A WORD ABOUT DIVORCE

The question Jesus is actually asked in today's reading is about whether divorce is legal... as is often the case in these situations the Pharisees are actually trying to trip Jesus up...

So although the issue of divorce and remarriage is as hot a topic in Jesus’ day as it is in ours, the Pharisees are not that interested in hearing the answer - they want to see whether Jesus will support Moses, will he be a good Jew and follow their traditions or will he give them more ammunition with which they can discredit him?

And more than this, Jesus is in the home territory of King Herod - whose marital activities make our soap operas look like a Sunday School picnic... It was a clever question for the Pharisees to ask, because Jesus could prove himself a good Jew and be lynched by the Authorities; or prove a bad Jew and be lynched by the crowd!

NEVER MIND THE LEGALITIES - THINK OF THE ORIGINAL INTENTION

In response Jesus takes his questioners back not to Moses the Law Giver, but to the very Creation itself: marriage is a gift of God in Creation. Jesus suggests that we need to understand the very nature of marriage before splitting hairs about divorce and re-marriage.

Marriage as a concept, Jesus suggests, is important because it teaches us something about God. There is a sense in which the intimacy of marriage mirrors the intimacy which human beings crave for with God - we are made in God’s image to know God and be loved by him - and part of knowing God involves a degree of intimacy with another human being also made in God’s image.

Now this is NOT to say that people who are not married are in some way deficient in their relationship with God - our Lord himself was single, as were many of the disciples and many of the great saints of history.

But it IS to say that marriage offers an insight into the way in which God the holy Trinity relates to human beings. Divorce reflects a failure of that relationship - it certainly isn’t the ONLY way in which we fail to understand God’s gifts, grace and love towards us. Anyone who has gone through divorce will bear testament to it being a traumatic and wounding experience - even if ultimately it was the right, healing and positive thing to do.

Jesus words about remarriage and adultery are perhaps best understood as condemning all of us who are unfaithful in our relationships - married, remarried, divorced, single, virgins, hussies... This is not a blanket downer on those who are remarried, it’s a saying illustrating the tension between an ideal and those of us who fall short of that ideal... you and me!

CATERING FOR HUMAN FRAILTY

The ideal is of fidelity - of lifelong faithfulness: yet our frailty shows us that - as hard as we strive for that faithfulness in our relationships with our lovers and with our God - we fail... So we repent and are forgiven. Marriage is a sacrament of the Church in that it points beyond itself to a reality of the God who refuses to divorce us and go off with somebody more promising! We may fail or desert God, but God doesn’t and won’t fail or desert us.

The Church upholds, and will continue to uphold, lifelong marriage, not because it’s a useful social tool; not because it’s the only way of controlling lust and passion which would otherwise overwhelm us; but because it shows us something about what God is like: God refuses to divorce us - even when we give God more than “reasonable grounds”!

CHALLENGE

Jesus hard saying about divorce and remarriage needs to be seen:

• not smugly by those who - regardless of the quality of their relationship - are still married to their first spouse;

• not as condemnatory of those whose first or second marriages have failed;

• but has a challenge to all of us to examine the relationships we’re involved in and our friendship with God, and say sorry for those times when we are unfaithful and when we fail.

But also to recognise and rejoice in the Great Lover, who paid a huge price to woo us, who refuses to divorce us and who constantly courts us to return his passion... God calls us to faithfulness, not selfishness: to treat other human beings as immensely precious, made in the image of God and loved by God as much as he loves us....

Fr. Andrew Perry
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea