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 nearly four years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on Sunday, Oct. 3, the 19th week after Pentecost.
This week's gospel: Mark: 10:2-16
2 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,[a] 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Jesus Blesses Little Children
13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
The message:
As you can imagine, sometimes when you look ahead at the gospel text that is planned for the coming Sunday, some of the gospel texts are not an easy read. Today's is an example of a text that for years that has been taken out of context and used to harm people because it deals with the societal issue of divorce, which so many people have been touched by.
So, when it comes to these texts, we have a couple of options. We can either leave them out of the service -- not read them -- which some pastors do when they aren't preaching on them. Or we can leave them in, and try to as heartfully and as spiritually as possible to deal with the texts, even though they're challenging.
And so today, I choose to deal with the difficult text ... even though it can be very challenging.
Two thousand years ago when Jesus was walking the earth, the Roman societal structure was so rigidly fixed that once you were in a station in life, essentially that's where you stayed. And generally, generation after generation didn't move upwardly as well. And, frankly, in the Hebrew culture of the first century, much wasn't very different. At the top, you had the wealthiest of society, and the ruling class as well. In Roman life that would have been the senators that were elected to make decisions on behalf of government and ruled the country underneath the Caesar.
A little bit lower, you would have had the lesser landowners and business class, and then the rest of the free men who maybe didn't have land or didn't own a business but were indeed free. They might have been laborers, or they might have worked as a part of a household staff. Also, in that third class, you might have had the freed slaves of the time. Now, the institution of slavery during the first century was different than the chattel slavery that we envision here as Americans. The kind of slavery that we would have studied in history and that we are familiar with. It was more of an economic indentured slavery, and there was opportunity for people to get out of their slavery. Once they did, they enjoyed a certain amount of rights in that society.
And then, on the bottom of this entire hierarchy, you would have had the slaves. Those that were born into slavery because their descendants were in slavery. Those that became impoverished because maybe their household was wiped out by a flood or a pestilence, or if they became poor simply through the institution of divorce.
So, even in ancient times, one of the biggest reasons that the people would enter poverty, or become a slave, was because of the institution. And for the record, that's actually true today still in America: One of the biggest reasons that new people are introduced to poverty is through the the institution of divorce.
The hierarchy of Roman society is well documented in history books. You can Google this all you want, and you will find plenty of diagrams that will explain the hierarchical structure of the Roman life or Hebrew life at the time. ... But, what is interesting is who isn't represented in those diagrams. And if you were listening to today's gospel text, it should be pretty apparent. ... It was women and children. Nowhere in that hierarchical structure were they included. ... It was as if they were forgotten people. It was as if they didn't amount to anything. And it was as true in Roman society as it was in Jewish society, as it was in most other societies at the time. ... Neither women, nor children, held any value. They didn't have rights. They didn't have the ability to own property. They didn't have the ability to seek out better circumstances for themselves.
And so it should come as no surprise to us that women and children are Jesus' focus in this gospel text. It is a text that is challenging, and sometimes, for those that have been touched by divorce either as a child or even into adulthood, it's a tough text to even hear. It seems too damning for so many who have been affected by divorce.
This is one of those Bible scriptures that has been so frequently used to shame those who have been divorced, or to even shame people into staying in adverse situations. And those who use this text in such a way today are no better than the Pharisees we read about in this gospel text who are trying to trap Jesus in an unanswerable position.
The Hebrew culture was held together by many biblical laws that were handed down to them through the Torah, or what we call the Old Testament. The laws in their own right, and there were many of them -- if you read through the Old Testament, there's an estimated 600-plus laws that the Hebrews were supposed to know -- and thus the laws were there to govern their daily life. ... But those laws were designed to help guide God's chosen people to live in community. And they weren't designed to oppress people.
The problem, of course, is that we are human, and thus we have the tendency to easily take things out of context. And if you take some of these more difficult scriptures out of context, and then you lay them on top of the crushing societal structure that existed in the first century, biblical laws such as the ones we read about in the gospel today pertaining to divorce ... well, these scriptures can be very abusive and very damaging and often catastrophic.
So when the Pharisees issued their linguistic challenge to Jesus today in the gospel text, they are trying to trap him by saying, "Well, Jesus, didn't the laws tell us that a man could divorce his wife?" ... Jesus refuses to take their bait, and he just isn't going to go there. Instead, Jesus flips those earthly values on their head, and thus indicts the Pharisees instead.
