This sermon followed a conversation regarding how worship has changed during the years, why we did things that way then and why we do them this way now. It was a much more conversational sermon than I normally preach, so if you were at the sermon and you don't remember parts of this one, I went off notes more than normal.
When we do liturgy, all of the parts have meaning and are meant to help us experience the presence of God. Liturgy is contextual, because it helps us experience God; it has to match our experiences. Early Jesuit missionaries used to shift the mass to relate it to the cultures they were trying to reach out to. Some Asian Christians use rice instead of bread for communion because rice is a more normal staple and closer to what the disciples experienced then bread would be.
We’re talking about this on Reformation Sunday, because a big part of what the early Reformers did was change worship so that it was more contextual for the people. It is thanks to the Reformation that we experience worship in our own language. Prior to the Reformation, all services were in Latin, even though none of the people and often not even the priest performing the service spoke Latin. Fun fact for the day: we get the phrase “hocus pocus” from the old Latin mass. It comes from mishearing the latin for “take and eat”, “hoc est, poc est.” The Reformers changed the mass from Latin to German so people could understand what was being said. They added singing so the people could participate in worship. They opened both the bread and the wine to everyone, before only the priests could have the bread.
Since then, we have followed in the footsteps of these early reformers to continue to find ways to have worship be meaningful and relevant to our time. We brought the table away from the wall so the pastor could stand behind it and everyone could see what was happening. In fact, we had the assisting minister and the pastor always face the congregation, instead of turning our backs to you, like Linda did in the opening prayer today. We wrote new hymns that more closely reflect the music styles of their time. We’ve loosened up the language, and stopped talking like something out of a Shakespeare play. We do all of this in the spirit of the early Reformers, to break down the barriers that keep us from experiencing God.
But not just the spirit of the early Reformers. The Reformers took their cue from Jesus, from the freedom they discovered in the scriptures. One of the stories that really helped this freedom to click is this morning’s Gospel text from John. Jesus is talking to some Jews. And remember, Jesus himself is Jewish, so he’s talking to some of his own people, about freedom. And the Jews scoff at him, “we are descendents of Abraham, we’ve never been slaves to anyone. We don’t need your stories about freedom.” Which is really a strange statement for the Jews to be making. One, because Jerusalem during the time of Jesus was a protectorate of the Roman empire so they are basically slaves of the Emperor. But even more importantly, the entire basis of the Jewish faith is the exile story, the story of God’s deliverance of the people from slavery into freedom.
But the Jews had forgotten what it meant to be captive. And because they’d forgotten their captivity, they couldn’t see the promise Jesus was offering them. They couldn’t see they were living in invisible prisons.
I don’t think the mistake the Jews make is all that surprising and uncommon. I think all of us at one time or another forget we are captive and thus miss the promise of freedom. All of us have some sort of invisible prison. Prisons of fear or addiction or pride. Prisons we’d rather remain inside because freedom, true freedom, is more terrifying than the familiarity of captivity. But captivity to old habits is not what Jesus wanted for the Jews and is not what Jesus wants for us. And so, we hear in this text the promise and the power of our adoption into God’s family through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Son has set us free and so we are free indeed. And because that place is permanent, even when we forget our place, someone will come around who will remind us of our freedom, of a world bigger than our imaginations, and will draw us back out into freedom again.
That is what we celebrate on Reformation Sunday. Not that Martin Luther wrote some stuff a long time ago, but that God is continually, through people like Luther, but also through people like you and I, drawing people back into the promise and the power of freedom. Reformation isn’t something that happened once, five-hundred years ago. It isn’t even something that happened for the first time five hundred years ago. Since the time of Jesus, the Holy Spirit has been and will continue to be reforming us and making us new. So that we can experience God’s presence in our lives just as we are and who we are. The reformation is the flowing, moving breath of the Spirit reorienting our timeless God for a time-bound people.
