"7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate" (Mk 10).

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus distinguishes his teaching on divorce from that which prevailed under the Law of Moses. This Law, in Deuteronomy, explicitly permitted a husband to divorce his wife; the only debate in Jesus’ day was about the grounds for that divorce. Was the adultery of the wife the only grounds, or could a husband divorce his wife because she burned the soup, or no longer pleased him in other ways? Rabbis uphold both positions. A wife could not divorce her husband under the Jewish Law, though she could under Roman Law; and under Jewish Law a husband could never be accused of adultery against his own wife, but only became an adulterer if he violated another man’s marriage.

In Mark’s version of this saying, Jesus does not ally himself with either school of commentary on Deuteronomy, but offers a critique of the whole tradition. He goes back beyond Moses to the story of Creation, and underscores the truth that every teacher of the Law would acknowledge: that husband and wife were meant to dwell in unity and peace. Jesus reminds his questioners that men and women were made out of the same stuff ("bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh" [Gen. 2:23]); husband and wife, in other words, were created for each other. The pattern that we learn in Creation, in the story of Adam and Eve, is the true one, which no Law of Moses can override. Jesus speaks of this concession as one that is rooted in human sin, in "hardness of heart" (Mk 10:5). And so Jesus says, "Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate": words still faithfully recalled at every wedding using the Book of Common Prayer.

What Jesus is getting at in his teaching is one of the characteristic manifestations of human sin. The words, "Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate", might be taken to refer not only to the unity of Adam and Eve, but to the unity of the whole human family. The story of sin begins with a declaration of autonomy from God, and a move toward self-actualization. Adam and Eve declare their independence when they disobey God, and the result is that they begin to fall out among themselves. When God questions their actions, Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent!

It is the unity of the first human family, which we see in our first reading, that is destroyed by sin. Adam and Eve assert their autonomy from God and in another sense their autonomy from each other. Division and a consequent destruction, shown again in the story of Cain and Abel, becomes one of its primary motifs as the human story unfolds.

No one can doubt that the human family is still under siege. The ties which bind us together in society and community are challenged by notions of radical individual autonomy. We want what we want, and not what other people might demand of us. Hardly any late twentieth century person will fail to find this notion striking a sympathetic chord. That is our myth, our besetting sin. We understand ourselves to be free to create not only our own destiny but even our own identity. That is the radical autonomy of the modern, self-actualizing person. The ideas are in the air, and the air is toxic.

This characteristic mark of sin, driving us apart and leaving us with the illusion of freedom, is demonstrated over and over again: in war, in social divisions within societies, in the division of resources amongst peoples. Our human self-centeredness is manifested in the distribution of health care, in the problems of poverty, in modern debates about reproductive rights and cloning. And, of course, it is manifested in seemingly irreparable divisions in families, the basic unit of society.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to simplify too quickly a whole lot of complicated issues. But Jesus in our Gospel is pointing to one of the characteristic manifestations of human sinfulness: the belief that we can go it alone, that we are at the center of the world, that we don’t need God or each other. He is not singling out divorced people to "beat up on"; after all, divorced people are in my experience intimately acquainted with the subjects of pain and loss. All Churches, and all persons, struggle with ways to deal with the reality of that pain and loss. But Jesus is challenging our fundamental assumptions, a way of looking at the world in terms of human freedom and self-actualization, that has become more and more pronounced as the human story has continued. The roots of the problem, as Jesus points out by his reference to Creation, go back to the very beginning.

"Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." The words of Jesus not only speak to that foundational tie of marriage, but to a host of ties that bind human beings together. We are inclined to turn away, to severe connection, to walk out on our fellow human beings in a variety of ways. But the God who is faithful to us keeps calling us, in the midst of human sin, to be faithful to one another.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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