I got a “help please” text from a friend today. She sent along a flyer that outlines an upcoming message for the youth group her middle-school-aged child has been attending. The topic? Sex, human sexuality, and basically all the related stuff.

The flyer is pictured below, but here are a few highlights:

“In this message, we aim to present Jesus’ own words on the issue and help our students begin to see how Jesus’ view on sexuality isn’t just true, it’s also really really good.” (emphasis mine)

“To unpack this topic, we’re looking at a conversation Jesus had with some religious leaders in Matthew 19. In this passage, Jesus is asked a question about divorce, which he uses to lay out the Christian view of sex, marriage, and what it means to be human.”

&

“We’re going to walk through it in four parts and Jesus answers four big questions for us:

1. 1. Q: Why does it matter what I do with my body? | A: We are all made in the image of God.

1. 1. Q: What is marriage? | A: Marriage: a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman before God.

1. 1. Q: Why do we want things the Bible says are bad? | A: Sin has corrupted our desires.

1. 1. What if I don’t fit into the typical mold when it comes to my sexuality? | A: Marriage isn’t for everyone.”

I replied to my friend (who reached out to me because she knows that I’ve spent the last few years studying Matthew and that the Read the Bible Better Members Study is going through Matthew with a fine-toothed-comb.) I’m glad she did. I certainly had some thoughts.

Here’s the short version: The main points outlined for this message are based on a really irresponsible interpretation of Matthew 19:1-12. The way they’re representing Jesus’ words and interaction is not only contextually ignorant, it’s also touted as Jesus’ teaching on topics that, in truth, Jesus didn’t address at all. The subject Jesus addresses in Matthew 19 is not human sexuality; it’s not even really fair to say its marriage. These massively important are being shared with kids and represented as Jesus’ teachings on these topics, which they’re simply not. And everyone should have a problem with that, regardless of your views on sex.

Below is what I sent back to my friend (minus a few personally identifying details). It’s long, but it’s thorough. To the best of my abilities, I’ve engaged quality scholarship (Bibical, historical, & cultural), critical thinking, and sound methodology to help explain what’s really going on in Matthew 19, and, with that, directly respond to the 4 questions the flyer claims Jesus is speaking about in this passage.

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Please note: I wrote this as if I were talking to a middle-schooler. I have a child about that age, and so I tried to write this in a way that would be accessible for her, but would also faithfully convey the complexities of the what’s really going on in Matthew 19.

The framework the teachers seem to be starting with here shows, unfortunately, that they’re not understanding the story of Matthew 19, and then taking it and messing it up in how they use it. It says they’re going to use “his own words on the issue,” but the problem is that this moment in Matthew 19 really isn’t about the subjects mentioned on this handout at all.

Let’s pretend there was a kid at school who was your rival in soccer, but went to a different school. Let’s say the kid thinks that some play your team made wasn’t fair. But your team won the game because of the play, and the kid’s mad. So, he asks you a question about the fairness of some detail of the play – in front of a big group of kids from both of your schools. 

So, first, you know this kid’s motives are probably not kind. He’s your rival. And, basically, he’s looking for an opportunity to make you look bad. His example is about the fairness of a specific play, but what he’s really implying is that your team is full of cheaters and that the ref let you cheat. You know it. He knows it. Probably most people listening know it too. 

So, say you defend your understanding of the play, how it fits into the specific rules of soccer in your league, and why the ref let it happen. You talk about the ways certain rules work, different strategic approaches, and etc etc. 

Later on, would it be fair for someone to take a recap of your conversation and say, “here, this is everything you think about referees? And this is exactly what you said about referees. And, in fact, you had some great thoughts about the referee of that specific game, and we all need to read these words so that we make sure we understand EXACTLY what you think about that speecific ref and referees in general.” Sound fair? No. because that’s not what you were talking about, and you might have answered really differently and said different things in different ways if that had been the actual topic in front of you. 

