Marriage: law or love? Sunday readings 27B (Y-not question the Sunday Readings)

Thanks CathyT for your thoughtful commentary on this Sunday's Gospel.
The church tries to stick to retaining the sanctity of marriage, but look at the farsical annulments and marrying outside the church etc?! A lot of us or our families can get caught up in these scenarios?!
A lot can/try to justify their relationships using the Bible, just like in the days of Jesus.
It's important I suppose "When we hear His words, not to harden our hearts"?!
A lot is about relationships in the end, whether we sign pieces of paper or not, I feel?!
Children also find it easier to relate to each other than adults, since they don't way up the pros and cons etc?!They seem also more trusting in others, less calculating etc?!
georgeh

Thanks, Cathy. My waiting was well worth the delay in my receiving these pearls.

• The words: “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate” were put to me by an author I've forgotten as having to do with the union between God and humanity. Does anyone remember reading something similar and how it was explained?

• “We are obviously a long way from this ideal world, although it’s not too hard to catch glimpses of the Reign of God in our present world, in both our everyday lives and in things we hear about that happen “out there” in the wider world. The important point, though, is that by its very nature, this transformed world which Jesus preached cannot be brought about through rules and laws. It is a world that can only come about if our hearts are genuinely transformed. This cannot be forced. It is something that can best happen when people feel deeply and genuinely loved.” Cathy, rules and laws have delayed, indeed created the need for, the redemption of the world. In my own decision to marry, I was confronted with the concept of ‘corban’ that I was consecrated to the Church as a priest and that nothing can separate me from that. I was to be transferred to another diocese to avoid scandal (my people stated they did not care if I was married or not as I was their priest) to the Church, Mary to give up our child to be reared elsewhere, and the laws kept intact. Love for my people, our offspring to come and for his/her mother had to be the prime choice so I gave up the active ministry of the priesthood for the rigidity of the rules.

• “But if we can still retain a child-like openheartedness, a sense of wonder, and above all a willingness to be open to love – then we are helping to bring about the transformed world which is the context for Jesus’ teaching on marriage.” Cathy, the wonder of my having fallen in love with a people so responsive to love was made ineffective by strict application of canon law but did not cease as love is great … one can take it with you. I believe I’m a better priest for having had the experience.
• “So, is the Church just being faithful to Jesus’ teaching in its stance on marriage? I would say that, so long as they turn his words into a hard-and-fast law, they are doing the very opposite. Jesus’ attitude to marriage only makes sense if you see it as part of his vision of a world transformed in love, and by definition, you cannot bring that about through force!” Cathy, you have summed up the whole situation. Rules do not fit in where love is liberated. I am not justifying my breach of vows but explaining how love resolves all problems. Cathy, I do hope I have not distracted from the wisdom of what you have given us as reflection.

Francis

My purpose is to remember the love that created me in God one with my brothers and sisters and with all life. My function is to extend that love and unity each moment to all.

OK, at the risk of seeming really conservative- marriage is a decision into which people enter freely. Well, the parents enter into it freely, but the children do not. In a sense, the children are forced into the family relationship- since they did not choose existence, but the actions of there parents forced it upon them.

In this sense, the parents would seem to be obliged, therefore, to give the rights and well being of the children higher consideration then their own happiness. Well, I know many people will reply that divorce often makes kids happier than they would be- but I don't believe this is the case. Instead, what the parents have to do (since it is their responsibility that the children exist) is ensure there is a happy, stable family life, at whatever the cost is to themselves.

In fact, if we read the Gospel carefully, Jesus advocates celibacy. Maybe the Church should promote that part of the Gospel more.

Cathy, although there is much to ponder on in your reflection, I offer another for our consideration.

