A Hardness of Heart
Jeff Meyer...
...will be the first person to tell you that he begins too many of his stories with, “When I was in Indonesia...”
And he's right.
But at this past Wednesday's Bible Study he happened to share an Indonesia story that's relevant to the scripture at hand.
Because today we're talking about marriages.
And what the institution means.
What it is, as well as what it was.
And the story Jeff shared was of an Indonesian wedding. And, as it goes, people aren't usually invited to an Indonesian wedding. People will be invited to an Indonesian reception – that's the event. That's where the party is.
But an Indonesian wedding... he described it as a real estate closing. Promises are made (sometimes with a male relative making promises on behalf of the bride). A deal is struck. Papers are signed and that's that.
It's a business transaction.
Which is not how we tend to think of marriage here in the western hemisphere. That kind of marriage seems like a throwback to a different time. A deal to be struck to guarantee a political alliance, or secure an economic arrangement.
This isn't to say that Indonesian marriages are mere loveless arrangements. I know too many loving Indonesian couples to say that. But the concept of a wedding as a transaction does harken back to another era where that was more often the case.
It's actually reminiscent of how marriage was thought of in Jesus's time.
So let's keep that in mind as we move into the question of this morning's scripture.
Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
Jesus is asked that question and he answers, “... a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Seems pretty cut and dry.
Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
Jesus answers pretty clearly, “No.”
But he also gives a reason for this cut and dry response. A reason that might give us a moment of pause.
Before he says, “what God has joined together, let no one separate,” he asks about Moses. What did Moses say?
“Moses,” they tell him, “allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and divorce her.”
And because that act was seen as a hardness of heart, that's what prompted God to say that the instructions offered by Moses no longer apply; that there should be no divorce. That compassion should rule the day. “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law.”
For a man to divorce his wife in Jesus' time was an act of cruelty. It was a shame on her and on her family. With no guarantee that her family would or could even take her back in. To divorce would be to cast her away and to leave her destitute.
If marriage is arrived at through a business arrangement – as in Jeff's story to me about Indonesia, and as in much of ancient Israel... If it's a deal to be struck. A vehicle for financial and social stability – then the whole house of cards comes crashing down when the deal is unstruck. And so in that context, any desire for divorce must be weighed against the consequences – particularly for the woman, who in that time, probably had no other means of support; could not own property; and had no recourse for being wronged.
Divorce in those circumstances was largely a blunt instrument by which women were cast aside for any number of reasons by their husbands, leaving them utterly at the mercy of a disapproving world.
In the first chapter of the first Gospel, Matthew 1, we see Joseph wrestling with this idea of how to divorce the pregnant Mary while lessening the public disgrace she would surely be subjected to. She is only ultimately saved from any disgrace when an angel of God convinces Joseph that Mary has been faithful to him, that her child is divine, and that Joseph should not doubt to marry her.
But he wrestles with that question of divorce because he is a compassionate man. And he knows what divorce means in that time and in that place.
It is embrace of compassion that drives all of Jesus's teachings.
In this case, divorce is the symptom but the underlying disease is that hardness of heart. That capacity for cruelty. That's what prompts Jesus to says that there should be no divorce – no casting out – no abandoning your spouse.
It's precisely that same compassion that later on, leads to Jesus offering an exception. Right now, in Mark 10, it's a blanket, no divorce, no exceptions. Because there is no compassion in divorce.
But what if divorce is the compassionate answer?
In Matthew 5:31-32, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers a way in which divorce might be allowed. “It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce,'” (that's the instruction given by Moses), “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Suddenly there's a huge tear in that blanket prohibition.
“Except for sexual immorality.”
When there's adultery. When the bond of trust is broken. That's the exception that Jesus makes.
It's no longer marriage for life, no divorce, no exceptions. Jesus offers this nod to the reality that marriage is fundamentally a bond of trust between two people and trust, unfortunately, is sometimes broken.
Later on in the Christian tradition, the scriptures don't change, but the human experience of marriage does. As it becomes even less contractual and more relational.
Martin Luther hated the idea of divorce. He thought it quote, “clear, both from the ordinance of creation and the teaching of Christ, that marriage is meant to last throughout life.” Unquote.
Yet even Luther allowed for its necessity – not only in cases of adultery, but in cases of desertion as well. In each case there is a guilty party and an innocent party, and so Luther wrote that “the guilty party severed the marriage tie so that the innocent one can act as though his spouse has died and he is free to marry again.”
