Griffin, Eric R.

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 23Issue 1 Essays in the History of Interpretation Article 75-1-1997Holy DivorceEric R. GriffinFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Sermons is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationGriffin, Eric R. (1997) "Holy Divorce," Consensus: Vol. 23 : Iss. 1 , Article 7.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol23/iss1/7Holy Divorce?Eric R. GriffinRector, St. Margaret’s Anglican Church,Hamilton, OntarioTexts: Genesis 2:18-24; Mark 10:2-16 (B-Proper 27)There is a lot of talk these days about the Internet andthe “information highway”, in which a great lot of people withpersonal computers are hooked up to even larger computersall connected to each other through telephone lines. I am, asthey say, “online”, which gives me access to an incredible va-riety and quantity of information, access to on-line discussiongroups, electronic bulletin boards, mailboxes, and so on. Oneof the discussion groups to which I belong is one which focusesexclusively on issues of worship and liturgy; we discuss ceremo-nial, historical evolution of worship forms, theology of worship,amongst other things, and last week there was a rather vigorousdiscussion extending over several days regarding one person’srequest for Christian divorce liturgies.Now to some people, talk of the church having a ceremonyof divorce is absurd, ridiculous in the extreme, and an exampleof just how far the church is willing to go to conform to secularsociety. After all, Jesus expressly forbade it, did he not? Isthat not what today’s Gospel reading is all about? I thinkthat if we take it only at first glance we would think that theBible teaches that divorce and remarriage are absolutely sinfuland forbidden in all cases. It has certainly been used this way.And it is obvious that Jesus is strenuously opposed to divorce.But let’s look at it a bit to see what’s really going on here,because this passage can cause a lot of pain amongst peoplein the church these days, and can be pretty upsetting. Andperhaps we can see why it is that the church recognizes divorceand yet remains faithful to Jesus, though he himself expressly72 Consensusprohibited it, though for highly specific reasons at a particulartime in history.Jesus is asked whether or not divorce is lawful. Now we aretold that this was asked to test him, to put him into a trapwhereby no matter how he answered he would open himself tocriticism. If he said “No”, then he could be accused of con-tradicting the Law as it is found in Deuteronomy 24, and thushe would be condemned. If he said “Yes, divorce is lawful”,he would embroil himself in a debate raging among the Phar-isees at the time over what constituted grounds for a husbandto divorce his wife. One side said that any reason was reasonenough—bad cooking for example. The other side said thatonly adultery was sufficient reason. Jesus would then have totake sides in the debate. To make matters worse, to do sowould jeopardize his position with the people. Divorce was en-tirely in the power of the husband over his wife, and althoughshe was protected financially by law, and the certificate of di-vorce which he was required to give her in fact gave her herfreedom to remarry, the likelihood was slim. Since many of hisfollowers were women, some of whom provided for Jesus out oftheir own resources, we are told, to be seen involved with thedivorce question would make him unpopular at the least.What Jesus did was to turn the question back on his in-quisitors. Don’t try to drag me into your fight. Moses told youthis because of your hardness of heart. Marriage was meantby God to be a life-long relationship of two people. You whouse the divorce laws so liberally may be keeping the letter ofthe law but are violating its spirit, because in fact you are us-ing the law in order to commit adultery. By unjustly treatingwomen as you do, by divorcing an innocent wife, you force herto commit adultery (Luke 16). And if you divorce and marryanother woman, you commit adultery against your first wife.Jesus is doing something new here. It is the man who bearsthe guilt in both cases, not the woman. Far from jeopardiz-ing his position, Jesus is striking a blow on behalf of women,defending their rights in a new way, because only women wereseen as responsible for both adultery and divorce. It was neverthe man’s fault, oh no. Jesus says, it is a travesty of mar-riage to treat it in such a cavalier and one-sided fashion. Andin support of his argument, Jesus quotes the Genesis passageDivorce 73that was also read this morning; and I think that what Je-sus meant by the statement “Those whom God has joined letno one put asunder” really means: marriage was instituted byGod at creation, and even Moses himself does not have the au-thority to undo it. Deuteronomy 24 does not supersede Genesis2 .In contrast to the comparative ease of divorce in Jesus’ time,the church has always taken a dim view of divorce and remar-riage, and at times has talked about the indissolubility of thewedding vows. St. Augustine wrote that people who are mar-ried in a pagan wedding (today we would call it a civil cere-mony) are not bound one to another and may divorce at will.A Christian married to a non-believer is not ultimately boundto his or her spouse. But Christians who have taken vows inthe church are never to divorce or remarry, even should one ofthe partners die. These vows are forever. But then he was afine one to talk: his own common law marriage ended whenhe became a Christian, largely it seems due to the connivingof his mother Monica. Christians, even the great ones, are notimmune from the problems of human life.For the truth is that divorce has touched all our lives insome way. Many of us have experienced the grief and painfirsthand. Many of us are married to persons who have beenpreviously married. Divorce has occurred amongst our chil-dren, our brothers and sisters, our parents, our friends. Andfor those of us who are married, this constant presence of thepossibility of marriage breakdown and divorce makes us afraidthat w'e may allow it to affect our present relationships, andcan rob us of our confidence in ourselves and in one another.Some churches, both Protestant and Catholic, are scandal-ized by divorce, and strip divorced people of