Stories, forgotten and remembered

Jeremiah 31:31-34

The days are surely coming, says Adonai, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt - a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says Adonai. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Adonai: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know Adonai,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says Adonai, for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, and though the mountains shake in the depths of the sea; though its waters rage and foam, and though the mountains tremble with its tumult. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be shaken; God shall help it at the break of day. The nations rage, and the kingdoms shake; God speaks, and the earth melts away. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold. Come now, regard the works of the Lord, what desolations God has brought upon the earth; behold the one who makes war to cease in all the world; who breaks the bow, and shatters the spear, and burns the shields with fire. “Be still, then, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.” The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.

Romans 3:19-28

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

John 8:31-36

Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

*******

Everybody has a story. You want to know who somebody is, you get their friends (or their enemies) to tell you a story about them, a defining event, an over-the-top decision, an outrageous experience. Tyler is a kid with a heart of gold, he’ll even use the gift card his teacher gave him to buy dinner for his friends. Luke loves the city life but takes his prayer time on his neighbor’s tractor out in the country. Dr Klein has been teaching Old Testament for so long he reads directly from the Hebrew and loves telling those stories of his two grandsons who were put together in a petri dish. Stories.

Then there are the stories of baseball teams like the Cubs, stories of celebrities like Bill Cosby, stories of family fishing trips and community traditions that help us re-live the historical events that shaped every celebration ever since then. Some stories are told with pride and carried forward, others with pride that we’ve gotten past them and don’t live like that any more. Many stories tell how we got to where we are and why we respond in the way we do when tragedy strikes or when a certain time of year comes around. My grandmother was always sad in mid April, because she suffered a miscarriage one April well over fifty years ago, and her body carried that story until the day she died. 

The Jewish people had a story they tell every spring, and two thousand years ago that storytelling became for us what we call Holy Week. The story of the Passover, the signs and plagues sent down on Pharaoh to set God’s people free from slavery. They were in slavery in the first place because Pharaoh forgot the story of Joseph, who interpreted the dreams of a previous Pharaoh and saved Egypt from starvation during seven years of famine. You’d think a famine lasting seven years would be a big enough struggle that folks would remember it for generations. When I lived in Massachusetts, every snowstorm led to the grocery stores being picked clean by people who remembered another storm from 40 years ago. But a seven year famine didn’t concern the Egyptians who figured their Pharaoh was a god, and they put all those foreigners in their midst into forced labor, despite the fact that those foreigners had been part of their basic survival.

Passover tells the story of God liberating God’s people from that slavery, sending the plagues, leading them in the wilderness, drowning Pharaoh and his army, providing manna in the desert, promising a homeland. It’s the defining story of the people. 

So it’s a bit funny that when Jesus talks about true freedom, the people who tell this story as their own, year after year, would say ‘we’ve never been slaves of anybody!’ Not just funny, it’s downright sad. Like the fairy godmother rescued Cinderella from a life of poverty, and she claims she’s always lived in the palace. Or the nation of immigrants goes on and on about how lazy and dangerous immigrants are, or the adults forget what it was like to be a teenager and the teens forget what it was like to be a kid. How have we lost who we are, where we come from?

There’s this movie with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler, called “50 First Dates,” where he falls for her but she has long-term memory damage and can’t remember yesterday when she wakes up in the morning. Every day, Sandler’s character has to reintroduce himself to Barrymore’s, because every morning she wakes up with no idea of their history together. It doesn't seem to phase him, though. Every morning she wakes up to a video reminding her of the reason for her memory loss and a recap of the recent history she’s lived through. God seems to be in that same sort of position with us, over and over again, reminding us that we were once strangers, that we were once far off and have been brought near, that we have all fallen short of the glory of God, that we are grafted into the tree as outsiders, that we were slaves in Egypt and have been slaves to ourselves and to our sin from the outset.

So that, when we get to the end and wonder what it was all for, when we get into the middle of the mess and wonder what’s the point to all of this, when we ask ‘why me?’ or ‘what now?’ or ‘what does it matter?’, we have a defining story, a root, a source to turn back to for strength and hope and freedom when it seems for all intents and purposes that our hands are tied and we’ve buried ourselves alive again.

We are grafted into a long, deep, rich heritage of God, where every time we run to our own destruction we are pursued, every time we turn our back on each other we are brought back together, every time we sin we are forgiven. Our short memories, however, lead us deeper and deeper into the lie that we can free ourselves from sin, that we can live perfect lives if only we try hard enough, that we’ve gotten this far on our own strength and so should everybody else if they’re worth the effort.

