by Russell Rathbun
Gospel Reading: Mark 10:2-16
For Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012—Ordinary 27
When we started this blog, we set out with a clear resolve to take seriously the questions that came up as we read the weekly lectionary texts—that is, hard questions about the text, not life application questions that arise from the text, not the ethical/pastoral, semi-Pelagian, “how then shall I live?” questions.
We really want to nail the sometimes theological, sometimes contextual, text-critical kind of questions—questions about how, what, and why the text means. And in a sincere pseudo-midrashic spirit, to open ourselves to the possibility that often the real questions are found in the texts gaps and fissures. Did I mention the sometimes outrageous?
Pointing Elsewhere
It is much easier to ask, “are we really receiving the Kingdom of God as a little child?” or “are we really loving our neighbor?” But everyone already knows the answer to those questions, so they are not really questions but more of an agreement. And the agreement is that we should all be better. That does not foster discourse and doesn’t have much to do with the Gospel.
They are also not the kind of questions that point us to Jesus.
Flipping Tablets
This week’s gospel reading is a pretty interesting example of what can come of questioning the text. The Pharisees ask Jesus, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Jesus answers, what does the text say, what does Moses/the Law command? They answer, quoting Deut. 24:1-4, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.
Here Jesus makes his move. He doesn’t just question the text; he picks it up and looks underneath it, then flips it over and exposes its underbelly to the light. His first response is wild, maybe even funny—Moses just came up with that commandment from God because he knows how bad you are and that you would never do what God really wants you to do. Then he goes on, seemingly telling them the way God really meant marriage to be, quoting Genesis. I say seemingly, because at first blush this seems to be strictly an anti-divorce argument, but Jesus finds a much more foundational sin when he flips over the stone tablet.
An Even Better Question
The Pharisees where arguing about the lawfulness of a man divorcing his wife. Jesus turns it around by saying that it is not the man’s marriage to dissolve. It is after all the man who leaves his own family to be joined onto the wife. And then Jesus goes on to say if a man divorces his wife, and marries another he commits adultery, and furthermore, if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she commits adultery.
A woman has no right to divorce her husband. Questions about this are not even debated, but Jesus has just exposed the sinful patriarchy of the law and given women equal status under the law. Of course that equal status finds both men and women capable of sin and condemned—and equally in need of grace.
The Hardest Question
Jesus questions the text in a way the uses the law of Moses to get a different truth. Is the Biblical text set in stone or is it a living, generative, therefore changing document?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
