What God himself, then, has yoked together no one must separate.”
be good
no questionwhat is
is what isnothing more
nothing lesswithout standing
stand downsit cornered
slip awaygrow elsewhere
and elsewayfor now
no pullingno pushing
no birth
Any “therefore” is dependent upon its preceding data points.
Obviously “one flesh” means more than one flesh. Though there are few parables told in this second half of Mark, this can be seen as a parabolic response to a typical challenge. To rebuild a legal or social edifice on a thought-opening rejoinder brings with it a great weakness. In this case it is most clearly a retrenchment of patriarchy that grew from the identifiers originally chosen (male language and interpretation from a male perspective). Don’t hesitate to choose differently.
One of the choices here is which phrase to put first. Are humans to refrain from sundering that which has been yoked? Is a yoking by G*D not to be sundered by humans?
Yet there is a tension in the G*D/Human partnership that sometimes needs noting as a Human/G*D partnership. As in this larger yoked pair each urges the other on to more beauty and each restrains the other from knee-jerk ugliness, so there is an evolving quality to their relationship. In this, ancient stories call out to be retold from a different vantage point.
For one who later will be “forsaken”, abandoned, divorced, this is a great cry for premeditated mercy as a basic grounding in any economic, political, military setting. It is a remembrance of an exiled Garasene. This is a recollection of healings, of lifting up and restoring to community. This is a seed seeking healthy soil and soil yearning for a new seed.
This is a call to fisherfolk to look around them again. Can they see the way the world has been separated into this group with power and that powerless mass? If they can glimpse the need for good news, will they begin to use that analysis to craft a way to re-yoke the world into a better image through hospitality and partnership?