There’s the great story Jesus tells about an older brother who works for his father as though he has to earn his place in the family. He never takes a holiday, never asks for anything, works his fingers to the bone, and then his younger brother takes half of the family bank account and runs off to splurge on childish, irresponsible, immature… Anyhow, with the younger brother out of the way, the older still has to do most of the work, but then one day that little snot comes home all apologetic, and the father sends servants to slaughter a prize animal for a feast! A feast to welcome back this piece of worthless mess, while the eldest has never gotten the recognition he deserves. He might as well be a slave, for all the thanks he gets, so he doesn’t bother to welcome his brother home, because he’s too busy working and trying to earn the love his father gives away freely.

We have been set free, but we keep living like slaves, insisting we were never slaves in the first place. It's messed up. It’s why we confess our sins together at the start of each worship service, because it’s the most basic rule of recovery: admitting you have a problem is the first step in healing. We tell a story on Reformation Sunday about Martin Luther, a Catholic monk who was absolutely terrified of God’s judgment, who lived in a time when the church was ignoring the pain of the poor who were dying all around in their own unholy fear of God, who in the age of a brand new printing press published some ideas for academic debate which ended up turning the world at the time upside down. One of those early ideas was: “The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.” No matter what sort of financial situation the church would ever be in, the story of our salvation, of God’s work setting us free from captivity to sin, is the source of our life and our greatest treasure.

Righteousness apart from works of the law. Law as no longer accuser or guilt-bringer, but gift of life and marriage covenant. God who relentlessly pursues us wherever we run or hide. A story of rescue, over and over again, and once and for all in the cross of Jesus Christ. This is what we celebrate this Reformation Sunday. This is our story, our freedom. Thanks be to God.

Powerless before Glory

Mark 10: 35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Professor, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

*******

I’ve been thinking about power and powerlessness a lot this week. Some of you know I’ve been sitting with a family in ICU for the last week while they wait for their son to wake up after a terrible car accident nine days ago. The family is of course powerless to wake him up, the doctor and nurses are keeping him alive and taking good care of him, his healing process will be long, everything about his family’s life has changed. Many friends and relatives have been spending their days in the lobby waiting, just waiting, and hoping, and chatting, and of course running the gamut of emotions through the stress and grief and fear and anger. I don’t want to say he’s ‘not one of ours,’ since God doesn’t do that whole ‘us and them’ separation, but just so you don’t think you’ve missed something, he’s not a member here, I just get to do this sort of thing with people who ask for a pastor because I’m local enough to get there, and sitting powerless with other people is uncomfortable, holy time. Of course there’s nothing I can do to fix anything, I don’t have any answers, I can’t explain why these things happen, I just get to sit in the awkward powerlessness with other people and pay attention to God in the midst of it.

This morning’s Gospel reading skips over a few verses from last week’s reading. I don’t know if that’s for the sake of cutting out repetition of verses we’ve already heard twice recently, or because the lectionary folks wanted us to focus differently, but I can’t help but back up to the end of last week’s reading and go on directly from there to today’s, so, from verses 32-34: 

And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”

For some reason, after this third prediction of his betrayal and death, James and John come up and demand to sit at his right and left hands in his glory. It’s so insensitive of them. But on the other hand, it sort of makes sense. They don’t want to hear about suffering, don’t want to think about it, don’t want things to change, don’t want Rome to burst their bubble of hope yet again while they remain powerless to do anything about their oppression. Rome, remember, can just come in a steal any woman they please, use her up and throw her away. Rome, remember, is an empire that keeps the peace by making public witness of humiliating anyone who expresses a desire for equal protection under the law. In our recent American history, we might say that Rome is in charge of the most public state-sanctioned lynchings, and here Jesus is saying that his own people are going to hand him over to just such a lynching. Terror and powerlessness. He’s letting his disciples know that he knows this is coming, and he’s reminding them again that it won’t be the end of him, because he will rise after three days.

So, say James and John, let’s just jump right to the glory then, okay? We’ve got to be able to do something more than just sit by and watch, than just stand around and wait. Being powerless is such an awful feeling, especially when you’re powerless to save someone you love and hope for.

