Reflection on the Word for the Sunday of October 3, 2021
MARRYING YOUR SOULMATE – Mark 10:2-16
Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her." But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." ……………………………………………………………………………
The Apostles, learned from Jesus face to face, were able to see the ups and downs in a marital relationship, all the hardships of marrying and divorcing according to the Law of Moses, and also according to the rule given by Jesus. It looked them impossible to stay righteous, fulfilling all the laws inherited from the fathers, and also to elevate their moral stand into the height Jesus invited them. In the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus added that the men do not have the right at all to divorce their wives except the case of adultery, the disciples sighed that then it is better not to marry at all.
However, the case of the marriage is quite the opposite. Marrying is a creation order, multiplying, as people, is a profound commandment in the Bible, as it is written in the Book of Genesis that God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”
According to the Bible story, at first the man was created, then the woman out of the man. The modern science is not profoundly antagonistic to this view, for genetics tells a similar story regarding DNA. Practically, Jesus pointed out that the laws of Moses were regulating the traditional common practice in the Middle East at his time, like having more than one wives, called today polygamy, and the ultimate and unlimited authority of the husband over the wives and the children.
It was a tough world with endless wars and overarching slavery, permanent suffering, and exploitation. Moses wanted to help the helpless, as much as he could at that time by putting some rules into an almost lawless social structure, where human sacrifice, torture, forced labor, whimsical warlords, bloodthirsty tyrants, tribal warfare, racketeering taxation and extortion, kidnapping women and children were the facts on the ground to be faced every day. Shalom or peace was a wishful prayer, and mostly seemed to be impossible to achieve, actually, just like today.
Regarding everything and regarding marriage, Jesus told them that it was not so at the beginning. When Jesus quoted the Book of Genesis, it should have been understood that at the creation of the human nation, an exceptional miracle happened, as it is written right at the chapter one that “God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. ”
Normally, today, we interpret this event in biological terms. However, we should take a second look at it. God does not have legs or hands, organs or blood. God does not have a body.
According to the Gospel of John 4:24 , at the Samaritan well Jesus told the Samaritan woman, who was married five times and had a sixth man as a partner after five marriages, that “God is Spirit and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
Thus, at least the image, humans were created after, is a spirit image, and that image is divine, because it is God’s own image. Thus, the human nation had its beginning as spiritual images, minted after the Creator Sky Spirit. So we are able to say very humbly that we are Sky Spirit people. Next to that, somehow everything became also biological. It has to do something with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, because it is written in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis that “the Lord God formed the human being from the dust of the ground, and breathed into the nostrils the breath of life; and the human being became a living soul.”
It means that without the Spirit Image, the body is completely lifeless. The Spirit gives the life and God is the life-source. The Apostle James asserts that as faith without deeds is dead, so the body without the spirit is dead. Nowadays, in the recurring social upheavals, in society there is a great emphasis on the body and its biological characteristics, albeit in the Gospel of John, chapter eight Jesus says, that it is so, because they “judge according to the flesh”. Moreover , Jesus declares it in the same Gospel, chapter six, that “It is the Spirit who gives life. The body profits nothing.”
God’s full and whole image is never broken. According to the Book of Genesis, God gave us an image from his own spirit. God does not have biological genders, neither the Spirit, but the partition into two of the divine image in us was intentionally done, and it has been given us as a bliss of love.
The divine image has been split into two parts, and the two were matching each other perfectly, like two spiritual puzzle pieces. It was easy to find the soul-mate at the beginning of the history starting with Adam and Eve, but after that a great multitude were born. Nonetheless, all the multiplied split-spirit-images are unique, since the beginning of history, just as our fingerprints and our irises are unique, regarding each and everyone in a 7 Billion strong population.
According to the physical laws of nature, the innate natural instincts, including the so called chemistry play a great role when we try to find a wife, a husband, a partner.
However, the biological environment is just the external curtain around what is really happening, because there is also an almost irresistible but supernatural urge in finding a match, and it is the soul searching. It is not that kind of soul searching like the morning meditation about the spinning habits of the Milky Way. In this soul searching we are desperately looking for the right one, the only one other soul, which has the other half of the Spirit Image, God assigned to us to complete ours.
The split-spirit-image of the other soul, if it is our soul-mate, is perfectly matching ours, like two perfectly matching puzzle pieces. When a soul-mate is found, or the closest possible one is found, that is when they say, that the match is made in Heaven. Jesus was right, in the ideal case, which should be the case always, there is no room for divorce, even for any disappointment.
However, society, many times, made marriage an earthly institution, filled with legal liabilities and prearranged artificial structures, with social pressure and economic ties, often making the path of finding a soul-mate quite impossible for centuries or millennia. However, finding the soulmate was supposed to be the very idea of marriage, where the ultimate goal is to get the split-spirit-images in two human beings united for the greater glory of God. It is true also in the case of a marriage or in any other relationship that whatever we do it must happen not only for the sake of love, but for the sake of the Love of God.
That is why modesty, morality, fidelity, loyalty and genuine, tender care is so important in any kind of relationship. That is why the searching for a soul-mate must be a sacred path, because through it, we fulfill divine commandments and we serve God, with our thoughts and speeches, with our deeds and godly conduct,
AMEN.
