Good morning! If you have been with us the last couple of weeks, you know we are journeying through the Gospel of Mark at the very time Jesus is openly proclaiming what is about to happen to him as he heads toward Jerusalem
In today’s Gospel, another drama unfolds. This time Jesus addresses a couple of things, as well as having another brief encounter with a child. This time he tells us that we can only enter the Kingdom like a child; not earning it nor deserving it.
It was just too good to be true and many have spent about two thousand years trying to add a bunch of condemnation on top of the beautiful grace God offers. Not only do the disciples struggle with the scandal of God’s love, the uncomfortable nature of God’s inclusive Kingdom but if we’re honest, we do too. Or maybe it’s just me, but I want to keeping things orderly, everything in place, nothing too messy and unabashedly hope the Kingdom is made up with people that I might want to hang-out with on a Saturday night.
But Jesus has a different agenda and the call to discipleship, essentially makes demands on us to let go of what we’re comfortable with in order to embrace and be embraced by God’s plan to throw a party where no one is left out. But it’s a bit more problematic than just hearing that God refuses to be domesticated, but as always, people have trouble with Jesus because they thought they had this God-thing all figured out. It is a fact of discipleship that when we shape our life around Gospel principles, we too will be seen by some like we are going the wrong way around the buffet table at the Golden Corral. Living an outrageously loving Gospel life will rarely bring accolades. Chances are we will be noticed, rejected, criticized and cast aside as irrelevant if we do. That’s sometimes a surprise but here’s the rub: a life well lived, one that makes a difference, is a life where we follow where Jesus led: to love and accept others and to celebrate that the realm of God is not restricted to those who serve on Church committees and are nominated for “religious person of the year” awards. The Kingdom truly is a hodge-podge of unlikely people… you know, people just like you and me.
But let’s pause here for a moment. This is truly good news and one that in the challenging times we live, is often muted by louder voices. There seems to be no shortage of preachers and writers and internet-posting people who proclaim a kingdom of judgement and condemnation and hate. Evidently there must be good money to made by looking past Jesus’ teaching and ministry and substituting a more palatable theology and lifestyle, because there sure are a lot of people out there who eagerly reject God’s all-encompassing love for something that seems to be neater, never out of order, imminently more controllable notion of a judgmental, wrathful God. I am not sure what the motivation is behind such proclamation, but it’s been around for a very long time, and I am not sure it’s going anywhere. But don’t let that be an excuse for not embracing and being embraced by the truth of God’s amazing grace. It’s called Gospel and it means Good News. And as a quick review, what does that even mean?
Rachel Held Evans reminds us that for “Matthew and Mark, the good news is that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah sent to establish God’s reign on earth, not through conquest, power, and revenge, but through faithfulness, sacrifice, and unconditional love. The kingdom of heaven is not some far-off, future dream; it is here, among us, made real by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is what it looks like when God is king, when God’s will is done “on earth as it is in heaven.” To the Galilean children who annoyed the disciples by asking Jesus for a blessing, the good news is that Jesus is the kind of king who laughs at their jokes and tousles their hair.” (Evans, Rachel Held. Inspired (p. 149). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.)
She gets it. This Kingdom is not some far-off dream but is present now, among us. It is here, right now, among us. And while it sounds like it is being muted by those louder voices, it’s not. God’s Kingdom is both at hand and yet to come. The cool thing is that we get to be participants in helping that Kingdom breakthrough into our world by the way we love, accept and include all those with whom we come into contact, and …. wait for it… especially those who have been told their lives have no value.
And this all comes to us, who have been waiting for some Good News in the age of Covid and the struggles of living in a time of great change, as more than just a breath of fresh air. Have you ever wondered why it seems like so much of life is lived swimming upstream? The current seems to be too strong to swim against yet maybe we have been straining too hard. Maybe if we just let go and love others as we’ve been loved, all the hard work would cease.
I admit, that for some, this just doesn’t compute. But that’s why we keep coming here, to listen to the stories, not just of the Gospel, but other stories that we share with one another. Stories of lives changed, tragedies faced, losses experienced and God using others to support, love and embrace us, not just in ways that we are the same, but most especially in ways we are different.
Again to quote Rachel Held Evans the “good news is as epic as it gets, with universal theological implications, and yet the Bible tells it from the perspective of fishermen and farmers, pregnant ladies and squirmy kids. This story about the nature of God and God’s relationship to humanity smells like mud and manger hay and tastes like salt and wine. It is concerned, not simply with questions of eternity, but with paying taxes and filling bellies and addressing a woman’s chronic menstrual complications. It is the biggest story and the smallest story all at once—the great quest for the One Ring and the quiet friendship of Frodo and Sam.” (Evans, Rachel Held. Inspired (p. 150). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.) This is why I can say with both theological convictions and real-lived experiences, that there is not greater way to live one’s life that to be part of this Jesus movement, where our loving God is “always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: who pour[s] upon us the abundance of [God’s] mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior. Good news? There is none better.