But, yet again, James and John have missed the point of who Jesus is. God has been watching us live with the consequences of our free will for generation after generation, calling to us, crying to us, through prophets and signs and miracles to turn around, to repent, to just be kind to one another and stop with the self-centeredness and the killing and the shaming and the isolating and the imprisonment and the abuse. We have turned our backs on God over and over throughout history, claiming we know better how to live in the glory we want. Our fight for glory only turns our world and our communities into broken bits of debris, adrift in the chaos. Then when we’ve made a real mess of things we turn in desperation to God and demand God fix what we have broken. God created this world out of chaos, so we claim in one of our creation stories, so we know God can do it again, but we’d rather God get out of our way, until we need God to swoop in with all of the power and bring us glory. This is how people have lived generation after generation. Heartbreaking.

So God isn’t getting the message across with the prophets, it seems, isn’t mending fully what we have broken, not even with the many sacrifices of the priests. Certainly we aren’t keeping order and justice with any consistency through the kings. We can’t fix this ourselves, so God comes in the flesh, descends into the chaos and the suffering and the madness and the gore. God comes deep down inside our powerlessness, to show us what real power, what real glory, what real salvation, is.

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, I know a few bedsides in the ICU with empty couches. 

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, I know a few prison inmates who could use a penal. 

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, I heard there are schools with ‘buddy benches’ in their playgrounds for the lonely kids.

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, look to your left, to your closest neighbor.

Because this is who God is, among us, with us, in our suffering and our everything. We can’t escape the realities of living in a world where our actions have consequences, and God doesn’t pull us out of it so much as crawl into it beside us. When Jesus talks about the cup he is to drink, remember that cup he poured out for us when he sat at that Passover supper with his disciples the night we betrayed him, that cup of his blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, the cup of salvation, of cells and plasma that flowed in his veins and has been given freely for us. When he talks about the baptism with which he is baptized, remember that day when the heavens opened and the voice of God said “This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased,” and remember how God has claimed you and named you in baptism, too. When we talk about the glory of God, we talk about this passionate love which has been flowing throughout all of history and flows among us and within us in the here and now as much as it did two thousand years ago.

For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. And to give his life as a ransom for you.

Can't earn it, can't lose it

Mark 10:17-31

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments; ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father of children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

*******

My father has been retired now for two years. About six months into his retirement he went back to work. His own father never took a day of vacation, never took a sick day, until he had two years or more accumulated at the end of his career working for the postal service. Granted, my grandfather was a first generation immigrant from Denmark and grew up on a Minnesota farm during the Great Depression. Or so the story goes. Work has been a matter of survival, pride, and good citizenship. Grandpa struggled a lot in his last years, though, with grief over having missed so much of his children’s and grandchildren’s lives because he was at work so much.

Then there was a tweet written this past week from mega-church Pastor Creflo Dollar, who said that Jesus bled and died so that we could have financial security. This is the same guy who told his congregation that God wanted him to have a personal jet.

And were still sort of hearing about the Syrian refugees, who are fleeing in droves and many arriving with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Oh, and also, I got to spend an afternoon at Whittier with a community of people whose memories are slipping away, and another couple of hours with family and friends of a young man in a coma after a car accident.

I wonder how this morning’s Gospel speaks to people from these sorts of experiences, what it can mean to us here. We have a strange relationship to stuff, all the buying and selling and collecting and tag sales and all. I still don’t own any furniture, at 32 years old, though I’ve never wanted for comfort. I could probably build a table and a bed out of all my books, but desk and bed and chairs I’ve not yet acquired, and I like it that way. Traveling light is my preference. Except now it takes multiple car loads to move all of my books. So traveling light has kind of gone out the window, and I keep getting more books, and as roommates come and go they bring new kitchen supplies… I guess I’m sort of building a collection of “adult,” “responsible” stuff that I ought to have by now. So many kids my age have houses and spouses and kids and comfy chairs and kitchen tables of their own, many of us reflecting on how strange it is to have all these trappings of adulthood and not knowing where they came from.

This young man in today’s Gospel reading has many possessions. Whether he’s worked for home or inherited them or some combination of both, we don’t know. He’s a sincere fellow, it seems, wanting to please Jesus, to inherit eternal life from God, and he’s followed all the commandments about loving your neighbor. Can you see him, running up to Jesus, “Good teacher!” he says. Oh, he’s excited, all right. He’s finally going to meet the guy everybody’s talking about, the Rabbi who’s stirring up the hearts of people everywhere, the one who’s making the Pharisees squirm and really reminding folks about love. “Good teacher!” he says, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And the first thing Jesus does is burst his bubble, just a little bit: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Maybe this guy has been rewarded for his behavior by doting parents, calling him a ‘good son’ when he’s done nice things, practicing that positive reinforcement so he continues his best behavior. Who knows? But this style of praise, a cycle of rewards for good behavior, only works sometimes. We don’t always do good, we don’t always feel good, we don’t always recognize good. Only God is good.

