We have a problem today. Here we are, gathered at worship as the household of God. Through baptism we belong to a worldwide community of faith. Each time we gather, we have an opportunity to pray together and recommit ourselves to peace. Now that we are here, we have to deal with a troublesome and potentially divisive text from the Gospel of Mark. Some Pharisees put Jesus to the test by asking him what he thought about divorce. His response, in turn, has always put a peace-loving church to the test.

Jesus' teaching about divorce provokes a variety of responses. Some people hear the text snarl at them like a wild animal. Others grow angry when they simply hear the words, and vow to cross their fingers the next time they encounter that piece of scripture. Still others wish their preacher would stand up and swing this text like a club; family life is spinning out of control, they claim, and the church should push us back to simpler, more Victorian times.

It is no wonder many ministers avoid this text. One year the lectionary appointed it for World Communion Sunday, of all days. A clergy friend said, "I have a congregation full of divorced people. How dare I invite them to the Lord's table with a passage that sounds so fierce?" Another minister, a divorced woman, avoided the issue altogether. She ignored the first ten verses and moved directly ahead to discuss the blessing Jesus offered to little children.

So we have a problem today. Is there any way for all of us to hear something helpful in this text?

Would it help to note this passage of scripture is a "controversy narrative"? It is one of those stories where Jesus was examined by his opponents. His back was up against the wall. Some Pharisees put him to the test. "Tell us how you read the law: Is it legal for a man to divorce his wife? Yes or no?" They wanted Jesus to give his answer. Of course, the Pharisees of that time were divided on the issue among themselves.1 Maybe Jesus' opponents thought if they could pin him down on the issue, they could criticize whatever answer he gave. Jesus, as we've heard, throws the matter back into their laps and exposes their hypocrisy. If anybody wants to play the judgment game, they themselves will be judged. Those who wield a club will themselves be clubbed. Does it help to tell you that? Maybe, maybe not.

Would it help to remind us that when Jesus spoke about divorce, he was responding against the backdrop of casual attitudes that men held about marriage? In that time and culture, the husband had all the power. If a wife burned the supper or did not bear enough male children, her husband could merely turn his back to her and say three times, "I divorce you." Then he was free to find a more appealing mate. His ex-wife was left standing alone in humiliation. Her only recourse was to return to her father's home in shame and hope he would receive her. So Jesus sought to put some teeth into the marriage covenant. The issue was not discovering a few loopholes in the divorce law. No, Jesus spoke of the promise of creation. Men and women were made as partners for one another, created as gifts for one another. Together we are joint heirs of God's creation. Essentially Jesus was saying, "Husbands, take your wives seriously!" Does it help to tell you that? Maybe, maybe not.

Perhaps it should be said, as Gordon Wenham notes, that within Jesus' pronouncement is a "revolutionary statement that puts wives on an equal basis within marriage."2 That is, when Jesus says, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her," he affirms that women in marriage relationships are equal partners who deserve the same legal rights as men. Then he goes on to add, "Whoever divorces her husband and marries another commits adultery against him." How striking a statement for women in ancient Jewish society! Women had no rights. They could not divorce their husbands. But the word of Jesus was spoken for a new day, to a church where women were considered full partners in God's household. In other words, Jesus was also saying, "Wives, take your husbands seriously." Is it helpful to tell you that about this text? Maybe, maybe not.

Maybe it would be helpful to point out the Bible does not have one overriding prohibition on divorce. This may surprise you, but the Bible speaks with many voices on the matter. The promise of creation says we were made for one another, but says nothing about those occasions when relationships are ripped asunder (Genesis 2:24). Is it lawful for couples to divorce? Moses assumed it was lawful, but for him it was the husband's prerogative (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). The prophet Malachi claimed God hates divorce, equating it with an act of violence (Malachi 2:16). But Ezra the priest lamented how the men of Israel had married women of other races and foreign beliefs. "Get rid of them," he said to the men. "Send them away!" (Ezra 10:10-11).

When we get to the New Testament, Jesus gives his unique word, "Whatever God has brought together, let no one separate." That causes some to wonder if God really does bring every couple together. Some relationships probably began on more primitive urges. Then the apostle Paul, who wasn't married, gave a surprising amount of advice from a distance. One thing he said was, "If you are unequally yoked, keep the marriage together for the sake of the children; but if it does not work, then divorce is one choice among a lot of difficult choices" (1 Corinthians 7:12-15).

The Bible addresses a variety of situations when the promise of creation is disrupted or ripped apart. The question is: What does God intend for us? What is God's promise for creation?

Does God want everybody to be married? No, that's ridiculous. As the unmarried apostle Paul said, some single people should stay as they are (1 Corinthians 7:8-9). Singleness is their gift. No one needs to be married to belong to God. That's why whenever a faithful church puts out a membership directory, it lists women by their first names, by their baptized names. God gathers the church at the baptismal font, not at the marriage altar.

