Today's Gospel

Become a New Creation

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we explore the genius of Jesus in the Gospel. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Mark 10:1-12. And Jesus left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again and again. As his custom was, he taught them. And Pharisees came up and, in order to test him, asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What does Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to put her away." And Jesus said to them, "For your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. 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. So they are no longer two, but one."

What, therefore, God has joined. Let us not, put asunder. And in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter, and 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." What is it that jumps out at you today? I think for me, anytime Jesus is saying something to somebody, I ask myself, like how would I feel if Jesus was saying that to me? What would my call to action be if Jesus said that to me? And today, Jesus says to his questioners, "For your hardness of heart," Moses wrote you this commandment for your hardness of heart. So what is Jesus saying? He's saying, "Guys, you're cold-hearted, hard-hearted, like your heart to become hard like stone," and Moses was accommodating your hardness of heart, but this is a new era. This is a new time. God wants you to become a new creation. Wants to soften your heart." So as I read that, I think to myself, "Okay, am I hard-hearted?" And of course the answer is sometimes, "Yeah." We sometimes we get into these situations where we think, "Oh, no, I'm not hard-hearted." Because for the most part, we probably aren't. But it's not that simple. Maybe a better question is, am I sometimes hard-hearted? And the answer is yes. I am sometimes hard-hearted. Why? Well, sometimes because I'm in a hurry, sometimes because I'm tired, sometimes because I'm cranky, sometimes because this person just irritates me. Sometimes because this person has been like asking me for the same thing over and over and over for years. And I've been trying to be soft-hearted, but they just worn out my patience.

So yes, I'm hard-hearted sometimes. And so today, Jesus is saying, "Okay, you got to be mindful of your hard-heartedness, and you can't adapt the gospel to your hard-heartedness." We may adapt a lot of things in our lives to our hard-heartedness, but Jesus is saying, "I'm not going to adapt the gospel to your hard-heartedness. I've come to soften your hearts, to open your hearts to more people, to everyone." And of course, that's the Radical invitation of the gospel is to soften our hearts to everyone, not just to lots of people, to everyone. And that's the challenge. Have a great day, and remember, don't just be yourself, be the-very-best-version-of-yourself, all that God created you to be.

I hope you're enjoying the daily gospel reflections. So one of the things I love doing, spending this time with you each day. Recently, I released a book called 33 Days to Divine Mercy. If you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, encourage you to do that today.