We spend a lot of time talking about good and bad, usually in relation to people, usually measured in how they dress or talk or what sort of money they have or how their children turned out. “Good” can often mean “useful,” or it did to my grandfather. Being a “good immigrant” he worked very hard for a very, very long time so he could contribute to society and help take care of his family. He passed that down to my father, who cannot stand being idle and needs to work, to be productive, to earn a paycheck even now that he’s a week away from sixty-eight years old. To Creflo Dollar, being a “good Christian” is shown in how much money God has given you, and if you have enough faith you will soon be blessed with abundant wealth, which you then have to show off in order to prove you’re faithful to God. Refugees need sanctuary and a good, honest welcome. Folks who are completely dependent on nurses and machines need good care. 

Jesus, on the other hand, looks at this young man who has probably been called a good man all his life, and loves him. The young man wants to know what to do to inherit eternal life, as though being welcomed into God’s family, being saved, is something we earn. And with all of our talk of “good” and “bad,” we sure get stuck in that mindset no matter how our theology tells us it’s not how God works. The question of why bad things happen to good people is one of the oldest questions there is, as though we only have to earn and always deserve what happens to us. The young man has been rewarded in life with many possessions. He can point to those things, to his faithfulness to the law, as proof that he himself is a good man, perhaps. Or at least that he is well on his way to becoming good, to becoming good enough. But he still doesn’t know for certain that he’s part of God’s family, still doesn’t know if he’s missing something, still doesn’t know if maybe there’s anything else he needs to do to inherit eternal life.

Imagine you’re a parent with one child who is always double-checking that you love them. Who thinks you must certainly hate them if they got less than a 4.0 grade average in school, or keeps trying to stay up all night on multiple work projects so they can buy you a better car or pay off your mortgage so that you will love them. And how terribly worthless that kid would feel if they got sick and you had to take care of them but they didn’t trust that they had done enough for you to really love them? If every time you told them you loved them they said you were only following the rules of being a parent and it wasn’t really love? How heartbreaking would that be? 

This young man with his many possessions and eagerness to inherit eternal life reminds me of my grandfather, of my father, of the refugees who have to prove they’re not a drain on society in order to find safe haven here. He reminds me of the kid on life support and the folks who will never get their memories back this side of heaven. He goes away sad when Jesus tells him to sell everything and give it to the poor, because who is he without his stuff and his proof of righteousness? He’s gotten all of these things because he’s been so good, how will he show that he’s so good once he has nothing to show for it? What good will he be to heaven if he can’t contribute anything to it? If he gives everything to the poor now, he will himself be poor, and what will he be able to do in the future that’s worth anything? 

We know these questions, we wrestle with our own worth so often, we take refuge in entitlement or we end up in despair.  But when this young man asks Jesus about inheriting eternal life, Jesus invites him to life eternal right now in the present moment. He’s always saying that the Kingdom of God has come near, isn’t he? Even when we’re not looking for it. But we forget, we cut each other off based on earnings. Simply put, the young man couldn’t point to his achievements as a golden ticket into eternal life. None of us can. We can not earn heaven. We can not build ourselves a resume’ worthy of eternal life. We never could.

And we’ve never had to. We are not our stuff, and we are not our achievements, we are simply and forever children of God. Saved by grace through faith apart from works for Christ’s sake. Jesus, looking at this guy, loved him not for his stuff but for his self. Just as Jesus, looking at us, loves us, not because we’ve earned it, not because we deserve it, not because we can prove he ought to, but just because that’s what Jesus does.

My grandfather’s grief at missing out on so much of our growing up is that same kind of hunger, that pull between needing to work to feed his family and needing to spend time with his family to know and to love them and to be loved by them. My father’s work ethic is admirable to a point and yet will no doubt be incredibly sad when they tell him he’s too old for the office work and will have to let him go. He had the hardest time getting hired at his age, and what’s a man to do who’s worked so hard for so long? Learning how to be loved regardless of station or “usefulness” might take some of us longer to learn than others, but it’s there, irregardless, for all of us.

