If you had a chance this week to sit with this Sunday’s readings, you might easily believe that the theme for this week is marriage. After all, from Genesis (Gen 2:18-24) we heard about the marriage of Eve and Adam, the first marriage and the pattern for all marriages. Then in the Gospel of Mark Jesus refers to that same passage in Genesis to teach the indissolubility of marriage, a teaching that the Church has continuously proclaimed and courageously defends.

But the focus of these reading isn’t marriage. I mean, they’re about marriage, but then again marriage isn’t the principal focus.

The real subject is the Kingdom of God. Mark’s Gospel is all about the Kingdom of God. What is the Kingdom of God? How do we realize it? Where do we find it? All these questions run through Mark’s Gospel.

And so, Mark (Mk 10:2-16) reports this incident: 

“The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked; ‘Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?’

They were testing him to see what he would say.”

The point of the question was a test, not to hear what Jesus says about marriage. The Pharisees couldn’t care less about Jesus’ opinion. Instead, the Pharisees are trying to catch Jesus rejecting the law of Moses, which permits divorce and remarriage. If he does, they can tell the people that anyone who does not care about the command of Moses cannot be a Messiah.

Jesus of course sees through this. He turns the question around by asking “What did Moses command you?”

 “Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.”

Then our Lord, for whom and through whom all things exist, taught the Pharisees, and us today, that, “from the beginning of creation” that’s not the way it was. He teaches us that God’s purpose in creating marriage is so that the married couple are no longer two but one flesh. “Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

Now we come back to what Mark is driving at. Through the Holy Spirit, the Gospel is teaching that, in the Kingdom of God, marriage is enduring.

The Kingdom of God is God Himself; the Kingdom of God is love itself, and the Kingdom of God is God’s gift. By God’s grace we are enabled to know and love and come into communion with God. 

How does this relate to the Sacrament of Marriage? 

Marriage as a sacrament is unique in that Priests or Deacons don’t marry people; we don’t administer the sacrament but rather serve as witnesses to the marriage. Marriage is a sacrament the couple administers to each other. At the marriage ceremony, two people who are striving for  the Kingdom of God, who have God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, and God’s presence give the love of God to each other, the life of God to each other. It is God that binds them together in an exchange that makes them one in the Kingdom of God.

It becomes evident that the Holy Spirit, through Mark, is teaching us about the Kingdom of God when, after Jesus’ exchange with the Pharisees, the Evangelist immediately transitions to the episode where Jesus blesses the little children. 

The scene is very sweet. Jesus has been preaching all day long. He’s very tired. And the disciples worry about Jesus. Sometimes, they worry about his person more than the truth of what Jesus is saying.

And so, in the background, the disciples intercept and try to shoo away  a group of parents carrying and leading their children, bringing the children up to Jesus so that Jesus might touch them and bless them.

Jesus gets very angry.  “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” 

Little children take Jesus, take God Himself, into their hearts, unreservedly. They understand that God loves them, that God cares for them, and they open their hearts in their simplicity.

Jesus warns us to accept the Kingdom of God as these little children do, or never know it, never understand what it means to have it. Knowledge of the Kingdom is a gift of God, and so is the promise that we may one day enter it. It is not something that we earn. Just as the love in a marriage is the gift of God and the life of a marriage is the gift of God. 

The Kingdom is the only thing that gives meaning to life. To long for the Kingdom of God means to look at the world in different ways, with yourself no longer the center. In praise and song, in the Kingdom we will acclaim God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as we see him in his glory.

The Gospel Mark reveals that the Kingdom of God is the goal of all Christians and through grace we can welcome the Kingdom with the innocence of a child. Marriage is Sacrament created by God, a gift from the Trinity to help us help each other to reach that heavenly Kingdom.