Friday 15 June

1 Kings 19:9, 11-16, Psalm 27, Matthew 5:27-32

Powerless people

When a man was tired of his wife, he could simply write a note of divorce. If the discarded wife could not return to her parents, she had to find a way of supporting herself. Often the only option was prostitution. The gospels suggest that Jesus had compassion for these women and here he gets tough with men who traded a wife for someone new. In these readings, it seems that Jesus gets tough about a lot of things. This is because Matthew puts a heap of teachings in chapters 5 and 6. Many are relevant today.