This morning I want us to take an opportunity to, like Luther did, declare our place in the Reformation. You may be familiar with the story of the ninety-five theses, how Martin Luther nailed a list of thoughts to the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg, and the list was published, passed around, and eventually led to the spread of the Reformation movement across the globe. What you may not know is this nailing to the door doesn’t have quite the same umph to it as we might think with such a bold visual. The Castle Church door was like the community bulletin board. Well, more like the community Facebook page. People could post questions or comments for conversation on the door to invite others into discussion. This morning we’re going to take an opportunity to post some Reformation thoughts on our own old style Facebook page, just like Luther did. Each of you has a small piece of paper. I invite you to write on your paper either a way you’ve experienced reformation or a way you’d like to experience reformation. Then when you’re ready, you can come and “post” it to the door. We have some nails and hammers. And after the service I invite you to come up and look at the door and engage each other in conversation about what Reformation might look like today for us. Happy Reforming!
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, October 26, 2015
Monday, October 12, 2015
The Price of Inheritance: A Sermon on Mark 10:17-31
I kept thinking of a random quote while I was reading our text for this morning. And since it always feels like a successful Sunday when I get to work an obscure pop reference into a sermon, I’m going to share that quote with you. When I read this text, I kept thinking about a line from comedian George Carlin about religion. First though, a bit of a disclaimer. This quote I’m going to share with you is G rated. If you Google it, the rest of the sketch is not. We’re all adults here, Google at your own risk. Anyway, George Carlin defines religion as “an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke… where he will send you to live and suffer…forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, [and] somehow just can't handle money!”
And I wonder if this isn’t a little bit how the rich man in our Gospel text for this morning was feeling. Here was a guy who had done everything right for his whole life. Kept the commandments well. Didn’t lie, didn’t murder, was faithful to his spouse, didn’t steal, honored his parents. Every nuance of every law he strove to keep faithfully. And to those around him, it seemed he had been rewarded for his faithfulness. Wealth was at that time believed to be a sign of God’s blessing, and this guy was rich! But something still was missing. Even with all his possessions and all his faithfulness to the law, he knew, deep down inside that there was still an ache longing to be filled. Which is how he found himself traveling to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan to fall at the feet of an itinerant preacher and beg him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And though Jesus looked at him, and loved him, what disappointment must have filled the man’s heart when the words were delivered, “‘Go, sell what you have, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ And when he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
And then there’s Peter—it always seems to be poor, hapless Peter in these stories, doesn’t it—Peter who turns to Jesus after Jesus has followed up the rich man’s departure with a teaching about how hard it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God, who points out to Jesus, “Look, we left everything and followed you.” Only to have Jesus respond, “yes, and you who have left everything, houses, families, fields, will receive one-hundredfold in this age of persecutions.” George Carlin’s God sounds like less of a joke at the end of this reading.
This text seemed easier when I was twenty-two and self-righteous. When I left all my possessions in my parents garage and moved to DC with a duffle bag strapped to a skateboard to begin a life as a volunteer coordinator at a homeless shelter working forty hours plus hours a week for one-hundred dollars a month. I knew even then what I was doing was not poverty. I had little money, but I had none of the insecurity that comes with true poverty. I had a job, I had a home, I had health insurance. But there was still an edge of pride to this lifestyle. I get where Peter was coming from when he pointed out to Jesus, “Look, we left everything and followed you.” I get his disappointment when instead of praising him, Jesus told him that such sacrifice offered not glory but persecution, for many who are last will be first, and the first will be last. I, like Peter, thought I’d done a pretty noble thing with this sacrifice I had made to serve the homeless. Until the first really cold fall rain came. As I pushed my bike past the front of the building, I passed the hooded figure of one of the day shelter clients hunched under an awning smoking a cigarette. The awning was too narrow to offer full protection, so she was wrapped and hooded in a thick grey blanket, her belongings carefully tied in grocery bags against the downpour. She looked up as I passed by. “Good night,” she said. “Be safe riding home, it’s nasty out tonight.” That night, as I sat in my warm home, wrapped in dry blankets, full of the food my roommates had cooked for dinner, I thought of the woman sitting on the stoop, wishing me safety as I biked through the rain, and I thought, I have given up nothing.
