Lectionary Theme: Marriage: Call and Commission (4th Sunday after Easter)
April 28 2024
18. Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”
19. So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
20. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.
21. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
22. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
23. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.”
24. Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
25. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
21. being subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22. Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord,
23. for the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
24. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.
25. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26. in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word,
27. so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, so that she may be holy and without blemish.
28. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29. For no one ever hates his own flesh, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church,
30. because we are members of his body.
31. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
32. This is a great mystery, but I am speaking about Christ and the church.
33. Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.
1. If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
3. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
5. or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;
6. it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.
7. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
9. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part,
10. but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
11. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
12. For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
1. When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.
2. Large crowds followed him, and he cured them there.
3. Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?”
4. He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’
5. and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
6. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
7. They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?”
8. He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
9. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
10. The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”
11. But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given.
12. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”