Hope for the Hopeless? Jesus on Divorce

Below you will find the conclusion to Linda's sermon on Mark 10:2-16.  Without collapsing the tension or avoiding the dilemma that Jesus' teaching poses, she points us to a surprise ending, one that is routinely overlooked when this passage is preached.

The disciples are listening in when the Pharisee’s propose this question: "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" and it appears they are equally stunned by his response to the Pharisees. 

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“What did he say?  Did Jesus just say that Moses was wrong?"  

As soon as they are alone, they ask Jesus the same question again.  This time, Jesus goes even further; not only is divorce not allowed, but anyone who remarries, man or woman, is committing adultery.

Why would he say that?  It sounds like the ultimate sin and Jesus offers, it seems, no way out.  

OUR DISORIENTING DILEMMA

In contrast to Jesus' words in Mark 10, there are other passages where Jesus ministers tenderly and lovingly to the woman caught in adultery.  He rescues her from almost certain death, and after he has cleared the field of her would-be executioners, all he says to her is this: go and sin no more.  

There is also the woman at the well, who Jesus knows has been in and out of relationships over and over again and then living with someone to whom she was not married.  Instead of pronouncing her sin to be unforgivable  Jesus offers himself to her as living water that will wash away her sin and her guilt. 

So how are we to understand Jesus' words in Mark 10?  

MAKING SENSE OF MARK 10

I think two keys that unlock Jesus' meaning are found at the beginning of this passage and at the very end.

The passage begins with a question from Jesus' enemies, a faction of the group known as the Pharisees.  These religious men came for one reason and one reason only. Mark tells us that they came with a question intended to trick him.  They were not after anything real or life-giving.  Their purpose was to find a way to humiliate Jesus.  

Instead, Jesus sees their true intentions.  Even more important, he is able to see something in their question that they themselves have not anticipated. 

You see, the Pharisees where guilty of having made the law into something that effectively blocked the path to God—for themselves and everyone else.  For everyone else, because the 10 commandments given by Moses had been expanded to become 613 commandments that almost no one could keep.

Only the rich and well-educated had a chance at being able to meet all of the rules and regulations.  That is why Jesus repeatedly chastises the religious rulers of his day because they used the law as a battering ram, beating down the people instead of using it to draw the faithful to God.

But, their use of the law also blocked their own path to God—and that is what Jesus saw and they did not—nor in this case did the disciples.  Neither the Pharisees or the disciples saw that the law, turned by human beings into a giant list of do’s and don’ts—also meant that if, indeed, one thought that they were fulfilling the law, they effectively had no need whatsoever of God.  

God was out of the picture—if we can earn our salvation by following all the rules, who needs God—on the other hand, if the rules are so burdensome that we can never hope to follow all of them then our path to God is blocked.

In his response to the Pharisees' trick question, Jesus does what he is so good at; he refuses to be boxed in by the legalism of his questioners.  

Jesus changes the question by broadening the meaning of the law so that it is abundantly clear that no one, no one, can ever meet the letter of the law by themselves.  

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, "You have heard that it is said (in the law) do not murder, but I tell you that anyone who has been angry with his brother has committed murder.  You have heard that it was said do not commit adultery, but I tell you that if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery. You have heard it said, love your enemies, but I say to you to do good to those who persecute you."

Indeed, Jesus' persistent message to to all of us is simply this: we cannot earn our salvation by being good enough to keep the law all by ourselves.

We have all gotten angry, most of us have lusted after someone else, and most of us have great difficulty doing good things to those who seem to hate us.

And so it is in this passage.  "No," Jesus says, "don’t even consider divorce.  It is not allowed. If you divorce and remarry you are still in deep trouble because now you have committed adultery."

So, what a are we to do?  

THE ENDING WE HAVE OVERLOOKED

I believe the answer is found in the very last verses of our reading today.  These verses we read today are rarely included, but there is very strong evidence that they belong here.  

Without missing a beat, Mark moves directly from the discussion of a very difficult topic, to tell us that people are bringing children to Jesus to be blessed.  Whether he did so consciously or unconsciously, the apostle focuses our attention on those who are most often the real victims of divorce.  