Now it is true that the woman had choices. She could have sought shelter in our night shelter or any of the other shelters throughout the city, and maybe she did after I left, I don’t know. And even if she didn’t, that was her choice and part of following Jesus command to love your neighbor as yourself is allowing your neighbor to make their own choices with their life. I don’t know her story, I don’t know what very valid reasons she may have had to have wanted to spend that night outdoors rather than in. But I knew that everything I had given up still left me vastly wealthy compared to her. Even if I gave up everything and moved to the streets, I was born into privilege that would always put me ahead. That’s the thing about trying to earn God’s favor; everything you do is never enough. There’s always something missing.
What Peter and the rich man had in common is this sense that there was something they could do to earn God’s favor. That they could be good enough or poor enough or faithful enough or generous enough to make God love them. But what Jesus pointed out in this text is no matter how faithfully the rich man kept the law and no matter how much Peter gave, they were always going to fall short. They were always going to lack one thing. The rich man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. And Peter, well, the disciples are just consummate screw-ups in Mark’s Gospel. Read ahead for next week to see just how far James and John can get off the mark. Even the disciples can’t get this whole living like Jesus thing perfectly. How hard it is, brothers and sisters, to enter the kingdom of God. Left to our own devices, we will never make it. And that, believe it or not, is the good news in this text. That is the freeing news in this text. We can never earn our way into the kingdom of God. We can’t, and we don’t have to. The rich man asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life. An inheritance isn’t something you earn, right? It’s something that’s given to you. Something you get by virtue of being part of the family. But what happens in order to get an inheritance? Someone has to die. Beloved, Jesus died. We confess every Sunday that Jesus suffered death and was buried. And so, we have an inheritance. Our inheritance is based not on our ability to earn it, but in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
God is not some invisible man in the clouds with a checklist of rules we must measure up to in order to earn some vague promise of salvation someday. Jesus looked at the rich man, right then, as he was, and loved him. Jesus looked at Peter and all of his wayward, pushy, and confused disciples, and loved them. Jesus looks at us, with our questions, our fears, our failures, and shortcomings, and loves us. That love is based not own our ability to earn it, but on God’s ability to give it, because that’s the way love works. Think about love in our human relationships. It isn’t something you earn by checking off some list of accomplishments. It’s something that’s given to you, or that you give, freely, because you can’t help but love or be loved by the person. The love we experience between each other is just a dim reflection of the limitless love of God.
And because we don’t have to earn God’s love, because our freedom is a product of the inheritance we received through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can give up trying to be perfect and just be loved. And that love will change us. The disciples don’t get it through the entirety of Mark’s Gospel. You might remember from Easter that even at the resurrection, Mark’s account has the disciples not telling anyone because they were afraid. But we know from the book of Acts and from the fact that we are here this morning witnessing to Christ’s presence, that the disciples got it right eventually. They went out and told the story of God’s love for the world, and we are benefactors of the fact that their story didn’t end every time they failed. But instead every time they failed, because of the inheritance they had through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they were able to try again, to go at it again, to be disciples again. The fancy theological term for this is sanctification, it’s the way we are changed for the better out of response for the love we’ve experienced through God. Not because we’re trying to earn God’s favor, but the way a flower opens toward the sun, because God’s love has filled us and there simply is no other way to respond. And I have to imagine this is the rich man’s story too. That a God who would not be defeated by death was certainly not defeated by a rich man’s sadness. We don’t know what became of the rich man when he walked away that day, but I can only imagine that encounter with Jesus was just the first part of his story, just the first glimmerings of change that would blossom into something extraordinary.
This change too is our stories. It is in our words of forgiveness, our working toward justice, our struggles to see the world through our neighbors eyes, all these are signs of the way God is at work within us, changing us, loving us, reorienting our lives to God’s kingdom. And so, brothers and sisters, be loved. Know that you are loved. In failures and struggles, in greed and pride, our great God of love keeps coming back to us, turning our hearts, changing our lives, reorienting our souls to receive it. The inheritance is ours, brothers and sisters. For mortals it is impossible, but not for God. For God, all things are possible. Amen.
