do you have to share?”  The pastor looked up at Sarah with anticipation.

Sarah’s voice reverberated in the small sanctuary, “I just want to tell you . . . well, I just want to say that you are SO good looking!” 

Her face was transformed by the smile that accompanied her words- her eyes narrowed and crinkled and her cheeks crumpled to make room for the grin that was stretching from ear to ear. 

For the space of a single heartbeat, utter silence commanded the room.  The young minister’s face-  in fact, his entire head- turned beat red.

Then his congregation saved him by breaking out in a gale of laughter. 

I have never asked Linda what she said to Sarah after that incident.  It is a story I love to hear and she tells it so well each and every time that I get wrapped up in her laughter.

As it turns out, Sarah was one of 700 or so residents of a home for developmentally delayed adults and as a chaplain at the facility, Linda had the responsibility to take Sarah and many other residents to attend churches in the community on Sunday morning.  The small Lutheran church was Linda’s last stop on the day that Sarah offered an unexpected and utterly delightful communion service.

I love to hear Linda's stories from her days of preparation- how she worked her way through Southern Seminary as a waitress and part-time youth director at a Disciples of Christ congregation and her days as a part-time Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Intern at a hospital in North Central Pennsylvania, and a chaplain for the residential facility where she met Sarah.  I even love to hear her tell about the agonizing attempt to plant a Southern Baptist church in the heart of Pennsylvania, and about her work as Associate Director and CPE Supervisory Education Student at Geisinger  Medical Center in Danville, PA.

Linda & Aley
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

I relate to so many of those stories, the difficult ones as well as the joyful and funny ones.  They mirror many of the stories that marked my preparation for ministry.

I did not, however, get my education and apprenticeship in ministry while almost losing my life due to an ectopic pregnancy and at the same time losing the ability to bear children at 29 years of age. Though I wasn’t there for that part of her preparation, I can see the rich result of Linda’s crisis of faith and of her faithfulness to God  in the way she goes about ministering to hurting people at Parkland Hospital and Iglesia Bill Harrod.

No one warns ministers about that kind of preparation, just as no one could warn Mary and Martha about losing Lazarus, regaining him, and then losing Jesus in the cruelest of circumstances.  Ultimately, however, I believe that preparation for ministry is less about academic preparation and more about how we grow through and learn from personal suffering as we seek to reach out to others.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: GET READY FOR AN ADVENTURE!

Knowing the personal background that informed Linda’s last observations about Christ’s call to Mary and Martha really brought this sermon to life for me.  She has been tested sorely by life, not only through the losses I mentioned above, but in ways too numerous for me to write about here.  In the midst of it all, she has nurtured a sense of humor that I have come to treasure, even to depend upon.  Through all of the heartache she has maintained a fierce determination to be used by God to bring healing.  As much as any person I know, Linda embodies the truth of St. Paul’s words,

“We are persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” (2 Corinthians 4:9-11)

Linda & Clark
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

Church history doesn’t give us any detail about what happened to Mary and Martha after Jesus ascended to heaven.  What we know from the Bible are two more stories, one in which Mary anoints Jesus’ feet as a moving object lesson, a confession of faith in Christ through symbolic action, and Martha’s equally powerful confession of faith just before Jesus raises their brother Lazarus from the dead.  After this, they are lost to us.  Yet these two stories provide us with an incredible picture of women disciples whose witness to Jesus as Messiah was every bit as bold and influential as that of any other disciple.

I don’t want to idealize either Linda or the two sisters who followed Jesus.  The point of the gospel stories is that Mary and Martha were ordinary people, just like you and me.  The woman who stood in the pulpit last Sunday is just as imperfect.   The fact that these ordinary, altogether imperfect human beings should embrace lives and ministries that are so incredibly extraordinary, that is what makes me want to get up tomorrow and attempt great things for Christ.  And call girls and women, boys and men to commit themselves to the same adventure.

Seeing Linda in the pulpit again last Sunday- hearing her sermon and her life come together was a remarkable experience.  It opened my heart to God's Word. 

That alone, dear reader, was worth the price of admission.

Please comment about the ways in which God has prepared you for your calling and set you free to experience the joy of it in your heart.

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Choosing The Best Part: Women & The Call To Ministry

Linda in Paris . . .
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

Linda was back in the pulpit on Sunday after taking the summer off due to a combination of health and work related demands.  As I watched her baptize Aley then preach, I found myself feeling unexpectedly protective, a combination of uneasy vigilance and fearful anticipation.  Every sense seemed to be heightened; my heart was pumping a little too fast the whole time. 

That is a new experience. It came as a big surprise. Perhaps it shouldn’t have, considering all that she has been through this summer, but that is another essay for another time. 