The disciples reaction is typical, isn't it?  "Don't bring those kids in here!  We are talking about grown-up stuff."  

Isn't it interesting that these two stories which are jammed so tightly together in Mark's narrative, are so seldom connected to one another? Yet Jesus sees these children not as victims or as intruders into the conversation, but immediately lifts them up as examples and teachers for us.

"Come," Jesus says, "come to God like little children, children who are dependent on God’s mercy and forgiveness."

Those people who think they can make it on their own are living a lie that will suck the life out of them. 

And those of us who have messed up, who failed in our promises to one another and missed the mark badly when it comes to loving and valuing the person we married, well, our only choice is to come to God as the children do.  

We must abandon ourselves to God's life changing forgiveness.  We cannot hope to correct our errors or somehow make up for them.  It is our sin, our need and our child-like faith that have driven us into the arms of God who, as a familiar praise song says, offers rest for the weary and hope for the sinner.

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His Mercies . . . New Every Morning!

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Joe is a walking, talking force of nature.  He has three sisters whose most common response to him seems to be "Joe, don't say that!" 

You never quite know what he is up to because he is, as we ministers are sometimes prone to say, "An Israelite in whom there is no guile."  What you see is what you get.  The harder you try to contain him the more he bubbles over.

And Joe is my walking talking reminder that God isn't finished doing miracles.  

Just a few years ago, I tended to flinch when I saw him coming, because when Joe came around it usually meant trouble was close behind.  He was hard headed and living way too fast and reckless for any three human beings.  He was an argument waiting to happen.

Then Jesus changed his life.  And do I mean changed him.  He gave up some really destructive habits and began to come to church.  He got a steady job.  Joe has some skills that are in high demand.  And once Jesus straightened out the personal side of things, the job and regular income followed.

Now the new Joe is decidedly different from the old one, except for the fact that they are still wrapped up in the same personality.  He laid on his horn one day when he was behind me in a funeral caravan.  When we stopped at the cemetery he jumped out and ran up to me and said, "I'm sorry, Pastor! You know that old flesh gets hold of me every now and then. I just forgot where we were."  

Not too long ago we asked him to give a tithing testimony.  "I don't know what you want me to say," he responded, "I'm just gonna tell'em if they don't tithe they are going to hell!"

"Joe," I responded as calmly as I knew how, "I wish you'd find another way to say that."

The next Sunday he took the microphone at the appointed time, looked out over the congregation and said, "God has blessed me a lot.  Everybody in here knows exactly how much God has blessed me.  My life is nothing like it used to be.  But on the tithing thing, here's how I see that. When Jesus comes back, I don't want to have to explain to him how he did everything he did for me and I couldn't even tithe." 

"And that's all I got to say on that."

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I love Joe, because his life is one of the best sermons I know.  He reminds me every day that God's mercies are new every morning.  Most of all he reminds me that with God's help, we all have the power to say, "My story isn't over yet."

I am praying whatever Monday brings you, that God will give you the power to understand that you are not at the mercy of any given moment or day in your life.  We all have the power to say, "This won't be the end of the story."

Whose life and example remind you of that lesson?  Leave a comment below!

Four Ways to Make the Best of a Bad Mess of a Political Season

Ruins
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Most people wouldn't recognize the name Harry Emerson Fosdick any more, but he was very well known in 1930.  As a matter of fact, he made the cover of Time Magazine.  Fosdick was a Baptist minister, hated with an abiding hate by the religious legalists of his time and renowned for his ability to make the Bible come alive to ordinary women and men.  The late Martin Luther King, Jr., counted him as an influence.

And though I will never be the preacher that King was, I like to think that Fosdick has influenced me as well.  I don't agree with all of his theology, but you already know that I have a passion for our desperate need to learn from people that we don't agree with.  That seems to me to be the only way out of the current mess we are in as a culture.

One of Fosdick's most famous sermons was titled, "Making the Best of a Bad Mess."  The sermon was based on Titus 1:5, "For this cause I sent thee, that thou shouldst set in order the things that are lacking and should appoint elders in every city, as I have appointed thee." 