And I wonder if this isn’t a little bit how the rich man in our Gospel text for this morning was feeling. Here was a guy who had done everything right for his whole life. Kept the commandments well. Didn’t lie, didn’t murder, was faithful to his spouse, didn’t steal, honored his parents. Every nuance of every law he strove to keep faithfully. And to those around him, it seemed he had been rewarded for his faithfulness. Wealth was at that time believed to be a sign of God’s blessing, and this guy was rich! But something still was missing. Even with all his possessions and all his faithfulness to the law, he knew, deep down inside that there was still an ache longing to be filled. Which is how he found himself traveling to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan to fall at the feet of an itinerant preacher and beg him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And though Jesus looked at him, and loved him, what disappointment must have filled the man’s heart when the words were delivered, “‘Go, sell what you have, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ And when he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
And then there’s Peter—it always seems to be poor, hapless Peter in these stories, doesn’t it—Peter who turns to Jesus after Jesus has followed up the rich man’s departure with a teaching about how hard it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God, who points out to Jesus, “Look, we left everything and followed you.” Only to have Jesus respond, “yes, and you who have left everything, houses, families, fields, will receive one-hundredfold in this age of persecutions.” George Carlin’s God sounds like less of a joke at the end of this reading.
This text seemed easier when I was twenty-two and self-righteous. When I left all my possessions in my parents garage and moved to DC with a duffle bag strapped to a skateboard to begin a life as a volunteer coordinator at a homeless shelter working forty hours plus hours a week for one-hundred dollars a month. I knew even then what I was doing was not poverty. I had little money, but I had none of the insecurity that comes with true poverty. I had a job, I had a home, I had health insurance. But there was still an edge of pride to this lifestyle. I get where Peter was coming from when he pointed out to Jesus, “Look, we left everything and followed you.” I get his disappointment when instead of praising him, Jesus told him that such sacrifice offered not glory but persecution, for many who are last will be first, and the first will be last. I, like Peter, thought I’d done a pretty noble thing with this sacrifice I had made to serve the homeless. Until the first really cold fall rain came. As I pushed my bike past the front of the building, I passed the hooded figure of one of the day shelter clients hunched under an awning smoking a cigarette. The awning was too narrow to offer full protection, so she was wrapped and hooded in a thick grey blanket, her belongings carefully tied in grocery bags against the downpour. She looked up as I passed by. “Good night,” she said. “Be safe riding home, it’s nasty out tonight.” That night, as I sat in my warm home, wrapped in dry blankets, full of the food my roommates had cooked for dinner, I thought of the woman sitting on the stoop, wishing me safety as I biked through the rain, and I thought, I have given up nothing.
Now it is true that the woman had choices. She could have sought shelter in our night shelter or any of the other shelters throughout the city, and maybe she did after I left, I don’t know. And even if she didn’t, that was her choice and part of following Jesus command to love your neighbor as yourself is allowing your neighbor to make their own choices with their life. I don’t know her story, I don’t know what very valid reasons she may have had to have wanted to spend that night outdoors rather than in. But I knew that everything I had given up still left me vastly wealthy compared to her. Even if I gave up everything and moved to the streets, I was born into privilege that would always put me ahead. That’s the thing about trying to earn God’s favor; everything you do is never enough. There’s always something missing.
What Peter and the rich man had in common is this sense that there was something they could do to earn God’s favor. That they could be good enough or poor enough or faithful enough or generous enough to make God love them. But what Jesus pointed out in this text is no matter how faithfully the rich man kept the law and no matter how much Peter gave, they were always going to fall short. They were always going to lack one thing. The rich man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. And Peter, well, the disciples are just consummate screw-ups in Mark’s Gospel. Read ahead for next week to see just how far James and John can get off the mark. Even the disciples can’t get this whole living like Jesus thing perfectly. How hard it is, brothers and sisters, to enter the kingdom of God. Left to our own devices, we will never make it. And that, believe it or not, is the good news in this text. That is the freeing news in this text. We can never earn our way into the kingdom of God. We can’t, and we don’t have to. The rich man asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life. An inheritance isn’t something you earn, right? It’s something that’s given to you. Something you get by virtue of being part of the family. But what happens in order to get an inheritance? Someone has to die. Beloved, Jesus died. We confess every Sunday that Jesus suffered death and was buried. And so, we have an inheritance. Our inheritance is based not on our ability to earn it, but in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
God is not some invisible man in the clouds with a checklist of rules we must measure up to in order to earn some vague promise of salvation someday. Jesus looked at the rich man, right then, as he was, and loved him. Jesus looked at Peter and all of his wayward, pushy, and confused disciples, and loved them. Jesus looks at us, with our questions, our fears, our failures, and shortcomings, and loves us. That love is based not own our ability to earn it, but on God’s ability to give it, because that’s the way love works. Think about love in our human relationships. It isn’t something you earn by checking off some list of accomplishments. It’s something that’s given to you, or that you give, freely, because you can’t help but love or be loved by the person. The love we experience between each other is just a dim reflection of the limitless love of God.