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR LIFE

Linda preached about Jesus’ visit to Martha and Mary’s house.  Even though I had the advantage of a sneak preview of her message, I found myself getting caught up in the story as if for the very first time.  Something that she said as we were discussing the passage hit home with much greater clarity on Sunday morning.  “A number of theologians see this story as a call narrative,” she told us, “much like the narratives that related the call of the male disciples.” As I listened, it occurred to me that Jesus encountered each of those disciples in the midst of their daily occupations just as he encounters Mary and Martha in this story.

“I was living in Barnwell, South Carolina,” Linda told us.  “I had taken a job as an industrial engineer for a carpet manufacturer there.  I began to feel, however, as though God did not intend for me to spend the rest of my life making carpet.”

As I listened to her story, I remember hearing Linda talk about how she had first felt as though God were calling her into the ministry as a teenager.  Like many teenagers, she wasn’t attracted to the idea.  “I spent my teen and college years searching.  I did not feel as though I were out of relationship to God, so much as I just found myself in one long debate.” 

Today I asked her to tell me a little more about those on-again-and-off-again debates with God.   She paused for a long time, seeming to be wrapped up in thought.  “Well, I took long drives in the country and just sort of argued with God, mostly about how I was right to do what I wanted to do.”  She laughed and said, “You know I can be pretty stubborn.”

“When I got to Barnwell, I began to feel alone and lonely.  I started going to church just to have a social group, but it gradually grew to something deeper, something that had a larger meaning for me than just passing the time.”

In her sermon yesterday, Linda lifted up for us the ways in which both Martha and Mary were paying attention to their lives.  Though the clear pattern of preaching on the story at this point in Christian history is to cast Martha as wrong and Mary as having it right, Linda invited us to take a slightly different view of the story.  “Jesus relates to both women in a respectful and affectionate manner.  He receives Mary, who sits at his feet along with the men and he talks to Martha in a gentle and patient tone.”

Indeed, ClaraBeth Speel Van de Water, in her exposition of the story, points out that the exchange between Jesus and Martha probably should be interpreted something like this: “Martha, my dear Martha, you are getting stressed by making too many things (preparing too many dishes for the meal) when we only need a simple meal . . .” Indeed, Jesus is inviting Martha to pay attention to her life, to let go of her desire to please long enough to actually learn something from her sister, and more importantly, from Jesus.

Martha’s approach was not necessarily inferior to Mary’s. Both forms of discipleship are affirmed in the early church. It was Martha’s temptation to get caught up in doing for Jesus that caused him to invite her to look at her life.

“The more I talked to my pastor, Billy Vaughn, the more I became convinced that God was calling me into full time ministry.” Billy gave Linda and her fellow church members a chance to explore God’s purpose for her life when he initiated a Wednesday night Bible study on the role of women in the New Testament. 

Whenever I hear Linda tell this part of her story, I find myself feeling a fierce gratitude to this minister whom I have never known. It was rare in Southern Baptist circles back in the eighties for male ministers to be as open as this man was to the possibility that God might be calling a woman. It was even rarer for a church leader to take the step to nurture that sense of calling within a context of deep faith in the Scriptures.

MAKE A DECISION TO FOLLOW GOD’S CALL

Jesus invites Martha to look at her life, and he lifts up Mary’s decision to follow Christ by choosing “the better portion.” Another image of food.  Though Martha brought lots of food to the fellowship, Mary chose the best part of the feast. 

I have developed a little breath prayer that I try to use at some point every day.  It goes like this, “I embrace God’s love even as I embody God’s love.” Both sides of the equation are so important.  I believe that is why Linda was careful not to take the popular route of condemning Martha’s “busy-ness” as opposed to Mary’s decision to sit at Jesus’ feet.  Both are needed and the decision to balance service with learning, contemplation and action sum up what following God’s call is all about.

Linda chuckled yesterday as she told us about making public her decision to follow God’s call into ministry.  “Even after weeks of bible study and a very clear description by my pastor, a number of church members came by to shake my hand and to congratulate me on ‘going to the mission field.’ It was their only way to understand how a woman would answer God’s call.”

In Mary’s time there was a similar debate raging about whether women should be taught the Torah (Hebrew Bible).  One rabbi said that you might as well teach a woman “lechery” as to teach her the Scriptures.  Other rabbis gave explicit permission for men to teach their daughters the Torah.

No matter what people might think about Mary’s act, her decision to sit at Jesus’ feet was clear to all. She chose to become a disciple and she was accepted into the company of Jesus’ followers. It required an act of courage on her part as well as one of deliberate invitation on Jesus’ part.

I am going to have to finish this essay tomorrow, but before I say good-bye to you, I would love to hear your thoughts about this scripture and its meaning for your life.  Where has God invited you to pay attention to your life and to follow in the steps of the first disciples?

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