Francis

Reflections on the readings…Presented by Fr Claude Mustovic
This is one of those Gospels that might tempt the preacher to call in sick. There is no getting around its challenge, no watering down its message, no way to avoid the pain that its truth may inflict on the already wounded. Jesus makes clear that love and risk are to be valued over what C.S. Lewis called ‘self-protective lovelessness’. God created us to interact, to engage with others in love, for without risk, there is no growth. Before his wife, Joy Davidman died of cancer three years after they were married, C. S. Lewis wrote:

‘Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung, and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, even to an animal... lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket... it will change. It will not be broken; it will be¬come unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.’

We are all capable of giving and receiving love. This is how we approach the reign of God - become God-like. We may in¬vite hurt and we risk hurting others – but happens in the knowledge that love can change us for the better. It is tempting to imagine that by avoiding intimacy or friendship one can avoid the dangers of suffering and grief.

Morris West in The Devil's Advocate presents Blaise Meredith, a decent but passionless priest, whose spirituality and service of the church was at the expense of self-knowledge. He never understood his need for loving. He served a God of love without knowing love.

He discovers he has cancer and now needs to know himself before facing his God. Church doctrine and law provide no solace or meaning. A bishop friend, when conversing about their beliefs and values, offers Meredith a mirror image on his priestly ministry:

There is no passion in your life... You have never loved a woman, nor hated a man, nor pitied a child. You have withdrawn yourself … and you are a stranger in the human family. You have asked nothing and given nothing. You have never known the dignity of need nor gratitude for a suffering shared. This is your sickness. This is the cross you have fashioned for your own shoulders. This is where your doubts be-gin and your fears too - because a man who cannot love his fellows cannot love God either. How does one begin to love? From need.

Blaise Meredith has tragically lived without love, and failed to realise his need for it. He has lost touch with his own needs because his energies were directed towards meeting the needs of a system. Love of God and people in the course of his work have become routine. Confrontation with death and support of his friend enables him to slowly acknow¬ledge his own heart's desires. He rethinks his understanding of life's meaning in the light of his new appreciation of love, reconciliation and forgiveness.

So through some genuine encounters with people he meets in his final task for the church, his sterile celibacy is transformed into the warmth of genuine and particular human love. Here, the love he receives generates in him a compassionate love for others, and a real commit¬ment to people whom he would previously have discounted and condemned for the scandal of their life choices. Dividing people into categories of `good' and `bad' no longer operate in his world. He becomes aware of the complexity of people's lives and comes to an acceptance in tune with the unconditional love of the God in whom he believes.

Genesis states: ‘It is not good for anyone to be alone’. It portrays a very tender and caring God who creates an environ¬ment for the newly formed creature, man. Yet, we hear that this creature is not complete.

People are made for relatedness and attachment. We cannot be whole persons by isolating ourselves from the world and each other. Genesis says, ‘.... they become one flesh.’ It does not apply only to marriage. Whilst the context is marriage it must also speak those who are not married: religious women and men, single people, homosexual people. When Jesus was asked whether a man is allowed to send his wife away, the question is not exactly about divorce, but about domination and manipulation in the relationship - more specifically male domination. The male-biased [patriarchal] approach to marriage is out of the question. Woman and man are created equal - with equal rights and equal responsibilities. Alice Laffey, in An Introduction to the Old Testament: A Feminist Perspective says these verses seem to signify that ‘the helpmate’ for Adam is Adam's equal.

And Jesus' comments seem directed more toward the equality of women and men. I wonder what the fundamentalist who believe that a man is the head of the household would make of this!!!!

Mark looks at a setting where issues of justice and power are often overlooked: marriage and divorce. These issues are outside his group and within it. Jesus’ opponents were not concerned about divorce, but what constituted the legal grounds for a man to dismiss his wife. In Judaism, and in the Greco-Roman world, repudiation was very commonplace and regulated by law. A woman could be rejected even by an insignificant action, such as allowing food to burn. Without being sucked in, Jesus addresses the system of power and privilege where a woman who has been dismissed by her husband became a social outcast without being able to support herself. He questioned the superior pretenses of the Pharisees who rejected women, just as they rejected children, the poor, the sick, and people in general. Jesus' teaching is innovative because, while defending women, he speaks on behalf of those who are rejected and excluded, those who had no rights.

