Divorce in Principle and Praxis

By

Reverend Litton J. Logan

October 8, 2006

Scriptures:

Opening Comments and Introduction:

          I have set for myself an almost impossible task for a single sermon or even for a one-session class.  However, the topic of Divorce is extremely important in the Christian experience. Therefore, what I hope to leave you with this morning is that divorce is never the ideal but it is not necessarily wrong. 

Sermon:

This Sunday we continue our focus in Jesus’ teachings concerning those people who were socially and religiously victimized, marginalized, and disenfranchised.  Jesus says that the measure of a true disciple is how we treat such people in the Christian faith and the Christian community.

          Today’s passages of scriptures and the confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees seem to be randomly sandwiched in between Jesus’ teachings on the little ones and his summation of true discipleship in verses 14-16.  However, a closer look will reveal that this story of Jesus’ confrontation with the Pharisees is a continuation of the theme dealing with the ethical, moral, and religious victimization of people who are most vulnerable in society.  Here that would be women in divorce situations.

          I hasten to remind us that one of the major issues in Mark’s church is sorting out the moral and ethical aspects of Christianity’s roots in Judaism, including Judaism’s position on divorce in contrast to Hellenistic and Roman customs.

These passages of scriptures in Mark and its counter part in Matthew are some of the most misunderstood scriptures in the New Testament.  Therefore, let’s look at these scriptures very closely.

          Let me point out that in Mark’s gospel Jesus is very human, a man of his culture.  In this confrontation with the Pharisees, Jesus speaks of divine principles or ideals while acknowledging and accommodating the real.

          ² Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

(Emphasis mine.  These underlined words are critical to our interpretations of Jesus’ confrontation with the Pharisees)

The Pharisees’ are trying to trap Jesus by forcing him into a false dilemma, regarding the lawfulness of divorce as advocated by the two major schools of oral interpretations of the Mosaic Law—the Schools of Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai.

          Furthermore, Jesus as a 30 something unmarried, Jewish male would have been somewhat suspicious to the Pharisees, unless he was a devote student of the Torah—or Law.  In this case, their question would have additional meanings.

Let me point out that because the Mosaic Laws in the Old Testament did not cover every aspect of human behaviors the Jewish rabbis and scribes over many centuries built up a large body of oral interpretations of the Mosaic Laws called the Mishnah or Halakot to give moral, ethical, legal, and civil guidance in particular situations.  It was these oral traditions and laws that Jesus frequently took exceptions to, condemned, or nullified.

The men of the School of Hillel were known to be quiet, peace loving, accommodating to circumstances and the times.  They were generally concerned with understanding and promoting the Law to help people become closer to God and to one another. More often than not Jesus sides with the School of Hillel except on the topic of divorce.

Conversely, the men of the School of Shammai were intensely patriotic, severe, rigid, uncompromising, violently anti-gentile, and rigorous in religious prohibitions.

On the matter of divorce, the School of Shammai—the radical, hard liners—maintained that the only lawful cause for a man to divorce his wife was sexual impropriety.  The School of Hillel, the kinder, gentler, and more accommodating group of men, interpreted scripture to mean that the husband didn’t need a moral justification for divorce. A man could divorce his wife because he found something objectionable in her as long as he honored his prenuptial contract. More on that later. Nevertheless, even in the liberal school of Rabbi Hillel there was a lot of protection for women and detailed instructions on marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

Thus, we find conflicting, human interpretations of Mosaic Law concerning divorce and remarriage, and Jesus comes down a hard liner for a reason I will explain later.  Also, I might add that both schools of thought had loopholes in their teachings that made women vulnerable.

          The Pharisees knew the Mosaic Law and its interpretations on divorce backwards and forwards and had no need to ask Jesus this question unless they were trying to undermine his credibility by an erroneous interpretation of the oral law, check out his rabbinical stance so as to alienate him from one of the interpretive factions, or to put him in harm’s way.

Divorce was a given in Jewish society and in the ancient world, just as it is to day.  We find the first mention of divorce in the Book of Deuteronomy.  What was at issue in the Mosaic Law was not the fact of divorce or its lawfulness.  The Mosaic command to give a woman a bill of divorce with all its later oral interpretations and understandings sought to regulate a practice already in place to ensure the ethical treatment and protection of women in a patriarchal world. 

