Upside-Down Kingdom 3

Today’s passage is , and for many people it is a passage that carries a history with it for a variety of reasons. Its a text that has been misused and misapplied a ton over the years. So much so that most resources for preaching this text start with a caution to the preacher to be sure to deal with the context and reality of the text while recognizing the difficult nature of the passage, especially 2000 years later in a cultural setting very different from the original in a number of ways. I want to relay one of those cautions to y’all this morning before we begin because I think its worth all of us taking a step back and trying to hear the passage as unencumbered as we can.

Beware this week.

“Beware this week. As soon as you read the word “divorce” aloud, a whole sermon will appear in people’s heads. Some will hear early sermons that were launched at them or someone they loved when a divorced occurred. Pain will make it difficult to hear the words you actually speak. Others will conjure up their condemnation of others based on this single word. In both cases those jumping to their own conclusions may miss what it said unless you open up to them clearly the complexities of this exchange.”

And truth be told, there’s a lot more going on in this passage than just the words given. Its setting in Mark, where it falls in Mark’s narrative and how Mark uses it again in conjunction with the welcome of children at the end is revealing though has often gone unnoticed. It comes amid a stream of passages primarily focused on welcome instead of exclusion, service as opposed to control, and protection of the vulnerable instead of the consumption of power. And specific to the theme we are working with right now, those passages are portraying the Kingdom of God in its most perfect form- something that people themselves fall short of bringing about in every possible way. Additionally, Jesus often works at the extreme end of teaching in order to make sure people get the point. Just last week we read the preceeding passage where the solution Jesus offers up for if a part of your body causes you to sin is to remove that part of the body. That’s not a passage we read in its literal sense, nor did Jesus mean it as such. If he had, the disciples and the early church would have been recognizable for more than just there acts of charity- they’d have been the limbless faithful few. But the point of that extreme language was to help the earliest followers understand the importance of pursuing what God intended, and highlighting the difference between what God desires and what is so often reality in this life- and the disparity between those two. The passage we look at today continues that conversation as well- the gap between a perfect God and imperfect humanity.

The New Revised Standard Version Teaching about Divorce

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, 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.”

So here it is. We are in yet another passage where the pharisees come up to Jesus looking to test him, trying to find a way to publically shame him in some form or another- either picking apart his answer as wrong or forcing him to alienate someone close to him and cut into his support base. It also isn’t terribly surprising that this is a question that they would bring to him at this point. Among the various groups of pharisees during the time of Jesus there’s an argument going on among them about the circumstances in which a divorce may be allowed under Jewish law, with the answers by those various groups ranging from “A man can only divorce his wife if she’s been unfaithful” to “A man can divorce his wife if she becomes displeasing to him in any way- looks, illness, burnt his toast, etc.” Notice that nowhere in there does a woman have the right to initiate the action, and in fact, if you pay attention to the old law, men can do pretty much whatever they want in that regard as long as their mistress isn’t married to someone else. This is part of the reason the story of the pharisees dragging the woman caught in the act of adultery only involves the woman- the guy hasn’t really crossed any significant boundary according to the old law. He walks and she gets stoned to death. So the pharisees have their own argument going about this and drag Jesus into the middle of it. And as per usual, Jesus doesn’t participate in the argument the way they want him to. Instead, he turns the whole conversation back on them. They bring this hypothetical “hey, say this guy...” and he sees something bigger going on and asks “what does the law given by God to Moses say to YOU?” And then while they give the generic flat answer “well, it hypothetically allows him to do it,” Jesus responds back, “Yeah, because of the hardness of YOUR heart. Not “his” heart. “Your.”

This is directed and intentional and in this moment we see the pharisees trying to trap Jesus in a dispute about the law and we see Jesus addressing the pharisees themselves, and not the law. This conversation is much larger than the topic the pharisees have brought up and it involves them far more directly than they seem to realize. Its amazing how that works, right? The pharisees are trying to have a conversation about someone else and Jesus finds a way to make that conversation about them and directs it at them. This whole conversation, including their jealousy of Jesus popularity and teaching which brings them to the point where they are posing this question, is a result of the hardness of their heart and their misunderstanding of Gods commands and purposes in general, never mind this single topic. We see in them the same things we see in ourselves, right? The Pharisees’ desire to be right, the desire to have things our way, the desire to have control over how others choose to do things- but that control the desire and the jealousy the lack thereof isn’t holy. Its hard-heartedness. We might call it selfish.