Fosdick opens the sermon by imagining the young Titus reading that line from his mentor Paul.  

Fosdick wonders what could have caused Paul to write to Titus.  

Perhaps a communication from his young protege, detailing the bad mess he found in Crete, the place where Paul had sent him. Maybe Titus had described in great detail how difficult the work was, describing the low character of the Cretans, who were infamous as liars, thieves, cheats and murderers.  

Paul's unsympathetic response to Titus was brief and to the point- "for this cause I sent thee . . ."  If there had been no mess, there would be no reason for Paul to have sent Titus.

You can read Fosdick's marvelous sermon on your own.  It is not my intent here to re-preach it.  I do, however, intend to use his title and main idea as a jumping off point.  In the process I want to address four ways that we can deal with the political quagmire we find ourselves in during this run up to the presidential election.

WE HAVE BEEN CALLED AND EQUIPPED FOR TROUBLED TIMES

If you think that faith is supposed to get you out of trouble, then you have haven't been reading your Bible.  It is my strong opinion that we Christians are serving the devil up a fat, slow pitch every time we wring our hands and moan about the fact that the world is such a godless place.  

If it weren't then we would not have been called to the work God has set in front of us.  

It is time to get over ourselves, and especially time for Christians in the U.S. to stop whining about how things are not what they should be.  Count it all joy, as the Apostle James exhorts us, when you fall onto difficult and trying times.  Or as Mr. Dawson, one of my high school coaches used to say, "It may not be good to you, but I can tell you that it is good for you."

The resiliency theorists label this key survival trait with the term, "optimizing realism," or the resolute, unblinking acceptance of reality that causes us to make the best of future possibilities. 

Optimizing realists leave fear-mongering to the religious and political marketers, who have shown no compunction about constantly mashing the panic button to milk one more reaction from a panic weary public.

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PRACTICE TRUST AND DEVELOP FAITH IN GOD'S PURPOSES

"Hope lies to mortals," said W.H.Auden in an insightful poem.  

When asked the difference between those who survived and those who did not survive imprisonment at the hands of the North Vietnamese, medal of honor recipient James Stockdale said, "The optimists were the first to give up emotionally and succumb to death." 

When asked how this could be, Stockdale stated that the difference for the survivors lay in where men placed their ultimate faith- not in being set free by Christmas, or Easter, or July 4, but in preparing themselves for the long battle and believing deeply in the fact that they would eventually experience liberation. 

If you are hoping this presidential election will take care of your problems, or if you have convinced yourself that the defeat of your candidate will spell disaster for you and for this country, then you have placed your trust in the wrong things.  

"The state is destroyed," goes a well known Taoist saying, "but the mountains and rivers remain."  

Can you trust in the creator of mountains and rivers?  

READILY FORGIVE YOURSELF AND OTHERS 

To paraphrase a well-known business motto, fail early, fail often and fail forward.  Accepting the need for risk and the inevitability of failure can prepare us emotionally and spiritually to forgive ourselves and others.

I'd like to suggest that you resist wrestling over your need to forgive, spending lots of time in prayer asking God to give you a forgiving spirit, or anguishing over why you don't yet feel more forgiving.  Forgive yourself and others today. Right now. And if you find that it didn't stick, then forgive yourself and others tomorrow.  And keep forgiving.  

Seventy times seven might be a good goal to shoot for.

A breath prayer that I use frequently goes this way, " I am not dismayed or disappointed by my failures.  I love myself fully in the midst of apparent defeat, confusion, difficulty and delay.  I own my mistakes and I confess them to God and to appropriate others."

BECOME AN ARDENT PRACTITIONER OF REDEMPTION

An interesting term that Resiliency experts often use is the term "briccolage." It refers to a person's capacity to sift through the ashes of defeat to find useful material from which to start again.  

Briccolage reminds me of a favorite television show I watched as a teenager, "MacGyver." 

The repeating plot was predictable.  Richard Dean Anderson would find himself in a very difficult situation, many times facing certain death.  Invariably he saved himself and others by making use of ordinary every day items that he found at hand. He turned those common items into the instruments of his salvation.