And that’s what a lot of Christians do – mostly with good intentions and out of simple not-knowing – when they take words said by Jesus or a biblical author and try to use them to give “answers” about a lot of things. 

So, that’s the first thing to remember. Context matters. So, here’s a bit about the context of this story in Matthew 19:1-12.

Jesus has already made quite a splash in the region where he’s been based: Galilee. And he’s already publicly criticized and caught out lots of Pharisees and other high profile people who are widely believed to be the “experts” on the law (insert basic explanation of “the law” = Hebrew scripture = legal & religious foundation for their lives, etc etc). 

At this point in the book of Matthew, Jesus has just left Galilee and entered a new region, Judea, and (as he did elsewhere), he’s getting a lot of attention from the public – in part because he was a well-known & successful healer. The Pharisees (denomination of Judaism at the time, with a lot of emphasis on meticulous acting out of all the rules) there have probably heard about his reputation, and are approaching him to try to trick him and (probably to) discredit him as soon as he enters their area. He’s a threat to their power and influence (and probalby many of them sincerely felt concern for influence they saw as “wrong” because of their own preconceived notions), and they’re playing defense. 

It’s probably also helpful to know that the author of Matthew was writing mostly to well-educated Jews, for whom questions like the ones the Pharisees asked (meaning it’s actual intent, which I’ll explain in a minute) would be really important. The underlying question (which had a little something to do with divorce and almost nothing to do with sexuality) was the kind of stuff that probably kept them awake at night. 

Since Matthew didn’t start each section of his gospel with a section about “here’s why I’m included and emphasizing the things I am,” it’s important that we do the work of remembering that as we read it. It makes a difference. So, we have to remember not only who Jesus is talking to and how they relate to him, but also who Matthew is talking to, and how they relate to both Jesus and Matthew. 

One of Matthew’s big concerns was helping other well-educated, thoughtful Jews of his time reconcile their faith in Jesus with their Jewish faith and culture. He went to great lengths to show that Jesus honored and elevated the existing Hebrew scriptures. He was helping put their minds at ease, because following Jesus’ teachings was kind of a radical thing to do and they needed reassurance, like we sometimes do, that the things we’re doing really do honor God, even (and especially) when some of the loudest voices who claim to totally know what God likes are telling us we’ve got it wrong.

All of that matters in this interaction. 

When we look at the actual conversation (19:1-12), because that is the whole conversation, and it’s not fair just to take a few bits of it and separate them from the whole conversation), the first important thing to notice is HOW the Pharisees ask the question.

They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” (v3)

This might seem like it’s mostly a question about divorce (though, not sex). But, in some ways, divorce is just an example being used to ask a different thing. They’re really asking 2 different main questions, kinda at the same time: 

The first thing they’re asking is the biggest question: “Are you going to go against what Torah says?” Jesus has already been asked this question again and again and, consistently and emphatically, he upholds and honors the Hebrew scripture. One of the things his critics said about him was that he was trying to break with the law, but he says himself (repeatedly) that he is not breaking with the law. Instead, he’s challenging the way it’s been understood. 

The other question, which is maybe even more the focus here is about something being discussed and debated as a big deal in Judea, 2,000 years ago.

The law, as it was written in Deut 24:1, just says that a man can divorce his wife if she “does not please him because he finds something about her objectionable.” (That’s in the NRSV.) This is the part of the law they’re asking about. Over many many hundreds or thousands of years, the way people understood and applied this had changed, partially because the world had changed in that time, and probably partially because people tend to move toward what they think they can get away with because doing the hard thing is harder. 

It’s also important to know how big of a deal divorce was then – and not just because people disagreed about the proper reasons for it. <Insert stuff here about how dependent women were on men for a means by which to live and care for their children, though women could remarry freely, it wasn’t usually that simple. Also how important honor and reputation were – and divorce wasn’t exactly a gold star.>  Especially at that time/place, marriage & divorce were issues that directly and deeply affected the lives of virtually everyone. 