And because we don’t have to earn God’s love, because our freedom is a product of the inheritance we received through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can give up trying to be perfect and just be loved. And that love will change us. The disciples don’t get it through the entirety of Mark’s Gospel. You might remember from Easter that even at the resurrection, Mark’s account has the disciples not telling anyone because they were afraid. But we know from the book of Acts and from the fact that we are here this morning witnessing to Christ’s presence, that the disciples got it right eventually. They went out and told the story of God’s love for the world, and we are benefactors of the fact that their story didn’t end every time they failed. But instead every time they failed, because of the inheritance they had through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they were able to try again, to go at it again, to be disciples again. The fancy theological term for this is sanctification, it’s the way we are changed for the better out of response for the love we’ve experienced through God. Not because we’re trying to earn God’s favor, but the way a flower opens toward the sun, because God’s love has filled us and there simply is no other way to respond. And I have to imagine this is the rich man’s story too. That a God who would not be defeated by death was certainly not defeated by a rich man’s sadness. We don’t know what became of the rich man when he walked away that day, but I can only imagine that encounter with Jesus was just the first part of his story, just the first glimmerings of change that would blossom into something extraordinary.
This change too is our stories. It is in our words of forgiveness, our working toward justice, our struggles to see the world through our neighbors eyes, all these are signs of the way God is at work within us, changing us, loving us, reorienting our lives to God’s kingdom. And so, brothers and sisters, be loved. Know that you are loved. In failures and struggles, in greed and pride, our great God of love keeps coming back to us, turning our hearts, changing our lives, reorienting our souls to receive it. The inheritance is ours, brothers and sisters. For mortals it is impossible, but not for God. For God, all things are possible. Amen.
Monday, October 5, 2015
Let the Little Children Come: A Sermon on Mark 10:1-16
Once again our Gospel text for this morning seems like a weird mish-match of stories. First we have this test by the Pharisees that led to these seemingly harsh teachings about divorce. Followed immediately by this beautiful image of Jesus taking the children into his arms and blessing them. These seemingly disparate images are hard to fit together as one coherent reading. Why would the lectionary have us read both of them this morning?
One commentary I read suggested the Jesus blessing the little children passage was added as a cop-out for pastors who didn’t want to deal with the divorce passage. Maybe, if the passage was read with enough monotony, no one would notice mean Jesus, and we could slide on over to nice Jesus who loves babies. But of course, we can’t. One, because this is one of those passages that as your pastor I feel responsible to unpack for us this morning, you can’t read something like this and just walk away. But two, because there isn’t mean Jesus and nice Jesus, there’s only one, Jesus, the loving, healing, grace-filled savior of the world. So if Jesus says something like this, there has to be grace in it, there has to be meaning for us. So what is it?
