Why Does Jesus Mention Divorce in Luke 16:18?

Mike Leake

“One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong…”

That’s a little ditty from Sesame Street. But it was running through my head as I was studying for Luke 16:14-31 this past Sunday. The whole chapter has money and resources as a theme. But then in verse 18 we read this:

Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

What does divorce have to do with anything preceding or following? Why did Jesus all of a sudden start talking about divorce in the context of money? Was it that divorce was expensive? Was it because their greed was causing the religious leaders to overlook the Law on divorce? Or was this simply source material that Luke was using and in his source material there was a statement about divorce so he included it? These were some of the options I was faced with as I wrestled with this text. I came up with something different and I will propose it to you.

What if Jesus isn’t giving an instruction about divorce here as much as he is using it as an illustration? What if this verse isn’t so much about divorce in the way we typically think of it, but rather it’s all about divorce in another way?

The Context

There are two themes that emerge in both 14-17 and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in 19-31. There is an obvious discussion of wealth. The rich man can pretty clearly be seen a portrayal of the Pharisees who were “lovers of money”. And there is an obvious connection between verse 16’s “Law and the Prophets” and the rich man’s brothers not listening to “Moses and the Prophets” in verse 31. In both instances (the rich man in the parable and the Pharisees) there is a casting aside of the law.

This entire section, I believe, is meant to drive us to verse 31. If you aren’t responding to what you have right now, if you cannot see Messiah right in front of your face, then you aren’t going to respond with even further revelation. They are so blinded by money and the present kingdom that they are ridiculing the One who is proclaiming, as well as bringing, the Kingdom of God.

So what does divorce have to do with any of this?

Why Mention Divorce?

I believe Jesus mentions divorce because this is precisely what they are doing with God’s Law. They are casting it to the curb and shacking up with power, prestige, and possessions. If they were really listening to God’s Law—in a covenant relationship—then you wouldn’t have someone like Lazarus uncared for. If they were really treasuring their relationship with God’s Law then you would see them rejecting Jesus or the kingdom in which Jesus was proclaiming.

Consider verse 16 and 17. Verse 16b is a little confusing as to its meaning. Does it mean that people are pressing into the kingdom? Does it mean that the kingdom is being passionately proclaimed? I’m not certain, but it doesn’t really impact our meaning in this discussion. Only note that Jesus moves from the Law to the gospel. And verse 17 is his way of showing that in His Kingdom the Law isn’t tossed aside to the curb it is actually fulfilled. They are making the law void and thus committing adultery with possessions and such. But the gospel is fulfilling the Law.

Warrant in Paul

I believe we may have some warrant for this way of thinking in Romans 7. Remember that Paul and Luke were friends. So it wouldn’t be surprising to find some similarities. In Romans 7 Paul argues this:

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

It’s not exactly the same as here, but I believe this gives us warrant to say that divorce/remarriage can be used as an illustration of the Law/Gospel relationship. And I believe that is precisely what Luke is doing with Jesus’ words here in Luke 16.

The Pharisees, because they are rejecting Jesus and the new life in him, are still married to the Law. They have not died and been given new life. Instead they’ve divorced themselves from the Law. They’ve kicked it to the curb. And there is now a great chasm between them and righteousness.

Conclusion

None of this is to say that the Bible is silent on the issue of divorce. I believe Jesus is clearly and directly speaking on the issue. And I think Paul speaks to the issue as well. But here in Luke 16, I do not believe that is the main topic at hand. Rather it is divorcing ourselves from the Law—or to apply that a bit differently—we are divorcing ourselves from God’s claim upon our lives.

The Social Media Day of Holy Week

Mike Leake

thThe 2017 word of the year for the Macquarie Dictionary was….

Milkshake duck.

If you’re scratching your head, that’s okay. What is a milkshake duck? It’s a person who was wildly popular on social media but then later was revealed to be a type of villain. The phrase comes from an Australian cartoonist who fictionalized a “lovely duck that drinks milkshakes” but then gets canceled because we find out the duck is racist.