And then Jesus does something else here. He highlights the difference between the perfection of what God creates, Gods best hope for humanity, and what is so often our reality. Gods plan in creation and Gods intention for humanity is perfect. God’s creation is good. But the desires, actions, choices, and motives of humanity aren’t perfect. We get things right, we get things wrong, amen? Perfect people cast the first stone, I mean raise your hand. And in the law of Moses, the Law given by God, voiced by God, makes space for the imperfections of people and the challenges that life throws our way. In this case, while Jesus is certainly clear that God creates, intends, and desires perfect unity, God has also made space in the law for people to function when that isn’t the case. God understands that we aren’t God, that we aren’t perfect, that relationships are challenging and don’t always go the way we would want them to. This should be fantastic news to all of us imperfect people who can’t cast stones and whose hands didn’t go up a minute ago. And this is something we know to be true of God, right? From the beginning of the biblical story, God’s actions and purposes are good, are Godly, are perfect, and peoples aren’t, and yet God is constantly making space for us, our choices and our struggles, and still providing a place for us with him.

Theres one other layer to this whole passage, one that often goes unnoticed. Mark’s portrayal of Jesus, how he lives and talks is intentionally structured in a way to present Jesus as akin to the Old Testament prophets. He’s compared to prophets, speaks as a prophet, even mistaken for a raised-from-the-dead prophet. Jesus is a prophet, one who speaks powerfully on behalf of God, which is what prophet means, and since the prophets are key figures in the Jewish tradition, Mark highlights the ways in which Jesus is like one of those prophets. Those prophets speak of adultery on the national religious and spiritual level. Hosea uses that very word and image to describe a people who aren’t unlike the pharisees, people who have some religious orientation toward God, but often treat it as a way to get something for themselves. The ancient Israelites chase other gods, sacrifice at their altars, worship in their ways, keeping God around as a part of their life but not their priority. The pharisees may not be sacrificing at other altars, but their adultery is an idolatry of self, of perfect knowledge and of perfect law keeping as if God is completely inside their grasp and their control. That is no less idolatrous than the ancient Israel, no less metaphorically adulterous. And Jesus, powerful prophetic voice of God, ignores their hypothetical and highlights the way that the pharisees themselves are part of this, even if they don’t understand it. If they are listening to Jesus, they should be hearing that broken relationships exist between God and people, not just people and other people. They don’t get to sit comfortably in judgement on others, they aren’t somehow superior, they aren’t God.

This is worth noting especially in light of what has come before and what is coming after. If you’ll remember back to our early lessons in Mark a couple months back, I talked about how in the gospel of Mark, ordering is important to understanding, how Mark will sandwich two stories between each other in order to help us interpret whats going on. Here, we find today’s passage sandwiched between two passages that involve children. In the first, Jesus uses a child as an illustration of who is to be served and why- we serve the vulnerable and powerless, extend welcome to those who others would say don’t matter or don’t belong because thats what Jesus does. And then we have this passage where those who hold power and argue over how to wield it against others, the pharisees, try to drag Jesus into it and Jesus finds a way to make sure they know their actions are no better than anyone elses, that they commit adultery by a different name against God. And then Jesus comes back to children- again, powerless ones that have nothing of social cultural value to give, a reminder of the ones who are to be served, and then marks them as the ones who get it- to oblivious and innocent to worry about power and status and honor and control and all the other things that both the pharisees and people in general concern themselves with.

The New Revised Standard Version 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.

There are a few things I want to close with. One- I feel it appropriate to recognize the way in which this passage has been used to abuse people in some of their most vulnerable and painful moments in life. Unfortunately, church legacy is full of people being told that somehow this is the one thing they can do that decides they don’t belong, never mind that its never set up as some unforgivable sin anywhere in scripture. Not that long ago this passage came onto the national public scene courtesy of a fundamentalist seminary president who had repeatedly argued (and still maintains) that women who are beaten and abused by their husbands have to stay in those marriages “because the bible says so”- which is not a good interpretation of the whole of scripture. This room itself is full of those stories. To those of who here who were kicked while you were down, I’m sorry. You are not worse and we are not better, and it was unholy and ungodly for you to be treated as such- that is more what lies at the heart of this passage than anything else. We have, over the years, written the book on how to shoot our wounded and my guess is that almost everyone here has something to apologize for. So sure, are broken relationships what God intended? Unequivocally, the answer is no. I’ll more than happily add to that list jealousy, greed, selfishness, pride, and vain conceit-my confession of other things not intended by God that I myself have participated in this week. And yet from the moment Adam and Eve got hungry and went snacking where they shouldn’t, things have not been as God intended, and yet God has continually made room for us, all of us, imperfect people, and called us to see the world as simply and purely as children, who do not care to concern themselves with all the things that the “adult world,” the mainstream culture, stumbles over itself to achieve.

This passage is a little more subtle than Jesus’ direct “let the one without sin cast the first stone,” passage, and yet it is every bit the same reminder of the imperfection of all of us, and God’s work on our behalf, constantly making space for our imperfections. It should come as no surprise that Jesus is on the journey toward Jerusalem as he teaches this passage. Jesus is on his way to be the sacrifice for the imperfect, to extend a welcome to all humanity, which cannot bring about its own forgiveness and salvation- Jesus work to turn us all back into wide-eyed, powerless, innocent children who do not seek our own power or honor. To call us to be people who are completely oriented towards the service of others in the name of God.

So here we are