Marriage:
The Escape Clause
Sermon Text Mark 10:2-16
A couple went out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. The waiter poured the wine, and as they raised their glasses, she noticed tears running down his cheek.
Deeply moved, she touched his hand and said, “Tell me what you’re thinking, dear.”
“Oh, I was thinking back to when we decided to get married,” he said, trying to dry his eyes.
The woman teared up and said, “I never knew you could be so sentimental. Tell me what you remember.”
He said, “I remember your father holding that shotgun and saying, “You’ll marry my daughter or you’ll spend the next 50 years in jail. And I was just thinking if I’d only taken the jail time, I’d be a free man tomorrow.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the institution of marriage.
Today’s Scripture readings all have to do with marriage, divorce, and family values. Kind of a sensitive subject in our society today.
What complicates the issue is that if you came to the Bible with a totally blank slate, you would have to admit that it is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the institution of marriage or of the traditional nuclear family.
Start with the Old Testament. Who were our early family role models? There’s Abraham, who had 2 wives, neither of whom could stand the other, and who twice gave his favorite wife to someone else to be their wife for awhile.
There’s the ultimate dysfunctional family of Isaac, with open warfare between the 2 sons, the parents choosing sides, and mom scheming and lying to make a fool out of her husband. There’s Jacob, who has 4 wives, and a bunch of children who try to kill one of their brothers.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of marriage and family.
Then we get to the New Testament, where Christianity seems to be almost an exclusive singles club. John the Baptist doesn’t appear to have been married. Jesus was not married. We don’t hear anything about the wives of the disciples. We do know that Peter was married, only because Matthew includes a story about Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law. Those disciples that did have families could not have had much quality time, following Jesus all over Israel.
Then in Matthew 12, we have this incident:
While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
He replied, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of marriage and family.
And who was the most influential missionary in all of history? Another single guy named Paul, who wrote an entire chapter to the Corinthians discouraging people from getting married. Some samples of his advice column:
It is good for a man not to marry.
I wish that all men were as I am.
To the unmarried and widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried as I am.
If you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles is this life and I want to spare you this.
He who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does even better.
Isn’t it ironic that so many of us get married to the words of Paul that appear in this same letter a few chapters later—1 Corinthians 13?
Paul does not give a ringing endorsement of marriage and family.
Now with that dubious background, what do the words on marriage and family that we read today have to do with the good news of the Gospel, and what to they have to say to us in our day and age?
The Pharisees ask a simple question: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
Yes or no?”
At first glance, it seems like Jesus gives the clear cut answer: NO. He seems to be taking Paul’s line of argument. Marriage is steel trap. Better off avoiding it altogether because once you’re in, you’re trapped in a horror flick: there’s no way out! As for that escape clause you think you found, that’s just a legal loophole that God gave Moses only because you people are such twits. But the fact is, in God’s eyes, once you’re married that’s it. You’re stuck. There’s no way out.”
The Good News of the Lord.
Ask yourself this question, though. Why did Jesus come to earth? To bring law and rules? Or to bring the Gospel, to bring life and salvation, to bring new possibilities for living?
With that in mind, let’s go back to the story. The Pharisees ask a simple question: Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Yes or No?
Does Jesus give a yes or no answer? Uh uh. Jesus hardly ever gives a yes or no answer to questions. If the Bible were intended as an Idiot’s Guide to the Rules of Life For Every Occasion, Jesus would give yes or no answers. But he doesn’t. And that means he has something else in mind. What he has in mind is the gospel.
Look at the situation a little more closely. Are these questioners earnest disciples, or lost souls seeking the truth? Are they impartial reporters trying to clear up a technical matter of law for their readers?
No, they are the people who don’t like Jesus. The Gospel tells us they asked the question to test him. As always, they’re trying to trap him; get him in trouble. What better way to do that than to stick a microphone in his face and bring up a hot button social issue? One that will tick off somebody no matter how he answers.
As usual, Jesus turns the question back on the inquisitioners. You are asking about a code of regulations, he says. The source of that code is Moses. If you want to know what the code is, go to the source. What did Moses say?
Smugly, the Pharisees reply, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” They are paraphrasing Deuteronomy 24:1, which says, “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house,” that’s legal.
The law seems straightforward. But as William Barclay notes, the tricky part comes in the interpretation of that phrase “found some indecency in her.” There were two schools of thought in the Hebrew world. The Shammai school of rabbis said that “some indecency” meant adultery only, and that was the only basis for divorce. The Hillel school taught that “some indecency” could mean putting too much salt in a dish of food or speaking in a loud voice. One rabbi went so far as to say divorce was legal if a man found a woman who was prettier than his wife. Human nature being what it is, guess which school was more popular?
