B Cycle – 27^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 24

Mk. 10:2-16

 There are times when Jesus’s teachings are direct and hard to embrace.  They can sometimes leave us wondering if we can ever overcome our human weaknesses.  Sayings like “…if our eye causes us to sin gouge it out.”  His teaching about how sin is not just in the written law for “…whoever looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt.5:8).  It is hard enough to keep the laws and commandments for Jesus tells us we must forget an eye for an eye, but we must turn the other cheek.  Interpretations of the law that goes well beyond do not break the laws.  He is saying we are comfortable with our little sins and ignore our need to change.  Not only change our behavior but also change how we view ourselves as worthy of the promises of God.

It seems we are always looking for loopholes or an easier way to satisfy God’s demands for our holiness.  We seem to forget or deliberately disregard the message, “to him who has given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more” (Lk.12:47).  Therein lies our problem which is the reason for the question the Pharisees posed to Jesus in todays gospel. We are constantly looking for a way to justify our behavior and ignore how we should respond to all Christ has given us and entrusted to us.  This gospel goes far beyond marriage and children because it lies at the heart of how we respond to the gift of Jesus Christ.

We do not grasp the significance of Jesus taking on human flesh and becoming one of us.  Experiencing every human challenge, every human emotion and every human pain including death.  He set aside His divinity and became flesh so that we may be reconciled to God.  To take our rightful place as sons and daughters of the Most High God and heirs to the promise of eternal life. We are deeply loved by God and are offered the embrace of forgiveness for every selfish act, every selfish sin, every selfish desire because God desires us to become what we were created to become. 

To feel that embrace of God does not require us to sacrifice or that we obey all of God’s ordinances.  It requires we allow ourselves to go before God as children and as the focus of God’s love. We need to learn to invite God to be present to us.   Recently a nine year old boy, the grandson of my sister in law, invited me to play with him. He did not see me as someone to please, to fear or to even defer to.  No, he saw an opportunity to invite me into his world and sit on the floor and play with cars, toys big and small and imaginary games.  I willingly entered his world of make believe just be with him and to discover just free he was to express himself. 

That is what God desires of us.  To allow Him into our world just to be with us and allow His presence to free us to experience a new world where we are comfortable to call Him Abba.  Just be with God, not trying to please Him, not trying to influence Him but to be with him.  That is our greatest challenge. It is not how well we keep the commandments is how willing are we to open our hearts to God.  How willing are we to allow His presence to free us from obedience to surrender.  How willing are we to experience life with all its beauty and inviting God to heal our deepest wounds and fulfill our deepest desires for forgiveness and freedom from sin.  

Christ said, “to him who has been given much, much more will be required.”  What has God prepared for us will be discovered when we invite God into our lives.  We have a destiny awaiting each of us.  Remember we are told that “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works God has prepared in advance that we should walk in them” (Eph.2:10).  We have a destiny awaiting us and it does not matter when we respond but it does matter that we do respond at some point.  We can learn a great deal about our ability to enter a new relationship with God by the changes that occur within us as we marry and by becoming parents. 

Marriage changes us so we focus on someone else and not ourselves.  We are to die to self for the good of the other. As parents we learn another lesson about sacrifice.  We guide and teach our children about human relationships and how we are our brothers’ keeper.  These readings are not as disjointed as they may seem because they are directly challenging us to stop trying to find an easy way to make ourselves comfortable with God.  That leads us to analyze ourselves and we become scrupulous and guided by law not by the Spirit.  We need to learn how pleased God is with us already and how eager God is for us to ask Him to come and enter our world and just be with us.

What I learned from playing with that nine year old was he did not need me to approve of him but to help his imaginary world to expand beyond his expectations.  That is what we need from God. To help us expand our world to include the Kingdom of God on earth. To experience the presence of the Father, inviting us to explore our relationship beyond obedience and our perceived expectations.  We need to how to embrace the freedom won for us by Jesus Christ and to know we will be transformed by the Spirit into saints, loved deeply by God.