Genesis' original vision was the equality between men and women. Marriage does not deliver a woman into a man’s power but instructs him to break with his patriarchal ‘house’ in order to ‘become one flesh’ with his wife. Patriarchy [control, domination, abuse], not divorce, drives a wedge into this equality. No one can be treated as an object.

The reference to the acceptance of children, least of the least, articulates our way of being in solidarity with the ‘little ones’ in daily life. In every social relationship, power is unequally concentrated, and our task is to redistribute it. The alienation in marriage coming from abuse of power is applicable in racism, sexism, ageism, classism, homophobia and other forms of oppression. In the gospel we witness Jesus' quarrel with his disciples because they refuse to let children approach him for a blessing. The genuine teacher should not waste time with children. They had missed the entire point of Jesus' teaching: they had not assimilated Jesus' attitudes nor the criteria of the Kingdom. Jesus’ anger goes back to not being able to tolerate contempt toward the marginalised. Children were unable to claim special consideration. In their lack of privileges and power, children are an example for the disciples. As disciples, they are expected to put aside any motivation of ambition or selfish pretense.

The gospel of Jesus reconciles the gap between persons, recreates true human value, and returns us to ‘shalom’. As relationality is central to life, alienation is a form of death. To be alive, truly alive, is to know the joy of the Other and the other; to be alienated from either is to experience death.

We need, however, to widen our horizons beyond marriage. The Gospel's overall concern is that commitment is the foundation or basis of any relationship. No person, married or single, can ever come to wholeness living a detached and un-committed life in a world filled with persons. Nor can we throw people away. Jesus stresses that full humanity is found in handing ourselves over to others in ongo¬ing commitments. It is paradoxical, but still true that we find ourselves by giving ourselves away.

This Sunday, many of us might find ourselves pushed to think beyond cultural myths of marriage to ask ourselves what God really wants for us in relationship with one another.

All people, women and men, are made in God's image. That deep truth of who we are as God's children must be upheld in whatever else we say about human relationships. God creates us for community. To become more fully who we are, who God made us to be, we need to walk alongside another who will be with us for the long haul, who sees us at our best and our worst and will tell us the truth about both, who knows us deeply and loves us unconditionally. Jesus worked so hard to make sure his community of disciples was a community of equals that it’s a terrible distortion for us to have our church continue to be a community where there are some who have power and position and in fact, contrary to everything Jesus said, can lord it over others. We have a church that is not reflective of the truth where everyone is made equal and that no one is to lord it over another in his community of disciples. Part of this lording over others is denying the truth that people are made for relatedness and attachment and that we cannot be whole persons by isolating ourselves from the world and each other.

My purpose is to remember the love that created me in God one with my brothers and sisters and with all life. My function is to extend that love and unity each moment to all.

What wonderful responses to your great reflection, Cathy!

As usual may I present a random tangent!

Smokey Mountain is the rubbish dump of the city of Manilla in the Philippines.
Manilla has some 11 million people and about 50% of them live in slums.
Some 30,000 of them live on the edges of Smokey Mountain.
One of the most incredible documentaries I have ever seen was about the lives of the people who live on this massive garbage dump.
What really struck me at the time was the wonderful sense of solidarity and hope was displayed by those who lived on the edges of this stinking mountain to earn a living from scratching through the putrid garbage for anything that might possibly be of some value.
Added to that there are many smouldering fires in various parts of the dump adding to the poisonous pollution of the site.
There existed a deep sense of community and loyalty because they were all in this struggle for life together and they saw that there was a future beyond this mountain in spite of the filth and garbage, the pollution and the poverty, as long as they worked together.

All over the world there are examples of people who live in circumstances that to us are incredibly degrading and inhuman and yet those people have inside them an incredible strength and perseverance to keep struggling because there seems to be this great bonding.

