What God Has Joined

Mark 10:2-12 is not just for married couples. This is a political statement binding on all God's children. See Romans 8:35-39 and Ephesians 2:11-22. Reading Mark's teaching episodes in light of these two readings, one may dare to allegorize what appears to be a straightforward examination of domestic relations as regulated by God's covenant. And then we find ourselves examining the human-divine relationship.

The teaching on marriage and adultery in Mark, followed immediately by Jesus' admonition to the disciples not to keep the children from approaching him, would appear arbitrary were it not for the impression that these episodes as juxtaposed are saying something about covenant itself. God has joined every person to God, and God has done this by joining the human race together. Any attempt to split the human union on account of age, class, race, sex, and other human factors is an assault on the human-divine union. Any person, male or female, rich or poor, white or brown or black, may be guilty of abandoning God by abandoning one's fellow child of God. Jesus refuses any efforts to hold the least of God's children at a distance from God and the peaceful reign of God.

And God remains a jealous God. To separate others from God's love is to effect one's own break-up with God in favor of another partner -- namely, one's own self or one's preferred persons or one's preferred in-group: same difference. This is what God despises and what Jesus calls "adultery." There is no God but God. You cannot leave God for one's own preferred selves and remain faithful to God. Either you love God and neighbor and preserve union above and below or you hate your neighbor and cheat on God by running off with the in-group you have made your lover -- orphaning the rest of humanity in the process.

As it was for the Hebrew prophets, the marriage bond was for Jesus a useful image of the bond between God and humans. This bond is characterized by exclusivity and permanence, and to a lesser degree, mutuality and intimacy. There is debate among scholars, but I find that Jesus leaves little wiggle room for divorce. If one holds the view that Jesus is saying something about the human-divine covenant through his severe interpretation (and correction!) of Mosaic law, then anything but an absolutist view on the indissolubility of marriage becomes incoherent.

What God has joined, let no human being separate. Well, God has joined all together to God so that God may be all in all. What God once may have permitted because of the hardness of human hearts can no longer persist if God's creation is to find ultimate fulfillment in God's reign. The authentic word of Paul in Romans and kindred word in Ephesians speak to me a word of already-achieved fulfillment and final fulfillment to come. And while that ultimate fulfillment may be delayed in coming, it will not fail to arrive.

Therefore, from the ancient witness comes the challenge to act as if one believed it was really true that God will not let the covenant be broken or the blessed union of souls dissolved.

"Between God and the soul there is no between." Even Julian of Norwich's declaration can be read as a political statement. Her indicative, when viewed through Pauline eyes, becomes an imperative. There will be no between, and no human being will thwart God from drawing all souls into union with God and each other in eternal relationship. Therefore, human beings who believe in God do best to be vigilant against those who, to paraphrase Lincoln, would seek to dissolve the covenant and divide effects by negotiation.

Such vigilance is what this soul, despite muddled thinking and weak resolve, seeks to practice.