The lectionary may have arbitrarily stuck these two readings together this morning, but Mark did not. These passages follow each other for a reason. You might have noticed this is the same pattern Jesus has been following throughout the last few weeks. Hard teaching, welcoming children, hard teaching, lifting up the little ones, hard teaching, blessing children. Jesus follows each of his hard teachings up with an object lesson about children. So let’s talk a little bit about the role of children in Jesus time. For us to really understand the power of Jesus words here, we have to take off our twenty-first century glasses and see this moment through the disciples’ eyes. Because we value children in our culture. Children are precious, sacred, we make them the center of our homes and of our lives. This was not the case in the first century. Children had no value in society until they were old enough to work. They were pushed aside, worthless. So when Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me,” this is not the Sunday school image of a shiny long-haired Jesus holding clean, chubby-cheeked, little children. A better image for our time would be Jesus saying, “Let the drug addicts come to me, let the convicted felons come, let the homeless, let refugees, let transgendered youth, let anyone whom society has cast aside, has said is worthless, let those people come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” In welcoming the children into their midst and blessing them, Jesus is making the case that the kingdom of God is not for people like the Pharisees, people with power and money and prestige. The kingdom of God is for the vulnerable, the cast aside, the helpless, the hopeless, the forgotten. Then Jesus goes on, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” This passage can really have two meanings. It could mean, welcome the kingdom of God like a child would welcome it. I think of my little buddy Emma, who though she is only three, seems to understand communion better than I do, holding out her hands wide with a huge grin on her face, so totally excited to “eat Jesus.” Were that I always received the Eucharist with such unabashed joy. But, lest I glorify childlike faith, if we settle on this interpretation we also have to take the other side of children. Emma’s three-year-old stubbornness often leads more to “why” and “no” than it does wide-eyed wonder. It is too simple to assume that God is calling us to sentimental child-like faith, because with children remember that questioning and refusing is just as much a part of the bargain.
The second thing this passage could mean is “welcome the kingdom of God like it is a little child.” Like the kingdom of God itself is vulnerable, small, weak, and lowly. What a world-jarring image, that the kingdom of God would come to us not in power and might, but in weakness and vulnerability. Whoever wants to be first must be last, Jesus said just a few verses ago, for the kingdom of God belongs to those the world has left-behind.
With that framework, let’s unpack these teachings on divorce. Once again it’s important for us to take off our twenty-first century framework of marriage as a legal agreement between two consenting adults. In the first century, marriage was a property contract between a woman’s father and her husband. She was literally sold from her father’s house to her husband’s. And notice who is having this conversation. Jesus is not talking to two people in pain because they cannot make their marriage work. Or to someone escaping an abusive situation. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, to a bunch of men. There are no women a part of this conversation. This is because divorce was totally one-sided. Women could not divorce for any reason; only a man could cast his wife out. The command of Moses the Pharisees referenced allowed a man to divorce his wife if he found “something objectionable about her.” “Something objectionable” could be growing older, failing to bear a son, burning toast, or even the husband simply being bored. And a woman’s entire value in society was connected to the man, either her father or her husband. A divorced woman could not return to her father’s home, and no one else could marry her. So divorce left her destitute, abandoned, and alone. Exactly like the little children Jesus so eagerly welcomed.
That this teaching takes place beyond the Jordan adds another dimension to the story. The Jordan River should remind you of John the Baptist, who taught and baptized at the Jordan, and was beheaded by Herod for calling out Herod for marrying his sister-in-law. Which, if you remember from earlier in the summer, was a move made not for love but for power. What Jesus seems to be doing, both here and in the John the Baptist story, is not setting some parameter that all marriages must fall into, but calling out the Pharisees on their on-going efforts to treat the law of God as a tool of oppression, a way to keep people in bondage, to separate people from God and from each other, to stop people from living into the fullness of God’s love for them.
I think the gist of what Jesus is getting at here is that people are not disposable. Moses may have permitted divorce because of men’s hardness of heart, but Jesus will not allow any of his beloved children to be treated as disposable, free to be cast aside by their husbands at the husbands’ will. This text seem less like a commentary on modern-day divorce, and more like a critique of the tendency of people in power to create laws and rules that keep them in power at the expense of the weak.
Ironically, I think this makes this Gospel teaching from Jesus the exact opposite of what it has historically been used for, as a “clobber text” to tell people that they are not welcome in the kingdom of God. This Gospel is, in fact, a firm declaration against all of the people who would try to use the Bible to assert that the kingdom of God is anything other than the place where the lowly, the lonely, the broken, and the hurting are taken up into the arms of Jesus and blessed. Grace, remember, is not the same as niceness. Grace encompasses both law and gospel. And for the Pharisees and any time we might try to use scripture to treat someone else as less than, this passage is law. Jesus is calling the Pharisees out on their treatment of others, because to do anything else would be to turn a blind eye to suffering. Grace is about shaking us down from our self-righteous thrones so that we can live in the beauty of the kingdom of God. Because it is in the knowledge of our weakness that God comes.