So, in that region and at that time, there were two kinda “main” takes on the allowable reasons for divorce. It was a controversial topic. One camp thought that a husband could divorce his wife for basically any reason. And this seriously meant any reason. Think of husbands divorcing their wives because they burnt dinner too many times, or because their wives fought with their sisters. Or because their wife didn’t always agree with them or anything really. 

Some people argued that because of the way the original law is written, this is allowed. Because the wife isn’t pleasing her husband in some way (with no real limits on how big or small that matter was). End of story. At Jesus’ time, this was a very popular interpretation and the logic behind most [Jewish] divorces in the area. That’s probably because this was what was easiest for husbands who could look at it this way. Because everyone can understand the appeal of doing whatever they want and not having to care about how it affects other people.

Then there was this other group who thought that Deut 24:1 should be understood with somewhat narrower parameters. They thought that it really meant that the husband could divorce the woman if she had done something displeasing, but only in the sexual realm of the marriage. At the time, this also included a husband thinking his wife wasn’t “modest” enough in her dress or her manner of speaking, or just how she responded when a man looked at her. We could have a whole different conversation about the unfairness of that approach too, but that’s how it was at the time. So, this second camp said that a husband could divorce his wife for reasons in this category, but not for just anything. 

So, what’s really important is to actually look at the question the Pharisees ask him. This – as logically makes sense – is how we can get our best clue about what the conversation is about.

You might notice that not only do they not ask him about sexuality or the definition of marriage (this was not even a topic at the time, because society had a totally different set of rules around both marriage and relationships between men and women… the verbiage we use now can’t really be applied to their lives in any way that’s fair). 

They ask him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” Knowing what you now know about this time and moment and the people involved, you probably can catch the two big important details here. They’re asking if it’s lawful. That’s the first idea I mentioned: they want to know if he’s going to go against the law (because that would be an easy way to completely prevent him from having any influence over the Jews in the area). 

They are also asking about divorcing for any cause. The NIV says “for any and every reason?” This points our attention directly toward the discussion about the way the old law was being applied in that day, and the people arguing about whether or not a man should be allowed to divorce his wife because she didn’t do a good job of milking the goat or broke too many jars of well water.

So, in response to this, although he does actually respond to each of the points at issue, he also does something unexpected (and his move here is #ClassicJesus). 

He flips the script on what they’re even talking about. Instead of nitpicking the wording of this particular law and what criteria a man should have to meet in order to get rid of his wife,  he starts by redirecting their attention toward a bigger idea. 

He points back to the very beginning of Torah (Genesis for us) and what it says about the creation of humans and how they’re designed to join forces and become something together that is different than either of them could be on their own. And that this synergy is God’s creation and by His doing and design. There are different ways of understanding the nuance of what he’s communicating here, but it seems that he’s kinda saying “hey, maybe the topic shouldn’t be who has the right to divorce whom and when, but instead, we should be talking about God’s vision for marriage, the potential in such a thing, and how important his/her marriage is meant to be to a person.” 

His response is also a bit of a double-punch because as he points his audience toward God’s bigger picture intentions, he does so by pointing toward the creation stories. The creation stories were held up by the Jews of the day as a picture of God’s ideals. So Jesus is kinda redirecting their attention away from when men should have the right to dismiss their wives and toward the idea of spouses working together and what God’s intentions are for people who come together in marriage. AND he’s doing it in a way that would be very hard for them to argue against without getting caught in the trap they tried to set for Jesus (saying that Torah was wrong or unimportant). 

What Jesus is doing here is something it would be good for ALL Christians to learn to do. He’s challenging the idea of using a single section of text for the “proof” of anything, and instead saying, “hey, look at the bigger picture.” 