Creflo Dollar’s got it all backwards about why Jesus bled and died. Yet Creflo Dollar has a mega church and millions of dollars, so it seems he’s doing something right, right? He’s preaching that God blesses us abundantly with wealth when we are faithful, but he’s measuring it out all wrong. Because the wealth that Jesus promises his disciples is not stored in mutual funds and bank accounts, is not shown in shiny gold watches and stretch limos, but in a family that stretches across time and around the world. Jesus tells his disciples “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father of children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” It’s not an easy road, but it’s full of love and relationships with so many people who are made in the Image of God, like Syrian refugees, and boys on life support, and people living with Alzheimer's, all part of one great family of God. One eternal family that just makes your heart break with love, that aches and groans with shared pain, that celebrates together the richness of eternity and rejoices at each new rebirth that comes, in reconciliation and forgiveness.

For we can never earn such love. Nor can we ever lose it. Because it does not depend on us. It never has, and it never will. It all depends on God, whose love will never fail.

Throw-away

Genesis 2:18-24

ADONAI, God, said, “It isn’t good that the person should be alone. I will make for him a companion suitable for helping him.” So from the ground ADONAI, God, formed every wild animal and every bird that filed in the air, and he brought them to the person to see what he would call them. Whatever the person would call each living creature, that was to be its name. So the person gave names to all the livestock, to the birds in the air and to every wild animal. But for Adam there was not found a companion suitable for helping him. Then God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the person; and while he was sleeping, he took one of his ribs and closed up the place from which he took it with flesh. The rib which ADONAI, God, had taken from the person, he made a woman-person; and he brought her to the man-person. The man-person said, “At last! This is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh. She is to be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” This is why a man is to leave his father and mother and stick with his wife, and they are to be one flesh.

Psalm 8

ADONAI! Our Lord! How glorious is your name throughout the earth! The fame of your majesty spreads even above the heavens! From the mouths of babies and infants at the breast you established strength because of your foes, in order that you might silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place - what are mere mortals, that you concern yourself with them; humans, that you watch over them with such care? You made him but little lower than the angels, you crowned him with glory and honor, you had him rule what your hands made, you put everything under his feet - sheep and oxen, all of them, also the animals in the wilds, the birds in the air, the fish in the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas. ADONAI! Our Lord! How glorious is your name throughout the earth!

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

In the past, God spoke to our fathers at different times and in various ways through the prophets, but in these final days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the material universe. This Son is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, and although sustaining all there is by the word of his power, yet made purification for sins, and then sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having been exalted as far above the angels as the name he inherited is more noble than theirs. Now it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But someone has testified somewhere, “What is man that you take thought for him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor, You put everything in subjection under his feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. But in fact we do  not yet see everything under his control. But we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor. For it was appropriate that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the champion of their salvation perfect through suffering. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one origin. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers, when he says, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

Mark 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 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. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

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How easily we throw one another away. 

The Gospel today starts with a test. The religious leaders approach Jesus to see how he will answer their loaded question about the legality of divorce. Justice and care for the vulnerable is a pretty clear message in the law and the prophets, but for the real-life, day-to-day, religion at home sort of decisions, people read into Scripture what they want to hear, and if there is a loophole in the law, we will find it to justify our own way. We’ve used the Bible to both justify slavery, and to fight against it, for example. Scripture, it has been said, has a wax nose. So how do we interpret what we find there?

That’s the crux of the question to Jesus this morning. If Moses said we can write a letter of divorce and dismiss a wife who no longer pleases us, then why shouldn’t we? Moses is, after all, the one who led us out of slavery into freedom, and the one who brought us the law from Mount Sinai. He’s the ultimate authority on God’s law, when we want him to be.

But in real experience, Jesus knows, life was particularly difficult. Adjusting to freedom takes time, and old habits die hard. Women were property as wives, with dowries and all, and their worth was tied to their purity. If it was easy to divorce a woman on a whim, just to marry another so as to collect dowries, why not marry a new bride every year? Seems like a great way to build up your investments, pad the portfolio, and not have to deal with a nagging wife wanting love and affection and attention in exchange for all that extra wealth.

So few people actually considered the feelings - no, the survival - of the woman in the aftermath of divorce. Who would want to protect someone else’s ‘damaged goods’? Remember Joseph and Mary, when Mary was found to be with child out of wedlock and Joseph considered putting her away quietly? She may not then have been stoned to death for infidelity, but she sure wouldn’t have been received with gladness into an honorable marriage with any other man.

