Mark
10:2-16
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." 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.
Truly I tell you, whoever
does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.
· This weekend, along with
our usual Sunday celebration of the Great Thanksgiving (that’s what “Eucharist”
translates to), we celebrate our nation’s festival of Thanksgiving. In Canada,
it’s tied to the harvest rather than to a specific historical event.
· Of course, the readings
assigned for this Sunday do not lend themselves to the theme of Thanksgiving…
especially as we celebrate it with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. (Or
is it ‘dressing’ rather than ‘stuffing’?)
· Still our reading from
Mark’s Gospel can lead us to a true attitude and sense of thanksgiving.
· For one thing, Jesus
speaks again of the kingdom of God and how it comes to us. He uses children as
an example of the sort of person the kingdom of God is for. "Let
the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these
that the kingdom of God belongs.” In its own way, this may be
harder to handle than the teaching of divorce which I’m sure you all understand
is difficult to handle from the pulpit.
· If we hear Jesus rightly
and receive the kingdom as a little child, it does
not set us on a road of unquestioning acceptance of statements. All of us who
have raised children have gone through the time of ‘the question’, when
everything and anything can provoke the question “Why?” Those inquiring minds
want to know, again and again.
· A little child has to
receive the world as it is, even if the question of “why?” is a constant one. Somehow
they know that they don’t know. They know that things don’t go their way all
the time. Rained out picnics are real… and disappointing. Things get broken, and
some can be fixed and some can’t.
· It may seem strange to us
to see Jesus use small children as examples of what the kingdom of God is
about. They don’t handle doctrine very well. They are small, weak, vulnerable,
and lack understanding. They are not ready to deal with the disappointments and
defeats life hands us, usually except with tears. And that is the entire point!
· In Jesus’ time, children
were more than expendable. They were nuisances to adults and annoyances to all
around them. They simply were not worth the time until they were adults, and so
the disciples wanted to shoo them away and not waist the Master’s time.
· Jesus takes issue with
this. Mark goes so far as to say Jesus was “indignant” with his disciples. He
told them to let the children into his presence. They were the ones to whom the
kingdom of God belongs.
· The point appears to be to
whom the kingdom belongs, not about who will achieve the kingdom, or those who
would earn the kingdom. The kingdom of God is one of grace and that grace is offered
to those who might not be considered worthy of the Kingdom. So the emphasis on
the children; they’re seen as unimportant and beneath recognition… until
they’ve done something deserving of it in the eyes of the people who decide who
is worth the trouble. But in Jesus’ view, the kingdom is a place where the
weak, the fallen, the forgotten – the “nobodies” if you will – are welcomed and
valued. It is to the broken and the powerless that Jesus proclaimed the Gospel.
That remains the mission of the Church.
· The beginning of this
passage from Mark’s Gospel speaks of a painful reality – the reality of
divorce. In truth, the Pharisees who brought this to Jesus didn’t care about
those who had experienced divorce. They did it to prove their power and to have
Jesus submit to their understanding of power. They hoped to silence him just as
Jesus’ disciples wished to silence the small children. But there would be no
silencing him. He stood in the middle of the controversy in almost the same way
he stood in the middle of the gathering of small children brought so that he
might touch and bless them. He spoke hard words, but those hard words cut the
power from those who would use their question to further their own views.
· In the same way, blessing
the children showed Jesus to be firmly on the side of those seen as not worth
the trouble and those who face a brokenness that is not their own doing… and
even those broken by their own doing. Sinners like us have an advocate and a
saviour in him who give us better than we deserve.
· And that’s good news.
That’s also something to be truly thankful for. A Christian teacher of the 13th
Century called Meister Eckart wrote about Christian thanksgiving in this way: “If
the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be
enough.”
W
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