We should also give Jesus some credit; he does go on to address all the little points they’re bringing up. He isn’t dodging the question. They respond to his statement about the original creation stories by asking why, then, did Moses give them instructions for divorcing. Jesus basically just says “this is because people are a mess. So, even though men and women ending their marriages wasn’t the original design, Moses provided a framework to do something that was going to happen anyway. People are going to end up with divides in their marriage, so out of a place of understanding [and as a way to protect the less powerful parties in marriage, the women], Moses gave us some guidelines.”

Jesus then goes on to say, “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity and marries another commits adultery.” 

So, Jesus takes the two ideas from the different camps and kinda doubles down by putting forth an idea that is even more restrictive than either of the two. He says that anyone who divorces for any reason other than a woman sleeping with someone else and then remarries is committing adultery himself. Not only is Jesus giving his own definition of what “something objectionable” should be understood to mean from Deut 24:1, but he’s also creating a scenario in which the man can be called an adulterer…something that no one was trying to talk about in the conversation before that.

It’s important to remember that Jesus often did this exact thing. He’d take something that the people around him held up as the example of being “righteous” and he would say, “Nope, sorry. You have to look at that totally differently.” There are a bunch of famous examples of this in Matthew 5. But Jesus’ main point wasn’t trying to create a new even pickier, stricter rule – that wasn’t Jesus’ style or approach.

Instead, he puts forth these even more strict parameters to make a point. He’s saying, “if you are really so committed to God’s way of doing things, then you should stop trying to figure out just how much you can get away with and still be on the ‘good’ side of the line. Instead, you should remember God’s original vision for this thing and then draw the line even farther back so that you don’t even wander up toward where the limit might actually be.” 

The last part of this conversation is really interesting and important.

In response to Jesus’ even more challenging beliefs about acceptable reasons for divorce, his disciples say, “Whoa, if that’s how it is, then maybe we shouldn’t get married at all.” 

And Jesus responds first by saying that, yes, it’s true. This standard is too high for some, and that only those to whom God gives the ability can live up to it. He then goes on to talk about men who are celibate. We often think of “eunuchs” as men who’ve had their testicles surgically removed at an early age. This was a fairly common practice in many of the cultures in the area at the time and was done for various reasons. But in this setting, eunuch really referred to any man who didn’t engage in sexual relations. (Women weren’t considered or included in this language, simply because of how male-focused the culture was at the time.) 

So this included men who were impotent, or who chose celibacy – in addition to those who were physically castrated and, as a result, lacked a sexual drive. Jesus talks about those who choose celibacy as being a special group, and in his entire response to the disciples here, he makes it clear that his teachings about divorce and sex are a high bar and that not everyone can accept them. 

So, when we remember the entire context of this conversation, it might be fair to see that Jesus’ closest followers – who he’s called to him in order to help perpetuate and share his message – are responding to just how high the bar is. And in the context of the conversation with the Pharisees just before this, many scholars think it’s fair to see that Jesus, in his response to them, is just reinforcing, again, how important lifelong monogamy is – in addition to saying that being celibate/single is a very high calling – and not for everyone. 

In light of what the flyer talked about, I think it’s important to re-read what they said they’re using this passage to discuss and ask ourselves if it’s fair or responsible to use Matthew 19 as a basis for trying to address these questions. 

In regards to the bullet points on the handout: 

There is an emphasis on God’s special designs for mankind in Matthew 19, but while #1 on the handout seems to imply that Jesus is talking here about God’s care for our bodies and how we use them sexually, the topic is really about how we use the specific language of the law when it comes to engaging with people to whom we’re committed in marriage. We’ve already talked about how the references to the creation story are included to convey something specific, and it’s about marriage, not human sexuality. 

As for #2, Jesus isn’t addressing, in any way, what we would call the definition of marriage. Not only is this (as I’ve discussed at length) NOT the topic of the conversation recorded here, but this isn’t even a conversation Jesus would think to have. The conversations and vocabulary we have around this today are completely different than the way marriage and things related to it were understood 2,000 years ago in Palestine. It’s simply not fair to take words Jesus said that just happen to reference men, women, and marriage and try to use them as his ultimate statement on what marriage even is or means. This is like the soccer example above. It’s just not fair. And it misleads people in ways that can cause and have caused a great deal of harm (see: persecution for gay people for centuries…).

