Franciscan Friar Fr. Paul Gallagher reflects on the Gospel readings for the Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time. How has God brought significant people into your life at different points of your life?
The content is edited by Franciscan Sister of Christian Charity Sister Anne Marie Lom and Joe Thiel. The excerpts from the Sunday readings are prepared by Joe Thiel. To read or download the complete pdf with excerpts for your prayer, please click here Franciscan Gospel Reflection October 6 2024. Excerpts are from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No portion of this text may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Mark 10:2-16
The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” They were testing him. He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?” They replied, “Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.” But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
In the house the disciples again questioned him about this. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.
Background:
Last Sunday in the Gospel Jesus’ disciples were upset because there were people using the name of Jesus for healing who did not belong to their company. Jesus insisted that those who use his name for good things cannot then speak against him. The second section of the gosp0el addressed the importance of being aware of what causes a person to fall into sinfulness. And the last part of the Gospel followed that theme by addressing the effects of sinfulness on children. “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, …” (Mark 9:42ff)
There are only three verses between the end of last Sunday’s Gospel and the text for this Sunday. “Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor? Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another. He set out from there and went into the district of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds gathered around him and, as was his custom, he again taught them.” (Mark 9:49-10:1)
Mark’s community would have recognized that Jesus is in the location that was governed by Herod, the one who imprisoned and beheaded John the Baptist. They would also recognize that the Pharisees’ question regarding divorce is not a simple request to hear Jesus’ teaching on the matter, but an attempt to trap Jesus and diminish his status among the people. In the Hebrew Scriptures divorce is frowned upon but permitted.
Jesus’ response to the question of the Pharisees focuses on the disparity between what is permitted and the ideal that God intends. Jesus states that God’s intent from the beginning of creation is that husband and wife should be one. What God brings together as one is incapable of being divided. What Moses permitted was quite different. People commonly believed that God was acting through nature and through their cultural practices. Just as children did not choose their parents, children did not choose their spouse. God was responsible and acting to bring two families together through the marriage of their children. (Marriage was much more the joining of two families than two individuals.)
In the second part of the Gospel Jesus addresses the disciples, away from the crowd and the Pharisees. Here he raises the possibility for a woman to divorce her husband. This would have been quite shocking for his disciples. The Jewish culture would not have considered this as even a possibility. Women were valued for their reproductive possibilities. A woman and her ability to have children was understood as belonging to either her father or her husband.
In this culture, if a husband divorced his wife, shame was cast on the men of her family. The male relatives were expected to make the situation right even if that meant bloodshed. If a couple was found to be in an adulterous relationship, the husband of the woman was shamed. This male-dominated way of thinking could not conceive of adultery by a husband as a sin against his wife. Jesus’ teaching would be a totally foreign perspective for the Jewish community. However, Roman law at the time did allow for a woman to divorce her husband. Jesus’ perspective would have been difficult for his Jewish disciples to accept as representing God’s perspective because it seemed to agree with their Roman oppressors.
The text offers no insight as to why the disciples prevented children from coming to Jesus. Instead, the text says only that Jesus was upset with the disciples’ behavior. Nor does Mark tell us how it is that one should be like a child. Without an explanation or the context for Jesus’ actions, the apparent intent is to show who Jesus saw value in. Jesus is treating those who had no status, in society or in the religious tradition of the day, as having value and importance in the eyes of God.
Reflection Questions:
- What was the last wedding in your family? Are you aware of how the family of the bride and groom participated together in the celebration? What kind of impact on the two families do you think their marriage will have as it unfolds?
- How has God brought significant people into your life at different points of your life?
- Jesus seems to have deliberately traveled into the area where his cousin John was executed and seems to find insight in Roman culture for how God sees women’s situations. What does this say to you about your image of Jesus? How does Jesus’ action in the Gospel text speak to you?
- What do you hear within yourself as Jesus in the Gospel distinguishes between what Moses permitted and what God intended?
- What are you feeling within yourself when Jesus tells the disciples to let the let the children come to him?
- In today’s Gospel Jesus seems to be deliberately challenging where people of the day had become accustomed to making distinctions between man and women and adults and children. Can you take some time to talk with God about a place where God may be challenging you, where you are feeling called to challenge another, or some other thought that arose within you as you reflected on this Gospel?