The patriarchal nature of the family and society and the man’s right alone to divorce must be kept in mind when we read these scriptures or hear Jesus’ commentary.  For it is the man’s right alone and its justification to divorce that is at issue for the Pharisees not God’s over arching intent of marriage.  If we loose sight of these points and try to impose the ancient customs of a patriarchal society onto our modern world, we will certainly end up in the religious nightmare that has victimized so many people across the ages as well as miss several critical aspects of these scriptures. 

Mark mentions men and women committing adultery against each other in a divorce, and Mark’s acknowledges a woman’s right to divorce her husband for adultery contrary to Jewish law.  These comments make it clear that Mark is writing to gentile Christians and either he does not fully understand Jewish oral traditions or he does understand it and is interpreting these laws in the spirit of Jesus for his audience and their situations. Mark’s insights, however, would not have been a part of Jesus’ or the Pharisees’ understandings as noted in the question—lawful, man, and divorce.  Matthew in chapter 19 of his gospel corrects Mark on these matters.

Adultery, as Jesus refers to it in Mark was primarily a personal crime against a man by his wife and another man, but it was also understood to be an offense that undermined the very fabric of the patriarchal society.  Technically, in Jesus’ day a Jewish man could not commit adultery with anyone except a married woman. Moreover, only married women could commit adultery with an unmarried or married man. Married men having relationships with unmarried women, willingly or unwillingly, fell into a category of property crimes against the girl’s father.  In this, the offender was forced to pay the father a sum in damages and take the woman in marriage never to divorce her.  Lucky girl!

A further insight in to the understanding of the Pharisees’ attempt to trap Jesus lies in the use of the word lawful, that is, does the Mosaic law allow for divorce, if so for what reason. The first time we hear any reference to the lawfulness of a divorce in Mark is when John the Baptist accused Herod of having an unlawful marriage with his brother’s ex-wife, Herodias.  Herodias, it seems, had divorced Herod’s brother in order to marry him. There would have been suspicions that Herod and Herodias may have had an affair before the divorce and remarriage—as such, the Mishnah would definitely have forbid their remarriage.  It was John’s vocal stance on the lawfulness of Herod’s and Herodias’ marriage that got him killed.  Thus, we can see where this test of Jesus by the Pharisees is headed.

          Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees’ question about the lawfulness of divorce under the oral interpretations of the Mosaic Law was:

³ …, “What did Moses command you?”

          Notice Jesus asked, what is the command.

⁴ They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

The Pharisees answer rightly that Moses gave a concession to men. By the way, the passage in Deut. 24 that the Pharisees and Jesus are referring to doesn’t mention the word adultery.  Adultery as a condition for divorce was an addition of the oral traditions. The Pharisees knew the law and we see that their question was just a ruse.

⁵ But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.

In other words as a concession to the hardness of your heart Moses commanded men to give a bill of divorce to their divorced wives.

          The harden heart in scriptures is a term that means stubbornness, indifference, callousness, insensibility, or inability to understand.  The ancient Jews saw the condition of a harden heart as either the work of God, that is God gave people over to a harden heart, God harden people’s heart for divine purposes, or people hardened their hearts against what was good and righteous. We read in Mark 6:52 and 8:17 that is was the hardness of the disciples’ heart that kept them from understanding Jesus.

Jesus is saying that Moses imposed an ethical condition upon men’s absolute and lawful rite to divorce their wives because men were being jerks and treating women with indifference and with callous disregard for their personhood and welfare.  Jesus says that it was ancient men’s unwillingness to understand or to amend their behaviors and power models of relating to women that caused Moses to give the law requiring a bill divorce.

With out a bill of divorce the woman was in a social, economic, and marital limbo.  She couldn’t remarry, which was unfair to her and to her family. To address such situations of male hardness of heart the rabbis had for centuries prior to Jesus’ time developed safe guards to protect women.  One of the best safe guards was the ketubah.  The ketubah was a required, prenuptial agreement or contract, which protected a Jewish bride from financial hardship in the event of her divorce or her husband’s death. The ketubah sets forth the trousseau or dowry brought to the marriage by the woman, which the groom must agree to match with an additional sum.  The groom agreed that all his property, real and personal, even the shirt on his back would be surety for the payment of the marriage contract, of the trousseau, and any additions made to it during his lifetime in the event of a divorce or at his death. The ketubah also set forth the man’s and woman’s rights and responsibilities in marriage.

