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Our reading this week is from the gospels of Mark,
Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. (Mark 10:2-16)
Multiple sources in the early Jesus movement attest that Jesus spoke against divorce. These sources both agree and disagree about what Jesus actually said and about what he might have meant by what he said. This week we’ll consider possible reasons Jesus spoke against divorce within his 1st Century Judean culture. Christians today do a great deal of harm by shallowly thinking Jesus was against all divorce, especially divorce as practiced in our society, rather than being opposed to a specific kind of divorce practiced in his society.
In Mark’s narrative, for example, Jesus appears to be anti-divorce. I’d like to consider why. We’ll begin unpacking this first.
(Read Part 2)
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