Mark
10:1-12
For anyone who grew up around the
time I did or earlier, you will recall that divorce was a pretty rare
thing. Not unheard of, but socially
stigmatized and something that just wasn’t done. Now contrast that with today’s culture, in
which nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, and where divorce is pretty
much an accepted thing. I don’t read the
tabloids except in the supermarket line, but it seems to me that every tabloid
cover shouts about this or that celebrity marriage breaking up.
In today’s reading of St. Mark’s
Gospel, we are presented with Jesus’ clear and rather blunt teaching on
marriage and divorce. And while we perhaps
don’t realize it today, Our Lord’s teaching was fairly radical in his time –
counter-cultural even. A man’s right to
divorce his wife, who was more or less treated as his property in those times,
was a pretty-much accepted thing, and the Pharisees could point to chapter 24
of Deuteronomy to justify that practice.
And while elsewhere Jesus claimed not to overturn the law but to fulfill
it, in the area of marriage and divorce, He clearly is overturning the teaching
of Deuteronomy, and pointing His listeners back to the way God created us and
what God wills for us.
Sadly, in our day Our Lord’s
teachings on marriage and divorce are becoming more and more, rather than less
and less, counter-cultural. Easy divorce
has been with us for most of forty years.
And while Jesus clearly refers to the complimentarity of the sexes – “male
and female He created them” – we’re now seeing our culture and even some faiths
completely change the very definition of marriage. Facebook, I was reading the other day, now
defines 56 different genders in which members can identify themselves. Fuddy duddy that I am, I thought there were
two!
So here’s the thing – it is now more
important than ever that we who are sacramentally married BE a sign to the world
around us of what marriage is intended by God to be. A sign to our children, our neighbors, our
Church community, everyone. And what is
that that God intends us to be – a “one-flesh union” – both literally and
physically, but above all that our union, our unity, come before all else in
our lives. That others look at our
marriages and say “I want that.” That
others look at our marriages and say “wow – real, lasting, self-giving love is
really possible.”
Because what God ultimately intends
us married folks to be is a symbol to the world of Christ’s self-giving,
self-sacrificing love for His bride, the Church. A sign of His persevering love for His bride,
but also a sign of the joy of Christ’s love for the Church and the Church’s joy
in being so loved. That by our lives
together and our sacramental love for each other, the world may come to know
the love of Christ – a love which never ends.
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