by Mark Chater
We are back in the Nazareth synagogue, with Jesus arguing as his critics use bits of scriptural text to attack him or trap him. We LGB folk have often been ‘back to Nazareth’ in that sense – wrangling over what the bible says about homosexuality (if anything!) and exchanging texts in a futile game of theological ping pong.
This summer (2024), evangelical homophobes in the Church of England have begun to leave, withhold money, and secede from normal episcopal authority, because they do not like General Synod’s very qualified decision to go ahead with prayers of blessing for same-sex relationships. The homophobes bring out the usual tired old bits of scripture to say that marriage can only be between one man and one woman.
Foremost among those tired old texts is Matthew 19:1-6, the argument with the Pharisees about divorce. Jesus is quoted as saying, ‘This is why a man must leave father and mother, and cling to his wife, and the two become one body.’ (Matthew 19:5, quoting from Genesis 2:24).
Ostensibly it was about divorce, but under the surface was the recurrent issue of interpreting scripture – and the Pharisees intended to test him on how to use scripture correctly, and who had the authority to do so. The structure of the exchange is suggestive of a larger narrative in Jesus’s mind – larger than one single ethical issue. The Pharisees’ question on divorce was answered by Jesus with a reference to creation, which is a higher-order theological concept than marriage or divorce. Working from creation, Jesus then appealed to a high notion of marriage as a very important part of the created order. In effect he secured a superior position in the argument by going back to the beginning.
those who in our own time assert the text’s restrictive intention on marriage for men and women only are committing exactly the same hermeneutical blunder that Jesus had been criticizing
We should note how this exchange is misused in contemporary church discussions on same-sex marriage. The single sentence ‘This is why a man must leave father and mother, and cling to his wife, and the two become one body’ is repeatedly taken out of context as an assertion that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. But read it again – that is not what it says. There are those who read this text as a foundation-stone of the notion of male-female complementarity in marriage, without which marriage cannot be real or divinely approved. Male-female complementarity may have been assumed by Jesus; after all, he lived in a patriarchal and (as we would now call it) heteronormative culture, and never travelled to Greece or Rome; but was male-female complementarity the essence of his argument in this text? No! Jesus’s point is that marriage is part of the created order, indeed it changes the created order by making two into one. And a glance at the context in Matthew shows us that the exchange as a whole was not about marriage, or complementarity, or divorce, or sexuality: it was about the use and abuse of scripture, and his authority to interpret it. They laid a theological trap for him, just as they do for us; and he refused to walk into it.
So here is the horrible irony: those who in our own time assert the text’s restrictive intention on marriage for men and women only are committing exactly the same hermeneutical blunder that Jesus had been criticizing. They are arguing over something that is not there. They have failed to follow Jesus as a teacher at this point.
Scripture, if used crudely, is a dangerous, inconsistent implement. As a weapon of attack it can go off in the attacker’s hands, and here it does just that. The lesson is that religious leaders should do more than simply learn how to quote specific bits of the text. Scritpure should not be used for literalistic micro-monitoring of one’s own or others’ behaviour.
Marriage comes up again when the Sadducees pose a question to test him. (Matthew 22: 23-23). This time they pose a technical legal problem, involving seven brothers who die in sequence, all of them having married the same woman; a case of such improbability (not to mention sexism) as to be absurd. Jesus’s dismissal is robust, bluntly exploding the legal question itself as well as the poor theological understanding behind it. ‘You are wrong, because you understand neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.’ As with the Pharisees, Jesus positions himself in a higher-order theological concept, this time resurrection.
In both instances, Jesus’s rebuke teaches that detailed pieces of text in scripture must be interpreted in the light of the larger picture, the grand narrative of theology; and the understanding of them must be shaped by realizing who God is. This becomes his battering-ram for demolishing the entire structure of their assumptions. He destroys their premise that the technical legal question is of any worth, and he renders redundant their assumption that scripture exists to resolve such questions authoritatively. Again, while the content of the exchange is legal and ethical, the underlying lesson is hermeneutical: the wrong questions are being asked. Start again. Let God be God. ‘And his teaching made a deep impression on the people who heard it’ (Matthew 22: 33).
So, what can we learn from this, when we are caught or trapped in a contemporary Nazareth by contemporary Pharisees or Sadducees? Here I’ll briefly suggest that Jesus offers us five powerful lessons:
- Using scripture to micro-manage other people’s sexuality is bad theology. It is an incompetent use of scripture. It is also oppressive. But we LGB people spend too much time crying ‘oppression’ and not enough time confronting their incompetent use of scripture. We should be telling them, ‘You are wrong, because you understand neither the scriptures nor the power of God.’
- Incompetent theology is to be called out. This means, don’t dialogue with them on their own terms. Show them how they have misused scripture. And in so doing, set our LGB people free from fear, self-loathing, ignorance and dependence, teaching them how the grand narrative of scripture and tradition is for us.
- Repeatedly go back to the most important doctrines in our tradition: the creator God, the incarnate God, the risen Christ, the all-inclusive kingdom of love, mercy, redemption – and let these big picture concepts govern how we interpret the detailed text. After all, we know that God, the author and source of love, is greater than any of us can imagine. If anyone imagines a god who has restrictive opinions about who can love and marry and who can’t, that god is a ridiculous god, a false god, a silly tyrant attempting to usurp the place of the creator.
- Do not, ever, let our enemies claim victim status merely because they have lost the argument. Today’s evangelicals are doing just that. They think it will work. Likewise, do not ever let them own words like orthodox, biblical, and traditional. The message of God’s expansive love is as traditional as it gets! Claim it back!
- Keep at it. Matthew 19 is only one instance of an ongoing argument that Jesus engaged in. They might not get it first time. We have to be persistent in making the same points over and over, in every place, just as he did in every synagogue.