Baby tomato plants!
Mtt 5:31-32
‘It was also said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
I was listening to the excellent podcast Nomad the other day, and found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the interviewee’s critique of Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage. At the time, it was very easy for a man to divorce his wife for no particular reason, all he had to do was hand her a certificate of divorce. In that patriarchal society, this practise could be devastating for women, as they would have potentially had to remarry (which wouldn’t have solved the long-term security issue) or take up prostitution to survive. As we might expect, Jesus speaks out against easy divorce for trivial reasons. However, the interviewee was, to say the least, disappointed that the reason Jesus gave for his opposition was that divorce pushed people into adultery rather than because it had negative impacts on women. While I don’t want to make excuses for what Jesus said, I do think it is unwise to read a first century passage with 21st century eyes and expect it to make total sense in our context.
What strikes me is that Jesus was speaking to his audience. This was a people who were deeply concerned about obeying the law, and so I imagine that breaking the seventh commandment (Do not commit adultery) would have hit home much more powerfully than expressing a concern for women’s rights – maybe Jesus was being highly pragmatic in that he found an effective way to advocate for women in a culture that had not yet developed an understanding of the equality of the sexes. A discourse about equal opportunities and women’s empowerment would probably gone over people’s heads, blinding them with the light rather than giving them enough light to guide them forward. I see it as a reflection of the imperfect reality of engaging with people where they are at and moving them incrementally forward.
The Christian faith is amazingly dynamic. We aren’t locked into a religion that was delivered fully baked in the first century, the Holy Spirit has been revealing the ways of God through the ages, moving us forward, sometimes despite ourselves, bringing us to the point of understanding women and men as being of equal value. Were Jesus born in the 21st century, I imagine he would speak to us in a way that we could understand, pragmatically guiding us forward, in an albeit incomplete way, since we seem only able to hear the truth in small doses.