The Marriage Metaphor

Gospel: Mark 10: 2-16

Throughout the Bible our individual and collective relationship with God is often compared to that of a marriage.  The use of the term covenant rather than contract indicates this reality.  In reading salvation history and reflecting on our own, we can see our constant infidelity and neglect of this relationship with God on the one side, and we can see God's constant fidelity to us on the other side of the ledger.  This fidelity of God is the ideal to which we aspire in all our human relationships.

Human relationships require constant care and attention.  They require our love, time, and devotion.  When human relationships fail, it is a great tragedy and loss for us.  Sometimes the relationship is so abusive that one's very health and safety requires leaving that relationship.  We don't want the relationship to end; we continually hope for better. But we have obligations to our own survival and that of children to consider as well.  In the face of competing duties, one must take priority over the other.  

God calls us to an ideal to which we all should aspire: being loving, trustworthy, and dedicated in our relationships with one another.  God calls us to discernment and deliberation in entering into different human relationships, and when we fail we must have pathways of healing, restoration, and forgiveness to repair what is broken in ourselves and others.