The Good News for the Day, May 24, 2024
Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time (345)
Jesus traveled widely around Judea and across the Jordan.
As usual, the public gathered around him and, as was his custom, he again was teaching them.
Men of the leading religious party approached him and asked, “Is it legal for a husband to divorce his wife?” He told them in reply, “What did Moses tell you?” They responded with, “Moses wrote for us to make a bill of divorce and let her go.”
Jesus says instead, “Because of the defiance of your hearts he wrote this rule for you. But at the very beginning of creation, God made them a male and a female. For this reason, a person [“anthropos” (person—not “aner” (male)] shall leave father and mother and be joined to their spouse, and the two shall become one flesh, one “Mortal Life.” So, they are no longer two but one life. Therefore what God has linked this way, let no human break the bond.” (Mark 10)
Scholars remind us that in biblical times, because ancient cultures often saw a woman- wife as a possession and an object, divorce essentially cut her off from family and support. She needed to find some family or person to provide for her.
But, surely, Jesus is more aware of deeper matters – of the spirit involved in marriage-and-divorce, of respect and love for individuals, of seeking love behind and within the Mosaic law, and of our meaning of family and sex. The inclusion in the gospel of this conversation with religious leaders and interpreters of the law – as well as the follow-up – is meant for our inspiration – to teach us something about loving.
Marriage is about transformation into a new life. Most marriages know this. You are not the same person after you commit to marriage. And it is an element of divine love that unites the spouses – each enriching one another with God’s gifts and helping each other adjust to the new life and become a better person.
This is the way Jesus and God see marriage. The link between the two spouses is the spirit of God – which is a love that is more than any kind of human engagement, but aware of profound growth, mutual respect, a process of transformation, and the growing pains involved in all of these.
Jesus presumes, as many of us do, that the breaking of the bond – divorce – implies that person is incapable (as of now) of that committing and special love which is of God – and therefore to enter a new sexual/spousal relationship is simply to carry that deficit into what is basically an adulterous situation… A “marriage” that is not of God.
Human law – whether Moses or American – is not about the realm of the kingdom of God – but only a human effort guiding towards that belonging together where the bond itself is God’s spirit.
The Good News is the great gift of love in all its manifestations – spousal love, love for children, erotic love, forgiving- and- understanding love. That is God in all of these – not an awareness of God, but God’s very real presence.
jorisheise 