their membership,and they end up punishing those whose marriages have failed,especially if they are clergy. So much for healing! The churchcontinues to crucify its wounded.For other churches, divorce is not the problem, but remar-riage is, for they insist that the first vows are now and alwayswill be in effect, usually citing today’s Gospel passage as proof.Remarriage would in effect be bigamy, regardless of what thecourts have declared about our legal status. Remarriage is onlyaccomplished by somehow finding a legal loophole which will74 Consensuspermit us to say that the first marriage can be said not to havereally occurred at all.Other churches are less rigid than that. Our AnglicanChurch of Canada has only permitted the remarriage of di-vorced persons in the past 25 years or so, and still only withthe permissions of a Bishop’s committee. In England only fouryears ago, clergy who remarried after a divorce, or who mar-ried a divorced woman, were not permitted to minister in thechurch. Strange positions, are they not, for a church whichowes its founding partly to Henry VIII’s desire to marry a newwife?But does the church “do” divorces? Certainly not. Thestate does divorces. For Christians in the church, marriage isa covenant, not a contract. Marriage vows are made in goodfaith, and are intended to be for life. We cannot simply undothem and remake them at will, even though the law of theland permits it. So why then does the church permit remar-riage of divorced people? Because marriages are organic, theyare living, changing things which need attention and care andnurture. They may starve from neglect. Sometimes they getsick, and sometimes they do not get well again, and die. Nowthis is no excuse for giving up too easily, for prematurely killingoff a perfectly good marriage that still has some life in it andcould be revived. But for some reason, displaced pride I sus-pect, people usually don’t begin to seek help for an ailing orwounded marriage until the prognosis is terminal.The church does not do divorces. But it does do funerals.It recognizes death when it sees it, names it for what it is, butthen in obedience to the Gospel it proclaims hope for resur-rection, that death does not have the final say in human lifeor in God’s love for us. I think that our Anglican approachis amongst the most realistic and the healthiest. We do notpretend that the first marriage never happened, nor do we pre-tend that divorced people do not exist, or subject them to aninquisition. We simply recognize that if a marriage ends, it isover. There is no use pretending that it is not. The peopleinvolved have made that decision, not the church. And peopledeserve a second chance at life.So in fact there is now available in the Anglican Churchof Canada a liturgy for the ending of a marriage, for thosewho want to use it. It is most emphatically not a liturgy ofDivorce 75divorce; the church cannot “do” divorces. The couple mustalready have separated and have finished all the legal mattersinvolved.The service exists in the Book of Occasional Services whichhas recently been published to accompany the BAS. It is notthe only such service around. The liturgies for the ending of amarriage which I have seen, and since they are relatively mod-ern, I have seen only a few, are not happy or superficial things.They do not take marriage or its failure lightly. The Anglicanservice combines an expression of regret and grief for the re-lationship now admitted before God to be over, penitence forpeople’s inability to keep their vows, which were made in goodfaith, then provides an opportunity for peacemaking betweenthe former partners as individual persons.Today’s Gospel also includes the passage about Jesus andthe little children; and I ask you, if a child of ours made apromise with all the best and honourable intentions of keepingit, but found out later that he or she was not able to do so,do we throw that child out of the family for failing, or punishhim or her for life, or forbid them from ever trying again? No,of course not. We listen with sympathy to their apology. Asparents we may express disappointment. And for us to offerforgiveness is not the same as indulgence, permissiveness orgranting license. Will not God treat us as a father or a motherwho loves a child? As Jesus said, if you who are sinful knowhow to treat your children with love, how much more will yourFather in heaven give you?So to say that the church grants divorces, or that sinceit allows divorced people to remarry it approves of divorce,is untrue; it would be like saying that since the church doesfunerals it kills people or approves of death. The church simplyadmits what is.My personal feeling is that to force two people to remaintogether in a relationship that is completely beyond recoveryis also a travesty of what God intended marriage to be; it isforcing a dead thing to keep the outward appearance of lifewhen the soul has fled. This is truly ghoulish; it is the stuff ofhorror movies. My feeling is let us bury our dead, grieve, andthen get on with living, and allow for resurrection in the livesof those who have experienced the grief of divorce. If we are tohave life in abundance, then allowing people to try again seems76 Consensusto me the only just and faithful thing to do. A good secondmarriage can be as Easter to those involved, a discovery thatlife is indeed good and worth living, despite our risks, lossesand failures.Marriage is not for all people, and we ought not expecteveryone to live according to a single pattern of life. Yet some-where in between casual divorce and legalistic prohibition liesthe true meaning of marriage for God’s people. In both casesof completely liberal permission for divorce, or in the utter re-fusal of it, the letter of the law kills, but it is the spirit of thelaw which gives life to those who choose to be under the law.Let us strive to find that spirit. Let us, if we are married,find God with our spouses; let all of us look for God in themarriages of others; as the marriage service says, may thosewho are married live as God’s sacrament to a broken world, sothat unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt,and joy overcome despair; may marital love enrich our commonlife and become a sign to us of God’s faithfulness.

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