MARKAN MEDITATIONS

Meditations in the Gospel of St.Mark

St. Mark 10:1-12

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OUT OF an occasion where the Pharisees sought to test Jesus and trip him up before the people, arose from Jesus very direct and deep teaching concerning marriage. The testing question from the Pharisees was on divorce, but the occasion is taken by Jesus to put over the divine order in marriage. This is very difficult teaching for us today because relationships in marriage are so complicated, and the break up of marriage increasingly common.

The problem is that so often Christian teachers take such teaching as Jesus gives here, not so much to put over the beauty and wonder of the married relationship, and the blessing which issues from it, but rather as a pressing of duty, with condemnation for all who fall short of the duty. This is both wrong and counter productive. It certainly does not make marriage more sacred, attractive or more successful in our society.

Jesus does two things, which he promotes by starting where the Pharisees were and advancing from that point. Jesus teaches the wonder of God's purpose in marriage, and follows this by giving the awfulness of destroying this purpose in any way. This direct outlining of wrong is not to condemn and reject, but rather to help us to face the reality in the break down of marriage so that we may appreciate how awful it is. Jesus never suggests here that divorce and adultery are greater and more awful sins than other sins, or those that commit adultery are worse than other folk. It is far worse in Jesus' view to fail to love God with all our heart; and to fail in marriage is just one of the ways we fail to love our neighbour as ourselves. There is just as full forgiveness and acceptance for the sin of adultery as there is for any other sin. Jesus recognizes that people do have great difficulties in the matter of marriage because of the hardness and sinfulness of our hearts, and notes this by reference to the permission for divorce which God gave through Moses. Just because we may have failed in a marriage relationship this does not mean we are cast out, specially when so often what has been done can't be undone.

The teaching which Jesus gives on marriage is so exalted. Jesus highlights the wonder of God's creation of the sexes. They are different, and the way so often they are made to be the same these days is confounding God's creation. There is no suggestion of one being inferior to the other, the truth that Jesus lays before us is that one sex is not complete without the other. This places marriage at the highest level of fulfilled life in the purpose of God. A man or a woman cannot realise all that God means for us in life on this earth outside of a God given marriage. Single people can live full lives, but they miss something of the fulness of life which God has built into marriage.

The idea of one flesh, which seems to me to be consummated by the act of sexual intercourse, is most profound. Two people come together in marriage and become one together into a better and more complete person. The complimentary nature of each sex fills out what is lacking in the other, and so together a couple are able to experience a more fuller potential. It is true, because of the sinfulness that resides in all of us, that we always fall short of the ideal of God, yet there is a fulness which is only possible in marriage.

Because of this one flesh, the break up of a marriage is like taking an individual and splitting that person apart with an axe. Life becomes dead. The person in the one flesh is murdered. Because we still remain two human beings in the one flesh, it is so difficult for us to realise this, specially in marriage breakdown, because in this situation all the wonder of the one flesh has been lost. However the truth of the one flesh becoming really one person out of two is the design of God in creation.

This is why Jesus speaks so seriously about those who have been married, and then have another relationship. They are always committing adultery. Having said this we must not use this reality to come down heavily on people who have come through the awful trauma of a broken marriage, nor must we press this to keep them from realising in the future in a new relationship something of the true purpose of God in marriage. Rather the teaching of Jesus should cause people to long for the reality, and in a new relationship do better and work harder to realise the purpose of God.

All God's laws are binding on us, and are sin when they are broken. It is no worse to fail in marriage than to fail in pride, or selfishness. Someone may fail only once in the matter of a broken marriage, but we fail all the time in the matter of pride and selfishness. Which is the worse situation? Is it not the constant failure in pride and selfishness! However we never really accept this, and self-righteousness constantly condemns as a worse failing the sin of adultery. Let us get a more biblical and Godlike attitude to each other in the problem of our sin and failing.