So if your spouse is unfaithful. Or your spouse leaves you – runs off, never to be seen again, those are what we would consider to be grounds for divorce – even for those of us who hate the idea of it.
I've got both my feet squarely in middle age now. There was about a decade of my life from my early 20's through my early 30's when it felt like I was going to weddings every weekend – especially during the spring and summer months. That's the age when all my friends paired up and got married; that's the age when Nicole and I got married too. We don't go to quite so many weddings these days – not as guests anyway. But we've see our fair share of marriages take root.
Some have lasted. Some haven't.
The ones that have lasted, with love and trust intact, even through ups and downs, and we don't know every couples' ups and downs. But the ones that last, we celebrate.
The relationships that break. We don't meet with that same celebration. Divorce is not something that anyone looks forward to.
With one exception.
We do have one friend whose divorce we actually did celebrate.
Was there infidelity? No. Well... there was, but she didn't know it at the time of the divorce – that came out later, after the fact. It wasn't the root cause.
Was there abandonment? Also no. Her husband was in the picture right up to the very end.
So they did not meet what we might call the scriptural grounds for divorce.
And yet we celebrated.
Because there's another reason for breaking the marriage vows that Jesus doesn't mention, the great theologians and Reformers of the church don't mention, and has really only come into focus in the last few decades.
And that's abuse.
Our friend's husband, thankfully now ex-husband, has a temper. And a very rigid set of expectations for his wife and his children. And when those expectations were not met in any way, the temper would come out. If his sons were playing Little League – at 8 or 9 years old – and one of them made an error – as 8 or 9 years old do – he would scream at them, curse at them, and shame them in front of their teammates, in front of the other parents. It was ugly to watch and I saw that too many times.
If his wife, our friend, stood up for her children, or tried to shield them, or herself for that matter, she'd get cursed at too. He would call her names that I will not repeat from this pulpit in front of their children and anyone else who happened to be around.
That's what he did in public.
In private it was worse.
I've seen the cell phone videos of them fighting. Fighting through a locked door, locked because he had locked her in the basement. That was her punishment for defying him.
I've seen the bruises.
And the scriptures don't mention abuse. Or what to do when a husband treats his wife in a way that is less than loving. And for many centuries the Church looked the other way; that it was part of the ways in which a wife was supposed to “submit” to her husband. Don't get me started on that.
I have to believe that acts of violence against the person you're sworn to love.. that constant emotional manipulation, gaslighting, physical and mental torment... the way that I've seen in our friend's marriage... I have to believe that those things, as Martin Luther put it, “sever the marriage tie.”
And so, for our friend, that was one divorce that we celebrated. And we celebrated not only her freedom from him, but also the relief of the very real fear we had that the marriage would end, but end violently.
I do believe that marriage is meant to last forever. That it's not something to be entered into lightly. That divorces of mere convenience are insult to the vows we make before God and man.
Yet if we look to what it is that Jesus talks about – Jesus wants us to act in our lives and in our marriages with love. With kindness. With patience. With compassion. He talks about divorce in our Gospel this morning as an inherently cruel and uncompassionate act, which in his time, with the consequences of that era, it surely was. Yet even he also acknowledged that there were times – times of infidelity – times of even greater shame – when divorce would be the more compassionate option.
That's not always the case today. There are many times when it seems like divorce is an easy way out; an option of first resort. That's its done cavalierly and without care. And those are the ones that sadden me for how they harm people, and harm families.
But there are certainly times enough when it is the compassionate option. When the marriage is so broken, that trust has been so eroded, that the reconciliation that we are all called to has been tried and tried again and failed. That I believe that it does us no harm to say that the ending of a marriage is the kindest, most loving way forward.
And the one thing that is always consistent throughout the scriptures, in every teaching of Jesus, without exception, is that we are to treat each other with love. With kindness. And with compassion. Amen.
Let us pray.
Most gracious God, We give you thanks for the love you place in our lives. For the people you give us to bond with, to make vows to, to build lives together with. Lord we pray that all of our marriages may be filled with love, kindness, and reconciliation to the end of our days. And when they are not, when the ties of marriage break, let us always reach for the most compassionate path for hurting people. Never to be undertaken lightly, but with great care and prayerful diligence, as you would have us do all things. We pray peace and love in all our families, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jeff Meyer...
