This coming Sunday is the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Thus, Jesus moves the dialogue to a deeper question and asks about what God intended in the creation:  “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. 7 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother (and be joined to his wife), 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

Jesus has posed a question to the Pharisees that puts before them a choice between preserving the Law as they understood it or discerning and doing God’s will. The former is a legislation that is based upon fallen human history. But is there something that precedes that history that will reveal God’s intent? Jesus is also appealing to the Torah in his reference to the creation account in Genesis. Many scholars have offered that the Law given to Moses was part of a covenant with the people of Israel for a specific time in history. That covenant was broken and “subsumed” into the larger Davidic covenant. But the covenant in Genesis is timeless and is revealed in Creation. Paul seems to make the similar argument that the Mosaic law was but an ‘inset’ into God’s earlier purpose and covenant of grace, which is eternal: “the law, which came four hundred and thirty years [after Abraham] does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to cancel the promise [given in Genesis].”(Gal. 3:17)

Jesus clearly has two passages in mind:

• God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:27)
• That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body. (Gen 2:24)

Jesus describes the union of husband and wife as a bond rooted in the very nature of Creation, one that takes priority over the other divinely intended relationship: family. As close as the parent-child relationship is, the husband-wife relationship is closer. They are not to act as though one, they are to become one. And this union is the action of God, therefore, humans are not to separate what God has joined. Jesus’ final pronouncement grounds the sanctity of marriage in the authority of God himself. This is consistent with the biblical perspective, which never considers husband and wife alone but always in the presence of God, subject to his commands and aided by his grace.

At one level, Jesus’ is repeating his charge against the Pharisees for substituting human tradition and understanding for the commandment of God (7:9–13). Perkins [643] writes: “The conclusion Jesus draws from the Genesis passage is consistent with the picture of Jesus and the Law already presented in the Gospel. God intended men and women to be permanently joined in marriage, so no human tradition can claim the authority to override that fact (v. 9). Jesus exploits the metaphoric possibilities of Gen 2:24, ‘they become one flesh,’ to exhibit the absurdity of thinking that divorce ‘law,’ whatever conditions it sets down, represents God’s will. Divorce would be like trying to divide one person into two.”

Image credit: The Pharisees and the Sadducees Come to Tempt Jesus | James Tissot | Brooklyn Museum, PD-US