The Divorce Test

Divorce is a hard topic to write about. It’s a source of pain for many people—whether you’re divorced or a close family member such as your parents. Today, Jesus gets asked about divorce, but the text says it’s a trap . . . there must be something more happening.

Earlier in the Gospel, Herod Antipas had arrested John the Baptist. John had been criticizing Herod for marrying his brother’s wife.

In other words, he was saying that Herod was a political joke (after all, Jesus is Israel’s true king, not Herod). But Herod didn’t take the joke very well.

So, when the Pharisees asked about divorce, they were really asking if Jesus agreed with John. They wanted Jesus to criticize Herod so that he too might disappear as John had.

The Church Fathers teach us that there may be an even deeper level of understanding.

In the Old Testament, the prophets had used marriage as an image of Israel’s fidelity to God. And, when Israel went astray and worshipped other gods, the prophets called Israel a harlot.

If we take this route, it’s possible to understand the Pharisees, who thought Jesus was taking Israel in the wrong direction, if he was divorcing God to take Israel’s religion in a completely different direction.

Jesus’s response, in this case, is basically saying that what God has put together (e.g., man and woman), no one can break apart.

Or, to put it simply, Jesus is saying that he’s the true fulfillment of Israel’s sacred scripture. God has always planned to put the world right through Christ and Jesus isn’t going in a different direction. This how it was meant to be.

Through Jesus, God is faithful to the covenant and the promises he has made. And this means that through Christ, we are all drawn into God’s kingdom and we all become children of the one God. 

The Reading

And Pharisees approached and tested him, asking him whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife. But in reply he said to them, “What did Moses command you?” And they said, “Moses permitted inscribing a writ of separation and divorcing.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardheartedness he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation ‘male and female he created them’; ‘For this cause a man shall leave father and mother, And they shall be two in one flesh’; thus they are no longer two, but rather one flesh. What therefore God joined together, let no man separate.” And when they were again in the house the disciples questioned him about this. And he says to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; And if she, having divorced her husband, marries another, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10:2-12)