It is another busy Monday morning when a young man sees an older lady throwing her cane (walking stick) in the air at an intersection (junction). After watching her do this several times, he goes closer and asks her, “Madam, why are you tossing the stick up like that?” “I am trying to decide which road (route) to take,” she answers while tossing the stick. “How many times do you need to throw the stick to decide?” The woman stops, turns to the young man, and says, “Until it points the way I want to go.”
In today’s gospel passage, the Pharisees came to ask Jesus if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife. They were testing him to get his approval for divorce. Jesus then asked them about what Moses taught them. They explained that Moses permitted a man to write a bill of divorce and dismiss his wife. Jesus then pointed out that they were trying to solve the problem by scratching the surface; he asked them to go back to the root, for when God created them, he made them male and female to be husband and wife, and when God joined them together, no human being must put asunder. Jesus explained that the command from Moses was only a temporary remedy, a concession that came as a result of the hardness of their hearts, it was only a scaffolding awaiting the perfection of the law.
In the time of Moses, the situation was so bad that men could divorce their wives for any flimsy reason. For example, a man could just come home and divorce his wife because he saw a more beautiful lady than his wife. A man could divorce his wife because there was too much salt in his food. Such divorced women could not remarry. Since Moses could not stop the men, he then legislated that the men must give the women certificates of divorce to set the women free for a new marriage. Rather than answer in the way they wanted, Jesus took them back to the root to rediscover God’s original plan. As long as we continue to treat the symptoms of an illness, it will continue to eat us from within; the best approach is to go beyond the symptom to the root.
When God created us, he created us in his image and likeness; and gave us a conscience to distinguish between right and wrong. We often play games with ourselves, God, and others. We know the truth, we know when we are wrong, but we want someone else to take responsibility for our wrongdoing. The woman in our opening story at the intersection had already decided on where to go, but she tried to free herself of the blame for her decision, so she employed the services of her walking stick. The Pharisees who came to ask Jesus about divorce knew they were wrong in the way they treated women, but wanted to pass the blame onto someone else, so they tried to pass the blame on to Jesus; when that failed, they moved on to Moses, but Jesus told them they were only treating the symptoms, he led them to the root; he led them to the original plan of God for marriage.
The break of each day greets us with many questions; each step we take in life brings up a question about what decision to make regarding our health, our relationships, how we make money, how we spend money, etc. Many times, we wonder what the right way is. Based on the response of Jesus to the Pharisees today, it is clear that the way out is to ask: what was God’s original intention for the decision I am trying to make? As Christians, whenever we have a decision to make, the way out is to go back to the Bible to find God’s original plan. My dearly beloved in Christ, we can never resolve any crisis until we are ready to go beyond the surface; we cannot solve the world’s problems until we are ready to go back to the root, that is, until we are able to find out at what point we deviated from God’s original plan. As we continue on our journey through life, as we continue to struggle with the different questions that life throws at us, may the word of God continue to be a lamp to our feet, and a light to our path, guiding us back to God’s original plan, until we come to our heavenly inheritance, through Christ our Lord Amen.
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