A Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Can you recall a time that you have been incredibly uncomfortable? Painfully uncomfortable?

I’ve got a long list, and I add to it daily! Here are some highlights. The time that they dragged a third-grade-sized desk into my first-grade classroom for me because I couldn’t get my knees under the littler desks. EVERY DAY of middle school. Being at the Thanksgiving table after an election.

How about places that you have felt truly comfortable, at home in your own skin, nothing to prove, no one to impress, just loved because you are you? What a blessing it is to be able to name these times! Curled up in my mother’s lap. Riding in the car with my father. Sitting on the screen porch with Julian, whose son I was married to for many years. And now, sitting with my new husband on our own screened porch.

And getting back to the uncomfortable spots. Right now would be one for me. Because I have been both divorced and remarried. And this Gospel is tough.

But following Jesus was never meant to be all comfort. For the past few weeks Jesus has said really uncomfortable things in Mark’s gospel. If you want to be a disciple, you must lose your life to gain life with Jesus. The last will be first and the first will be last. If you have an eye that wanders or a hand that has done harm, pluck it out, cut it off. And I’m sorry to report to you but next week isn’t any better. It is easier for a camel to through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.

So today we find Jesus being tested by the Pharisees. The Pharisees who just like us want to understand how the rules apply. They are trying to make sense of the Kingdom that Jesus has come to proclaim. So, they push to understand.

What about divorce? they ask. Jesus asks them what the law is according to Moses. Allowed, they say.

But Jesus explains to them this has been allowed because of their hardness of heart. Because of our inability to understand that we were made to love one another, and those who have made that promise should be true to it.

Later, Jesus has more to say to the disciples about this. You know after you’ve had an argument and hours later you come up with And another thing! I wonder if what Jesus said next to the disciples was something like that. Because it has even more of a bite. Jesus says those who are divorced and remarried are committing adultery.

This passage has been viewed through so many lenses over the centuries. Each lens bringing a different understanding to the world Jesus was addressing, first-century Israel. I do not think we can just walk away from the text because it sounds antiquated to our understanding. That’s too easy. Some view this passage through a lens of the law. Some view the passage through a lens of Jesus’ concern for those who are weakest in society. Some see Jesus’ pronouncement against divorce has more to do with an understanding that the incoming reign of the kingdom was close at hand so why worry with divorce or remarriage.

I can’t square myself into understanding fully what Jesus was trying to say with any of these lenses or any other readings of this passage.

Jesus came to show us the unfathomable wideness of God’s mercy and as I understand He was not concerned with regulating God’s love. Jesus always stood on the side of the weak, the sick, those in need. And I cannot see a way that Jesus would forbid divorce to a spouse who faced physical and mental abuse, or to a spouse who sought divorce to protect the lives of their children. And honestly, although I know that eschatological thinking, considering the imminent return of Jesus, is an important lens, I don’t quite understand it completely in this context.

So, I think I will forever be left uneasy about this portion of Scripture. Hoping that Jesus understands why I sought a divorce while taking my marriage vows very seriously. Hoping that Jesus blesses my marriage now.

But this discomfort is not where today’s gospel leaves us. What comes next is a completely different tone entirely.

Let the children come to me, do not stop them… whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.

Jesus has spoken of children in preceding Gospels.

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Jesus holds children up as ones to guarded and honored.

And today Jesus tells us to enter the kingdom we must become like children. Which one might hear as sweet. To have the innocence of a well loved and cared for child, untouched by the sordidness, tragedies and suffering that being an adult can bring.

Recently I asked some of our kids what grownups are like. The overwhelming answers were BUSY. IN A HURRY. WORRIED. SOMETIMES ANGRY. I was not surprised by their answers, because I know it is true. But to hear it straight out of their mouths made my heart sink.

Jesus knew what being an adult in this world entails and the impossibility of escaping that. There is no way to Jesus that does not lead us to the cross. What keeps us adults from becoming like children is not trying to find some innocence at this point, because that is impossible. We’ve seen too much.

We are BUSY, often rightly so, trying to provide for those we love. We do WORRY about everything and try desperately to make things right, to make things safe without much success. And in all this worry and rush we can fall into ANGER, RAGE even, when we just can’t fix any of it really. And sometimes being busy, worried, and enraged leads us adults down even darker paths toward greed, dishonesty, and ultimately shame.

How is it that we are to return to that place of a blessed childhood where we could trust in the goodness of the world, trust in our own goodness?

I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating today. It is a story that has become part of the foundation of my faith, my trust in God’s mercy and love. On the day that I filed for divorce I drove to my in-law’s home. They had been steady and supportive to me as my marriage fell apart, holding both their son and me in love. I walked into the house and found my father-in-law, Julian, in his den. I stood there and told him that I had signed all the papers. He stood up from his chair and came and wrapped his big arms around me and I fell apart. He said, “I told you on the day you married my son you were a part of this family, that you were mine, too. Nothing, nothing will ever change that.”

In that moment I was a child in his arms. Not because I was innocent, not because I had magically erased all pain and loss. I was like a child again, because despite this I had complete and utter trust in his love.

Nothing ever did change Julian’s love. His love was a safe harbor for so many people. I keep a message on my phone he left randomly one day for no reason at all. He called just to tell me he was proud of me and loved me, that he cherished me and my babies and even our dog Ruth. There was no hard heartedness in Julian. His love was bigger than the law, more than just being protective of me, not based on what was coming in the future. His love mirrored perfectly to me the love of God, of Jesus embracing me as a beloved child.

As we keep going in Mark’s gospel on into Advent the readings don’t get any more comfortable. We will hear again and again how uncomfortable and demanding it is to follow Jesus. It is much more than we would ever place on the shoulders of a child to bear. But we can try to have the trust a child knowing we are daily being reconciled and redeemed by God’s love through Jesus our savior. And nothing, nothing will ever change that.

Amelia McDaniel