These thoughts developed as I was thinking about this gospel dealing with marriage!
Crazy mind!

It seems to me that many parents have this same wonderful energy and attitude when it comes to bringing up their own children.
What gifts these new lives are.
And how strong is the drive in the parents to do their best for them, no matter what!

Nothing is more important than these relationships between people.
Riches don’t count as long as ‘we are all in this life journey together.’
The riches are in the bonds between people
The riches are in the self sacrifice for the benefit of the children
That is probably as good as any reason to point to this year’s Social Justice Statement.
The family is still the most important cornerstone of society.
And the crux of that relationship is not about ‘rights’ or ‘duties’, but about ‘service’ and ‘sacrifice.’
For each other.
For their children.

Cathy, thanks for your sensitive approach to the question of marriage in this reading. These days, every family seems touched by marriage breakdown, if not in the immediate family, certainly in the extended family, and in the lives of close friends.

What I have come to realize with the passing of the years is that there is no divorce for a couple who have children. It is in a child that a couple become 'one flesh', and a child cannot be sent back to where it came from! For sure, there may be a legal divorce, but the marriage is not dissolved; there are only degrees of separation. In most instances I know of, couples continue to be involved with eachother (even if it is trying to avoid being both present at their extended family's happenings), and that involvement continues, right into grandparenthood. And that whole situation becomes even more complex as additional marriages producing more children are laid over the original one.

What the solution is, I don't know. All I see is the tremendous unhappiness to everyone, family and dear friends, not just the couple and children concerned, when a marital relationship becomes embittered. Certainly, continuing to live together is not a solution.

Cathy, you say that

'in Jesus’ time, marriage was governed by legalism: it was a legal transaction, and one in which, from what I’ve read about the times, women were more-or-less treated just like the property of the man.'

Perhaps we need to revisit the whole idea of marriage. While I would never want women to be regarded as the property of men, we need to ask what were the benefits to both in this arrangement. Did it mean, for instance, that a woman and her children, were then protected from from sexual predators? That a man could believe that the children he was supporting and protecting were his? Were these benefits enough for both to give up their sexual freedom? Do such rights and responsibilities need to be legalized, formally agreed to by both parties?

Marriages based on love are breaking down too often in our society. Perhaps we need to have a look at how other cultures 'manage' marriage. I have met girls in other cultures who think arranged marriages are a good idea, as long as the right of veto is there for the girl. I also once knew an older couple - both university graduates from another culture - happily living in an arranged marriage some forty years later. Love grows after marriage, I am told. This is not to say that arranged marriages are all successful, because they are not. That system is very open to abuse too, if families arrange marriages without the son's and daughter's welfare and happiness as the top priority.

Our culture is very different to the culture of Jesus' time. The contraceptive pill and the means of preventing and treating STDs allows much more sexual freedom to both women and men. How we live with that is another matter. In other times, when marriages were arranged for political and economic reasons, the partners- well, at least the man, would have their affairs of the heart elsewhere. Perhaps this could work now, if a marriage contract was was for reasons other than romantic love, but more about a mutual desire for children and a supportive interdependence?

Now, I realize that I am talking about a very basic and narrow view of marriage. This does not mean that I am against any other form of marriage, whether de facto, same-sex, or without children, or polygamous or whatever. It is just that the basic form of marriage has reached a crisis. Can we do it better?

This is where I think that your commentary, Cathy, on Jesus' words about marriage provides a really good starting point. Many thanks,

Sue

Cathy, you have opened up this urgent topic most effectively. As Kay wrote, it is "one of the most powerful & meaningful reflections on Christian marriage that I have ever heard of". You have presented the law of love in opposition to the law of - whatever: of nature? of social necessity? of church regulation? As you write:

...Jesus is preaching against legalism in this passage. This is not surprising of course, since the predominant picture of Jesus that emerges from the Gospels is of someone who condemned legalism and rigidity, who wanted to draw into the community those who were excluded, and who valued love and compassion over obedience to the letter of the law.

