Gospel & Reflection for 27th Sunday.
Mk 10:2-16
The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked,
“Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?”
They were testing him.
He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?”
They replied,
“Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce
and dismiss her.”
But Jesus told them,
“Because of the hardness of your hearts
he wrote you this commandment.
But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together,
no human being must separate.”
In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this.
He said to them,
“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another
commits adultery against her;
and if she divorces her husband and marries another,
she commits adultery.”
And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them,
but the disciples rebuked them.
When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them,
“Let the children come to me;
do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to
such as these.
Amen, I say to you,
whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child
will not enter it.”
Then he embraced them and blessed them,
placing his hands on them.
Reflection
Friends, four hundred years before the birth of Christ, the polymath Aristotle wrote: ‘I can only have friendship authentically with someone who is my equal. Someone whose gaze meets my gaze, whose intelligence meets my intelligence, whose curiosity meets my curiosity, whose capacity for love meets my capacity for love. It’s only with an equal can I be friends.’ Aristotle was describing his perfect soul mate. In it, we find a beautiful description of the equality of the sexes. He was looking for someone equal, not less.
In our first reading this weekend, the Book of Genesis, which is a written version of an oral tradition simply explaining and placing God as the force and centre of everything, Adam is described as having dominion over all creatures but who does not have a suitable soul mate. Adam needs someone able to respond to his intelligence, his emotions, his personality. In the words of Aristotle, only with an equal could Adam be closely involved. To make this possible, God takes from Adam to create Eve.
These lines of scripture have been used by some in the past to symbolise, unfortunately and falsely, the inferiority of women. However, this should never have been the case. The taking from Adam symbolises the incompleteness of man. He is missing something. Only in the creation of woman will Adam be complete once more, but he is complete through Eve as his equal. “This at last is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh!” Man and woman are one.
So here, in the very first book of the Bible, written long before even Aristotle was a boy, where our early ancestors were trying to understand their place and role in the world around them, we have it wonderfully expressed what they first believed was God’s plan for them. They understood the radical equality of the sexes, where one complimented the other, doing so as equals. No wonder then, that here also we find the beginning of our Christian understanding of marriage, strengthened and built upon by Christ through His teaching. “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body.” Christian marriage is based on the equality, the oneness, of those who enter into it.
However, all of this is mocked and questioned by the Pharisees in the Gospel. But far from backing down, or diluting His teaching to make it more tolerable, Jesus intensifies the importance of the marriage relationship and His exclusion of divorce. “What God has united, no one must divide.” As God does not break His love and commitment to us, so should the marriage relationship and any taking of vows/commitments/responsibilities, reflect this total and unending commitment of God to us.
Friends, our readings this weekend clash with two of the biggest criticisms and continuing tensions of the Catholic Church in the modern world: First, that we are a misogynist organisation, treating woman as less than equal; and Second, that our understanding of marriage as both permanent and between a man and a woman, is outdated, unrealistic, and homophobic. However, in all of the verbal noise thrown around on these and many other issues, vision has always been mistaken for condemnation, and role always misunderstood as meaning power.
But the truth is that we are all called to share in God’s vision of equal dignity, love and respect; and we live out this vision and calling in different ways and through the different, unavoidable roles of our lives. Whatever our role, responsibilities or calling in life, we live not through power but by influence, inspiring each other in our shared calling to love and care as God would want us to. This vision of life in God, the ideals and values that we share with Him and each other, they are demanding and they will stretch us. But they have to because they put before us that which we believe is best for us and that which gives true glory to God.
But this vision is not only demanding, it is also reassuring. We are assured that if we fail to live up to any of God’s expectations, He still loves and cherishes us and wants a relationship with us. So, in every aspect of our lives, when we welcome the Lord’s gift of love and faithfulness, we receive from Him the strength to keep moving towards living up to His vision. Even if we don’t always hit the mark, it is the constant reaching for it, that matters to the Lord.
In the equality of our being, in the difference of our roles, the call to love remains the uniting challenge and it is through love that we become one with each other and with God.
Fr. Richard