Friday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
A lot of things happened this week that were beyond my control. My kids started school this week. It was bittersweet - the two oldest are now in first and fourth grade and happily skip off to school without looking back. Me, on the other hand - I'm reminded of how time marches on, and how parenthood is so often about learning to let my kids grow and go. At work, the computer and printer at work both crashed, twice, setting me behind a few days! Students will be in desks in less than a week! I also had some good unexpected events beyond my control - I happened to bump into a couple longtime friends I hadn't seen in a while.
Today's scriptures reminded me that of course my life isn't really ever in my control. Our lives aren't wholly down to us and our decisions.
In the first lesson (Joshua 24:1-13), Joshua is telling the people their whole story, all the way back to Genesis in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,right down to their present day, where they live in lands they did not till, and eat from vineyards they had not planted. The Israelites are meant to remember that everything becomes a gift to receive and take care of. We realize that all of life is a gift that is not ultimately up to us.
In the second reading (Matthew 19:3-12), Jesus overturns a common thought about marriage, which is that the people had been used to thinking of marriage as something they did. Therefore they had the right to use marriage as they saw fit. This led to numerous injustices, particularly for women. In ancient times, there were two sides when it came to interpreting the particular Old Testament passage about divorce from Deuteronomy 24:1. This verse is about a man divorcing a woman who "becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her." One of the sides maintained that it was only matters of indecency that could permit a man to request a divorce. The other side maintained that was any matter that caused displeasure at all that permitted a man to divorce his wife. So the question posed to Jesus about this verse is ultimately a trick question meant to embroil Jesus in a heated dispute and make some people hate him because of the side he takes.
But characteristically, Jesus sidesteps the controversy by taking the question to a new level. Jesus is well aware of the pain and problems that divorce causes in his society: in ancient Israel, women without families had almost no way to support themselves, and this was even worse if they had children. The recourse was often prostitution and the like. This is why the Old Testament so frequently features laws about taking care of the widows and the orphans, because they were the poorest of the poor. So when Jesus suggests that people should not divorce at all, it is a matter of care and justice for the poor, just as healing on the Sabbath is a matter of justice for the very ill. Jesus is thereby saying that the ones who follow only the "letter of the law" are too hard of heart and do not quite understand the nature of God's kingdom. God's love and mercy push us to seek beyond the mere letter of the law to living a more full life of discipleship that particularly means not just divorcing a woman for any reason at all.
But living this out means accepting marriage, and one's spouse as a gift that is not entirely in your control, even in the times when the marriage seems not so much to be a gift. God brings people together, people only tend to separate themselves from each other when left to their own devices. The result of living only for our own ends - whether that is getting rid of a spouse for a vague charge of indecency of whether that is simply letting her go - is that we don't experience justice, love and mercy in our own lives either. By receiving the gift of another person, we come to see God's great gifts.
Today, let us seek ways to see our whole lives as gifts God has given to us. Let our prayer be to respond to that gift in the best ways we can.
- Jana M. Bennett