The Christian word for "briccolage" is redemption.  The mass marketers, political spinsters and campaign strategists don't want you to believe in redemption.  They want you to fear making the wrong choice.  They want you to believe that your one chance for salvation is to vote the way they scare you to vote.

We have been called to a higher purpose than to serve as lab rats for propagandists.  

We have been called to the ministry of briccolage, to be ambassadors of reconciliation and redemption.

As usual, I am interested in what you are thinking in response to what I've written here.  What is your strategy for making the best of the mess we find ourselves in these days?

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Stumbling into a River of Grace

There is a line in one of my all-time favorite movies, "A River Runs Through It," that sums up so much of the peculiar ambivalence about grace that I have felt all of my life. 

Norman MacLean is talking about his father, a Presbyterian minister who has an ardent love of fly fishing.  "My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - came by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy." MacLean goes on to say that if it were up to his father, no one who fished the wrong way would ever be allowed to disgrace a trout by catching one.

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I’ve been stuck on that statement for years, trying to think it through.  Some days I cannot see an ounce of grace in that philosophy.  All I see is the older brother complaining about the prodigal son getting off scot free.  The prodigal certainly didn’t go about catching his fish in the right way.  

He stumbled out of a good home with a generous parent, then  hit the road to drunk and disorderly, and finally came crawling back a filthy disgrace.   Didn’t seem to matter.  His father gave him the ring and a feast all the same.

Meanwhile his older brother did everything right.  He worked his heart out to get it right.  To use MacLean’s metaphor, he learned to fish the right way.  In the end, however,  it seems his brother was the one who caught the fish.  That sloppy ne’er do well tripped all over himself and lucked into the biggest catch of a lifetime while his faithful brother had nothing to show for all of his hard work.

Most of my life I’ve stood firmly in support of the older brother in this story, and by extension of Norman MacLean’s father’s take on grace.  Grace should come to those who have mastered the artist’s craft.  The individuals who have put in the time and effort are precisely those who should catch grace

Over the last decade or so, however, things have changed for me.  Passing through agonizing darkness, I confronted my own carefully ignored prodigal failures and found myself sitting at Jesus’ feet in the long hour before dawn, asking him what a braggart who always thought he was the one who got it right but finally realized he had it just about as wrong as it could be gotten would have to do to find peace of mind.

He smiled and said quietly, “You must be born again.”

I hope I haven’t lost you by this point, because I have covered a lot of ground- a movie, a parable ,painful self-disclosure and Jesus talking to Nicodemus.  A lot to take in . . .

I want to pause for a moment and say to you, “Stay with me.  Just a  few more words and I believe I can show you the beauty I found.”

You see, many trout will be caught by hard work and expertise, but now and then some fool will luck into a trophy catch.  And prodigals will have their parties and their fattened calves, as they should have. But then prodigals must wake up on the morning after the big party and learn how to be responsible, hardworking sons of their heavenly father.  

THAT is the real reward. That is why the prodigal was given the ring, after all, as a sign that he had come back to those who really loved him and responsibilities that could finally satisfy him, not just a lucky reward.

I can imagine the older brother waking up after a night of sulking, hung over from an overdose of bitterness and realizing that not one moment of the time he spent working shoulder to shoulder with his father was wasted.

I can see him laying in bed just a little longer on the morning after the feast, remembering the days he basked in the wisdom and love of his father’s presence.  When he gets up to go to work, he may pass his younger brother’s bedroom, the one who is a prodigal no more, and think to himself, “I am so glad I stayed.  I could see the anguish in my brother’s eyes last night.  It will be a long time before he can accept the love that has been offered him. He'll need someone to remind him that it is his to receive.”

Now the prodigal stirs, and stumbles out of bed.  It is his first day back home and he is determined to make good on this second chance.  The obligations from which he fled so long ago no longer appear as chains holding him back.  They have become the new life he was always seeking.

In the end, both the prodigal and his older brother get what they need.   Life in the presence of their father.  

May it be so with you.

Mark

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