27th SundayB

27^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: Genesis 2:18-24   Hebrews 2:9-11  Mark 10:2-16

“May you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!” (Ps 128:6).  This joyful blessing from the responsorial psalm expresses the spirit of today’s readings, celebrating the God-given gift of sexuality and the dignity of marriage and family.

The Genesis story recounts the creation of woman from the rib of man and thereby affirms her equality with man, the goodness of the sexual attraction between man and woman, and the importance of the marital bond as the basis for family life.  In a charmingly innocent manner, the Lord God reflects: “It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a suitable partner for him.”  None of the various animals “proved to be the suitable partner for man,” and so the Lord God creates the woman from one of the man’s ribs, the bones closest to his heart.  When she is presented like a precious gift to the man, he exclaims with recognition and joy: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones/ and flesh of my flesh . . .”   The narrator then tells us that this God-given attraction between the sexes is the basis for marriage and family life.  “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

This Sunday is the first of several weeks when the Epistle will be from Hebrews, an anonymous treatise arguing that Jesus has brought to completion the sacrificial traditions of Judaism.  Today’s selection celebrates Jesus our “leader  to . . . salvation,” who shared our human nature to the point of being perfected “through suffering.”  According to Hebrews, Jesus entered the human condition so that “he might taste death for everyone” and then lead them “to glory.”  The oneness of Jesus and the Father with our humanity is beautifully affirmed in the closing verse of the reading.  “He (Jesus) who consecrates and those who are being consecrated all have one origin.  Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them brothers.”

In the gospel Jesus, on the basis of the dignity of marriage, protects women from mistreatment by not allowing divorce for arbitrary reasons and offers to his disciples the receptivity of “a child” as the model for entrance into the kingdom of God.  Our selection continues Mark’s account of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem in which he both prepares his disciples for his impending death and resurrection and instructs them in the demands of discipleship.  When the Pharisees attempt to test Jesus on the question of divorce, he has the opportunity to teach about God’s intentions in the creation of man and woman and to overturn Moses’ command which allowed a man (not a woman) to simply divorce his spouse by writing “a bill of divorce” (see Deut 24:1-4).

According to Jesus, Moses’ commandment was a concession to human “hardness of heart” and did not represent God’s original intention expressed in the Genesis creation story.  God’s will is that husband and wife should “become one flesh,” and so Jesus concludes by commanding: “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”  When Jesus is alone with his disciples, he explains that a person (man or woman) who divorces and remarries is committing adultery against the rejected partner.  Notice that Jesus’ teaching is aimed at protecting marriage and the rights of the rejected partner.  Other New Testament writings do allow certain exceptions to the ideal articulated in Mark (see Matt 5:32; 19:9; 1 Cor 7:10-16).

The episode involving Jesus and the “little children” concludes Jesus’ teaching about marriage and family.  When the disciples scold parents for bringing their children to be touched by Jesus, he commands that they be allowed to come to him and uses them as the model for the open receptivity that is necessary for entrance into God’s kingdom: “Let the children come to me . . .for the kingdom 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.”  In Pope Francis’ recent visit to the United States we have repeatedly witnessed Peter’s successor living out this gospel mandate.