Mark 10:2-16
Almost everything to do with divorce is messy, which is probably why Jesus’ opponents have chosen the topic to test Jesus in this week’s gospel lection. Jesus has just returned to Herod’s territory, who has already beheaded John the Baptist over a public confrontation about Herod’s own divorce and remarriage. His interlocutors may be hoping to catch Jesus up in that controversy by asking whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife.
In Mark’s context, it was much too easy for men to abandon their spouses through divorce, leaving them and whatever children they may have in a very vulnerable position. Some rabbis even taught that a poorly cooked meal was sufficient grounds for a man to divorce his wife. At the same time, it was nearly impossible for women to be granted a divorce under any circumstances. The question posed to Jesus doesn’t even acknowledge the possibility. This may have been rooted in the assumption that only men could be wronged in marriage. If a married woman had an affair, her husband was the victim. If a married man had an affair, the other woman’s husband (if she had one) was the victim. Women were rarely seen as victims in marital misconduct, only potential causes of strife.
Jesus’s response to the question, however, rejects that rationale and highlights the way that marriage irreversibly intertwines at least two lives, including that of the married woman. Where some circles seemed to treat divorce as if a man was discarding an item that had lost its appeal, Jesus tells us that two people have become one flesh. Households have merged, families have mingled, finances have mixed, living space has become shared, children may have been created, emotion has been poured out, and a whole host of other habits, plans, and realities have fallen into place. Separating all of those things is like ripping a body in half. Imagine what it takes just to cut off an arm – sawing through bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and blood vessels, and then somehow dealing with all of those hanging bits, no longer connected to anything. Amputation may be possible in dire circumstances, but it is risky and, well, messy.
Jesus calls upon his listeners to recognize what they are doing when breaking up a household. He demands that we recognize the wound we might be creating as we pull two lives apart that have been deeply interconnected with one another. While this should give folks pause as they consider leaving a spouse, too often this passage has been used to frighten people in bad and abusive marriages away from getting help, or to condemn people who are already reeling from the wound of a broken home life.
Instead, maybe this passage should be considered more deeply by those who would break up a household from the outside. Perhaps judges should consider this before sentencing someone to years in prison, tearing a leg off of a household without even bothering to plan how to close the wound. Perhaps police officers should think about Jesus’ words, “What God has joined together, let no one separate” before putting someone in handcuffs and dragging them away from everything and everyone they know. Perhaps policymakers should consider the consequences of legislation that would result in more household carnage, more open wounds, and more traumatized communities. Perhaps mayors should think twice about criminalizing homelessness, ripping off freshly formed scabs from deeply wounded bodies again and again.
There are far too many ways that things like poverty, economic disparity, mass incarceration, and violence tear apart families and other essentially connected community members. Let us continue to work toward keeping bodies and relationships from being torn asunder, toward communal healing from already-broken relationships, and toward meeting Christ and one another in our collective woundedness.
Chris Nafis is a Nazarene Pastor and hospital chaplain in San Diego, CA.
