WelCom October 2024
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – Mark 10:2-16
2 Some Pharisees approached him and asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ They were testing him.
3 He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’
4 They replied, ‘Moses allowed us to draw up a writ of dismissal in cases of divorce.’
5 Then Jesus said to them, ‘It was because you were so hard hearted that he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. 7 This is why a man leaves his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh. They are no longer two, therefore, but one flesh.
9 Therefore, what God has united, human beings must not divide.’
10 Back in the house the disciples questioned Jesus again about this.
11 He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. 12 And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she is guilty of adultery too.’
13 People were bringing little children to him, for him to touch them. The disciples scolded them.
14 When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 In truth I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.’
16 Then he embraced them, placed his hands on them and gave them his blessing.
What God has united, let none of us divide
Dennis Horton
If we were to count the hot topics facing people in Jesus’ time, divorce would have to be up there near the top of the list. Our gospel reading for this Sunday has Mark’s account of what Jesus has to say on the topic.
Earlier in the same gospel, Mark outlines in graphic detail the treatment of John the Baptist who had expressed public criticism of King Herod for his taking in marriage the wife of his brother Philip. In fulfilment of a reckless oath, Herod has John beheaded and the head delivered on a plate to Salome, his wife’s daughter. Jesus mourned the Baptist’s death, describing him in another gospel as ‘the greatest born of woman’ (Matthew 11:11).
Now time is slipping by, and Jesus is well on his fateful way to Jerusalem, where Jewish leaders are likely to look for any accusation they can make against him. A group of Pharisees, working to test him, put the simple question, ‘Is it against the law for a man to divorce his wife?’
Jesus begins by asking them to repeat what Moses had commanded. Back came the answer, ‘Moses allowed us to draw up a writ of dismissal and so to divorce.’ With the skill of a chess master, Jesus comes back to his listeners, insisting that this was a concession made by Moses for the people’s hardness of heart.
God’s original plan, discerned from reading the creation story in Genesis, was that a man would leave father and mother, and he and his wife would become one body. ‘So then, what God has united, man must not divide.’
There’s a glimpse here of the genius of Jesus as he asserts that he has not come to abolish the law or the prophets. ‘I have come not to abolish but to complete them.’ (Matthew 5: 17) The vocation of marriage, as Jesus outlines it, is for a couple to see their love as a little piece in the unfolding mosaic of creation itself, building from their love for each other and for their children something of enduring, even eternal dimensions.
Our gospel passage ends with Jesus blessing the children whose parents had brought them for the Master to touch. He was ‘indignant’ when he saw his disciples trying to send them away. ‘Do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.’ What is it we can learn from our children in responding to God’s call? Is it their trust and openness, their lack of a cynicism born of disappointment and betrayal? Or perhaps the sense of receiving something as pure gift, not earned but bestowed by a God who knows our every need?
Dennis Horton is a parishioner of St Anne’s Church in the Wellington South parish. He retired earlier this year after working as a writer for the Sisters of Mercy for 23 years. In a former life, he edited Zealandia, the Auckland diocesan weekly, for 10 years.