What's Behind All This?

The topics on the table for today for discussion are divorce and Jesus blessing the little children. So by a raise of hands who is excited to talk about the gospel reading? Which one would you want to talk about? Why did the people who wrote the RCL decide to include a teaching about divorce and adultery with Jesus talking about the little children? One of the commentaries I read jokingly said that they did it on purpose so that you could ignore the reading about divorce and instead talk about the children in the story today.

7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

SCRIPTURE READING:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

I believe one of the biggest problems that we face today is inserting our perception of society, life and culture into what we read when we read the Bible. Now I am not saying that is necessarily wrong in all cases, because I believe that the Bible has context in all times and in all places. That is why the Bible speaks to us in many and various ways that help us to understand God even though its been so long since the Bible has been written.

So by a raise of hands who is excited to talk about the gospel reading today?

Just like last week I am going to do my best to show you some of the context and history behind the stories we hear today so that we can have a better understanding of what all the different people are trying to get at, and believe it or not, once again tie the stories together and hopefully show you that the story of the little children actually do have the same underlying theme as the discussion about divorce between the Pharisees and again with the disciples.

So let’s jump right in and discuss the topic of divorce. But before we can get to that topic we have to first discuss the thing that happens before divorce and that is marriage. I think it’s obvious but we have to talk about the idea of marriage before we can begin to discuss the topic of divorce. As you might imagine marriages at that time and for a very long time after the time of Jesus, couples were brought together through what we now call an arranged marriage. The reason for two people to be married were so that two families could strengthen their familial ties to one another. This was done to ensure a better future for each other. It was done to gain status in society. It was done in wealthier families to have political gain. There are a lot of reasons why two families would join together in marriage.

Now the next thing that is helpful to understand and is once again not a pleasant topic to talk about, but the marriage agreement was usually between the males of the two families because Israelites were a patriarchal society. So either the two fathers or the groom and the father of the bride enter into agreement with one another. Remember how I talked two weeks ago about women were only good for being married off so their parents could receive a dowry? This is what we’re getting at here because it was the father who received the money and not the bride.

It all happens this way because the bride was considered property. Take a look at and you will see that in the 10 Commandments it lumps together women with all the other property that a man might own. So now we understand that a marriage was a way to strengthen two families for a number of reasons and that the marriage wasn’t really between a man and a woman but between those same two families that entered that marriage.

The whole reason I tell you this is because at the time of a divorce, which is what the Pharisees want to know about, it isn’t about the man and the woman but it is about both the families that entered into this agreement.

The reason why the Pharisees bring up this idea of divorce is because it was highly debated between two schools of thought. The two groups debated over the language of . The part they debated was that line that says ‘something objectionable’. There are two definitions for that word in the Hebrew and so these two schools of thought debated on which definition was the right one.

The Hillel school of thought used the definition of objectionable as simply anything the husband didn’t like about the wife. So if she made a meal that upset him then he could hand her a certificate of divorce and she would then leave the house and they’d be divorced. The Shammai school of thought was based on the definition that objectionable talked about was something that the woman did that was indecent which they took to mean adultery. Either way the woman had no say in the matter because she was his property to do with as he saw fit. The problem is that the divorce wasn’t just between the man and the woman as we might suppose today, but the divorce affected both extended families and could have some serious consequences financially on them. The real shame was not necessarily on the woman as we might suppose but on the father of the woman whose word the husband has just now broken.

Jesus, as we see takes a different route than what anyone would have typically expected though it does appear he sides more with the Shammai interpretation than the Hillel. But I say that Jesus takes a different route because he clearly has different thoughts on the subject. One of the main reasons that I believe Jesus prefers the option that a couple stay together is that Jesus is concerned for the woman’s wellbeing. In all that we have talked about in marriage and divorce today I have focused on the historicity of marriage, but the fact still remains that a woman was seen as property in all of this. A man usually stayed married to a woman not because he loved her but because of the contract he entered with her family. Jesus is looking after the woman when he says what he says. Jesus elevates the status of the woman from something more than an object to be sold or disposed of if some man finds something objectionable with her.

The life of a person is more important to Jesus than the laws of men. The woman would be desolate without a husband. She would have lost her home, her children, her safety and her ability to survive especially if her birth family wouldn’t take her back in. Jesus’ concern is for that woman and the life that she has and the life that she still needs to live. Jesus is once again caring for the least of these in society and trying to show everyone else that the life of a woman matters very much to him and to God.

Which is exactly how and why these two stories about divorce and children are actually about one and the same thing. As we talked about two weeks ago we saw how much I hammered in the idea that children were worthless in Jesus time. Boys were good once they could work around the family trade with the father and the girls worked around the house and were hopefully sold off for a dowry and for some kind of family gain from what joining of the two families could offer to one another. Women and children were property in the eyes of the society and therefore weren’t always treated as well as other members of society.

When Jesus invites the children to come to him despite the attempt of the disciples to stop them, he once again shows the disciples and everyone gathered to see that God cares for ALL people. God cares for the greatest, but God also cares deeply and even more so for the least, like the women and children. It is the women and children who are overlooked and not as readily cared for. It is those people that God and Jesus point out and remind us who are doing fine to pay attention to and care for them.

Jesus invites them and us to welcome the lowly and not the rich and lofty or those that we would be inclined to invite because they would make us look better and be invited in return. We should welcome all people regardless of station in life. We should welcome to our table the divorced, the homeless, the outcast and those who are considered the least of these, because they are in just as much need of God’s grace and forgiveness as anyone else and because of where they find themselves in life, they may not know it yet.

. Jesus invites them and us to welcome the lowly not the rich and lofty or those that we would be inclined to invite because they would make us look better be invited in return. We should welcome all people regardless of station in life.

Always remember, that you too, no matter what place you find yourself in life, you are loved by God and welcomed into the arms of Jesus as one of his beloved children. Jesus welcomes you, Jesus blesses you, and I know that he wishes nothing but joy and happiness for all of us, both in this life and in the life to come.

Amen.