We're looking forward to many more contributions being added to what's already here, some of them quite mind-blowing. Sue in particular has put the accent squarely on the children and their welfare!!!

For my own part, I wanted to comment only on the children as metaphor standing for those who belong to the kingdom. The gospel image has sometimes been used to present a soft and inadequate idea of Jesus.

“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

In Mark's narrative Jesus has already left the familiar homely encounters in Galilee and is on his way to Jerusalem, knowing pretty well what's likely to be ahead of him there. So the teaching gets a little tougher. Any image of Jesus, "meek and mild", welcoming the children is likely to be misleading. Rather the disciples may have sensed that he was showing a tougher front, and felt the time for gentle encounters with mums and little children was over. But Jesus was "indignant" [!], and grasped the occasion to proclaim another dimension of his very tough message.

There can be no short cut for us here. We have no option but to work out what exactly he means. He has told his disciples of the harsh realities ahead; he has set his face resolutely towards Jerusalem. What does he see in the children that leads him to say: That's how you've got to be?

I would like to reprint here what I wrote earlier in the week as part of last Sunday's extended discussion:

I find myself pondering on the ever unfolding relationship that I perceive to be an actual reciprocal relationship with the One in whom I trust/believe. The only concrete ideas I have about the Other come wrapped in phrases like "God is love", and "Are you not worth more than many sparrows?" and the like...

Most of the unfolding is going on daily in me: maybe that's how it is with little children (3-4 yr-olds) who grow so quickly and eagerly over against the stable Other of the parents whose world is perceived as essentially beyond, and yet encompassing the child's whole universe.

This leads me to suggest that getting to know "god" is similar as a process to the 3/4 yr-old getting to know the parents. And parents for their part recognise how the experience changes them in very many undefinable ways. So can we say that the eternal immutable deity is able to experience what parents experience as their children grow in relationship to them? Or should we say it the other way round: that this experience of parents is the closest humans ever got to being "like god"?

Since god is love, then god can not be immutable, immobile, eternally unchanging, static, statuesque, already complete and perfect. Love is a dynamic of relationship: such is god.

It might be possible to sum up:

• Relationship is central to any discussion about the kingdom of god: to belong to the kingdom is to relate to the Mystery we call god in a personal way, as exemplified in the way Jesus related to the Mystery he referred to as "my Father".
  
• So when he uses the phrase "like a little child" he is referring to the way a little child relates, or to the relationship a little child has to its parents. Not, I would insist, on anything in the mental status of a little child as such.
  
• Characteristic of the relationship of a little (3-4 yr-old) child to parents is the way the child is focussed on the parents: they are truly the centre of its universe.
  
• Further, the child is growing very rapidly, very energetically, testing, experimenting, expanding its sense of self over against the stable Other of the parents.
  
• It may be hard to say what "trust" means in the mind of the little child, apart from the sense that the parents can be relied upon to be there, to fix things up, to sort things out, to make tomorrow be another day of adventure and wonder.
  
• Finally, I wonder is Jesus suggesting (as I have suggested above) that the Father must be seen as responsive in this reciprocal relationship, as a parent is seen by the little child as responsive to its needs, its dreams, its bursting energy.
  
• When I have problems with images of "god", then I find it useful to go abstract, to consider the Other in this relationship as the Life Force, the Evolutionary Environment, the "Tug of the Transcendent".

Somewhere in the house we have a large picture of Jesus welcoming the children, a picture rescued from a sacristy or a church hall years ago. I've just exchanged a word about it with Sue, and her comment was this: The message is that the disciples ought not to follow the Jewish practice of endlessly debating the Torah; they should get on with living it, with all the commitment of little children to everything they do, totally immersed as they are in the mystery of life unfolding within them and around them every day.

It's a good point, and maybe it says it all.

