27th Sunday Year B - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2009

I don't believe that Jesus was generally into laying down rules of behavior or prohibitions - as such. To hear him that way, I think, is to misunderstand him. But Jesus was not slow to challenge, and to challenge radically.  He called to conversion - to step back and to critique fearlessly many of the attitudes and practices commonly accepted in the culture, and to begin to act in ways that would profoundly change society and shape it according to what he called the Kingdom of God.

Paul understood Jesus that way. Paul didn't read Jesus' comments on divorce as hard and fast rules - but he certainly shared the vision of Jesus, and translated it into the different social situation of the cities out in the Roman Empire.

Jesus' starting point was the dignity of every human person - a dignity based on the fact that each person reflects the image of God and is personally, individually, loved by God.  We probably all nod our heads to that. It's just what we believe - or Is it? Consistent with his recognition of each person's dignity, Jesus challenged people to relate in love, not just to act as if - but to apply themselves to the task of genuinely loving people - an enormous challenge: to most people unrealistic, or hopelessly naive, or impossible.  Cultures don't work that way. Invariably societies have their privileged classes and their underprivileged classes; those enjoying most of the nation's wealth and resources and those missing out; and, often, not just missing out, but effectively excluded and unjustly oppressed.

Jesus' world was an unashamedly patriarchal world. Men were respected, women weren't (nor were children); men had rights, women had none (nor were children regarded as having any).  For example, with regard to marriage, men could divorce their wives, and could do so under virtually any pretext. But women could not divorce their husbands.  If a man was unfaithful to his wife, and divorced her, it was the wife's father and brothers whose honour was offended.  The fact that she was betrayed didn't figure in the equation. She had no rights, no share in the property, no right to dignity, respect or deep love..

It was these unquestioned patriarchal assumptions that Jesus rejected. He was talking to men.  Jesus insisted that 'What God has united, man must not divide.' The image that he used (It's not obvious in the translation) was of two people yoked together; so a partnership, a partnership of two people of equal worth, where each recognised the dignity of the other, and chose to love the other because each was deeply and personally loved by God.  Jesus saw the potential of that mutual love to profoundly change each of the partners and, together, to become something new: They are no longer two, but one body.

He saw how, through their love, they could empower each other to blossom and to grow; cooperating with God in creating each other. Because it was a partnership of two equals, he said that the man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her - his wife: not her father, or her brothers, but against her.  He saw the relationship of husband and wife not only as good but as the primary relationship - having priority over responsibilities to parents (who are still to be loved). A man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body.

I also think it important that couples also see that the quality of their relationship, and their responsibilities to each other, have priority over their responsibilities to their children.  Indeed, the most practical way for them to love their children is to work diligently at cultivating their love for each other, and letting their children see quite clearly that children take second place to that first priority, their love for each other.