Milkshake duck is evidence that social media is a weird place. You can go from hero to villain in only a matter of moments. I’ve had my own experience with this a time or two. Social media is a wild place where someone could even post a Scripture passage and then get mauled. Questions are often insincere and meant as traps rather than for information.

Yet, social media can also be a place where good can be accomplished. It’s tough to navigate because on occasion we’ll get so accustomed to the negative flow that sincere questions are read with snark.

Tuesday of Holy Week is Jesus’ day on social media. He’s teaching in the temple but rather than authentic interaction he ends up getting a ton of silly questions that aren’t real questions—they are just meant to trap him.

They’ll Listen to Him…

When I preached on Mark 12:13-37 a few years ago I struggled with how to make contemporary application. But when I saw these words in Mark 12:6 I was gripped:

“They will respect my son”

It’s heart breaking. It’s words in the parable of the tenants of the father sending his son to the people. “If I send bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh maybe they’ll respect him and listen”. But they say, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.”

The religious leaders new exactly what this parable meant. They were rejecting God’s own Son. That’s why they wanted to see Jesus thrown in prison. They wanted him done with, because they understood he was talking about them. He’s the son that they aren’t listening to—they’d rather kill him than listen.

How do you get to that spot? Especially if you are a religious leader. You’ve given your whole life to studying God’s Word, to being pleasing to God and then you end up saying, “here’s the son—let’s kill him.” How does that happen?

They recognize the Son. They see that he comes from God but they don’t like him and so they want to have him done away with. What is happening is that their foolish hearts are being darkened. They actually think they can trap Jesus because they’ve convinced themselves that they are more “in the know” than the Son of God. Their quest isn’t about finding truth—it’s about escaping God’s ownership of them. It’s unbelieving doubt

Barnabas Piper says it well:

When unbelieving doubt poses a question, it is not interested in the answer for any reason other than to disprove it. Unbelieving doubt is on the attack. It is much more interested in the devastating effect of the question itself to erode the asker’s belief and hope in what is being questioned. The asker is not asking to learn; she is asking in order to devastate. She does not want to progress to an answer. She wants to show that there is no answer. Unbelieving doubt is not working toward anything but merely against belief.

And this is the kind of thing we see played out on social media, in the news, etc. on a daily basis. Truth doesn’t matter as much as “gotcha” questions.

Tuesday of Holy Week is consumed with unraveling all these “gotcha” questions. Jesus masterfully navigates the questions and pulls everyone back to the kingdom of God. This too is part of His mission of making all things new. On Monday he shows his intention to rescue the vulnerable. On Tuesday he fights for truth, wrestling it from the hands who would dice up truth and then spread it in halves for their own benefit.

The Good Question in the Midst of Noise

I think there is one more person that Mark wants us to notice in this narrative. In the midst of all these dumb “gotcha” questions is a scribe who actually asks the important question. “What is most important?”

There is something a little different about this scribe and Mark clues us into this by his use of the word “hearing”. It’s often used of one who is hearing with perception and not just hearing with the ear. There is sincerity with this scribe. He wants to know—what is the most significant—which commands supersede them all.

Jesus answers by combining Dt. 6:4-5 (the Shema) with Leviticus 19:18 and essentially says the Law comes down to loving God completely and loving others perfectly. His answer puts him in a unique camp because there is no evidence that before Jesus these two commandments were combined. Jesus, as usual, is in his own camp.

The scribe affirms what Jesus says and even adds a bit of his own flavor saying that Jesus is correct that love is more important than sacrifice and burnt offerings. Which is essentially saying that relationship matters more than the religious practices and rituals of his people. And Jesus tells this guy that he is not far from the kingdom. He’s not saved yet. He doesn’t fully understand that to love God means to embrace Jesus. But he is at least walking down the correct road.