We’re suddenly in the month of October already, and two of the many causes which have laid claim to this month are those of bullying and domestic violence. Why we have to set aside an entire month, but only a month, to talk about these painful realities that don’t take a day off, that someone said these things need to be talked about and we have to set aside particular time for those conversations, when ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a basic rule to all major religions? 

I don’t know the statistics, except that bullying is a lot more visible now that we have texting and Facebook, that domestic violence can be physical, mental, or emotional. It doesn’t always lead to bruises we can see. It isn’t always men beating women. Abuse comes in many forms, as a power play. Sometimes it leaves the abused cut off and the abuser might repent over and over again only to continue the cycle of violence. Often it is learned behavior. Always it is a violation of the marriage vows, a sin against what we claim to believe about the created order of things.

Because the first thing in the creation narrative that God says is definitely not good, is that it is not good for a human to be alone. So God creates all of the animals, in this the second creation story in Genesis, and brings them to the first dirt-person to name. I’ve seen a delightful drama of this story, where each animal comes to Adam and looks wistfully up at him, asking, “wife?” only to have Adam say, “no, not wife: donkey. Not wife: sloth. Not wife: crocodile.” All creatures, created with companionship in mind, but none quite fits the bill, not even the duck, until Adam is rent open and torn in two pieces for companionship, partnership, a helper who is different but equal. The word there, the ‘helper’ word, is used in the First Testament also for God, so this is no lesser servant person, no subordinate, but an equally valuable complement.

So how did we get so far from ‘bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’ to ‘ball and chain’? How did we get from ‘helper’ to ‘make me a sandwich’? From the story that man leaves his home and clings to his wife, to double-checking on the legalities of deciding that the pretty girl next door can be traded in because she burned my toast again this morning?

We were not made for this, friends. We were not made to be one another’s means to an end, to be anyone else’s rung on a ladder, or trophy, or excuse, or even ‘cross to bear.’

We certainly weren’t made to be isolated one from another. Weren’t made to bite and scratch and claw, to bully and berate and belittle, to disregard and dismember. In the kingdom of God come near, we who have grown so accustomed to the pain of one another, who are so dead in sin and so full of spite and malice, are reborn children of God, new, forgiven, and free.

This story isn’t asking Jesus about sexual ethics and male-female marriages. This is testing Jesus about the value of a human person, a vulnerable human person, a needy human person, and the role of a person with power in relation to someone of socially lesser status. Is it lawful to divorce? Well, it’s certainly not ideal, but sometimes tying oneself to another person for life turns out to be toxic rather than life-giving, and those ties need to be severed to prevent strangulation. This is not to be entered, nor exited, lightly. There will be a cost, there’s always a cost when we talk about loving another person. Jesus knows this well.

The people of Israel know this well, too. Their prophets have told stories for ages about God as the jilted lover, with the people of Israel as the unfaithful bride. In many and various ways, God spoke to the people of old by those prophets, but now in these last days, God’s own self, who we call the Son, has come to speak with us face-to-face, to walk with us hand-in-hand, to love us so passionately that he dies with a spear in his heart and comes to us again, scarred by our rejection but arms still open to us in endless love and reconciliation.

Again, this is Jesus who does this. Jesus, as in God-with-us, Emmanuel. This is not a model for abused lovers to bear the scars of their abusers. Jesus is not just a model and a teacher, Jesus is our savior and our God. There are some things Jesus goes through that we don’t have to emulate or imitate. Letting someone beat us to death out of love is one of those things. That’s Jesus’ territory, taken up freely for the sake of loving us through death in a way only God can do, so that we can be raised up to new life beyond all of our pain and death. Jesus makes with us a new marriage covenant, with his own blood and body given and shed. 

And, somehow, Jesus does this knowing how many ways we will throw him away, again and again. God bleeds for us over and over while we draw blood from each other, while we deny life in our very midst, and yet life grows despite ourselves. God can be awfully annoying like that, refusing to be tied down by our rules, refusing to be limited to our expectations, refusing to stop loving anyone just because we’ve deemed that person unlovable. Even when we consider ourselves unlovable, God will never throw us away. 

That’s why Luther said the most important words we hear at the Table are “given and shed for you.” It is not good for a person to be alone, and so God comes among us in the flesh, to feed us with God’s own flesh and blood, so we never need be alone again. And like an apple tree grafted onto ancient roots, we are connected by that sacred bloodline of Jesus to all the other beloved of God, because even when we don’t love each other, we are loved still by the God who first formed us and put us all together in this fragile and beautiful world.