27th Sunday Year B
27th Sunday Year B – Love and Completeness in God
Today’s readings are about love, about relationships, about completeness and about us coming together in body and in spirit as one – man with woman, and us with God.
Our first reading tells us the story of the origins of mankind, the origin of equal parts that together become one whole; the origin of marriage and the origin of family life. The story of Genesis is one of scene-setting for the rest of human history; it is the story of God’s love being expressed in creation.
God made the world and all that is in it. he made man and He made woman. He made them in His own image and likeness, as equal parts of the same body. He made them to share in His love of and for, them and they did this most completely by becoming one.
So, what happened along the way to change all of this? What happened that resulted in the practice and acceptance of divorce? Divorce is not just a recent creation or innovation of our modern times. It has been around for thousands of years. Yes! Thousands of years! If we think that it is easier to get divorced today than it is to get married, it is worth recalling that for the Old Testament Jews, it was a lot simpler, a lot easier than it is today.
In those times, the husband simply had to give his wife a short note that said, “I divorce you and free you from today” and that was it. That was her cast aside and in real terms, cast asunder as she became an untouchable. And the reasons for this divorce, well they could be anything from adultery to possibly as little as being a bad cook, It came down to her being or becoming out of favour with her husband!
Jesus was very strong and very clear on the sanctity of marriage and responded to the test put to him by the Pharisees, by challenging them to think on why it was that Moses allowed the note of dismissal or divorce. It was because of their own wants and desires; their own refusal to accept the teachings of Genesis, of God’s plan for humanity. Their insistence on having the easiest of lives, without care for consequence or responsibility. Their refusal to accept that marriage was so important, that, “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body.”
That God’s plan, was that man and woman should be joined as one; that they should live as one; that they should love as one and that this love would then allow them to show to the best, their love of and for Him. Marriage is sacred and holy. Marriage is the joining together of one man and one woman.
Is it simply the case that we can dismiss this out of hand, as maybe being more relevant to the time of Christ but completely off track for us here and now, today? After all, we do not have “Notes of Dismissal” any more. We do not casually and carelessly dismiss and discard our partners today. Divorce is not that “throw-away” or casual today. While it may be not that hard to get a divorce, it does at least require a visit to a court of law! And we do have to say surely, that we live in different times today, where we have more pressures than our ancestors of old. Of course we need to be able to be free to change, to react, to move on, to make different choices that reflect the different challenges and changes we come across. And of course we are a developed society, completely capable of deciding such matters for ourselves. Aren’t we?
Well are we? Really? How are these arguments different to the ones put to Moses in his time? In what way do they demand anything other than the same freedoms that the early Jews sought: those same self-centred, self-servings wants and desires that they had?
We do have to accept that we live in different times, with challenges of stress, anxiety and fast-changing demands on our lives. Marriages and relationships break down, of course they do! People are hurt and isolated by divorce and separation and we need to look to provide comfort and support, inclusion and invitation, space and time for them to heal. Especially us here in our church community where previously we may have been amongst the first to cast stones and to exclude and isolate.
We also have to accept that we live in times when our faith and our right to practice that faith are being pressurised from all sides. We have unborn babies denied the right to life. Babies with imperfections in body or mind being killed off without a second thought. Catholic adoption agencies closed because of state refusal to acknowledge our faith and allow us to practice it. And we have of course the many challenges on what actually constitutes marriage.
In accepting that we live in these times, we must not accept these challenges in silence and give our agreement by our none-response.
We do need to check and to challenge and to speak out about what we believe and about what is counter to those beliefs as Christ did in today’s gospel.
We do need to become as little children. We need to take in and soak up the teachings of love, of family, of Christ, of creation, of commitment, of responsibility and of setting example, exactly as children would do, with openness and readiness, with a willingness to accept and strength to challenge what is wrong and to say it as we see and hear it.
We pray for all married couples and those contemplating marriage. We pray for all who are divorced and separated or going through breakdowns in their relationships – that they seek the support, guidance and strength of the Holy Spirit to fully enjoy and reflect God’s love of and for them and their families in their lives. And we pray for all single people that they live lives full of the love of God and this is reflected in how they relate to each other.