...will be the first person to tell you that he begins too many of his stories with, “When I was in Indonesia...”
And he's right.
But at this past Wednesday's Bible Study he happened to share an Indonesia story that's relevant to the scripture at hand.
Because today we're talking about marriages.
And what the institution means.
What it is, as well as what it was.
And the story Jeff shared was of an Indonesian wedding. And, as it goes, people aren't usually invited to an Indonesian wedding. People will be invited to an Indonesian reception – that's the event. That's where the party is.
But an Indonesian wedding... he described it as a real estate closing. Promises are made (sometimes with a male relative making promises on behalf of the bride). A deal is struck. Papers are signed and that's that.
It's a business transaction.
Which is not how we tend to think of marriage here in the western hemisphere. That kind of marriage seems like a throwback to a different time. A deal to be struck to guarantee a political alliance, or secure an economic arrangement.
This isn't to say that Indonesian marriages are mere loveless arrangements. I know too many loving Indonesian couples to say that. But the concept of a wedding as a transaction does harken back to another era where that was more often the case.
It's actually reminiscent of how marriage was thought of in Jesus's time.
So let's keep that in mind as we move into the question of this morning's scripture.
Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
Jesus is asked that question and he answers, “... a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Seems pretty cut and dry.
Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
Jesus answers pretty clearly, “No.”
But he also gives a reason for this cut and dry response. A reason that might give us a moment of pause.
Before he says, “what God has joined together, let no one separate,” he asks about Moses. What did Moses say?
“Moses,” they tell him, “allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and divorce her.”
And because that act was seen as a hardness of heart, that's what prompted God to say that the instructions offered by Moses no longer apply; that there should be no divorce. That compassion should rule the day. “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law.”
For a man to divorce his wife in Jesus' time was an act of cruelty. It was a shame on her and on her family. With no guarantee that her family would or could even take her back in. To divorce would be to cast her away and to leave her destitute.
If marriage is arrived at through a business arrangement – as in Jeff's story to me about Indonesia, and as in much of ancient Israel... If it's a deal to be struck. A vehicle for financial and social stability – then the whole house of cards comes crashing down when the deal is unstruck. And so in that context, any desire for divorce must be weighed against the consequences – particularly for the woman, who in that time, probably had no other means of support; could not own property; and had no recourse for being wronged.
Divorce in those circumstances was largely a blunt instrument by which women were cast aside for any number of reasons by their husbands, leaving them utterly at the mercy of a disapproving world.
In the first chapter of the first Gospel, Matthew 1, we see Joseph wrestling with this idea of how to divorce the pregnant Mary while lessening the public disgrace she would surely be subjected to. She is only ultimately saved from any disgrace when an angel of God convinces Joseph that Mary has been faithful to him, that her child is divine, and that Joseph should not doubt to marry her.
But he wrestles with that question of divorce because he is a compassionate man. And he knows what divorce means in that time and in that place.
It is embrace of compassion that drives all of Jesus's teachings.
In this case, divorce is the symptom but the underlying disease is that hardness of heart. That capacity for cruelty. That's what prompts Jesus to says that there should be no divorce – no casting out – no abandoning your spouse.
It's precisely that same compassion that later on, leads to Jesus offering an exception. Right now, in Mark 10, it's a blanket, no divorce, no exceptions. Because there is no compassion in divorce.
But what if divorce is the compassionate answer?
In Matthew 5:31-32, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers a way in which divorce might be allowed. “It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce,'” (that's the instruction given by Moses), “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Suddenly there's a huge tear in that blanket prohibition.
“Except for sexual immorality.”
When there's adultery. When the bond of trust is broken. That's the exception that Jesus makes.
It's no longer marriage for life, no divorce, no exceptions. Jesus offers this nod to the reality that marriage is fundamentally a bond of trust between two people and trust, unfortunately, is sometimes broken.
Later on in the Christian tradition, the scriptures don't change, but the human experience of marriage does. As it becomes even less contractual and more relational.
Martin Luther hated the idea of divorce. He thought it quote, “clear, both from the ordinance of creation and the teaching of Christ, that marriage is meant to last throughout life.” Unquote.
Yet even Luther allowed for its necessity – not only in cases of adultery, but in cases of desertion as well. In each case there is a guilty party and an innocent party, and so Luther wrote that “the guilty party severed the marriage tie so that the innocent one can act as though his spouse has died and he is free to marry again.”