'TonyL
"A post is a free gift, and it will go where it pleases."'

Cathy

Once again thanks to you and everyone else for a marvellous and thought provoking set of responses.

The context of the gospel is the legalistic mindset of the Pharisees and their endeavour to catch Jesus out.

In a society where the divorce rate nudges 50% it is easy to focus solely on painful the failure of marriages and the church's(sometimes insensitive ?) responses to those situations.

(1)The Positive Side :

However there is a positive side to these readings that is perhaps easy to overlook.Jesus is articulating a wonderfully positive ideal of marriage.

In those many marriages that do last there are some truly marvellous relationships.

(2)Genesis 2 (Free of mysogyny )

Jesus uses Genesis 2 ( today's first reading ) to push beyond the Pharisees mindset.( I hate the translation 'helpmate' whch is what I heard at Mass this morning )

This from Barbara Reid in a commentary in "America" 3 years ago:

The creation of woman in Gn 2:18–24 has often been misinterpreted in misogynistic ways: that the creation of woman as second, and from the man’s side, makes her subordinate to and derivative from him. And the Hebrew phrase in verse 18 has been poorly rendered in some translations as “helpmate,” making the sole purpose of woman’s creation to be an aid in man’s work. More recent translations have rightly rendered it as “suitable partner” (revised NAB) or “a helper as his partner” (NRSV). These capture the nuances of the Hebrew words for “strength, indispensable aid,” often used of God’s saving help, and for “corresponding to.” As a myth of origins, Genesis 2 tells of how human beings came to be and how male and female relate to one another with mutuality and partnership. Having been created from man’s rib (literally, “side”), woman is to stand alongside him as his equal. As the man’s exclamation in verse 22 affirms, she corresponds to him exactly. She is strong like him (“bone of my bones”) and weak like him (“flesh of my flesh”).

Jesus quotes this text to his opponents, changing the focus from divorce to God’s original intent for oneness and mutual correspondence.

(3)Concessions ?

The challenge of the breakup of relationships seems to have always brought concessions.

The only reference to divorce in the Torah is Deuteronomy 24.

This from Peter Feldmeier ( again from "America" )

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is tested by the Pharisees about Moses’ allowance for divorce. Jesus appears to articulate an absolute rule: no divorce, or at least no divorce and remarriage. Early on the church struggled with such an absolute pronouncement. We see the struggle even within the New Testament itself. Matthew’s version of the same story (19:9) adds an exception Jesus appears not to have made originally, for sexual immorality (porneia). Paul refers to Jesus’ original teaching (1 Cor 7:10) and apparently feels free to nuance it to fit the conditions of the church. In this case Paul allowed divorce and remarriage between believer and unbeliever if the unbeliever wished it. The value he draws upon is God’s will that we live in peace (7:15).

(4)An alternative ( and more compassionate,sensitive and sensible ?)Christian response - The Greek Orthodox approach to marriage divorce and remarriage

http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/liturgics/athenagoras_remarriage.htm

(5) The second half of the Gospel:

In the meantime Jesus puts children ( one of the marginalised groups ) at the centre of things.The disciples continue to miss the point and want to control things.

Maitland

Could I also point out two sets of consecutive commentaries Peregrinus wrote for us in 2006. The first was on Jesus' comments on adultery and this was followed up with a four-part series on the divorce question. Both sets of commentaries were closely related to the sections of scripture under discussion this weekend. Here's the link to the first commentary and at the end of that there is a link to the 4-part series:

www.catholica.com.au/peregrinus/006_pere_160806.php

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Wow, what an amazing thread this turned out to be. Many thanks to everyone who put so many different perspectives on this issue which is so central to most of us. And of course I particularly want to express my appreciation to Kay and others who had such kind words to say about my contribution which started off the discussion.

There's so much more that could be said about the issues that have been raised, and no doubt the conversation will continue even after this thread has disappeared "over the horizon"!

Cathy Taggart

I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused. - James Broughton