Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is Sundays with Bishop Ken.
Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord this week on Sundays with Bishop Ken, our guest, Father Pete Gaspini, shares today's gospel with us, followed by one of Bishop Ken's homilies.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark.
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 a husband 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.
The gospel of the Lord.
In the Gospel, Jesus is quoting the book of Deuteronomy, which is largely a book of laws and prescriptions that were developed after the ten Commandments to help expand and explain them.
In the fourth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, there is one part that deals with divorce. It says that a man can divorce his wife if he finds her to be unholy.
Now, that word unholy is an ambiguous word which could be translated unclean or unfit. And for centuries, jewish leaders and jewish theologians argued over the meaning of that word.
They accepted divorce and argued over what grounds it was permissible.
There were two main schools of thought on this.
There was the school of Shammai, which took a limited view and said that a man could, in effect, get rid of his wife only if she was unfaithful. That's what unholy meant. The school of Hillel, on the other hand, taught that a man could get rid of his wife if he found her simply to be unfit for almost any reason.
And so the controversy raged for centuries. And they came to this man, Jesus, who was a teacher, and they presented him with the question and he stunned his audience by saying, I don't agree with the school of Shammai or the school of Hillel. I don't agree with divorce.
Well, the disciples couldn't believe their ears. And when they got him aside in the house, they said, in effect, you have the darndest way of saying things, and those people out there think that you said, people can't get divorced and get married again. And he said, that's exactly what I said.
There are many things that could be said about this, but it is worthwhile to take a look at the reason Jesus said this.
You may have noticed in deuteronomy that the woman was considered the man's property and he could simply write a decree of divorce to disown this property.
That's the way it was at that time and in that culture. And Jesus said, that's not the way it is. That's not the way God created us in the beginning. God made them, male and female, equal, both fully God's children. And as equals, they become one. She does not become his property. They become one, and the two shall be as one.
That same attitude carries over into the next incident in the gospel, and that's why the two are related, because little children were also treated like property. That may come as a surprise to us since we naturally have a warm place in our hearts for children, even crying children.
Yet in those days they didn't. They treated children like property. And in that culture, and at that time, a child had no rights, no rights at all.
And Jesus said, I disagree with that. Let the little children come to me. They are precious. They are human beings. And he embraced them and he blessed them.
Jesus taught here dramatically and everywhere that human life is precious. It is God's. That each person belongs to God and must be cherished as God's life, whether it be a man or a woman, whether it be a little child or an older person, whether they be rich or poor, leper or clean, good or bad, cherished, loved, forgiven.
Back at that time, life was cheap. And Jesus was reminding them that that's not the way God created human life to be cheap.
In our day, life is cheap. Life is cheap. On the streets of many of our cities where lives are taken right and left, life is cheap. In abortion clinics where the unborn child has no rights, life is cheap. When women and minorities are treated like things, life is cheap. When you watch television and see people killed again, and again, life is cheap around the world, where freedom is taken away, life can be cheap.
And so you and I, as disciples of Jesus, have to be as Jesus was. In a sense. We have to stun our audience and stand for something different. We stand against the cheapening of any human life, good or bad, young or old, whatever nationality.
It is God's it is to be cherished. It is to be blessed. That is perhaps the hardest teaching of Jesus to accept and live. It is, for me, the hardest of all his teachings is the way he cherished good and bad, young and old. Samaritans, Jews all.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us today. If you like this week's reflection, subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.
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