It’s also important to remember that Jesus often taught about priorities. That might not be a word he used a lot, but it was the essence of a lot of what he did teach. Like the divorce question here. Instead of answering about the details of the language of the law, he talks about the priority God places on committed union between two people and how it is a thing of God’s design.

When it comes to gay people/homosexuality/etc it’s really important to know that Jesus didn’t talk about it. At all. (This is part of why people try to take Jesus’ words on other subjects and apply them to this topic, on which they are focused). 

Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount is understood by basically all Christian scholars and teachers to be Jesus’ main message summarized, covering what he understood God’s highest priorities to be. And he never talked about men having sex with other men or women having sex with other women or anything else like that. That was happening around him and in the culture, and it’s not like Jesus didn’t know. Jesus wasn’t naive or ignorant. And yet, it wasn’t where he focused his attention. 

Instead, he talked about how we shouldn’t put energy into deciding whether what other people did was right or wrong and that we should take good care of the people that society turns its back on. Those were some of his highest priorities. We should think about and learn something from that fact. Regardless of what his specific ideas could have been about homosexuality, he didn’t find them worth mentioning. 

As for #3 on this handout, it’s hard to see how Jesus’ words here could even be framed to respond to this question (about why we want things that “the bible says are bad.”) What I will say is that some Christians start their ideas about God and humanity with the baseline idea that humans are messed up and broken. They approach life with the idea that how we engage with God is and should be based on and understood through the lens of this brokenness. #3 in this handout seems to be rooted in and more focused on this way of approaching God.

On the other hand, some Christians start their ideas about God and humanity with the baseline idea that man and God are interconnected and linked in a sacred way that can never be broken. They approach life with the idea that how we engage with and relate to God is and should be based on and understood through the lens of this connectedness. The Bible starts its story of God and humanity with this idea, and that’s worth remembering. 

As for #4 on this handout, I think it’s important to remember that the people writing it aren’t coming from a neutral place and trying to understand Jesus’ words as he intended them. That’s basically all of what I’ve said above. And yes, Jesus does talk about people who choose celibacy as part of what he says… but he also talks about people who are castrated (intentionally or by accident) and people whose anatomy is sexually dysfunctional in the same sentence. There’s nothing in what Jesus says that is about people who are gay, and he certainly isn’t suggesting that a life of celibacy is the choice that some people should make because their sexual identity isn’t approved of by the larger religious body. In fact, what he says is that it’s a really hard path and that it isn’t for everyone. If he thought it was “the” path for a whole group of people, doesn’t it follow that he might have said so? If he’s talking about anyone specifically, Jesus is talking about himself here – not gay people.

When we look at what’s actually happening in this interaction, I can’t help but think that the question, “What should people who don’t fit into the ‘typical mold’ do with their sexuality?” as a little too similar to the original question about the ins and outs of when people should and shouldn’t get divorced. And we should remember that Jesus’ response to that was basically, “Hey, you’re missing the point.” 

I’m not saying that Jesus didn’t have thoughts about homosexuality or human sexuality in general. But I am saying that 1) he definitely isn’t talking about them in Matthew 19 and 2) he didn’t talk much about sex anywhere, and he certainly was quite capable and willing to boldly articulate the things he did find worth his emphasis and focus. He spoke at length in much of the rest of the gospels about what his priorities and focus were. 

If we want to follow Jesus’ lead, we need to start by focusing on what he focused on and not letting ourselves get distracted by things other people (like the Pharisees in this story) think of as crucial details. 

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This ends what I shared with my friend and what I have to say about this at the moment. We can do better; we should do better. There is way too much on the line.

Below is the original flyer for any who are interested in it in its entirety.