The rabbis maintained that a couple could not live together one hour without a ketubah.  Between the ketubah and the various legal requirements, the rabbis placed on a man’s right to divorce, and there were many, men thought long and hard before they issued some capricious divorce decree. Although divorce was lawful, it was not always financially practical or as easy as you may have been lead to believe.  Ah, don’t you just love it—get’m by their wallets and their hearts and souls will follow.  Likewise, the ketubah served as a further inducement for women not to stray. More on that later.

There were cases listed in the Mishnah where a man could never divorce his wife and there were situations where a Jewish woman could demand that her husband give her a bill of divorce.  The woman couldn’t divorce her husband but she could petition her husband or the elders of the community for a bill of divorce, called a Get, for certain causes.  Those causes were physical abuse, deprivation of her lawful liberty of person, failure of conjugal rights, impotency, failure to support her and the children, a loathsome disease, a malodorous business, or the husband’s renunciation of his religious beliefs. 

Except in some cases a divorced woman had all the legal rights of a free person and could give herself in marriage to whom she pleased, here again with certain exceptions. 

The children of the divorced woman remained in her custody; but the father could claim the custody of the boys after their sixth year.

The elders or courts could even compel the separation and divorce of a man and woman on certain grounds of public policy. 

After a man and woman were divorced, the rabbinical traditions and laws tended to favor their remarriage within limitations.

This is the Jewish world of divorce and remarriage of Jesus and Mark.  The laws and customs surrounding divorce in the Roman and the Hellenistic cultures were often lax to the point of being ludicrous and frequently violated the very heart of Jewish morality and ethics in the extreme.  Given that many in Mark’s church would have come out of gentile backgrounds and would have been slaves, where marriage was a different matter altogether, we can begin to get an idea why this question of marriage and divorce and its abuses is so critical to an emerging Christian community with one foot in highly moral and ethical Judaism and one in a promiscuous, pagan culture.

Let us return to scripture.  Jesus refuses to be polarized.  He breaks the seemingly false dilemma by basing his answer from within scripture itself as he often does. His response is in effect that it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife but only if she commits adultery—the School of Shammi. 

However, let us not think this hard line position is not without its problems.  During patriarchal times and some indications even in Jesus’ day even the merest suspicion of a wife’s adultery in both schools of thought was grounds for her husband to divorce her and she forfeited her ketubah and was turned out without anything including her children. Another case of women getting a raw deal.  Later rabbinical rulings changed this and required stringent evidence before a husband could divorce his wife for adultery.

Jesus says that divorce is lawful, but not in keeping with God’s original intent and ideals, just as any act of sin or immorality is not in keeping with God’s original intent for humankind.  Jesus answers the Pharisees by lifting up the divine principles or ideals of marriage while acknowledging the practical.  Jesus is not issuing a new law or precedent for us to haggle over or to set up another scheme of religious victimization.  Jesus is lifting up the preexisting standard of divine intent for marriage—a hyperbole if you will.

          Jesus says, and please I paraphrase and take great license: Look you idiots, God’s original idea for marriage as expressed in the creation story in Genesis was one man, one woman for life—not polygamy or serial monogamy.  (Of course, Adam didn’t have a choice in his wife, nor were there any other women available so he stayed either with Eve or nothing.  And, the same could be said for Eve.  Not to mention, that Jesus is single, it is easy from him to talk.)

Jesus infers from scripture that God’s original intent was one man, one woman joined in the oneness of body and spirit and becoming one flesh in their children.  Again, men missed the point of divine intent and got lost in the arrogance of their own wisdom and the hardness of their hearts.  It seems that men were not interested in God’s will but in their male egos and power. I wager none of these pious hypocrites ever questioned why their wives might want to commit adultery and their complicity in her desires.

          Folks, what is the Gospel of Christ all about—God taking the initiative to extend to us divine grace because we are imperfect, we fail, we sin, we fall short of all we should be ideally.  Humankind could not achieve through law the right relationships with God or others, so God in love reconciled humanity to God in Jesus Christ period.  All sins and failures are covered in grace for those who profess Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives.

          No, divorce is not the ideal but it is lawful—Jesus says so.  Jesus comes down on the side of the hard liners because ostensibly it offered more protection to women than the liberal school of Hillel, although as we can see in Mark and Matthew men still connived to circumvent the moral, ethical, legal, and divine aspects of marriage.

People, can commit all sorts of sins and violate God’s ideals, but if they truly repent, pay their debts to society, ask forgiveness they can be accepted back as members in good standing in the Christian fold.  In fact, we feel compelled to forgive and accept the truly repentant and contrite.  Now a days true confession and contrition are so rare people become moral heroes when they fess-up to their wrong doings. However, in some Christian quarters divorced folks are still stigmatized, marginalized, disenfranchised, and made to feel awful about themselves. 