Broken relationships hurt. Be those relationships be divorce, a damaged friendship, an alienated child or parent, be they broken by racism, sexism, homophobia, pride, greed, violence. So many things can break our relationships, leave us hurting and alone. Even in cases where a broken relationship is the absolute best outcome. Even when the marriage, the friendship, the bond, whatever it might be is frayed to the point where the only healthy decision is to walk away, even then it hurts; even then it is awful. And that pain, even when it is the absolute right thing, even when it is the only way to healing, is not pain God wants for us. God will walk with us through broken relationships on the path to wholeness, but that pain is caused by human failure, it is never God’s divine plan for our lives. But anyone who would willingly bring that pain on another, who would willingly cast another aside; that is the brokenness Jesus is speaking against. What God has joined together the powerful cannot from their own hardened hearts, separate. Using your power to subjugate another, to treat another as less than you, is wrong, Jesus says, in no uncertain terms. God’s law is not a tool for your oppression.
But also, all of us have experienced times when we have felt cast aside by others. When we have been broken by the sin of another, left hurting and alone by fellow children of God. And it is in those times that this passage is flowing with good news for us. Because this Gospel passage says you who are hurting, you who are broken, you who have been cast aside, come to me, do not be stopped; for it is to you, who you are, as you are, that the kingdom of God belongs. Thanks be to God. Amen.
One commentary I read suggested the Jesus blessing the little children passage was added as a cop-out for pastors who didn’t want to deal with the divorce passage. Maybe, if the passage was read with enough monotony, no one would notice mean Jesus, and we could slide on over to nice Jesus who loves babies. But of course, we can’t. One, because this is one of those passages that as your pastor I feel responsible to unpack for us this morning, you can’t read something like this and just walk away. But two, because there isn’t mean Jesus and nice Jesus, there’s only one, Jesus, the loving, healing, grace-filled savior of the world. So if Jesus says something like this, there has to be grace in it, there has to be meaning for us. So what is it?
The lectionary may have arbitrarily stuck these two readings together this morning, but Mark did not. These passages follow each other for a reason. You might have noticed this is the same pattern Jesus has been following throughout the last few weeks. Hard teaching, welcoming children, hard teaching, lifting up the little ones, hard teaching, blessing children. Jesus follows each of his hard teachings up with an object lesson about children. So let’s talk a little bit about the role of children in Jesus time. For us to really understand the power of Jesus words here, we have to take off our twenty-first century glasses and see this moment through the disciples’ eyes. Because we value children in our culture. Children are precious, sacred, we make them the center of our homes and of our lives. This was not the case in the first century. Children had no value in society until they were old enough to work. They were pushed aside, worthless. So when Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me,” this is not the Sunday school image of a shiny long-haired Jesus holding clean, chubby-cheeked, little children. A better image for our time would be Jesus saying, “Let the drug addicts come to me, let the convicted felons come, let the homeless, let refugees, let transgendered youth, let anyone whom society has cast aside, has said is worthless, let those people come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” In welcoming the children into their midst and blessing them, Jesus is making the case that the kingdom of God is not for people like the Pharisees, people with power and money and prestige. The kingdom of God is for the vulnerable, the cast aside, the helpless, the hopeless, the forgotten. Then Jesus goes on, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” This passage can really have two meanings. It could mean, welcome the kingdom of God like a child would welcome it. I think of my little buddy Emma, who though she is only three, seems to understand communion better than I do, holding out her hands wide with a huge grin on her face, so totally excited to “eat Jesus.” Were that I always received the Eucharist with such unabashed joy. But, lest I glorify childlike faith, if we settle on this interpretation we also have to take the other side of children. Emma’s three-year-old stubbornness often leads more to “why” and “no” than it does wide-eyed wonder. It is too simple to assume that God is calling us to sentimental child-like faith, because with children remember that questioning and refusing is just as much a part of the bargain.
The second thing this passage could mean is “welcome the kingdom of God like it is a little child.” Like the kingdom of God itself is vulnerable, small, weak, and lowly. What a world-jarring image, that the kingdom of God would come to us not in power and might, but in weakness and vulnerability. Whoever wants to be first must be last, Jesus said just a few verses ago, for the kingdom of God belongs to those the world has left-behind.
