SERMON FOR OCTOBER 3, 2021                TEXT: MARK 10:2-16

          In my first year serving a parish I had two experiences that shaped my pastoral approach to divorce and marriage. The congregation had been founded by Finnish immigrants and still had a significant component of “old Finns” active in the congregation. I was the designated Finnish pastor for the wider area, which meant I provided services for a number of people I generally saw only when they attended the funerals of other old Finns. But I had one baptism in this outlying community. A young woman, who had given birth to a little boy, was referred to me by Finns in the congregation who knew her father. She arrived at my office, bringing her best friend, whom she had chosen to be her son’s godmother. This friend was neither Finnish nor Lutheran. She described herself as a lapsed Roman Catholic but a believing Christian. She was quick to tell me her story. Her father was a rounder and a spendthrift with a temper; her mother eventually divorced him, when the situation became precarious for the children. The young woman was delighted that I would let her participate in the sacrament of baptism, even though she was not a Lutheran, because her own church had rejected her mother after the divorce. “Do you know a convicted murderer can confess his sin and be forgiven and go to mass,” she concluded angrily, “ but my mother can never receive the sacrament again?”

          The following spring I was contacted by the local funeral director to conduct the service for an elderly Finnish widow. She had no remaining family; the arrangements were made by the lawyer for her estate. So I was surprised that there were calling hours. Although she had spent the remaining months after her husband’s death in a nursing home not so very far away, no one had ever mentioned her to me. So I was even more surprised to find the “old Finns” from the congregation present. The coffin was open. The woman’s hands were wrapped around a pair of kewpie dolls. At this point, whatever originally clothed them was reduced to a few shreds of fabric. I knew that between now and the graveside service the next afternoon I had better find out what that was all about. Eventually someone cracked the code of silence. The woman’s husband had been a hard drinker, quarrelsome and abusive; people avoided him as much as possible. Over time he and his wife were left permanently outside of the camp. The kewpie dolls were the bride and groom from their wedding cake; the widow had instructed the lawyer that she was to be buried with them. The person who explained the history lamented her fate. Divorce would have been socially unacceptable and financially impossible. This barren marriage was all the poor woman had, and she clung to it even in death.

          Not to worry — I did also officiate at a number of weddings that resulted in healthy marriages, but it is when people are cut by life’s jagged edges that we turn to our faith for understanding and for help. The Pharisees’ begin the discussion in today’s Gospel with a question to Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” They are referring to the Mosaic law code as recorded in Deuteronomy 24:1-4. This is a curious passage: “Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of the house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies); her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that would be abhorrent to the Lord . . . .” Divorce and remarriage are not the issue. The concern is a particular parting and pairing — a woman, divorced by husband #2, cannot go back to husband #1, who originally dismissed her, although one assumes she can enter into a new relationship with a husband #3. To be able to remarry, she must have “a certificate of divorce” from the husband who is sending her away. Without this formal document she would be ruined. The man owes her this much.

          There were contending schools of thought within the Jewish community as to what constituted valid grounds for divorce. Some argued a husband could dismiss a wife for just about anything that he found objectionable. Others insisted that the only legitimate reason for sending her away was adultery, and one could read today’s Gospel as evidence of Jesus’ support for this more rigorous position. Mark indicates that the Pharisees are testing Jesus. Remember, John the Baptist fell afoul of the Judaean royal family because he accused Herod of committing adultery when the king married his brother’s wife. It is likely the Pharisees are angling to draw Jesus into this controversy that cost John his life.

          But Jesus quickly moves the conversation from a matter of religious law to a proclamation of God’s will. He cites the creation story from Genesis 2 in response to the legal code of Deuteronomy 24.    He moves from what is permissible to what is good and reminds the Pharisees that divorce is a response to human brokenness, whereas marriage is a means of human completeness.”Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner’ . . . . Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh”    (Genesis 2:18, 24). Jesus speaks as a defender of marriage, not an enforcer of family law. And he is responding to a particular issue, that is, the male’s legal prerogative to dissolve the relationship. Women had no independent standing in this society. Their security depended on viable connections to men, beginning with their fathers and brothers, who then consigned them to the care of husbands. Jesus knows that divorce might well be their undoing. It is not a course of action to be taken lightly. It is not a matter of indifference in the eyes of God because of the harm it can do.

          The Roman Catholic Church regarded marriage as a sacrament; the making one of husband and wife was an earthly sign of the union of the bridegroom Christ with His bride, the church. This relationship is eternal, and so the human bond that reflects it can never be dissolved. The only way around this was to show after the fact that the marriage had not been valid in the first place. Over the centuries the church developed an extensive body of law identifying the conditions that invalidated a marriage contract, allowed the partners to go their separate ways and in certain circumstances remarry.

          Luther, on the other hand, did not regard marriage as a sacrament. Established before the fall, it did not convey the forgiveness of sins, like baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, Luther believed marriage was not even distinctly Christian; it was part of God’s created order, a good gift intended for all peoples. In order for it to continue to be good and life-giving, Luther recognized that one must take into account the reality of sin that now infects all things human. He expected people to be realistic about the challenges of married life and to work hard at their marriages. He advised them to remember what forgiveness was all about and to undergird their relationship with prayer, confident that God, “who established marriage, continues still to bless it with his abundant and ever-present support,” to quote the hymnal.

          We are not saved by our works, and Luther recognizes that we cannot always save our marriages by our own best efforts. Moreover, sometimes we find ourselves too broken even to try. Luther came at divorce as a matter of pastoral care rather than an issue of righteousness. It is wiser, he concludes, to allow divorce than to court greater evil. It is better to put asunder what God has joined than to drive a couple deeper into sin and misery. When a failed marriage is allowed to be exactly that, a failure, one finds oneself face to face with a new reality — the power of God’s mercy and the possibility of new life in the wake of a painful death. Amen.