I can imagine Jesus standing there, addressing the Pharisees, pointing a finger directly back at them. And he's saying, "Yes, you're correct. The law says that a man can write himself a certificate for a divorce at any time." But I could also see Jesus going on to say, "But Moses wrote that commandment for you, you hardhearted rulers." He had to write a law that essentially equaled the playing field for women. You see, in the Pharisees' belief, the law that they were talking about was all about continuing the power structure so that women were kept on the outside of society. So that women were kept in their place and under men's rule. Thanks to the law, men could draw up any reason they wanted so that they could issue their own divorce decree.
But the wives didn't have that same privilege, and so this is why Jesus calls the men out. He reminds them that whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. ... And then Jesus goes on to remind them that the same goes for women who divorce men. Jesus is saying that women have rights as well, and this is the law that he's talking about. The gospel text addresses the fact that a man could write a divorce decree for his wife. But Jesus reminds the Pharisees about the second part of that commandment, and that is that women now could write their own divorce decrees too.
Originally, as the Pharisees understood it, this wasn't an option for women. And it never occurred to them that that same law that had set them apart and given them such privilege, could also be applied to women, and thus equal the playing field for them. And so, as the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus and indict him, and tried to get Jesus to buy in to the culture that existed in the time, Jesus flipped the whole argument on its head.
Jesus's intent of this discussion is to make the Pharisees come to realize that the law wasn't designed to keep anyone downtrodden. God did not sit on high and hand down the 600 laws that he passed through Moses and other Hebrew leaders onto his chosen people. He did not intend for that law to oppress anyone. God intended those laws to be given as a gift to his chosen people, to ensure that everyone was provided for, even women.
And so that leads us to the second story of today's gospel. It does seem like a kind of a strange juxtaposition, doesn't it? I the first half of the gospel text tonight, we're dealing with this very hard question about divorce, and the rights that people of the day held. Then we take this kind of 90 degree turn, and gospel text starts talking about children. ... And for some of us, it might even be more difficult to hear about how the disciples were treating children. After all, the text tells us that the disciples, Jesus' closest follower, we're the ones turning away people who were trying to bring children to Jesus. ... Trying to bring the children so that they may just touch his cloak.
But even though this seems like a weird juxtaposition, this story deals with the very same issue for Jesus. Because here in the first century of Roman rule, children held no status in culture, just like the women of the first story of today's gospel. The disciples would have been trained to think, "Well, who cares if these children want to see Jesus? He's got more important things to do, or maybe more important people to visit."
But it's at this point in our text that Jesus very sternly puts his foot down, even with his own disciples. He tells them to let the little children come to him. Do not stop them. For it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs! ... What an entirely different message than what those earthly rulers were telling. Both the Pharisees and the disciples, right?
"Let the children come to me. For it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs." ... Not Caesar, not the senators, not the patriots, not the landowners, not the businessmen. But to these, the children. ... And in the first story, women. It is to these that the Kingdom of God belongs too.
So, just as the Pharisees hadn't recognized the value of women in the first story, Jesus's own disciples in the second story didn't recognize the value of children. And so in both stories, by his own replies, first to the Pharisees, and then second to the disciples, Jesus upends all of the conventional earthly thinking in both instances. ... Jesus with a couple of statements rewrites the rules about who matters and who doesn't. And in God's kingdom we know everyone matters. ... In God's kingdom, women and children matter as much as anyone. ... In God's kingdom, there are no privileged people. ... In God's kingdom, the laws don't oppress anyone.
Faith Family, it's no secret that there are some very hard texts in our Bible. Anyone who reads the Bible understands that they run into texts that were prepared for a first century audience. Or some of the older texts in the Old Testament were written even thousands of years before that. ... And in the wrong hands, in the hands of people whose intent is harm, these texts can cause great damage. ... Just like today's gospel has. There have been many who have abused it, and so it is up to us as followers of Christ, that when we encounter a situation in which someone is trying to misappropriate a Bible text for the intention of harm -- such as the Pharisees did in the first story of today's gospel -- it is up to us as Christ's followers to see it for what their intent is. Because unequivocally in God's kingdom, no one is left behind. ... No one is without power. ... No one is less worthy of God's love than anyone else.
And that is the Good News for this Sunday, Oct. 3, the 19th Sunday after Pentecost. ... Amen.
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