Divorced people are frequently denied places of service and leadership in some Christian communities contrary to all that Jesus taught.  Interestingly enough, George Barna indicates that so-called Born-Again Christians’ and conservative Christians’ divorce rates mirror society in general.

          Which one of us is so perfect, so blameless that we can throw stones?  Which one of us wants legal justice before God? Which one of us feels sanctified before God because we haven’t been divorced?  Folks, I want God’s mercy and grace for me a sinner as made know in Jesus Christ not justice based upon my merit.

          Let me add that divorce in some instances maybe the most ethical, moral, and wholesome choice.  Many people stay in awful marriages and endure horrible stuff out of fear, guilt, social embarrassment, and stupid, miss interpretations of these scriptures. 

Let us do as Mark did—interpret with the spirit of Christ all that we know about this topic of divorce for a moment within our modern, democratic, human-rights context.  Do you really believe Jesus would demand a woman stay in a marriage if she has a choice where she is routinely beaten, cheated on, sexually abused, denied support for her and her children, and has her personhood dishonored just to satisfy some lame interpretation of an ancient, patriarchal, misogynistic argument over scripture?  Especially given the timidity and cowardice of society in general to intervene on her and her children’s behalf.   Do you believe Jesus would want a man to stay in a relationship with a woman that is physically or emotionally abusive or who withholds familial support, affection, and makes his life and the life of their children a living nightmare?  I didn’t think so. Nor, can I see Jesus denying to divorced people in such situations the blessings and hopes of a remarriage—it doesn’t make sense with all I understand about grace, forgiveness, and further opportunities in life.

          In cases of the failure of a Christian’s marriage, the Law of Love should be the Christian’s bases of arbitration and decision-making in property settlements, child support, and child visitation.  A person may not love their ex-spouse as a wife or husband, but they are to love them as the “neighbor” or as a brother and sister in Christ

        Like Mark and his gentile audience, we must struggle to hammer out the implications of scripture in the ideal with in the practical aspects of our lives not in some ancient, patriarchal legal context.  As such, we are people who sin and fall short of God’s ideals. We are people who live under God’s grace made known to us in Christ.  When we sin or when we fail, we try to do the right thing, learn from our sins, mistakes, and failures guided by the Law of Love.

          Grace however, doe not give us a license to sin or to repeat our bad choices with moral immunity.  The Christian who sins or fails in marriage should rely on the Holy Spirit’s presence in their lives to confess their failure and to get professional help before dissolving a marriage.  Christians are to learn from their mistakes, get help in avoiding the same dynamics and choices in the future, but always, always deal with failure and sin within the context of the Law of Love.  

God’s ideal is for us is to live in God’s will and ways in all aspects of our lives; failing this, as we will, we accept God’s grace, spurn the pride of guilt, learn from our mistakes, move on, and do the best we can all things considered.  That’s called living in grace.

Let the ideals of scriptures guide us, do not let the ideals victimize us in to a life of works-righteousness.  We are not, nor can we ever be perfect that was the whole purpose of Jesus on Calvary.

Bibliography

Amram, David Werner (2002).  Adultery. 10/7/206, www.JewishEncyclopedia.com.

Amran, David Werner and Schechter, Solomon. Divorce. 10/4/2006

Baab, O. J., “Divorce,” in the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, CD-Rom, 1999 by Abingdon Press.

Schechter, Solomon, and Greenstone, Julius H.  Marriage Laws.10/07/06, www.JewishEncyclopedia.com.

Singer, Isidore, et. al. Marriage. 10/02/06, www.JewishEncyclopeda.com.

Interpreter’s Bible, CD-Rom edition, Exegesis Deuteronomy 24:1-4, Abingdon Press, 1999.

Interpreter’s Bible, CD-Rom edition, Exegesis Matthew 19:1-12, Abingdon Press 1999.

Interpreter’s Bible, CD-ROM edition, Exegesis Mark 10:1-12, Abingdon Press 1999.

Executive Committee of the Editorial board and Lauterbach, Jacob Zallel.  Mishnah. 10/04/06, www.JewishEncyclopedia.com.

Jastrow, Marcus and Mendelsohn, S. Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai. 10/04/06, www.JewishEncyclopedia.com

Adler, Cyrus, Greenstone, Julius H. and Adler Elkan N. Ketubah. 10/04/06, www.JewishEncyclopedia.com