The Unauthorized Homily

By Bill Dunn

A commentary on the Scripture readings from the Sunday Lectionary

(Scripture readings for Sunday, October 8th: Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10: 2-16)

WHAT GOD HAS JOINED LET NO MAN SEPARATE

Occasionally, people will use an interesting debate tactic. They’ll say, “Jesus never talked about [fill in the blank], so how can you intolerant Bible thumpers claim to know what he thought about it?” The most common topics that fill the blank are abortion and homosexuality. Following this logic, we note that Jesus never talked about drunk driving, bank robbery, or flying jet airplanes into high-rise office buildings. So I guess these activities are perfectly fine.

(By the way, I consider it an honor to be labeled an “intolerant Bible thumper.” It means I consider Scripture to be divinely inspired—God’s word to man, rather than man’s word about God. It also means that by the standards of about 40 years ago, I would be considered a mainstream moderate.)

Yes, there are important issues Jesus never talked about. So we have to look at the sum of His teachings, plus His overall value system, to deduce what He expects in these areas. However, with the topic Jesus discussed in this week’s gospel reading, no such connect-the-dots deductive reasoning is necessary. This week Jesus stated His views very plainly. Unfortunately, the topic He spoke about is very uncomfortable for most people: divorce.

Referring to marriage Jesus said, “What God has joined together, no human being must separate.” He also added, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.”

It’s quite clear that Jesus said divorce is wrong—no if, ands, or buts. This is a very uncomfortable view for most of us nowadays because every single person in America now either is divorced or has very close friends or relatives who are divorced. Even people who are blessed to be happily married for many years find this topic uncomfortable. (In my case I am very, very blessed. My darling wife of almost 25 years is patient and loving and patient and kind and patient. Did I mention that she’s patient? She has to be; she’s married to me.)

Divorce is one of the most difficult topics in our society. On the one hand, Jesus’ words are quite clear: divorce is wrong. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll agree that the high rate of divorce in our culture—and the resultant breakdown of the family, with millions of kids now being raised by single parents, or by a series of step-parents, or by mom’s boyfriend-of-the-month—is not a good thing. On the other hand, we all know of situations where the relationship between spouses has simply collapsed. If they don’t get divorced they’ll end up killing each other.

So if you think I’m going to offer in this essay a definitive solution to the problem, then you must think I’m a whole lot smarter (and braver) than I really am. I don’t have a solution. All I know is, divorce is sad. It’s like a death in the family. Quoting this week’s first reading from Genesis, Jesus said, “A man shall…be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

When two people are married, a new single organism is created, this “one flesh” Jesus spoke about. A divorce is the death of that “one flesh.” Like all deaths, it’s terribly sad.

Although I don’t have any solutions, I’d like to make a couple of observations. First, it would be nice if practicing Christians would take Jesus’ teaching about divorce a bit more seriously. The divorce rate among church-going believers is indistinguishable from that of the rest of society. And among people like me, “intolerant Bible thumpers,” that is, people who believe the Bible is truly the Word of God, the divorce rate is the same or HIGHER compare to the rest of society.

If Christians ignore Jesus’ clear and plain teaching on this subject, why should we expect anyone to listen to us on the other topics that Jesus did not address directly?

The second observation concerns Moses. In this week’s gospel reading Jesus made an amazing statement. When the Pharisees asked Jesus, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” Jesus answered their question with a question, “What did Moses command you?”

They replied, “Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.”

It’s true that Moses, the great law-giver of the Old Testament, allowed a man to dismiss his wife (Deuteronomy, chapter 24).

But then Jesus offered His amazing statement, explaining why Moses did it. “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.”

Wow. Moses actually gave a specific law to the people of Israel, not because it was God’s will for them, but because they were so stubborn and selfish.

I wonder how many of our laws today—whether criminal laws, civil laws, or church laws—exist not because of what is right and just, but exist because of our stubbornness and selfishness?

If people spent a little less time looking inward and saying, “My will be done,” and instead looked heavenward and said, “Thy will be done,” maybe our culture would be just a little less stubborn and selfish. And I suspect if we Christians took the lead in doing this, our lives would become noticeably more peaceful and serene, and with hearts noticeably less hard, our marriages and families just might stay intact at a higher rate than we now see. And I suspect if that happened, it would put quite a smile on Jesus’ face.

©2006