October 7, Ordinary 27B (Mark 10:2-16)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found this Mark passage on divorce to be one of the most difficult texts in scripture. As someone who grew up with divorced parents and has been divorced, I’ve found it hard to find meaning in this text.

“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” some Pharisees ask Jesus, trying to trip him up. Moses allows it, they say. In his response, Jesus considers both a man divorcing his wife and a woman divorcing her husband. That sounds good, right? It’s a step toward empowering women and making them more than property. But keep reading: for either a man or a woman, divorce leads to adultery. So it ought not to be done. What’s the good news in this? This is why I’ve avoided this passage. I’ve chosen silence on the topic of divorce rather than trying to wrestle hope out of this text.

But now I hear a subtext of help and hope that I couldn’t acknowledge before. While this passage has been used to condemn those who are divorced, I don’t think this is what Jesus means. I firmly believe that if something isn’t loving (think agape), then it isn’t what Jesus would have us do.