My mother raised me alone. I cannot remember ever having my father be part of my home life.
My parents were separated … originally because my father was in the military and stationed in Germany. He met a woman while in the military, whom he preferred to be with more; so he asked my mother for a divorce.
My mother refused to grant my father a divorce; but because a legally separated couple no longer needed such permission after seven years apart, my parents were officially divorced when I was seven years old.
My mother received the news in the mail.
A while back, after my mother passed away and I was going through all her belonging, my wife and I came across some letters my mother wrote.
The letters were not officially sent to anyone that I know of. They were more like loose pages in a diary. She lamented being a divorced woman; and in one she cried out that she would have endured harsh beatings by my father’s hands, if that would have kept the two married and together.
My mother never remarried; and I now know that she did not believe in divorce … because she did not want to be judged to be an adulterer, because she left her husband for another man.
I imagine today’s Gospel reading from Mark (and Matthew 19) is where she developed that belief. That is how it sounds, when Jesus privately told his disciples, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
This is where it becomes important to understand the difference between a couple developing “hardness of heart” … desiring to find someone who will open their hearts again … and someone like King Solomon, who had many wives, but no divorces.
Last week we read from the Book of Esther, who was one of many queens to King Ahasuerus. While we did not read the part that said the king had not called upon Esther for over thirty days, we need to see how the king’s heart had wandered onto other queens. Perhaps, the king’s heart had sought someone newer or someone younger?
Still, King Ahasuerus had fond memories of Esther, who was still his queen. His soft heart towards her made it possible for him to grant her the wish that saved the lives of the Jews living in Persia.
There is no difference between a common man’s lusts for physical pleasures and a king’s. There is no difference between a woman’s excitement from a man who sees her as desirable, regardless if that man be a handsome regular guy or a wealthy prince. All carnal desires, be them within normal humans or those born of privilege, are adulterous.
This goes to the root cause of the Greek word, “moicheia,” and the Hebrew word “naaph,” where both mean “adulterer.” While the definition of both words is understood to mean (most likely) a man lying with another man’s wife, one cannot miss the most basic intent.
One cannot commit “adultery” unless one is an “adult.” Being “adult” means, “a person who has attained maturity; a grownup.” That means one’s sexual organs have matured and are activated.
It is the adult drive that compels two humans to have desires of the flesh. A couple cannot have children without having had adulterous contact. Thus, marriage is a result of one’s adult lusts.
The sin of adultery is stated in Leviticus (20:10) as, “’If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife–with the wife of his neighbor–both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.”
By stating the sin is “if a man commits adultery with another man’s wife,” it can be assumed that “adultery between a man and his wife” is not a sin. Further laws against sins of a sexual nature use the Hebrew word “shakab,” meaning “to lie with,” which implies a more temporary arrangement than the permanency of marriage. This difference would imply that “legal adultery” is an on-going relationship … like “playing house,” which includes all the sex and kids part … agreed to be for good and for bad. Illegal adultery is like stealing, thus forbidden.
The most important things to know about marriage is it is foremost a relationship between a man and a woman, to produce offspring. Second, it is to raise those children in a stable environment that includes both natural parents (given neither parent dies).
Therefore, legal divorce, as allowed by Moses, assumes a child was never conceived. A “certificate of dismissal” is due to a man having committed himself to a barren woman, or a barren man is preventing a fertile woman from producing a child.
We can see how Abram and Sarai were together as a couple, attempting to get pregnant – committing the acts of adultery – but three times other high-ranking men attempted to make Sarai as their “queen,” only to find out Abram and Sarai were an official “adult couple.”
Because the two had no children together, Abram introduced Sarai as his father’s daughter, which implied she was his sister and not his wife. She would today be called (one’s father’s) daughter-in-law. However, kings and pharaohs heard that, saw Sarai’s beauty, and felt adulterous feeling about her.
Seeing this element of children, one can then hear Jesus quoting from Genesis, saying, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and then the two shall become one flesh,” as pointing out how that is a two-step process.
1. Grow up and get married to one of the opposite sex, for the purpose of being like father and mother.
2. Have a baby (or many).
When two “become one flesh,” one has entered the realm of genetics. This means every child born is “married” to the DNA of its father, joined (or “cleaved”) together with the DNA of its mother. While husbands and wives separate after sex, and while they can legally divorce, they can only truly become “one flesh” through a child.
A man and a woman having adulterous relations with one another creates the right conditions – the proper ingredients made available together – but that by itself does not create a baby. God is the one who directs a sperm to enter the egg; and God is the mastermind that turns that union into a developing embryo – a fetus – a newborn.
Thus, when Jesus said, “What God has joined together, let no one separate,” that is minimally a directive against abortion.
