Equal Dignity

The 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: Gen 2: 18-24; Ps 128; Heb 2: 9-11; Mk 10: 2-16

One of the most powerful forces in human society is our desire to fit in. Most of us want to feel like we’re accepted and part of the crowd. That’s why in high school, for example, you get defined as being part of a particular social group by the way you dress, by the music you listen to, by the activities you take part in, by the parties you go to (or don’t go to), and so on. And all of that can spell acceptance or rejection—with serious social, emotional and even psychological consequences.

In Jesus’ day, the cultural forces were every bit as strong as they are today—maybe even stronger, because you couldn’t just pick up and move someplace else or enroll in a different school if things didn’t go your way. If you hoped to fit into the prevailing social life—the foundation of society—there were a lot of ground rules you had to follow and expectations to meet.

Many of those rules concerned women and children. Women and children, essentially, had no rights. They were considered to be possessions, and they were expected to be loyal and respectful—and good breeders, too, if they were wives.

It may sound crass, but when she was young, a woman belonged to her father. Later on, the father would make arrangements with a suitable man and ownership was transferred to a husband. The process was called marriage, but certainly not in the sense that we like to use the term today… as a partnership based on love and commitment.

And within this marriage structure of the ancient near east, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that men had all the rights and power. They were literally the “lord and master” of their home. According to the Book of Deuteronomy (Dt 24:1), the law of Moses explicitly stated: If she find no favor in his eye, he writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house. Talk about no-fault divorce!

Obviously, this could be a terribly heartless thing. Every woman was placed in a helpless and very dependent position in relation to her husband. If he grew tired of her for any reason or no reason at all, she could be thrown out on her ear. The injustice was patent… and unconscionable.

And Jesus, who wasn’t as worried about fitting in and being accepted as most of us are, took this injustice to task—and naturally, infuriated the Pharisees once again, as we hear in today’s gospel! Christ taught that this one-sided right of divorce was wrong. Women were inherently of equal dignity to men. And within the marriage relationship, according to God, wives were to be equal partners with their husbands.

What’s more, if this weren’t a hard enough teaching on its own, Jesus’ lesson today is not just about husbands and wives and marriage. It’s got a much broader scope. The teaching is actually about every human relationship. Christ wants us to understand that all people are of equal dignity and should be treated as such.

It’s not just a coincidence that after the Lord’s instruction about husbands and wives, we immediately hear how Jesus blessed the children and taught how the kingdom of heaven belongs to little ones like them. Once again, Christ wants us to understand the inherent dignity of even the weakest, most vulnerable members of society. The point is, our value and our rights don’t derive from our legal or social status. It doesn’t matter if I’m your husband or your father or your daughter or your third cousin or your employee. What matters is that just like you, I’m a child of God. Just like me, you’re a child of God. We’re brothers and sisters in the Lord. Let that sublime truth sink in.

When you open the bible and find that the Book of Deuteronomy permits divorce, and then the Gospel of Mark seems to forbid it… you might wonder if Christ is teaching us something that is different from the literal words someplace else in the bible—even after telling us that he came to fulfill the law, not abolish it! Which is it to be? This apparent confusion just shows the danger of trying to understand a bible verse literally and in isolation. What is absolutely clear is that Jesus won’t let us use Scripture to put down or abuse God’s children. No individual Scripture passage is the “last word.” We have to take the Scriptures as an organic whole; in other words, we have to see the big picture from God’s viewpoint. Moses understood that, and so does the Church. But many of us have forgotten it.

It’s easy to pluck a verse out of the bible that tells kids to be seen but not heard and just obey their parents… it’s easy to find verses that say that women shouldn’t open their mouths to the men folk… it’s easy to find passages that govern our diet, our sexual relationships, our friendships, our way of dress, our style of prayer…

In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees appointed themselves the gatekeepers to God’s kingdom—but sad for them, Christ often had to put them in their place.

Today, everybody from tellers of redneck jokes to television evangelists are trying to define who is living up to God’s standards… and you know what? If Jesus had his own network TV show today, I have no doubt that he would slam a lot of their talk as bigotry, not piety.

Giver of all life, teach us to love and live in a way that strengthens our community and lifts up all your children. Amen.