EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 2.5 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on Oct. 7, 2018.
This week’s gospel is one of those texts that can be a powder keg .. both for the reader of the Bible … and for the preacher. … In preaching circles it fits right up there with a handful of the texts that make a preacher cringe when it appears in the lectionary. Because, as you well know, our Bible can be a complicated book.
And in the instance of this text, as soon as I utter the word “divorce” you are all likely convinced in your heads of the sermon of I am going to preach. … Or at the very least, the sermon you THINK I should preach.
Admit it: As soon as I read the word “divorce” in the gospel today, you immediately had a notion in your head about what should be preached. … Likely, your mind will harken back to previous sermons you may have heard about divorce, or the text may bring up some very difficult memories for you, or you may have preconceived notions as to how I might handle the topic of divorce as a preacher.
Or even, just the pain of the word “divorce” might make this a difficult passage to hear, and that too will color your expectation of my sermon. … And so it is absolutely understandable if your mind immediately jumps to a conclusion about what my sermon should be. That is human nature, after all.
And that is why preachers dread this text: Because of its very loaded connotations.
But that’s not the only thing that makes this text challenging.
You also may have noticed, that the lectionary writers could easily of have lopped off the second story in this passage, the one regarding Jesus’ rebuking of his disciples for trying to push away the children trying to get close to him. … But the lectionary writers didn’t do that. … And so, we are left to wonder, just what the heck are we to make of the pairing of these two stories in our gospel today?
Well, let’s try to unpack that a little bit.
First, we have to remember the setting -- the time and place -- of where Jesus is in this passage. If you think back over the past few weeks as to what the Gospel of Mark has been telling us, Jesus is traveling with and leading his disciples to Jerusalem. And when we read today’s stories we’re still in that time frame.
And so on that journey, Jesus is trying to help the disciples discover how it is that God wants us to act as humans. … And note that during these lessons -- today’s and previously -- what Jesus keeps coming back to is the often contradictory nature of the “human-constructed laws” that were handed down to the Israelites and the promise of God’s love.
I also think it’s important to note in this period, that Jesus, the Son of God, after all, isn’t calling on the disciples to learn any acts of spiritual power, but rather in all of these passages in Mark, Jesus is asking the disciples just to live well in their human condition. … Hmmm, interesting. That seems worth repeating: Jesus isn’t calling on the disciples to be divine as he is ... but rather just decent people to each other.
So in today’s texts specifically, as we try to interpret what Jesus is doing in his conversation with the Pharisees -- who are again trying to trap Jesus into an answer regarding divorce that would upset the Romans -- I think we need to keep in mind what Jesus was trying to teach the disciples.
And secondly, in addition to trying to understand what Jesus was trying to accomplish in this text, we need to remember that this text was written a few thousand years ago, for an audience that was almost entirely men who owned property. ... And this context is of the utmost importance.
The fact is … life 3,000 years ago wasn’t pleasant for many. ... But for women -- and also children who are mentioned in the second story in today’s gospel -- life was infinitely more difficult, as they had virtually no control over their life. … In fact, women and children were little more than possessions in this world. … They were in no better standing than the servants who served their masters.
So then, just what is that we do with these two Gospel stories together?
The answer comes in just what Jesus’ purpose was in this lesson … which was to draw attention to how women and children were treated in the 1st century. … Just as other lessons in this portion of the Gospel of Mark illustrate how we are to act toward others on the margins of society, such as the poor and the sick.
We’ve already stated, that during this time, women and children weren’t much more than property. And so in today’s first story, Jesus deliberately takes the Pharisees’ attempts to trick him into an answer about divorce that will get Him into hot water with the Romas -- remember the threat that Jesus played to the daily lives of the religious leaders of the day -- and He turns it on its head, as he so often does.
Instead of answering the Pharisees’ question, Jesus takes this opportunity to ask the Pharisees what they have done in service for those who are on the edges of society, including women. Because lest we forget, that in the ancient world, divorce only worked in favor of the men.
Women were disproportionately hurt in a divorce, as first off, only men could decide to divorce, and second they could do so for whatever reason they desired. … True story. … In the Old Testament, essentially a man could divorce a woman for any reason. Simply by writing a quick divorce decree on paper he could unwed his wife and essentially cast her into the world with nothing.
And in that world, where was she to turn? Once already wed, she wouldn’t be wanted by any other man, and most often her father wouldn’t have wanted her to return home as it would have been just one more mouth to feed. … A burden. ... And so without choices, the women who were divorced often become beggars … or even worse … just to stay alive.
