Divorce East of Eden

Jill and her husband were active in their local Episcopal church. They taught Sunday school, served on committees, showed up for various parish activities and dinners, and were well-known to most of the congregation.

One day it became known to the congregation that Jill had separated from her husband who was devastated by her decision. He wanted to do whatever it took to stay together, but she, for her own reasons, which she felt were valid and were not arrived at quickly or lightly, felt ending the marriage was the only option available to her.

Her husband was invited over for dinner by various members of the congregation and given a great deal of support which he very much needed and appreciated. But Jill, who also needed support at a time that was equally devastating for her did not receive so much as a phone call from anyone, even the rector.

Christians sometimes respond like that. Sometimes we make it hard on divorced persons. To be a divorced person can feel like being a leper in Jesus' day. The divorced person almost feels as if he or she should carry a sign warning, "Unclean!"

Sometimes churches sidestep the issue. Divorce is so common and so sensitive that we are tempted to avoid the subject. No priest looks forward to preaching on our Gospel lesson for today. Church pews are full of people who have suffered through a divorce - people who wanted a happy marriage - people who are still trying to figure out what went wrong - people who are still hurting. I suspect at least half of you are children of divorce and the rest of you have friends and relatives who are divorced. The last thing we want to do is to inflict more pain. So in many churches, the subject is seldom mentioned.

But there are good reasons to talk about marriage and divorce. We need to think deeply about marriage and divorce. People who are contemplating divorce need our help and guidance. And people who have been divorced - or affected by divorce - need understanding, and reminders of God's and grace and love.

So let's look at what Jesus thought about divorce. In our Gospel lesson, the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" Note the way the question is phrased, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" In that time and place, a man could divorce his wife for almost any reason, but a woman could not divorce her husband. A divorce was often ruinous to the woman, who was often left with no property, no support payments, and no good way to earn a living.

There were two schools of thought on the subject of what was lawful regarding divorce. One was that a man could divorce his wife only for adultery. Another held that a man could divorce his wife if he was displeased with her. Just imagine that! What husband hasn't been displeased with his wife at some point! Divorce was quick and easy. A man just had to give his wife a certificate stating that he had divorced her.

When the Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce, they were hoping to trap him. They were hoping that he would take one side so that he would alienate the other side. Should men be able to divorce their wives for any reason at all, or only for adultery? It didn't really matter to them which side Jesus took. He would be in trouble with the other side.

But Jesus didn't take the bait. Not only was he too smart to walk into a trap, but, more importantly, he was never comfortable with legalisms. Instead, speaking to those men who enjoyed being able to rid themselves of a wife, Jesus said,

Instead of taking one side or another, Jesus went back to the Garden of Eden to establish God's intent for marriage. God's intent was that a man and woman be joined together for life. God's intent was that a man and woman live happily in an innocent world - in a beautiful garden. But it was not long before we were no longer living in the Garden of Eden. It was not long before we had sinned and found ourselves living, not in the Garden of Eden but in the wilderness east of Eden, a place characterized by weeds rather than flowers - by dust rather than dew. East of Eden is a place, not of innocence, but of hardness of heart. We still live there today - east of Eden.

East of Eden, nothing is as God intended. East of Eden, we have locks on our doors and bars on our windows. East of Eden, we pay police and soldiers to protect us from our neighbors. East of Eden, we are afraid to walk down an unlighted street. East of Eden, some husbands beat their wives and wives abuse their husbands. East of Eden Palestinians are displaced and killed and nobody notices. East of Eden, people of color, gay people, and women are oppressed. East of Eden, people get divorces. God created us to live in Eden, but we now live east of Eden.

Does that mean that we should just accept our brokenness as inevitable? Does that mean that we don't need to try? Of course not! It means that we need to ask God's help to become again what God created us to be. But it also means that we must learn to love one another even in our brokenness. It means that we need to forgive and to be forgiven. It means that we need to ask God's forgiveness for all the ways that we have fallen short of God's intent.

The most difficult part of our Gospel lesson is the part where Jesus talks about remarriage. Mark reports Jesus as saying, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." In Mark Jesus offers no exceptions.

Matthew reports this same story, but with an exception. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus says, "Anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery..." (Matt. 5:31). Matthew was written later than Mark. Matthew adds unchastity as grounds for divorce and remarriage. By Matthew's time, the church was beginning to struggle with the reality of living east of Eden. By Matthew's time, the church was still preaching wholeness, but was beginning to struggle with the reality of brokenness. By Matthew's time, the church was struggling with the issue of divorce.

And in his first letter to the church at Corinth, written over twenty years before Matthew's Gospel was written, Paul addresses the problem of Christians married to non-Christians. He says that the Christian should continue the marriage, if possible, in the hope of winning their spouse to the Lord. But then he says, "If the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound." Paul seems to have created another exception. It seems that he, too, was trying to help the church cope with life east of Eden. We think of divorce as a new problem, but it was a problem even in the earliest church. It has always been a problem, because we have been living east of Eden nearly forever.

But, while we, the church, must take care not to condemn divorce more harshly than other sins, we must also take divorce seriously. We must remind people that God seems to have intended marriage as a lifelong commitment. We see evidence of God's will in two books that were reviewed in last week's New York Times Book Review that suggest that children of divorce fare less well even into adulthood than children from intact families. So, we must encourage people to persevere in reaching for that elusive ideal unless they are in a seriously abusive situation where everything possible has been done to improve the relationship and end the abuse. We must hold up marriage - and, indeed, all committed relationships - as something precious and holy. We have not always done that well.

We were created to live in Eden, but instead we are broken, so we live east of Eden. We need to pray that God will help us as we live in our imperfect world - and we need to pray that God will help us as we struggle to make our world better for ourselves and our children.

Amen.