October 8, 2006

By Harry T. Cook

Mark 10: 2-9

One always needs to ask about a biblical passage what it was that prompted its writing in the first place – in particular the gospels, which depict Jesus saying this thing and that thing. Careful study of the gospels demonstrates that their writers and editors were not embarrassed to place on the lips of Jesus whatever those writers and editors thought was important. It was not uncommon in the first century to attribute one’s own thoughts or words to another in order to get attention and respect for them.

The subject of this passage from Mark’s gospel appears, on the face of it, to be the polar opposite of marriage and divorce. What it’s really about– surprising for the time in which it was written – is justice for women.

What is reported in the text about how a Jewish husband 2,000 and more years ago could divorce his wife is accurate. In effect, just leave her a note telling her to get out. And she had no recourse but to get out. She had no resources, no redress. She was out of luck. And finally, a reader can find no text setting forth how a wife would divorce her husband by the same means, because apparently she couldn’t.

Since there was little-to-no chance of changing the customs of the times, the early Christians (at least those associated with the communities out of which the Gospel of Mark originated) may have decided to come at the problem from another direction. The memory of Jesus among these communities was of one who was keen on justice, both as a concept and as a practice. It could not be just under the Golden Rule for a man to be able to divorce his wife, at least not without making provisions for her and whatever children they had.

So the solution was to attribute to Jesus the words about marriage being more than a contract, but a union with divine sanction. Marriage should protect women as well as men, and if it took a declaration that God is a party to the union – which, therefore, should not be carelessly broken – then so be it.

Just past the text about marriage in Mark appear four verses that speak of children to whom belong “the kingdom of God.” Children rated just below women and just above farm animals in the First Century Mediterranean scheme of things, so they are raised up to dignity by this passage.

What’s going on here is not unlike what went on in America 40 years ago: the assertion of justice and rights against a monumental social barrier that in some cases had been written in to law. You’ve heard of the “Jim Crow laws”?

As you remember or can gather from the historical accounts of the period, simple justice for African-Americans, then called “Negroes,” was very difficult to achieve. The movement was stalled until Martin Luther King, Jr., so eloquently linked justice for black people in America to certain well-known themes of the Bible. When King let loose with: Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness as an everflowing stream – that verse from the prophet Amos – the movement had religious legitimacy that only increased and deepened with time so that Mississippi Senator Trent Lott’s careless remark a few years ago about how the late racist Strom Thurmond was such a hero rightly cost Lott his job as majority leader of the United States Senate.

So did the words Mark attributed to Jesus about marriage having a clear aspect of justice attached to it contribute to the idea of enhanced well-being of women and children – though it has taken a long time for that idea to catch on in the Western world.
This is not to say that the fully realized “kingdom of God” has come for women or for children. Look at the statistics in our own national economy – single moms trying to get off welfare but running into the Catch-22s of laws written deliberately, it seems, to keep them in their place. So there is a long way to go, and today’s gospel is a beginning.

We need both to preach and practice it: preach it over and over to ourselves to remind us of our purpose as Christians and church members; practice it not only by attending to the symptoms of injustice through working at soup kitchens and homeless shelters and filling up the parish food pantry, but by attending to the systemic problems of injustice.

We do that by deciding for whom to vote, not by how much they say they will cut our taxes, but to what extent they promise to make government of the people and by the people be for the people who need its tender mercies most.

Thus shall we have helped to dismantle the dam that holds back the waters of justice and righteousness from cascading down like an everflowing stream.

© Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.