What did Moses command you?
Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.
What did Moses command you?
Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 7, 2018
Mark 10, 2-16
The Gospel this coming week is about simplicity, not immaturity. It is about seeing with the eye of the heart into the meaning of things. There is here no condemnation of persons who have experienced the pain of divorce. It is about the relationship of creatures to each other before the living God. God is always about unity, about bringing together what is separated. The ancient tradition of equating the church to marriage, of using marriage to symbolize the church touches this very issue. This teaching of Jesus is more about the church than it is about marriage and divorce. It is a reminder to the primitive church at its very beginning that God created – God, no one else, and that this God created male and female – equal for the purpose of being in relationship, for the purpose of coming together so that in their oneness they might more fully mirror the image of the one who made them. This is a reminder for a world that has forgotten how God made us not as individuals separated from one another living in competition and sometimes hostility; but as one in union with each other and in union with God. What Jesus is saying is this: Moses allowed divorce because you were stuck on yourselves. You had forgotten that you are incomplete without each other. You have forgotten the right relationship between yourselves and God.
Fr. Tom Boyer