As a teacher by training, and as a professor of education at Creighton, I am all too familiar with the idea of the “trick question.”  Perhaps you are familiar with this too.  You know, when those teachers in our past seemed to revel in ensnaring the student in a trap – drawing out a wrong answer for the sake of the wrong answer.  I never liked that.  I suspect that you probably didn’t either. 

As it was with us in our days in the classroom, so too was it with Jesus and the Pharisees.  Testing Jesus on the minutia of the laws governing marriage and divorce, Jesus answered the question as he often does – with another question.  This simple redirection to consider the love of God since creation, foiled, yet again, another attempt to trick Jesus into teaching that was contrary to the laws of the day.  And in doing so, Jesus revealed an important point, that the word of God transcends the law of man, and that any divorce that was allowed at the time was due simply to the “hardness of your hearts”.

What is the condition of our hearts?  Are they open vessels… sanctuaries… much like the open heart of Jesus, who gave all on the cross for the good of humanity?  Or are they cold and hardened, like those of the scribes and the Pharisees who seemed to be more interested in debating and tricking Jesus than in his actual point of view.   When we approach our relationships with others, and especially the rules, expectations, and the norms that we place on those relationships, with a hardened heart, then those relationships become more transactional and less human.  So, my prayer for all of us in reading today’s Gospel is that it will prompt us to prioritize relationships based in love, and human dignity, when we set and interpret relational expectations for each other.

Trick questions are never fun.  But, looking past that, open hearts and deeper reflection are the foundation of healthy relationships where we can encounter Christ in our encounters with each other.