Our old screen door slammed shut and suddenly I felt alone and afraid. Paralysis swooped in and took hold of my supple seven-year-old body. My mother had done it too—up and left me—uttering not a word as she exited right out the door.
I became an orphan child that dreadful night, left alone to care for myself and my baby brothers; left alone to make it in the world. Alone and unloved.
After my father divorced my mother in the summer of 1978, I became convinced that my mom would leave us too. Each time she opened the front door to let our dog out, I feared she was right behind her. I would beg to stay up late so I wouldn’t have to retreat to my bed of terror, where the monsters of fear taunted me. Upon hearing the screen door screech open, my body would freeze until I heard my mom’s unmistakable voice calling our spunky springer spaniel back into the house. “Mandy, come on girl! Mandy!” Ah, the sweet sound of calling the dog: It meant that I had not been left alone after all.
After Mandy was back inside and my mom nestled in her crimson red chair, I would jump out of bed past those monsters of fear, fly around the corner, down the wooden banister, barely missing the full-length mirror at the bottom of the stairs, and into my beloved mother’s arms.
She would then hold me as long as I needed to be held—so tightly that I could barely distinguish her body from mine.
Divorce changes us. It tears our life apart, leaving us feeling alone and afraid, unloved and unlovable. It can destroy our capacity to trust. The emotional, financial, and spiritual impacts are devastating.
Divorce has undoubtedly touched your life, too. The United States has routinely received top billing for unsuccessful marriages. According to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the current divorce rate nationwide is 42%. While divorce happens between two people, its ripple effects are far reaching. Just mentioning the D-word conjures up a range of emotions—people begin preaching their own sermons in their heads based on their own beliefs, memories, and fears related to this most heart-breaking of experiences.
It comes as no surprise, then, that when this scripture lesson presents itself in the lectionary cycle, I have conveniently found it more compelling to preach on one of the other readings. Ok, It’s probably more honest to say that I have avoided this text like the plague. Not only does it trigger my own painful memories, deep down I don’t think I ever really wanted to face what Jesus had to say about divorce. What if it was as serious a sin as I was taught to believe?
It didn’t help that in response to divorce in my home church, our pastor at the time pointed to this very scripture as though it was a simple, black and white issue—you divorce, you commit a grave sin. For my mom and the man who would become my stepfather who had also previously divorced, those words, “you divorce, you sin” felt nothing like the pastoral care they were seeking and more like harsh judgment. The case was closed. Their pastoral counseling session came to an abrupt end, no further questions asked, no compassion, grace, or other interpretation of Jesus’ words offered.
It was easy, then, for me to disregard our pastor’s shallow understanding of the text. “A totally outdated interpretation,” I said to comfort myself and then to my mom and future stepdad, after apologizing to them on behalf of the pastor who did not offer them the spiritual care and insight they not only deserved, but desperately needed. Ironically, the notion of hard-heartedness that Jesus spoke of in this very teaching on divorce described our pastor—but certainly not those who had just gone through one of the most difficult events of their lives.
When the Pharisees approached Jesus with their question about divorce, their intention was not to learn more about the issue, or even to clarify the law, but rather to expose Jesus as an unorthodox and heretical teacher. By this time, they had already plotted his death, wondering “how they might destroy him” (Mark 3:6) ever since he and his disciples broke the law by plucking grain and healing on the Sabbath. In response to their supposed legal question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Jesus asked another question. “What did Moses command you?” Notice the shift in pronouns. Jesus artfully reframes the Pharisees’ general question about “a man” by posing it to them directly: “What did Moses command you?” Knowing full well the answer, the Pharisees reiterate that Moses allowed men to write a certificate of dismissal to divorce their wives—a simple note jotted on a piece of paper would do. Jesus then explains that Moses only made that concession because of their hardhearted ways. This was not the legal clarification the Pharisees purportedly sought.
Instead, Jesus responded pastorally. He didn’t really discuss divorce. He discussed how human beings were created to live in intimate relationship with one another. He described not divorce, but holy union—when two become one flesh and form a new unity—the way God intended for us to live and love.