So if your spouse is unfaithful. Or your spouse leaves you – runs off, never to be seen again, those are what we would consider to be grounds for divorce – even for those of us who hate the idea of it.
I've got both my feet squarely in middle age now. There was about a decade of my life from my early 20's through my early 30's when it felt like I was going to weddings every weekend – especially during the spring and summer months. That's the age when all my friends paired up and got married; that's the age when Nicole and I got married too. We don't go to quite so many weddings these days – not as guests anyway. But we've see our fair share of marriages take root.
Some have lasted. Some haven't.
The ones that have lasted, with love and trust intact, even through ups and downs, and we don't know every couples' ups and downs. But the ones that last, we celebrate.
The relationships that break. We don't meet with that same celebration. Divorce is not something that anyone looks forward to.
With one exception.
We do have one friend whose divorce we actually did celebrate.
Was there infidelity? No. Well... there was, but she didn't know it at the time of the divorce – that came out later, after the fact. It wasn't the root cause.
Was there abandonment? Also no. Her husband was in the picture right up to the very end.
So they did not meet what we might call the scriptural grounds for divorce.
And yet we celebrated.
Because there's another reason for breaking the marriage vows that Jesus doesn't mention, the great theologians and Reformers of the church don't mention, and has really only come into focus in the last few decades.
And that's abuse.
Our friend's husband, thankfully now ex-husband, has a temper. And a very rigid set of expectations for his wife and his children. And when those expectations were not met in any way, the temper would come out. If his sons were playing Little League – at 8 or 9 years old – and one of them made an error – as 8 or 9 years old do – he would scream at them, curse at them, and shame them in front of their teammates, in front of the other parents. It was ugly to watch and I saw that too many times.
If his wife, our friend, stood up for her children, or tried to shield them, or herself for that matter, she'd get cursed at too. He would call her names that I will not repeat from this pulpit in front of their children and anyone else who happened to be around.
That's what he did in public.
In private it was worse.
I've seen the cell phone videos of them fighting. Fighting through a locked door, locked because he had locked her in the basement. That was her punishment for defying him.
I've seen the bruises.
And the scriptures don't mention abuse. Or what to do when a husband treats his wife in a way that is less than loving. And for many centuries the Church looked the other way; that it was part of the ways in which a wife was supposed to “submit” to her husband. Don't get me started on that.
I have to believe that acts of violence against the person you're sworn to love.. that constant emotional manipulation, gaslighting, physical and mental torment... the way that I've seen in our friend's marriage... I have to believe that those things, as Martin Luther put it, “sever the marriage tie.”
And so, for our friend, that was one divorce that we celebrated. And we celebrated not only her freedom from him, but also the relief of the very real fear we had that the marriage would end, but end violently.
I do believe that marriage is meant to last forever. That it's not something to be entered into lightly. That divorces of mere convenience are insult to the vows we make before God and man.
Yet if we look to what it is that Jesus talks about – Jesus wants us to act in our lives and in our marriages with love. With kindness. With patience. With compassion. He talks about divorce in our Gospel this morning as an inherently cruel and uncompassionate act, which in his time, with the consequences of that era, it surely was. Yet even he also acknowledged that there were times – times of infidelity – times of even greater shame – when divorce would be the more compassionate option.
That's not always the case today. There are many times when it seems like divorce is an easy way out; an option of first resort. That's its done cavalierly and without care. And those are the ones that sadden me for how they harm people, and harm families.
But there are certainly times enough when it is the compassionate option. When the marriage is so broken, that trust has been so eroded, that the reconciliation that we are all called to has been tried and tried again and failed. That I believe that it does us no harm to say that the ending of a marriage is the kindest, most loving way forward.
And the one thing that is always consistent throughout the scriptures, in every teaching of Jesus, without exception, is that we are to treat each other with love. With kindness. And with compassion. Amen.
Let us pray.
Most gracious God, We give you thanks for the love you place in our lives. For the people you give us to bond with, to make vows to, to build lives together with. Lord we pray that all of our marriages may be filled with love, kindness, and reconciliation to the end of our days. And when they are not, when the ties of marriage break, let us always reach for the most compassionate path for hurting people. Never to be undertaken lightly, but with great care and prayerful diligence, as you would have us do all things. We pray peace and love in all our families, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.