And so, as we deal with Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees’ question about divorce today, we unequivocally have to deal with it in this framework: When Jesus commands that a man not divorce his wife and marry another, or else he commits adultery, Jesus is continuing his ongoing teaching regarding the care of other human beings in the 1st century. … He’s absolutely not dealing a stinging blow to those who have been divorced.
Even more so, Jesus cleverly takes this opportunity to elevate the standing of women, as in his answer, he also insists that women who divorce a man and wed another are committing adultery, the same as a man. … But think about it: Women didn’t even possess that right at this time. They couldn’t divorce their husband. … So, in his own cleverly disguised way, Jesus tells the Pharisees that they do! … He essentially used the Pharisees’ own trick question to turn the tables on them and heighten the importance of women’s rights.
OK, so that right there was a whole lot of detailed unpacking of a text that you probably aren’t accustomed to hearing from me very often.
But I don’t want the importance of today’s message to go unnoticed: What I’m trying to say is that in this passage -- which has been used for hundreds of years to keep many in bondage over the idea of divorce -- that we must focus more on what Jesus was trying to accomplish than on what the words state.
In other words, Jesus is not honoring divorce here in this text, but rather what he is saying is that marriages, as well as the relationships between adults and children -- let’s not forget the other story in today’s gospel -- are proposed as spheres in which we can live toward the other in the promise of our divine image … in the image of our maker: God. … Our relationships is where we deliver on our promises to God.
Jesus’ clever answer back to the Pharisees relativizes the human-constructed law in light of God’s message about love and how we treat one another. … Or, in other words, Jesus argues that God’s views on the integrity of how we treat each other is vastly more important than the laws on divorce that were handed down to the Israelites.
In today’s gospel text, Jesus wasn’t trying to cast a bad light on those who get a divorce, as this passage has for so long been used to shape our views on marriage. … What Jesus was saying is that in the relationship of a man and wife, the wife has equal footing as the man, and God had a mutual expectation of how each should treat the other. … And allowing a man to just cast off his wife on a whim, wasn’t what God had intended.
But, of course, we live in the 21st century and the frame through which we read these texts is so very much different, isn’t it? … So just how is it that we can deal with such a potentially harmful scripture passage today?
I suggest this is what we do with it: Take this passage for what Jesus is trying to do … which is to elevate the standing of women 2,000 years ago, and leave behind the charged emotions over the topic of divorce that have built up for thousands of years.
Let me be clear: God hurts just as much as we do when a relationship ends, when a marriage ends. … I am not saying that he doesn’t.
But I think it’s utterly important that we be careful in using biblical texts that were written some 3,000 years ago as tool of abuse and shame in today’s world. … And before we try to use the legalistic framework of ancient biblical writers from before even Jesus was born, we ought first to try to understand the implications of doing so.
The gospel text today deals with some very emotionally charged topics: The treatment and care of women and children in Jesus’ time. … And Jesus very deliberately uses these two sets of people -- women and children -- as symbols of all of the forgotten people of his time … and frankly our time.
He’s telling the Pharisees -- and his own disciples in the case of the secondary story -- that they are missing the point. … As the Pharisees want to hold onto ancient laws that keep women in place as less than second class citizens … and as the disciples want to keep the children away from Jesus so as not to bother him, Jesus wants to tell them both to knock it off. …. Jesus is emphatically stating that the rules of this world, and the customs of how we treat others that we established here on earth often conflict with how it was that God intended us to act.
So in both the Pharisees’ insistence that men have the right to divorce their wives for whatever reason … and the story of the disciples’ efforts to keep the children away from Jesus, Jesus is yelling to them, “Stop!” … “Enough!” … “This isn’t the way that my father had planned!”
Let me boil today’s lesson down to this: In the case of those involved in divorce, it is not our role as God’s people to refuse them access to Jesus. … And as well, in the case of children, we also shouldn’t stand in their way to their access to Jesus either.
Instead, we broken people of God -- which is all of us -- are invited to be healed by the hands of Jesus. … In fact, if you ask them, many people will testify that it is exactly our loving God who has healed their broken hearts after the trauma of a divorce. … And I am one of them.
And so I think it is imperative that the lesson we take away from today is … that we not use God’s word as punishment for those who are living through some of the most difficult times of their life … very real earthly challenges … but instead, we remember that it is God’s love and Jesus’s healing hands that bring many through their toughest periods in life.
And that is the Good News for this Sunday. … Amen.
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