Like all pastors, I’ve officiated countless weddings. On the rare occasion when I am a guest, and not the officiant, I am always curious how others craft the ceremony. Which scripture passages are chosen? Often, in addition to the ubiquitous “Love Chapter” from 1 Corinthians 13, always a fan favorite, the ninth verse of this 10th chapter of Mark is also incorporated. It is not uncommon to hear that verse in the traditional King James Version, which most of us know by heart: “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” Those words always hit my ears like a threat—don’t you dare mess this up or else! But after several couples I married ended up getting divorced, I began to wonder if God had truly brought them together.
How do we know, deep down in our bones, that God has united two persons? Two entities? How do we discern that the covenant we are making is divinely blessed and not prone to us putting it asunder? Perhaps Jesus is making the distinction here between what is legal and what is God’s will by referencing the intention for human companionship revealed at the beginning of creation. We were made for one another by divine design, he reminds us. We were made for holy union—not to be separate and alone. The current epidemic of social isolation and loneliness is evidence of that. It is also evidence of how hard we human beings find it to nurture, sustain, and live in holy union with each other.
In our modern understanding of marriage, we seek a love that sweeps us off our feet. Unlike the economic and social transaction of marriage in ancient times, our contemporary hearts’ desire is to fall in love and live happily ever after. And when we don’t, not only do men but women also have every legal right to file for divorce. Not so, of course, for women in Jesus’ time. So when the disciples ask Jesus again about divorce and he says, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery,” he is actually leveling the playing field. Jesus is including women, naming them specifically—something that had never been done before!—giving them the same agency, rights, and responsibilities as men. In one short phrase, Jesus subverts the patriarchal and exploitative structure of marriage.
Immediately after these questions about divorce, which Jesus reframes to discuss healthy relationship, Mark takes us to the scene where Jesus blesses the little children. Now at first read, this sudden shift seems out of place. As the disciples attempt to shoo the children away, Jesus refuses to do so. Instead, he opens his arms, embraces them, and blesses them, reminding the disciples that the Kingdom of God belongs to children like these.
Just as he honored the agency of women who were otherwise perceived as property, Jesus placed children “at the very center of life in the kingdom” (Mark 10:14, MSG). In God’s realm, the vulnerable take center stage. Women and children—the meek—the weak—the marginalized—the poor and the powerless—are not last, but first. Perhaps that’s what the Pharisees were really hoping to figure out in testing Jesus: “To whom does the Kingdom of God truly belong?” After all, weren’t some of the Pharisees themselves divorced? Does the Kingdom of God belong even to them, despite their hardhearted ways?
And Jesus shares the good news that the Kingdom of God belongs to women who live in fear, to women still treated as though they are less than, and lack agency. It belongs to children afraid that the other parent might leave them, too; and to all the children who long to be held and blessed. And yes, it belongs to the divorced—because the Kingdom of God belongs to the broken and the broken-hearted. It belongs to the betrayed, the unfaithful, and the rejected. It belongs to the abused, the unwanted, and the incompatible. It belongs to the fooled and the foolish. The Kingdom of God belongs to those with hardened hearts and to those recovering from hard heartedness. Divorce happens not only between two people. It happens between nations, and it happens within the same nation. In these volatile, uncertain, complex, and divisive times, holy unions seem illusive. Our hard heartedness is human.
But God’s intention, God’s will, is for all of creation to live in healthy, loving, and life-giving relationships with one another. God’s divine design is for us to experience the intimacy and fulfillment of living together in unity. But God never promised that it would be easy. Unlike our feeble and fickle attempts at human love, Jesus shows us a love like no other—a love that heals our brokenness, that transcends social and economic and political barriers, that beckons us forth and forgives, and that lifts up the lonely, the lost, and the least of these.
Because there is not one of us who has not experienced separation, betrayal, rejection, loneliness, conflict, or the fracturing of a relationship. Like that mother whose arms scooped up that frightened little girl, Jesus refuses to abandon us or send us away, instead taking us up in his arms as he lays his hands on us and tenderly tells us that the Kingdom of God belongs, yes, even to us, the broken and the broken-hearted longing for the holy union of God’s unconditional love.