Thankfully, Jesus is able to sift out the sincere questions from the trap questions. That is good news. And it’s good news that he welcomes these type of questions. Ask them.

Truth matters.

That is what Tuesday of Holy Week teaches us.

A Constructively Destructive Day One

Mike Leake

187539_cleansing-of-the-temple_lgI’ve always found the Palm Sunday story a tad anti-climactic. There is massive build-up with Jesus riding into town, the people shouting Hosanna. The little header above the text of Mark 11 usually says, “The Triumphal Entry”. It is Messiah coming into his kingdom. And this is what we read:

“And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.”

Maybe he was just tired from a long trip. And tomorrow morning he’ll get to work establishing his kingdom. But what do we read next?

“On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.”

What Mark doesn’t tell us, but other gospel writers do, is that this first little look through the temple is when he cleared it of the moneychangers. It’s day one of Holy Week and Jesus is cursing a fig tree and crafting a whip to run people out of the temple.

The people expected when Messiah came he would rid the land of wickedness. And that typically meant rid the land of any foreign rulers. But here Jesus is doing something different. The King is coming into his kingdom and he is judging fruitless religious leaders.

The King is establishing his kingdom and step one is to root out the imposters.

When the people shouted “save us” they thought it meant from Roman rule. But Jesus spends day one saving them from religious leaders. That should be informative for us.

The Meaning of the Fig Tree

The atheist Bertrand Russell was astonished at this cursing of the fig tree. He said, “I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history.” The conservative scholar T.W. Manson was just as befuddled:

It is a tale of miraculous power wasted in the service of ill-temper (for the supernatural energy employed to blast the unfortunate tree might have bene more usefully expended in forcing a crop of figs out of season); as it stands it is simply incredible.

Wasted power.

It’s actually the opposite. Jesus is using His power to tear down the fruitless fig tree of abusive religion. What was supposed to be a lighthouse was turned into a business. And this did great harm to many people. Jesus spends day one of Holy Week tearing this down.

When we think of this week we tend to think of Jesus’ action of making all things new. We don’t tend to think of Jesus sitting opposite the temple. We think this week is about Jesus building his kingdom. And it is. But on day one he is building in an unexpected way.

His cursing the fig tree, overturning the tables in the temple, isn’t ONLY destructive. It, like the healing of a man with leprosy, is both constructive and deconstructive. It’s destructive to a dead religious system. It’s constructive to a real vibrant union with the God of the universe.

When Jesus turns his back to the temple….when he curses the fig tree…when he overturns the tables…do you know what he’s doing? Do you know what he’s doing for you?

Day one of Holy Week is far from anti-climactic it’s what the rest of the week is built upon; namely, Jesus using His power to rescue the weak and the weary for the glory of God.

Deconstruction and Filling the Gap

Mike Leake

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“And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them.” (Luke 15:12)

When I read that verse I think about the space between those two sentences. Dad give me my inheritance…………dad gives inheritance. What happened in that gap? Think of all the ways in which the father could have responded.

For one, this request is deeply offensive. This is a rejection of the family. He’s walking away from all the family stood for, all that he had been taught. He is taking his Proverbs 6:20-21 necklace and throwing it in the weeds. Does the father bring out the guilt card in an attempt to get the son to fall into order?

It is also evident that this son is acting in foolishness. Does the father raise his voice and point out the ignorance of not only the son’s request but also his inevitable actions? Does the father sternly warn him of his coming demise—reminding him of all the Proverbs and Sirach 33 and what the elders would think of such a thing? Will he use his power and position as a father to keep the son?

Perhaps the father could be passive aggressive. “Fine, if this is what you want then this is what I’ll give you. But this is not going to go well for you and don’t come running back when you run out of money, because I won’t have any.” I suppose the father could also try to shame the younger son by comparing him to his well-behaved older brother. “Why can’t you be like your brother…”

The biblical text gives us nothing in which to fill that gap. Or does it? Can we not learn something from the father’s response to the son returning? He clearly loved his son. Would any of the above options fit the character that we see from this father? Clearly, not. The silence of that gap is intentional. The father took the risk of letting his son have his rumspringa—a time of ‘running around’. And it seems he did in silence.

