Some Uncomfortable Stuff From Jesus (Reflections on Pentecost 19, Year B 2021)

 

“Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15)

I got a call from an old buddy this past week, and I hope he won’t mind my using his situation as a sermon illustration. It seems that after about thirty years of marriage he and his missus are about to call it quits. As any divorced person knows, this really sucks—it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. Broken relationships are painful, and a broken marriage can really sting in light of the gospel lesson assigned for Pentecost 19, Year B (Mark 10:2-16) in the Revised Common Lectionary for 2021.

Yup. It’s that nasty passage in which Jesus talks about divorce and adultery. Since my buddy and his wife are Catholic, this is a pretty tough piece of scripture to choke down. Our Roman brethren frown on couples who split up and have been doing so for centuries. Did you know that in Ireland, the most Catholic country in Europe, it was—as late as 1996—actually illegal to get a divorce? I mean, what were they thinking? Your spouse could be a brutal junkie, a criminal, or a psychopathic murderer, but you had to stay with them because divorcing them was a sin. Really..?

The best way to approach this subject—or any subject in the Bible that makes us feel a little queasy—is to look at the context. I’d like to remind my old friend that the Bible was written a long time ago and in a culture much different from ours. The most crucial thing to remember, however, is the radical nature of the guy who is being quoted—Our Lord and Savior. Jesus is at times prone to a bit of hyperbole. Just check out his warning to believers whose actions or words screw with the faith of newer and more vulnerable Christians (See last week’s gospel lesson Mark 9:42-50). I know we might like to think of Jesus as that gentle shepherd, blessing children and comforting the sinners, but he’s also that wild, freaky guy who overturns the tables of the money changers and pisses off the religious leaders. Sometimes he says extreme things to get our attention. If his teachings don’t make us uncomfortable every once in a while, maybe we’re not really hearing what he’s saying.

At the time this story takes place, it wasn’t uncommon for Pharisees to debate each other over every aspect of the Law of Moses. These guys really loved to split hairs. In Deuteronomy 24:1-4, it says a man can divorce his wife if she doesn’t please him or he finds something objectionable about her. But how do you define “objectionable?” I imagine these Pharisees wanted to hear Jesus’ take on this so they could pigeonhole him. But Jesus isn’t having it.

In Mark’s gospel Jesus makes it clear that a broken relationship—for any reason—is still a manifestation of sin. In Matthew’s gospel, which we believe was written later than Mark’s, Jesus makes a little caveat that you can divorce your spouse for “unchastity” (See Matthew 5:32). This is usually understood to mean adultery, but there’s a little more baggage attached to this word. The Greek word is porneo (from which our word “pornography” comes) and could refer to incest which might have been common in some parts of the ancient world. The older text, however, reflects Jesus’ reminder that a certificate of divorce—however legal it might be—doesn’t erase the fact that two people failed to get along and good faith was broken.

But good faith is broken all the time. One of Jesus’ wildest statements is made in Matthew 5:28 when he opines that anyone who eyeballs an attractive person who isn’t his or her partner and starts to imagine hooking up with them is committing adultery. Even just asking yourself “What if?” means you’ve kicked the Sixth Commandment to the curb. And that means just about every last one of us has been an adulterer at one time or another.

It is also likely Jesus is aware of the consequences of sin in his time. If a man did show his spouse the door, it was possible he was dooming her to a life of poverty. Jesus’ radical words might well have been in support of the rights of women and a reminder of the duty we all have to protect and care for the vulnerable.

We sinners really love making a hierarchy of our sins—usually ranking the ones we don’t think we’ll commit as worse than others. But Jesus reminds us of the truth: sin is sin—and we all do it, say it, or think it every day of our lives. We all are guilty, and we all are forgiven by God’s grace. The best we can do this side of the kingdom of God is be grateful, accept the consequences of our actions, and try to triage the hard choices we make based on what will do the most or least harm.

It’s anyone’s guess why Mark glued Jesus’ teaching on divorce to the incident related in verses 13-16. Here Jesus scolds the disciples for trying to stop folks from bringing their children for him to bless. Perhaps Mark liked the juxtaposition of innocent kids—kids who haven’t yet learned how to judge others or become their own jailhouse lawyers—with the legalistic and excuse-making Pharisees. Jesus says that we all need to approach him like children who need to be loved and are willing to accept love and forgiveness. That’s how we get through this life with all our past mistakes and our incurable human tendency to sin. We just come into Jesus’ embrace, cry a little on his shoulder, say we’re sorry, and promise to do better next time.