20th Sunday after Pentecost Mark 10:2-16

Context of the Passage

Mark explicitly states at the beginning of our text that the Pharisees wanted to test Jesus. The important question to ask then, is why? This question wasn’t asked in a vacuum.

N. T. Wright shares in his Mark for Everyone commentary that in the early 1990s a number of British bishops and priests were regularly receiving phone calls from the press asking about the church’s stance on divorce. This wasn’t prompted by accident, nor did it stem from a renewed interest in the church’s social teaching. It was asked because members of the royal family, Prince Charles and Diana, were going through a divorce.

1. Jesus says that Moses' law allowed for divorce because of the "hardness of heart" of the people. What does this mean? And why do you think God makes allowance for this?

2. How does Jesus' teaching modify the way we understand Moses' earlier law on divorce?

3. Jesus goes back to the original design of human relationships by God—a man and woman who become "one flesh." A man and a woman don't literally end up "joined at the hip." In what sense…