I believe the silence of that gap is what encouraged the son to return. Do prodigals return to an “I told you so” father? If they are won back by anger and control are they actually won back?

The Gap and Deconstruction

If you aren’t yet familiar with the term “deconstruction” you soon will be. I could try to define it philosophically and quote people like Derrida—but that’d be nerdy and you’d get just as lost as I do when trying to understand philosophers. Besides, the philosophical concept isn’t what people mean these days when they use the term. It’s basically that a whole generation, because of various scandals, abuses, and political wrangling have begun to question whether the faith they were taught is actually believed by those who taught it. How much of this thing we call “faith” is just excess and how much of it actually has to do with Jesus?

Many are trying to untangle a ton of knots and are doing it in the context of a ton of pain. It may not be entirely accurate to call them prodigals—because many aren’t leaving their father’s home in order to party in the far country. To be a bit more accurate many are exploring the far country because the father who taught them all about the faith didn’t seem to believe it himself. They are often leaving the far country on the search for Jesus. In the parable the father’s house is rightly positioned as the place of truth and love. It wouldn’t be accurate to slide evangelicalism neatly into that spot.

Using this parable may not be exactly a one-to-one correspondence, but I do believe there is much to learn. I think we can learn from the older brother as well as the father. Many of the responses I outlined earlier are typical of how someone might respond to a person asking for the inheritance and leaving the home of evangelicalism. And those responses, I would argue, have more in common with the older brother than they do the father. The father is the one we need to learn from in this parable. And I see two actions the father makes which can help us as we navigate this season of deconstruction.

Lessons From the Father

Again, I do not want to imply that evangelicalism has the truth market cornered. There are excesses and a type of deconstruction does need to happen. We aren’t consistent. In the parable there is nothing but pig slop in the far country. It’d fit well with our typical arrogance to neatly position ourselves as the father’s house but we evangelicals need to acknowledge that we have pig slop on our own farms and there might be more of Jesus out in the far country.

Having said that I do think there is some correlation here to the prodigal. There are some things being picked up in the far country that do not belong in the father’s house. You’ll notice in the text that though the father clearly loved the son he did not turn his home into the far country in order to keep him.

The Father will always remain true to Himself. He doesn’t have a wax nose that shifts with whatever our fallen inclinations are treasuring in the moment. He remains the treasure. He must remain our standard of truth. And we must remain steadfast to the truth as we see it in Jesus.

But we also need to prepare the soil for the prodigals return. There is famine and pig slop out there. Just as an evangelical obsession with power is collapsing, so also other worldviews seeking to fill that void will inevitably collapse. They too will experience famine.

I think this is why that gap is silent. The father knew it would eventually collapse and he wanted the road on which the prodigal would return to be void of roadblocks. He wanted his love to be the last thing the prodigal remembered as he walked out the door and into the far country.

Conclusion  

Truthfully, if our community looks more like the elder brother in the story then the prodigal probably isn’t going to return. And that isn’t a bad thing. The elder brother remains in the house but he’s just as far off from the father as the prodigal was. Tim Keller is correct:

“If, like the elder brother, you seek to control God through your obedience, then all your morality is just a way to use God to make him give you the things in life you really want.” (Keller, 39)

Filling that gap with elder brother responses isn’t going to bring back the prodigal, nor do you even gain much if you convinced him to stay. You’d just further encase his heart to the “far country” even if he stays in your house.

I also write this as an encouragement. I believe if you do have communities that are marked by the father—lovingly preparing soil for their return while remaining steadfast in truth, then there is a day coming soon when you’ll likely see a busy highway of returning prodigals.

But this is where we need to acknowledge that not a one of us is actually the father in this parable. It’s not our mud houses that we want people to return to, it’s the Father.

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