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Reflection by Mike Hansen, Lavalla Catholic College & Parishioner of St Michael's Parish, Traralgon.
There is a real sense that Jesus is addressing important domestic issues in Mark’s gospel account… the issues of divorce and the place of children in community life. In the same chapter Mark will have Jesus speak of worldly riches and discipleship. There they are, the great ethical issues of any age: marriage, family, money and commitment.
We see Jesus and his disciples cross the Jordan into gentile territory. And it is in this context that Jesus speaks to the mixed crowd. There always seems to be a smarty pants who wants to puff himself up in the eyes of the crowd by asking Jesus the ‘zinger’ question. In fact, Mark mentions that there were more than one and we can imagine how they hung together in a less than open or sympathetic group. They already know that Moses allows for a man to divorce his wife and Jesus gets one of them to repeat the law for all to hear, Jews and gentiles alike. A crowd just like ours!
The response from Jesus must have made them wish they had never opened their months. Jesus senses that in their patriarchal worldview it is completely justifiable for a man to cast off his wife with a simple certificate of departure. Jesus addresses these men personally… “because of your hardness of heart (and men like you) Moses wrote this commandment for you.” Jesus then goes on to speak beautifully of God’s plan for marriage… the inseparable bond between a man and a woman, a bond so close that they become one flesh. This is a new unity, not a discardable partnership.
The account of Jesus receiving the little children seems a little out of place but it is actually a fitting follow up from the discussion of divorce… it places the joy of children at the forefront of marriage for the dignity that He bestows upon all children as gift and blessing.
Do you remember taking your little ones to visit Santa Claus? There was an instinct deep within us that somehow the magic of the Santa myth would imbue them with a sense of curiosity and wonder. Likewise, the first century parents in Mark’s account sensed the holiness in Jesus and wanted their children to be touched by his hands… that they might absorb the blessedness of this miracle worker and have their spirit ignited by his mere touch. We need to understand that children in the first century, like women under the divorce laws, had no legal status, it seems. The disciples try to brush the parents and their children aside, like troublesome outsiders to the main event. But Jesus is outraged by the rebukes of his disciples and indignant that the little ones are denied his presence. Not only does he ‘touch them’ in a symbolic way but he gathers the children in his arms, lays his hands upon them and blesses them in abundance.
By referencing divorced women and the little children Jesus shows his concern for the powerless.
