That is one doozy of a gospel reading, isn’t it?
The question of divorce is a thorny legal question in both the civil and religious law of Jesus' time, as it is in ours.
In ancient Palestine, women were property of their fathers and then their husbands. Without a man at the head of the household, women and children were vulnerable and often marginalized.
All three synoptic gospels include some variation on the question about the legality of divorce, and each gives a different representation of the law.
Jesus answers the Pharisees’ question with a question that points them back at what they already know. He then returns to one of his recurring themes: the law is made to address situations created by humans; humans are not made to squeeze into the boundaries set by the law. [1] God is more concerned with the life and thriving of beautiful, precious humans created in God’s own image than adhering to laws created by men to preserve their own interests.
Let me pause here to say that divorce is not bad. Divorce affects many people’s lives, and can leave us feeling inadequate, forgotten, alone and ashamed.
God’s ideal vision for deep, mutual relationship like marriage is that two people care for each other in such an intimate and mutually life-giving way that they become one and indivisible. When a marriage is intractably not life-giving, divorce can be a healthy choice for thriving. There is no shame in seeking health and safety by leaving a marriage that is not life-giving.
God desires every human being to be fully loved and respected, to thrive and grow. By extension, we are to humbly respect, love, and care for other people. God directs us particularly to care for the vulnerable and forgotten, those judged disposable.
In our empire-drive society, we have divorced ourselves from the people who make our clothes, and grow our food. From those who sleep on our streets and languish in refugee centers. From our changing climate and its effects on crops and wildfires and hurricanes. From shrinking orca and polar bear populations, dying bats, endangered owls and wasting tree canopies. We have allowed our God-like tender and compassionate hearts to harden as a matter of our own desperate survival, forgetting that God created a world designed for all people, all creatures, all creation to mutually thrive and grow. God’s creation is a delicate balance of enough for all people and creatures and creation to thrive.
The heart-softening antidote is humility. Humbling our hearts before God and one another. Acknowledging that we don’t know how and we can’t do it all. We have not listened and respected one another and God’s creation. That we still have a lot to learn about the experience of our most vulnerable neighbors near and far.
Fortunately for all of us, it’s not too late! God’s grace is forgiveness and love unbounded, ours for the asking, no matter what we have said or done, no matter how often we ask.
Jesus tells us to be like little children: full of wonder and curiosity, open-hearted and compassionate. Our future depends on it! Hope for the world depends on communities working together. Faith communities, partnerships of civic and nonprofit and faith communities, neighbors looking out for one another. All of us, together, looking for long term solutions, advocating, sharing, centering the voices of the most vulnerable with respect and tenderness.
Today the last Sunday of the Season of Creation overlaps with the first Sunday of our Walk in Love season. At the end of the service we will bless the animals and plants we steward, and then we turn our attention to other ways we steward our lives and our world. Adult formation opportunities begin today with a series on “Beyond Land Acknowledgement” at St. John the Baptist in West Seattle. Starting next Sunday 10/13, adult formation picks up here at Trinity between the services. We start with a session on “Voting Faithfully” and then a short series on “Christian Nationalism.”
It’s a beautiful synchronicity of overlapping stewardship themes that invites us to continue in a posture of gratitude for the amazing, coupled with curiosity and learning about our world and our neighbors.
We don’t know the future or all the solutions to the strife of the world We do know that we make a difference, we change the world for God’s purposes, when we work and pray and praise God together. When we open our hearts to care for the lives of all God’s creatures and creation.
Together, we will learn to walk in love.
[1] Thanks to SALT Project commentary for helping unpack the thorny divorce teaching in this week’s gospel, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-media-resources-blog, 20th week after Pentecost, accessed 02 October 2024.
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