24 May 2024 Mark 10:1-12
“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Mark 10:2
Marriage was on a lot of people’s minds in Jesus’ day.
In the Roman world, the decades of civil war (50-31 B.C.) had taken a considerable toll on the cohesiveness of Roman society. Men and women, particularly among the aristocracy, were not marrying as much, nor were they having children. Infidelity and promiscuity were common. Augustus addressed this by passing a series of marriage and sexuality laws increasing the tax burden on single and childless people, making divorce harder, and penalties on adultery harsher. The intent of these laws was to increase the size of the senatorial class and stabilize their families so that the transition from the old Republic to the new regime would be smooth, and respectful of at least some traditions, even while most political traditions were already a thing of the past.
The Jewish world was not immune from the changes taking place in the ambient Roman culture. Divorce was increasing, and grounds for divorce had become as petty as a woman having a voice loud enough to be heard in the house next door.
So when the Pharisees asked Jesus if it were lawful for a husband to divorce his wife, it may not have been just a cynical attempt to trap Him in his words, or to get Him in trouble with Herod who had unlawfully divorced his wife, and executed John the Baptist for calling attention to it. They may have been sincerely looking for some new insight into a particularly thorny problem.
Whatever they were seeking, what the Pharisees got was deep and sophisticated even beyond their standards. Jesus didn’t begin with what Moses permitted regarding divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1-4), but began instead with what God commanded for relations between men and women (Genesis 1-2): “God made them male and female…”, indicating that the union of male and female was part of the divine plan from the very beginning (Genesis 1:27). And then, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” indicating a union of such profound intimacy that in the deepest places of the one there will always be found the love of the other (Genesis 2:24). St. Paul came to see Christian marriage as a microcosm of the love Jesus has for the Church (Ephesians 5:32) – in the deepest places of God there will always be found the love of God for people, and in the deepest places of people their love of God – “As you, Father, are in Me, and I am in You, may they also be in us” (John 17:21). There is no higher view of marriage than this. Whatever it was that the Pharisees were expecting, what they got was something more scripturally serious than they had, and more spiritually profound than they had ever imagined.
Marriage is on a lot of people’s minds today. According to the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which has been conducting a general social survey annually since 1972, the happiest people in America are married, and very serious about their religion. They also tend to have the best health, the most financial stability, the best social and family relationships. With those kinds of advantages, you’d think that a society that is on the ball would be promoting marriage and religious faithfulness as keys to well-being. Perhaps that is the kind of thing churches should be doing more shouting about. What we have is more scripturally serious than what the world has, and more spiritually profound than they have ever imagined.
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