FINDINGS III By Harry T. Cook

Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook 

10/1/12 

Founding members of a humanist synagogue once told me that their interest had turned from what had been written ("geschrieben") to what might be written. They left what they took to be the limiting confines of mid-20th century Reform Judaism to seek a new way. They were not so much interested in merely reinterpreting the law that they had been taught from their youth to obey, but to find or formulate for themselves a more relevant and perhaps more just and rational ethos.
 
That is the sense of the passage from According to Mark which is the centerpiece of the readings for this coming Sunday in congregations that use the Revised Common Lectionary. Marriage is its subject and the rights and responsibilities inherent in it are part of the discussion. The legitimizing aspect is imagined to be the proposition that a deity joins a man and woman together, which I suppose, seems a tad more preferable than your ordinary arranged marriage that is so common in the region, whence the gospels in the first place. But, in keeping with what appears to be a central emphasis in Mark, justice is the main idea.
 
To get to that point, it is necessary to start pretty much all over again, which is what my Jewish friends did in abandoning the strictures of their childhood religion to seek a new and, they hoped, better way. Paul, the Jew of Tarsus, talked about the same thing when he spoke of putting away childish things.

The Markan narrative has turned a significant corner in the verse just preceding the beginning of the passage under discussion. Jesus is depicted as having gone to Judea "and beyond the Jordan" where large numbers of people are said to have come to him. We are not sure about numbers, or to what extent Jesus' following actually was large. Certainly the evangelists of the late first century would have gone to whatever ends necessary to portray a significant following. Such an effort would have been a natural part of the enterprise of building up Jesus Judaism. In any event, the fat is in the fire because in Mark's plot Jesus is heading for denouement. Luke at 9:51 captures the drama of this juncture: "He sent his face toward Jerusalem" -- "stiffened" εστηρισεν from στερεοω "to make hard or solid" suggests a grim countenance, a gritting of the teeth, perhaps, connoting both resignation and determination.
 
Why at this juncture in the narrative the question of marriage and divorce is raised is an interesting inquiry in its own right. It may not be so much the presenting issue (divorce) but the "test" referred to in 10:2. It might have been any issue. The test will be the first of many as Jesus is depicted as approaching what will be his final test.
 
We will not devote many words to parsing the Jewish divorce laws thought to have been in effect in the first third of the first century, except to point out that the question "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" is already answered in that law. See Deuteronomy 24: 1-4 in which it is spelled out just under what circumstances a divorce may legally be obtained. The answer to the question is "Yes," because "that's what it says in the bible." And, reading on in Deuteronomy and elsewhere in places in which the issue is referenced, it is an inescapable fact that the woman gets the short end of the stick. And that may be the central purpose of the story -- just at the juncture at which Jesus heads for Jerusalem and the final confrontation. The kind of injustice often visited on women in divorce, like all injustices, must be ended.
 
The issue is what happened to a woman when, as the Deuteronomic code specifies, her man "finds something objectionable about her." This is what happens: The man "writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house." End of story.
 
"Wrong," Mark's Jesus is made to say. Marriage must protect women as well as men, and if it takes an a priori declaration to the effect that the biblical god is party to the union, which therefore should not be sundered, then so be it.
 
If that's what the text means, it is not difficult to see how it would run cross-grain of first century custom and expectation. The marriage/divorce code in some regions of the twenty first century Mideast is not far different. Neither is basic economic justice for women.
 
The introduction once again of children into the text hinges upon the saying "whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." Is it too much of a rationalization to interpret the use of the saying at this place to mean that in dealing with such laws as the marriage code of Deuteronomy it is almost necessary to start over, to be "born again," as it were, in seeking a new and more just way? The Genesis reading accompanying this gospel is an early Hebraic construction on which the remarks about the nature of marriage in the Markan passage may be based.

Those who take the Bible literally (and therefore not seriously) have to deal with the line in the Markan passage: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her (the first wife). And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." The first "she" in the second sentence may refer to the one who has been divorced. Either way, the Law was clear that only a man is entitled to effect divorce. A woman could enter a petition for divorce on grounds of a man's impotence or even sometimes on cruelty, but the divorce itself was at the initiative of the husband.
 
In any case, those who believed Jesus spoke for the god in whom they trusted and vowed to obey must likewise steer clear of divorce. We know that there have been and will be plenty of cases of divorce among sincere and believing people as well as among unbelievers who are nevertheless self-governed by humane ethical standards.
 
Conservative legislators and commentators advocate marriage as an economic staple as well as a moral one. In more agrarian days, marriage was almost a necessity to make the farm function and to produce children who could eventually be sent into the fields.
 
"Marriage" is a noun that names the relationship between persons who have committed themselves to live together and share each other's life. Usually, marriage involves a woman and a man, but sometimes persons of the same sex. This, of course, is what the battle royal is about in many church circles today. 
The point of the Markan passage before us in this time and day is this: It's not the gender; it's the justice and faithfulness of a caring relationship in the way of which no one should stand or unduly set out to destroy.