Of course, there is more to the Gospel this morning, isn’t there! If I just ended here, then the elephant in the room would probably step on someone and that could hurt. And so, I won’t. But as in all things scripturally related, it’s important to have context, lest we take a small story and develop an entire theology around it. To do so is both intellectually dishonest and theologically disastrous. Oh, it’s not that that doesn’t happen and many of you in here may be able to attest to having been beaten up by an ill-preached sermon that perhaps sought to maintain order and peace but replaced the Gospel of love, acceptance and inclusion with one of judgement and condemnation and hate. Mark 10 is a typical place where this might happen.
Let’s travel back to the story. The religious people listening to Jesus and watching how their theology and way of life were being threatened by this itinerant preacher, had decided to try eliminating the threat that he posed. We don’t have a record of the meeting that obviously had been called to lay out plans to either quiet Jesus by trying to highlight inconsistencies in his teaching or trip him up by forcing him to contradict the law and the prophets. The scene this morning opens with Mark’s commentary that the Pharisees showed up one day to, “test him.” That’s important. They weren’t seeking the truth from Jesus, they wanted him to simply go away. I think that is pretty much one of the two reactions that Jesus still gets, in our day. We either want him to go away, or we want him to go deeper. He took one look at the Pharisees and chose to do just that, go deeper. And I for one, am thankful he did.
During the first century, when this whole story unfolded, the notion of divorce was not new. In fact, as Jesus reminded the Pharisees, the whole idea of divorce had originated with the law of Moses. But like so many things, the practice had run away from the intent and spirit of the law.
We probably wouldn’t even have this story recorded for us if the Pharisees had a true interest in what Jesus was teaching and living. It seems like the favorite topic Jesus taught was about God’s realm, the Kingdom that he was ushering in. They wanted to trip him up, so they weren’t listening. Held Evans beautifully explains that “the kingdom Jesus taught, is right here present yet hidden, immanent yet transcendent. It is at hand—among us and beyond us, now and not-yet. The kingdom of heaven, he said, belongs to the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, the merciful, and those who hunger and thirst for God. It advances not through power and might, but through missions of mercy, kindness, and humility. In this kingdom, many who are last will be first and many who are first will be last. The rich don’t usually get it, Jesus said, but children always do. This is a kingdom whose savior arrives not on a warhorse, but a donkey, not through triumph and conquest, but through death and resurrection. This kingdom is the only kingdom that will last. There is nothing Jesus talked about more than the kingdom. It is by far his favorite topic. “Jesus went through all the towns and villages,” Matthew reported, “teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness” (9:35). And yet you’d never know it from the way many modern Christians talk about the gospel. “Jesus came to die,” they often say, referring to a view of Christianity that reduces the gospel to a transaction, whereby God needed a spotless sacrifice to atone for the world’s sins and thus sacrificed Jesus on the cross so believers could go to heaven. In this view, Jesus basically shows up to post our bail. His life and teachings make for an interesting backstory but prove largely irrelevant to the work of salvation. Dallas Willard called it “the gospel of sin management.” Evans, Rachel Held. Inspired (series_title) (pp. 153-154). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
But they wanted to trip him up, so they don’t ask questions about the Kingdom, only sin management. And not surprisingly, they even mess that up.
To divorce a person in Jesus’ day, it’d help if you were a man, because a woman had virtually no chance to divorce her husband. He could be abusive, an adulterer, a terrible person, father and/or husband and she couldn’t do a thing about it. Divorce was out of reach. But as far as a man, if he came home and was upset because his meal was cold and had to be microwaved, then he had grounds for divorce. On top of that, in those days, a woman did not have her own identity and was seen merely as an economic possession of her husband. This got crazy when it came to several things, but the Pharisees knew that if Jesus showed compassion by allowing divorce, then they had him right in the crosshairs and could show that he was a lawbreaker or a simple libertine, telling people it’s ok to live without moral restraint. They had him.
Or so it seemed. What Jesus does here is a game changer. Despite the cultural constraints placed on women, Jesus is saying they are valuable. Indeed in this beautiful scene women are made to be equal in value to men and both are invited to share in the realm of God that is breaking through amid the pain and suffering life often brings.
When we look at scenes like this one this morning, it is too easy to make assumptions that might lead us to believe that we have been excluded, put on the outside looking in. That is not true. God’s love is always the context that we place our lives; even if life leaves us bruised. If we don’t go deeper than scratching the surface, the entire Gospel changes. Unfortunately, that happens too often and the very people in need of drinking deeply from the chalice of God’s grace and love are left to sit outside on the curb. So if that is you this morning, let me encourage to let go of those things in life that made you wonder if God loves you. He’s already proved that by setting us free by giving up his life for us; we didn’t deserve it but Jesus did it out of love. In Jesus name.
And there have been some here who have experienced divorce. It’s too clever by half to make the gospel into a law, excluding those who don’t measure up. Too often people twist the truth of God’s love to hurt those who have gone through the pain of divorce. There are even some places that exclude those who have experienced divorce from receiving the sacrament. They very people who need to experience the grace found in Communion are left out. This is wrong.
Sometimes life is very messy and sometimes mistakes are made. God never abandons us. God’s love is always there. So if you have experienced divorce there is good news for you today. God has not rejected you. You are loved.