When she first talked to me, she was frightened beyond belief. Her husband of 30 years had just decided to send her papers of divorce, and she was not ready.
What I mean by “she was not ready” is not that his actions were completely unexpected, he had been telling her that she was worthless for years, but I mean that she was not ready to be on her own; she did not know how to function in the most basic of ways in life. She had never driven a car, never paid a bill, never contacted a service repair provider, never worked a day of her life, and she had not even written a single check; not even one.
The only thing she knew how to do was clean house and look pretty for her husband, and that is no exaggeration. He had never allowed her to do anything of substance during their 30 years together.
So, teaching check writing was the first order of business in our counseling sessions, something that I never had imagined would be a part of the ministry. Believe me, no one should ever ask Pastor Jira for financial advice, but I thought that I could at least swing check writing.
We also talked about the religious significance of divorce.
There was a part of her that felt like she was headed toward hell because of her upcoming divorce, and she had no way to stop it. She feared the words of Mark 10 where Jesus says, “what God had joined together, let no one separate.” She felt like somehow she had let down her husband for being so unlovable and she ultimately felt unlovable to God.
What she did not realize was that those words about divorce spoken by Jesus all those years ago were spoken especially not to condemn her, but in support of people like her.
In the ancient Hebrew world, women held almost no power. They were given away in marriage, and men could release them from marriage at will. A rabbi at the time quipped somewhat sarcastically that a man was allowed to divorce his wife if she burned his eggs. It was intended as a joke, but as we all know, jokes do not reside far away from the truth.
Men could release their wives on the streets for almost any reason, and there was very little that they could do. With no political, economic, or even household power, a divorced woman (and her child), would be an utterly poor woman and child.
It actually is not too different today. When you look at the statistics, the number one correlation to poverty for women and children in the United States is quite clearly divorce. If a woman is divorced with her children, she and her children will likely struggle to get by with the basics…especially before the courts have had their say.
Jesus’ distaste for divorce and remarriage has nothing to do with righteously chastising people for failing in this aspect in life. Divorce is not somehow Jesus’ one exception in his redeeming of the failed and fallen. Rather, Jesus is continuing to speak on the same subject that he has been speaking about for some time in the gospel narrative: caring for the vulnerable…especially the children.
You do not just throw away your family and leave them stranded so that you can move on to the next best thing. You do not just up and decide to write off your wife of 30 years when you know she will languish in poverty.
To those who would so easily dispose of a vulnerable, human life, Jesus reminds, only “because of your hardness of heart” did Moses write a commandment of divorce for you. But, marriage is not merely an earthy thing. “From the beginning of creation, "God made them male and female.' "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."
Marriage is a divine thing. Marriage is the creation of a small community of God that protects the vulnerable; the women and children. Jesus cares about the vulnerable. Jesus cares about the powerless. Jesus cares about the little ones. Jesus cares, and he expects that his people will do the same.
It is no mystery why, immediately following his teaching on divorce, we get a story about Jesus rebuking his disciples for keeping children away from him. Jesus cares about the children coming to him. Jesus cares about the children…the vulnerable…the little ones, period. It is not fair for them to be excluded or abandoned in any way.
Jesus’ desire as seen clearly on the cross is to open his arms wide and draw all creation together, not to divide us and leave us separated.
I just want to acknowledge here that there are lots of reasons for divorce and remarriage. Some are justified and bring about the end to fear and pain; a new life beginning with a remarriage.
Others are less justified and mired in selfishness and self-interest.
But, do notice that Jesus in no way says that he will abandon those who suffer the pain of divorce, whether justified or not. Look carefully at your Bibles, nowhere in this text does Jesus offer any sentence of condemnation for those who are torn apart from the pain of divorce. It is painful, period, no matter what. It is the ripping apart of what was once joined together. And, wherever you find pain and separation, you find Jesus offering healing and new life.
New life is what was baked into the casserole that the matriarch of the church brought to the back door of the house.
You see, a powerful member of the community decided to call it quits on his marriage, and in the whole ordeal he managed to make himself smell like roses during the couple’s’ very public divorce. Of course, we all know that in these things there are two sides to the story, but the man’s influence and power completely buried her side. She quickly became the derision of the community and was forgotten.
Well, she might have been forgotten if it were not for the matriarch of the local church. In a move of solidarity for the vulnerable, the matriarch of the church arranged to have a month’s worth of meals brought over to the forgotten woman. She provided the first week of meals herself.
Not only that, the women of the church scraped together the security deposit and first month’s rent for an apartment for the forgotten woman, because in the end the woman was not forgotten. Jesus does not forget the vulnerable, and neither did his people in that small community.
After-all, Jesus is about drawing together, not division. And, in that little town, a small group of church people drew together for the sake of one of God’s forgotten.
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