The Pharisees’ question is meant to trap Jesus in this quagmire of dispute. Who’s right, the Shammai or the Hillel? Let’s get him to pick sides, and that way he’ll make some enemies that we can exploit.
Jesus is used to these traps and he’s not going to play this little cat and mouse game.
Their question shows that they are stuck in a rut of sin and death. Their question really is, “How do I rid of the old ball and chain? What are God’s rules for getting unhitched from this life sentence at hard labor called marriage? Where are the loopholes, the escape clauses we can exploit?
For Jesus, this summarizes the Pharisees’ whole attitude toward the law. They treat the law like a ball and chain. As if God imposed a bunch of harsh rules just because God felt like it and because God can. And these people think they can get around God with escape clauses and loopholes. Like kids trying to sneak something by the lunchroom monitor.
Instead of answering yes or no to their question, Jesus reminds them what the law is for. He goes back to the very beginnings of the Bible, of society, to show that the law is a gift intended not for God’s benefit but for ours. Marriage is a gift intended not for God’s benefit but for humans. Marriage is the act of two people committing themselves to each other. That commitment draws them into close relationship and relationship is what life is all about. Relationship is what God is all about.
The Pharisees ask what are God’s rules for going about destroying that gift. They want to know how to manipulate the system to get God’s seal of approval for destroying the gift. Jesus declines to play that game; he doesn’t give them any loopholes.
The second half of this episode is just as interesting. The disciples aren’t quite sure what Jesus just said back there with the Pharisees, so they ask him if he would please clarify. This time he says something revolutionary, that we miss if we don’t understand the context. As Jewish law was interpreted at that time, women had no rights whatsoever. Jewish law said, quote, “A woman may be divorced with or without her will; a man only with his will.” According to Barclay, men at that time were so aggressive and skilled at exploiting their divorce loopholes that women were refusing to marry at all, and the gift of marriage and of family were in danger.
In answering his disciples, Jesus again wipes out the escape clause that men have manipulated to their advantage. He says, in effect, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The law is impartial, the law exists for the sake of justice. It is a gift to help us get along. It is not some arbitrary decree for people to exploit to their own advantage. When you go by the law, the law applies for all people, equally.
Marriage is a gift that helps us to form deep relationship. I care about Linda in a way that goes far beyond what would have happened if we hadn’t married. Like the law, marriage is not intended as a discipline, an ordeal, or test of character to build your faith. It’s a gift of relationship.
Family is a gift that helps us to form deep relationship. I care about my children, and parents, and brothers and sister, and in-laws in a way that goes far beyond what would have happened if we were not bonded together as family.
Is marriage and family the only way we can experience deep relationship? No, and that’s what all those other seemingly family-value unfriendly verses in Paul and in the Gospel are about. The Bible reminds us that there are other ways to deep and meaningful relationship. Mother Teresa was deep in relationship with God and the world, without marriage or family.
In fact marriage and families can actually get in the way of the relationships. There are no tighter family units in the world than in the Mafia, and yet they are not shining examples of relationship with God and the world. Families or couples that stick together clannishly and insulate themselves against outsiders are not in relationship with God and the world. Relationship is the key. Marriage and family are two possible ways, among many ways, that God has provided for us to experience deep relationship.
Marriage and families are gifts. But they do not always accomplish what God intended. There is this little matter of sin and fallibility in the world; hardness of heart, as Jesus calls it in these verses. It may be on the part of one abusive person, it may be on the part of two, it may be on the part of every member of the family. Verbal or physical abuse, callous indifference, unwillingness to compromise or adapt, selfishness, lost of trust, despair, and countless other human weaknesses can destroy marriages and tear apart families.
Gifts can be destroyed. What Jesus is saying is that it is never “okay” with God when that happens. God grieves the breakup of a marriage or a rift in a family just as we do. No matter how you manipulate the law, there nothing the law can do to prevent it or fix it. There is no legal loophole that makes it all good. The law can only do two things: warn of the consequences of destroying a gift; and try to sort out some of the pieces that result from the destruction.
There is one thing that can heal the hurt in lives that occurs when marriages and families fall apart, and it is not the law, it is the love of God. The love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord, from which nothing, not life or death, nor angels nor demons, nor the present, nor any powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us.
Thanks be to God!
Give thanks for the opportunity God has given in marriage to develop a special closeness
in love.
Marriages, family, friendship, and fellowship of service to the Lord.
Praise God when able to use gift, sorrow when we cannot