I was asked why I divorced…but they were looking for only one reason to justify acceptance back into ministry. I could have murdered my wife, been tried and convicted of the crime of murder and sentenced, even as someone who had “a testimony” but not living as I should, but while in jail got serious about Jesus and (with a little miracle after many, many years) was paroled for good behavior—and I’d be accepted for licensing as a pastor in most conservative denominations. But simple because I am divorced and I don’t fit the one accepted reason, I cannot be received for pastoral ministry. Divorce is worse than murder.
The one reason normally looked for to “excuse” a potential ministry candidate who is divorced is that the spouse committed adultery. All other reasons bar one from pastoral ministry—and in some cases almost any form of vocational church ministry. Usually the proof-text is an appeal to Matthew 19:7-9:
“They said to Him, ‘Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery’.”
The reference in the text is a quote from Deuteronomy 24: 1-4. The proof-text’s meaning is narrowed to the action of adultery as the only “exception.” It is the acceptation for an “excused” divorce. Like when one of my high schoolers missed school, if I call in with an acceptable excuse, the absence is excused and not marked against my teen. Likewise, when someone is divorced or married to someone divorced, applies for vocational ministry, if the spouse divorced from committed adultery, the divorce is excused—and the barrier is removed for professional ministry. The problem is, the loop-hole is not really, well, a loop-hole, and is a little—no, a lot—misleading and misses the point of the Old Testament reference, and bars people, unnecessarily, from potential, vocational church ministry. Divorce is worse than murder…when it comes to who can and who cannot be accepted for professional church ministry.
A text often used improperly over and over and over, especially when it is policy and written in to manuals, is hard to unlock from its faulty interpretation in order to hear what’s really there. The Deuteronomy 24 divorce-remarriage passage is one such text. But hopefully with some patience, the text will be heard more clearly.I’d like to review Deuteronomy 24 in order to see how narrow the “exception clause” really is and even if it should be applied the way it usually is by those in power over professional ministry. This is not meant to be a commentary or a deep and detailed exposition of Deuteronomy 24:1-4. However, the text in its context offers insight often missed because we are drawn to words isolated from their intended meaning and use in a text.
“When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house, and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife, and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance” (Deuteronomy 24:1-4).
This divorce-remarriage law/code here in Deuteronomy 24 is intended as social law, and implies both a social/legal and religious sphere as the context, before and after the text, suggests. The issue at hand is not divorce of marriage or even remarriage, but land and property and how families and individuals related to each other and property. Both divorce and remarriage (and remarriage again) is not just related to, well, divorce, but the issue of land and property, which were very important within the ancient Israelite world. This is a text clearly submitting the moral laws of marriage/divorce to the land/inheritance laws and intentions of God—or, at a minimum, a blending them. Remarriage to the original husband, after having married another, would bring potential land-disputes and confusion over inheritance—especially if children are involved through the second marriage. This is not just a moral issue (i.e., divorce-remarriage) as so often suggested, but one regarding a public domain/public square related issue (i.e., economical vulnerability and land-inheritance); a code that was instituted to help protect and reinforce the fulfillment of the social order God had intended under His authority.
How typical is this of marriages, anyway? How many female divorcees return, after marrying a second husband and then divorces or widowed, to the first husband? Is there no guilt on the divorcing first husband? Why does this not apply to the males? The men seem to be free of the prohibition. No wonder many have turned to this text for “the exception clause” to marriage. (No wonder men like this text!) But that is not its use (which was corrected even by Jesus himself in Matthew 19 and Mark 10). I think we need to see this more broadly related to case law that deals with financial and land/inheritance concerns.
First, doesn’t anyone think it odd that the first divorce and then first remarriage does not have a defilement aspect...to be continued..
Posted by Chip Anderson at 05:10 AM. Filed under: In the Margins • Church Leadership and Pastoral Ministry • Gemara (expository notes) •
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