The child is a miracle of God. Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah. Therefore, when Jesus told his disciples, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs,” the deeper meaning says, “Children are pure and without sin. Let all cleansed and reborn adults become children who replicate me in themselves. Do not stop them from God’s hand transforming them who will be joined in my name; as the kingdom of God can only be reached via this marriage.”
By seeing this, one can begin to understand the character that is Job. If you look closely, then you can see how Job was Jesus, well before Jesus was born.
To fully grasp that, one has to see how the epistle to the Hebrews says, “It was fitting that God … in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”
Job suffered, as did Jesus.
Thus, Paul wrote, “For the one who sanctified and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” That is like saying Job was essentially a brother to Jesus, just as Jesus is a brother to all subsequent male Apostles.
We sit now as brothers and sisters of humankind. We are called to be recognized as brothers and sisters of Christ, through the Apostleship of the Holy Spirit.
“God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels,” wrote Paul to the Hebrew-speaking Jewish Christians.
“[God has] made them for a little while lower than the angels; [God has] crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet,” wrote Paul, quoting David, from Psalm 8.
This means that just as God makes little babies to bless the adulterous unions of human males and females, God makes little baby Jesus reproductions from adult human males and females who marry God. ALL of those Apostles … just like Job and just like Jesus … were, are, and will always be higher than sinful mortals, but lower than the angels … because they retain mortal bodies.
See the halos are representative of their minds in Heaven, while their bodies are still on earth. Notice Judas does not have a halo.
Thus, Job was one to whom Jesus would proclaim, “You are my brother. In the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”
Jesus would praise Job, just as God praised Job to the elohim, which including Satan. He said, “There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.”
To understand that last bit of praise, one has to see how Job was a brother to Adam. Thus, simply from Adam having been banished from a “higher than angels” status (in the heavenly realm of Eden), to one “but little lower than angels,” as a mortal who faced eventual death, both Adam and Job were created by God. Job still maintained the integrity of being the Son of God; and Job continued that line of faith, through the Holy Spirit.
Seeing how Apostles are born from the Holy Spirit, as a continuation of the lineage begun by Adam, through Abram, David, Job, Jesus, Paul and ALL brothers and sisters who are Apostles in Christ, one can then see how it was the marriage of a physical body to God that made those “babies” capable of being born.
Thus, the “wife” of Job was not a woman – like Eve after she fell for the serpent’s trick – but the physical body that was Job. Remember, Eve was made from Adam’s rib, where the Y-chromosome equates to Heaven and the X-chromosome to Earth. Adam’s wife was XX, or fully material of Earth. Thus, the plan is for it always to be that a body of dust and clay (material elements) becomes the “wife” of God. For Job, that was his physical body; which, in turn, gave birth to the Holy Spirit Job, at the hand of God.
That means it was Job himself, as the body of matter that is completely opposite of the Spiritual realm, who spoke in Job’s mind as Satan’s influence, saying, “Curse God, and die.” The “wife” of Job was his physical body voicing doubt, because of his physical sufferings.
That means when Job said to his “feminine side,” his “earthly form,” “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” Job was saying, “Get thee behind me Satan. Has my physical body not made vows with God?” Those vows included: for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death does us part.
Interestingly, the name Job means, “Where is My Father” or “No Father” (according to some experts).
To grasp the symbolism of that name, one has to realize that Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, was in name only. The true Father of Jesus was God, just as was Adam’s.
Regardless of whether or not Job had a human father in his life is moot. God was his Father, and only by one being born of God can one truly be “blameless and upright, one who fears God and turns away from evil.”
Any lesser father cannot “make children for a little while lower than the angels.”
In a way, the lack of a father in my life kept me from being raised by a mortal who would have been suffering from a hardened heart, one who could have blamed me for him being stuck with my mother – a woman he no longer loved.
My mother did not remarry, but she married both of us to a church. She told me I would grow up and become a preacher boy.
I wanted to do that, when I was a child; but once my body began to mature into adulthood, I divorced the church and became adulterous.
In many ways, I have been Job. In many ways, we all have been placed in positions of hardship, like Job faced … for no reason or no fault of our own.
Still, we cannot choose the righteous path alone. We need help. We need to become brothers and sisters of a lineage that is raised to the point of denying Satan’s tests and temptations. We must be raised, just as Jesus instructed, “Pick up your cross and follow me.”
Only the Holy Spirit of God can give us that strength. Only a test like that Job endured and like that Jesus spent forty days in the Wilderness passing can marry us to God and make that strength come forth.
We have to become divorced from our human roots and become reborn in subservient bodies joined with God, as the little children who have no adulterous lusts. We need to mesh our DNA with that of Jesus, becoming filled with the Holy Spirit, and able to receive the kingdom of God as the reward for that commitment.
Amen