So what does God want for us? More than anything else, God wants people to live in peace as a community. Beneath the crusted corals of various interpretations, that's where this text points us. God wants us to recognize other people as partners, not strangers; to live as companions, not competitors. Jesus was doing something more than confronting the reality of divorce. He was attacking a human trait that disrupts the life of a community. He called it "hardness of heart," a deadly condition of the soul when compassion freezes, when care collapses, when love turns to stone.

This hardness of heart makes single people feel like they are not welcome in a congregation full of couples. One church, for instance, announced the formation of a new fellowship group in their worship bulletin. The group called itself, "Spares and Pairs." The pastor, who was a young widower, called the well-intentioned (and mostly married) founders of the group together. "For God's sake," he fumed, "what makes anybody think a single person would want to be called a 'spare'?"

The church is called to welcome single people, whether they are newly single or have always been so. God calls the church to welcome anybody whom God sends, without preference or prejudice. Hospitality is a fundamental virtue of the faithful. The church announces to single people, "You are welcome here, as you are."

Let's also recognize the hardness of heart which makes divorced people feel excluded from the promises of God. No person ever gets married with the intention of getting divorced. Every couple who marries does so with the intent "to have and to hold, from this day forward." That is the promise. Yet sometimes the promise can no longer be kept. Relationships break down. People break down. Should that happen, the church is called once again to offer hospitality. We say, "Come and join us, especially if you are broken, and we will tell you about the Christ who binds our wounds and holds us together." If you are divorced, you need to hear the church say, loudly and clearly, that you are also welcome here, as you are, with whatever you bring.

What's more, let's acknowledge in our midst the hardness of heart which endangers a lot of our marriages. Many myths exist about divorce. One myth is that fifty percent of all marriages in this country end in divorce. It simply is not true. The actual percentage is much lower. The myth began about twenty years ago when an amateur statistician, probably a preacher, noticed the number of divorces in a given year equaled half the number of weddings in that same year. He concluded fifty percent of all marriages will fall apart. The statistics are skewed. As any divorced person will tell you, there are many more married people than divorced people. That is one reason why so many divorced people feel so alone.

The fact such myths continue is evidence of how difficult it is to be married these days. We live in a fast-paced society that undermines our ability to know one another deeply and intimately. Our culture worships self-fulfillment over patience, mercy, and steadfast love. It's difficult to keep a long-term commitment when popular books push instant gratification and self-help. It is not easy to pledge your troth to anybody in a "me-first" society.

God wants us to live in peace with one another. Therefore the church is called to support and strengthen marriages, for a marriage is the smallest form of community. As the Presbyterian wedding service announces, "God gave us marriage for the well-being of human society." We cannot expect peace in our world unless we claim some sense of peace in our households.

Working for such peace may require us to stand up against some prevailing thoughts in our culture. Wendell Berry is a Kentucky farmer and a champion of community health. He also writes award-winning articles and stories. A few years ago, he wrote a brief article for Harper's Magazine where he explained why he was never going to buy a computer. First, he already had a good typewriter. Second, his wife Tanya helps him with the proofreading and production of his work.

Berry anticipated a negative response about his use of a typewriter. Our age honors bigger and faster machines with a certain kind of technological fundamentalism. What surprised him, however, were the many antagonistic letters he received about the nature of his marriage. Angry people wrote, "How dare you think of your wife that way! It's positively Neanderthal. She is an individual, separate and distinct, with her own life to live."

Berry mused over what could be wrong with the notion of sharing daily tasks with one's spouse. As he observed, a lot of couples live separate lives, detached and cut off from one another. They pretend to be married, but they divide things up as if they are divorced. He went on to note,

There are, however, still married couples who understand themselves as belonging to their marriage, to each other, and to their children. What they have they have in common, and so, to them, helping each other does not seem merely to damage their ability to compete against each other. To them, "mine" is not so powerful or necessary a pronoun as "ours."3

What does it mean to live like a community --- in our homes, in our church, and in our world? That's a good question to ask a church that gathers around the Lord's table. No matter how alienated we feel elsewhere, God welcomes every person here. Regardless of how broken we may be, God's table is the banquet of mercy. We do not deserve the invitation, if only for our hardness of heart, yet we are gathered by a grace that covers us all. And when we leave, we are under obligation to extend the hospitality of God to all people, as they are, wherever they are.

So let us learn from a gracious God whose love embraces every one of us. Gathered by God's hospitality, we can discover how to live together and love one another, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

1. John R. Donahue, "Mark," Harper's Bible Commentary, 1988 ed., p. 996.

2. Gordon J. Wenham, "Divorce," The Oxford Companion to the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 170.

3. Wendell Berry, "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine," What Are People For? (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990), pp. 180-1.