In today’s Bible verses, the confrontation continues between Jesus and the Jewish authorities, who now send Pharisees and Herodians, themselves mutually hostile, to seek to provoke and condemn Jesus [ … ]
Jesus tells us that, from the beginning, a man and a woman joined in marriage would become one flesh. There is this complementarity of man and woman in sexual union. Divorce marks a falling away from God’s intentions for men and women in marriage. It is an aberration, a failure of docility before God. Jesus tells us that Moses’ command (see Deuteronomy 24:1) was because of the hardness of people’s hearts in rejecting God’s initial ordering of male and female sexual relations. Indeed, it can be seen as a liberal command, protective of women, in that it required the husband to write out a certificate of divorce, freeing the woman rather than merely excluding and rejecting her. There is no real trap here for Jesus, as the Pharisees tempt him; God’s creation of man and woman to become one flesh in marriage remains truth [ … ]
Jesus invites us to a life of giving. Jesus declares for the Christian an end to egotism, that hoarding of self as of property which can so restrict our lives, distancing us from God and from our fellow human beings, ultimately from perfect happiness. Our happiness is to be found in the service of God, which is also the service of others. As we give our lives away in this sense, as we deny ourselves, so we grow in community as a Christian people [ … ]