With that framework, let’s unpack these teachings on divorce. Once again it’s important for us to take off our twenty-first century framework of marriage as a legal agreement between two consenting adults. In the first century, marriage was a property contract between a woman’s father and her husband. She was literally sold from her father’s house to her husband’s. And notice who is having this conversation. Jesus is not talking to two people in pain because they cannot make their marriage work. Or to someone escaping an abusive situation. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, to a bunch of men. There are no women a part of this conversation. This is because divorce was totally one-sided. Women could not divorce for any reason; only a man could cast his wife out. The command of Moses the Pharisees referenced allowed a man to divorce his wife if he found “something objectionable about her.” “Something objectionable” could be growing older, failing to bear a son, burning toast, or even the husband simply being bored. And a woman’s entire value in society was connected to the man, either her father or her husband. A divorced woman could not return to her father’s home, and no one else could marry her. So divorce left her destitute, abandoned, and alone. Exactly like the little children Jesus so eagerly welcomed.
That this teaching takes place beyond the Jordan adds another dimension to the story. The Jordan River should remind you of John the Baptist, who taught and baptized at the Jordan, and was beheaded by Herod for calling out Herod for marrying his sister-in-law. Which, if you remember from earlier in the summer, was a move made not for love but for power. What Jesus seems to be doing, both here and in the John the Baptist story, is not setting some parameter that all marriages must fall into, but calling out the Pharisees on their on-going efforts to treat the law of God as a tool of oppression, a way to keep people in bondage, to separate people from God and from each other, to stop people from living into the fullness of God’s love for them.
I think the gist of what Jesus is getting at here is that people are not disposable. Moses may have permitted divorce because of men’s hardness of heart, but Jesus will not allow any of his beloved children to be treated as disposable, free to be cast aside by their husbands at the husbands’ will. This text seem less like a commentary on modern-day divorce, and more like a critique of the tendency of people in power to create laws and rules that keep them in power at the expense of the weak.
Ironically, I think this makes this Gospel teaching from Jesus the exact opposite of what it has historically been used for, as a “clobber text” to tell people that they are not welcome in the kingdom of God. This Gospel is, in fact, a firm declaration against all of the people who would try to use the Bible to assert that the kingdom of God is anything other than the place where the lowly, the lonely, the broken, and the hurting are taken up into the arms of Jesus and blessed. Grace, remember, is not the same as niceness. Grace encompasses both law and gospel. And for the Pharisees and any time we might try to use scripture to treat someone else as less than, this passage is law. Jesus is calling the Pharisees out on their treatment of others, because to do anything else would be to turn a blind eye to suffering. Grace is about shaking us down from our self-righteous thrones so that we can live in the beauty of the kingdom of God. Because it is in the knowledge of our weakness that God comes.
Broken relationships hurt. Be those relationships be divorce, a damaged friendship, an alienated child or parent, be they broken by racism, sexism, homophobia, pride, greed, violence. So many things can break our relationships, leave us hurting and alone. Even in cases where a broken relationship is the absolute best outcome. Even when the marriage, the friendship, the bond, whatever it might be is frayed to the point where the only healthy decision is to walk away, even then it hurts; even then it is awful. And that pain, even when it is the absolute right thing, even when it is the only way to healing, is not pain God wants for us. God will walk with us through broken relationships on the path to wholeness, but that pain is caused by human failure, it is never God’s divine plan for our lives. But anyone who would willingly bring that pain on another, who would willingly cast another aside; that is the brokenness Jesus is speaking against. What God has joined together the powerful cannot from their own hardened hearts, separate. Using your power to subjugate another, to treat another as less than you, is wrong, Jesus says, in no uncertain terms. God’s law is not a tool for your oppression.
But also, all of us have experienced times when we have felt cast aside by others. When we have been broken by the sin of another, left hurting and alone by fellow children of God. And it is in those times that this passage is flowing with good news for us. Because this Gospel passage says you who are hurting, you who are broken, you who have been cast aside, come to me, do not be stopped; for it is to you, who you are, as you are, that the kingdom of God belongs. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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