Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Second Sunday before Lent (23 February 2025), we have come to the end of a month, March begins tomorrow, and Lent begins next week on Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025).
Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 10: 1-12 (NRSVA):
1 He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.
2 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ 3 He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ 4 They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.’ 5 But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” 7 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’
10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’
Today’s Reflection:
This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Mark 10: 1-12) challenges us to think about the differences between how we see God’s ways and the actual working out of God’s ways. It challenges us to think about the foundations of faith, which are weak if they depend on God meeting our expectations, and are weakened when God does not meet our expectations.
The Gospel reading also challenges old ideas and customs – in the Pharisees’ tradition about divorce. But, instead of accepting yet another tradition, how might we accept what Christ says as a way of challenging custom and tradition, and as a way of being brave enough to come to new conclusions that reflect the priorities of God and the compassion of Christ?
If our family life and domestic situation become desperate, our income dries up, our family breaks up, we find ourselves down in the dumps and marginalised, do we blame God? How is God with us in our woes?
Do we see material success, prosperity, family life and children as rewards from God?
Is faith, like love, not without seeking reward?
Or do we only love – and believe – because there are rewards?
When this Gospel reading occurs as a Sunday reading, many decide to preach on one of the other readings. But if they do this, they leave us in danger of thinking that Christ is too harsh on those who go through a divorce.
I know only too well how people who go through a marriage breakdown and divorce, and who still cling on to going to church, perhaps just by their fingernails, may well ask, ‘Where is the Good News in this reading?’
So, what is happening here? Herod Antipas was the Governor of Galilee. He had divorced his wife Aretus to marry Herodias, the wife of his brother, Herod Philip. This caused such a scandal that when Saint John the Baptist confronted Herod about it – he was beheaded (see Mark 6: 18-19).
If Christ says it is unlawful for a man to divorce his wife, does he end up like John the Baptist?
If he says it is acceptable, does he contradict the teaching of the Torah and leave himself open to the charge of blasphemy?
The Pharisees were divided on the legality of divorce and the grounds for divorce. So, the question is a trap in another way. They say: ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her’ (Mark 10: 4). The Law of Moses allowed a man to divorce his wife, if he finds ‘something objectionable about her’ (Deuteronomy 24: 1).
Mind you, it never said a woman could divorce her husband (see Mark 10: 12).
A man could simply ‘write a certificate of dismissal’ (verse 4), without going through any formal legal proceedings. ‘Something objectionable’ could cover a multitude, from adultery to an eccentric hair-do on a bad hair day. Indeed, by the time of Christ, divorce was allowed for the most trivial of reasons, and was so common that many women suffered.
However, instead of falling into the trap being set for him, Christ asks the Pharisees: ‘What did Moses command you?’ (Mark 10: 3). In other words, what does the law say? He tells them Moses allowed this ‘because of your hardness of heart’ (Mark 10: 5), perhaps hinting at how hard-hearted men were now making women suffer even more.
There are other places in the New Testament where Christ, and Saint Paul and Saint Peter, accept that a man may divorce an unfaithful wife. Saint Mark alone mentions the possibility of women also divorcing. This may have been normal in non-Jewish contexts, but cases of Jewish women initiating divorce are rare.
In this reading, Christ reminds those around him of God’s original intention. Marriage is a covenant relationship in which the two people become one and live in mutual love and affection.
Christ devotes much of his teaching time interpreting scripture in a way that gives priority to human wellbeing. For example, the Sabbath is made for us rather than we being made for the Sabbath. Similarly, we could say he is saying here that the order of marriage is made for us, not that we are made for the ordering of marriage, or worrying about the minutiae in the details religious people construct around marriage.
The way Christ interprets scriptural law ought to provide a clue to how we interpret his teaching.
Today, many of us may appear to be on the side of the Pharisees on the question of divorce. Divorce is common today and most of us accept it as a reality. Our laws and our customs, like those of the Pharisees in this Gospel story, assume divorce happens.
On a first reading this morning, Christ appears to be harsh and uncompromising. But many marriages get stale or toxic, relationships can dry up or lose focus, self-destruct, or break down. Things go wrong for far too many reasons.
A divorce may be a burial for a dead marriage. Divorces do not kill marriages any more than funerals kill people … although one of the tragedies today is that many couples are burying their relationship when it is only sick or injured.
Is it not possible that the promise to be together until death can refer to the death of the relationship as well as the death of the person?
Is it not possible to recall that the original intent of our loving and caring God who gave us the gift of marriage was to make our lives better?
Does that desire of God evaporate when we are no longer in a marriage?
From the opening of this story, it is clear the Pharisees are not seeking Christ’s wisdom or compassion. Instead, they are trying to trap him. But marriage is not a trap and not a matter of expediency in which the wife is the inalienable property of an abusive or violent husband, or the husband the inalienable possession of a controlling or narcissist wife.
Of course, the covenant of marriage is still just as valid today. Ideally, when two people marry, they commit themselves to an exclusive relationship of love and devotion in a new entity.
But that is easier to say than it is to face up to reality, which includes the complexities of child-rearing, careers and competing religious, social and economic claims and responsibilities.
Ideally, we are not to live alone, but in loving and committed relationships. In an ideal world, there would be no such thing as divorce. But we do not live in an ideal world. We live in a fallen and broken world in which human nature always falls short of the glory of God. Whether we like it or not, divorce is a reality and we have to live with that.
Sadly, when people go through a divorce, the church is often the last place they can turn to for help and understanding, as I have experienced.
But divorce is like a death. It is the death of a relationship, and so people grieve, and they need sympathy and to be consoled. Would you dare chastise someone who was grieving after the death of a family member?
I was reminded once by a divorced priest and colleague that when God says: ‘I hate divorce ... I hate divorce’ (Malachi 2: 16), that of course God hates divorce because he has gone through the sufferings and grieving of divorce through our faithlessness and wandering.
God hates divorces because God has suffered divorce.
What a profound insight.
Too often, in debates, passages of Scripture taken out of context, or one-sided interpretations of the tradition of the Church, can be used to set a trap so that people are forced to accept only one standard or practice for marriage in the world today. But in this Gospel reading, Christ responds to those who seek to trap him by refusing to accept to be trapped into accepting their interpretation of Scripture or Tradition.
Instead, he challenges those around them to think for themselves and to think with compassion.
Let us not use this reading to trap Jesus through hardness of heart. And let us not use this reading to trap vulnerable, suffering and grieving people who remain open to loving and being loved.
We must face questions about marriage and divorce, about who can be married and who can be divorced, as challenges that ask us to think outside the box, without trying to trap Jesus or to trap those who are faced with honest questions about marriage and about divorce.
Today’s Prayers (Friday 28 February 2025):
This week marks the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Grain of Wheat.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Revd Dr Nevsky Everett, chaplain of the Church of the Resurrection, Bucharest, Romania.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 28 February 2025) invites us to pray:
Heavenly Father, we praise you for the Church of the Resurrection and their faithful service to you and their community. Bless Father Nevsky and the team’s ministry with strength, wisdom, and continued impact as they bring hope and healing to those in need.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,
now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
by your gift
the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise,
and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:
may we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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