Jesus' Teaching on Marriage & Human Sexuality

Within the Jewish community of Jesus' day there were different schools of thought about marriage, and, in particular, about the vexed question of divorce. The two dominant schools were those of Rabbis Shammai and Hillel. Shammai took the view that a man needed a serious reason to issue his wife with a writ of divorce; whereas, Hillel said that any trivial reason - for example, if she burnt the dinner one evening - would suffice. It is worth noting, of course, that the rights were all in the hand of husband. The woman did not a say.

Given that this debate was happening, it is unsurprising that people wanted to put the question to Jesus. Jesus, by now establishing a reputation for being something of a radical, a man who ate with sinners and seemingly stretched the law of the Sabbath to breaking point, might well have been expected to give a fairly liberal answer concerning the law of divorce. What Jesus, in fact, comes up with is an answer even more conservative than Moses.

‘What did Moses command you?’ ‘Moses allowed us’ they said ‘to draw up a writ of dismissal and so to divorce.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘It was because you were so unteachable that he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body. They are no longer two, therefore, but one body. So then, what God has united, man must not divide.’

The level of the surprise is evident from the fact that the disciples felt the need to clarify the matter when they were alone. 

Back in the house the disciples questioned him again about this, and he said to them, ‘The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she is guilty of adultery too.’

If Jesus' answer seemed conservative to His first hearers, of His own day, then, in our time it will seem radically reactionary to the people of our day. Ours is an age where men and women seem to be finding ever more creative ways to live contrary to the chastity to which Jesus calls them through the Church. Yet, in the midst of it all, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Church must continue to faithfully hand on the teaching of Jesus Christ, namely that marriage is a sacrament, a holy and indissoluble bond between one man and one woman for life; and, that the only proper context for sexually intimacy is within such a bond between two people and open to the procreation of new life.

Whilst saying this, the Church continues to proclaim the compassion of Jesus Christ to those who are finding or who have found it hard to live out. Christianity is not easy, and it is not meant to be. Carrying the Cross may save our souls, but there are times when the Cross will be very heavy. All Christians should be there to journey with their brothers and sisters in difficulty, and the Church is always ready to minister God's mercy and forgiveness to those who need it.

However, there is nothing merciful about hiding the truth from people. And the truth is that when we engage in sexual activity outside of marriage it wounds us spiritually. The marital act expresses self-gift; the action itself expresses that I am giving myself to you completely. When we make that expression outside of the context of a relationship where we have definitively committed our lives to the service of the other person, then we are lying with our bodies. 

The power of physical intimacy is a deep power of our soul, and when we use it wrongly it does real damage to our relationships with others and with God, which is why the Church teaches that if we have sinned in this way it is essential that we go to confession before returning to Holy Communion.

But some people still object - this teaching does not sound like the merciful teaching of Jesus, who always loved the people and reached out to the marginalised.

Doesn't it? 

Well it depends on your standpoint.

If you were a first century Jewish woman, this teaching was extraordinary. Suddenly, you were no longer the property of your husband, to be put away if, for a serious or even trivial reason, you upset him. Here, for the first time in the debate, someone was thinking about female dignity. Christianity, today regarded by so many feminists as misogynistic, was, in its inception the beginning of rights for women, affirming in various places in the New Testament the equality of men and women before God.

And today? Who does a liberal attitude to relationship morality serve today?

Go and speak to people on the streets and you will find that the breakdown of a casual relationship is the most likely, immediate cause of their homelessness. Separation of a relationship is an expensive business, and often it is the children who lose out. According to the Joseph Rowntree foundation children of separated families have a higher probability of:

• being in poverty and poor housing;
• being poorer when they are adults;
• behavioural problems;
• performing less well in school;
• needing medical treatment;
• leaving school/home when young;
• becoming sexually active, pregnant, or a parent at an early age;
• depressive symptoms, high levels of smoking and drinking, and drug use during adolescence and adulthood.

This is absolutely not to pass judgement on anyone whose relationship has broken down. Every situation of relationship breakdown is utterly unique, and very often people find themselves trying to do their best in an impossible situation - if that's you, then the Church stands with you, and will do all that we can do to support you.

However, this is the context for Jesus' teaching on marriage. He knew that a culture which widely undermines marriage and treats relationships as transitory and recreational would have losers. Bad ideas have victims, and in this case the victims are usually the poorest. The poorer a child is, the more likely he or she is to grow up with one parent absent from the lives.

In the end, brothers and sisters, if Jesus' teaching today seems challenging to the world, then that sets you and me with a mission. That mission may, at times, mean explaining to others where Jesus is coming from in what He says about this. However, most of all, especially to those of you who are married to demonstrate and incarnate the beauty of Jesus' call to live marriage as an indissoluble sacrament, open to new life. Perhaps, only then, will the world have a chance to see.