Dear Partner in Preaching, Let me suggest a totally different way to approach this text. I’ve written it on it from the perspective of how Mark’s “divorce text” relates to questions of marriage before, and there are certainly excellent commentaries available on this theme. But what strikes me this time around is that perhaps we don’t need to read this as addressed to individuals but rather as something descriptive of, and helpful to, a community. Bear with me a moment while I explain. When this passage is read at church, we tend to hear it in an intensely personal way. This is particularly true, of course, if you have gone through...

Three weeks from today voters all over the country will take to the polls to elect a new President and a host of other public officials. In Minnesota, along with close to another dozen states, we will also have the opportunity to vote in a public referendum to change the constitution of our state so that it defines marriage as an estate solely between one man and one woman. Not surprisingly, this has occasioned impassioned rhetoric on both sides. This debate echoes, emulates, and informs similar conversations occurring in the church. I understand the passion in these conversations, knowing they stem from deep convictions about the Bible,...