What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, October 4, 2009

18th Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 2:18-24 • Psalm 8 • Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12 • Mark 10:2-16

"Some Pharisees came, and to test him 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."

As with any passage that puts off alarm bells in our heads like this text from Mark—the con-text is just as important as the text itself in how we interpret this passage. It’s a challenging one to find the gospel “kernel” in the midst of Jesus’ very stern words about divorce. But it’s there. So let’s take a look.

First of all, Divorce rates were certainly not as high in Jesus’ day as they are today. Jesus’ words do not create new regulations about divorce. He speaks knowing full wel the long history of Israelite law and tradition surrounding marriage and the breaking of marriages. Just as Jesus does not replace Jewish law with his gospel news of a new kingdom of God, Jesus with these words re-new-s the heritage he inherits and operates within. In answering the Pharisees’ question regarding whether it is proper – or lawful, as they put it – for a man to divorce, Jesus gets at more than just whether divorce is proper, but he gets at the intentions involved in such a case.

It's also very important that we see this passage within the whole Gospel of Mark. Not just with these words but throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus finds a way to re-new, re-interpret, again and again, what is at the essence of the matter—which is God’s COVENANT with us. Jesus renews the covenant promise in his response to the Pharisees, the promise for God to be the God of the Israelites, to lead God’s people to liberation and salvation, to commit to an everlasting love that will never let us go. In Mark’s Gospel, it is Jesus who prepares the way to a new Exodus, who bears the covenant as God’s messenger, who is baptized by John into that same covenant promise for the forgiveness of sins.

When Jesus speaks against divorce here, also remember who Jesus speaks to. He is speaking to the pharisees, to the religious and social elite. Jesus speaks to the powerful who supported using the Torah and other legal codes giving permission to divorce for different intentions than God had intended. The rich and the powerful, such as they, were marrying and divorcing left and right. They were wheeling and dealing so they could “move up” the social ladder to accumulate wealth, status, power…and then they divorce so they can remarry and take it all with them to a family that had even more wealth, status, & power. Jesus, with his reply to the Pharisees, puts divorce back into the realm of the whole mission of his covenant renewal program—and puts divorce back into the realm where it must be a reality to rekon with. Jesus puts divorce in its place as a sad, tragic and not hoped for outcome—rathern than as a tool for personal gain. Jesus exposes here the Pharisees’ failing to see divorce in order to marry again as a rupture of God’s hopes and intentions for a life that is lived together in a covenant promise, a life in which two people have become one. Jesus exposes the shame brought upon not just the male, not just the female, but upon all who are involved when the motivation of divorce is to “marry up.”

Now, it would be inappropriate to say that God is married to us. However, we could say that God is “covenanted” to us—similar to married, but still different. God does live in a covenanted relationship with us. We could even say that God “covenants down” with us. Have you ever heard a very wise person say about their partner that they have “married up”, that they have received something more for who they have committed their life to? Well God does the opposite with us—God’s on the one end with all the power, all the gifts to give us, and we’re the ones whom God is coming down to covenant with—that’s what covenanting down is all about. God covenants down with us to give us God’s self, God’s son, to give away all that God has for us. God covenants down with us who are divorced from God—separated, apart and distant. In God’s relationship with us, it is Jesus who renews God’s intention to live with us as our partner, to give all God has away to us who are not deserving of this unequal equation.

Have you ever made a covenant with a group of people? It’s not easy, and it’s difficult to put one together, because it’s really not something that’s easy to put words to. I can remember being a part of putting covenants together with youth groups before discussions about different religions, before going to the youth gathering (we did one this past summer), before going on a week of retreat time together. There’s always that initial silence when the question gets posed: “What do we want in our covenant? What do we want the boundaries and limits for our group? What will our witness be” But once the discussion gets going, and everyone gets their input in, and we come up with the covenant, there is this sense of the group laying out what it wants to be, and what it does not want to be a witness to. The end of the process yields a group who wants to witness to a love and respect for one another, that will always put the group first and that will seek to be safe. These are not rules, they are principles—but they guide and flow out of that same intention God has in God’s covenant relationship with us—to come down to our level and serve us, to seek and thirst to restore trust with us whenever the covenant between us gets broken.

Jesus comes to renew our breaking of God’s covenant, to bring us back from our divorce from God. We break God's trust. United Lutheran Church breaks God's trust. We break trust with one another. But Jesus continues to come to us, to restore what has been broken, to ground us in God’s intention to not live isolated lives, but to live as the body of Christ, to live in community, to live in relationship as a covenantal people. When we back out of our covenant relationships for our own gain, Jesus comes to us as God’s antidote for us—an antidote to renew us in God.

Yes, divorce, separation, from a church, from our other covenant relationships is sometimes a sad necessity. Jesus' words do not deny this reality. But God’s desire for us to live in covenant with one another—as family, as friends, as brothers and sisters in Christ—does not waver!

Here at the table, Jesus comes to renew us in God who has “covenanted down” with us, to make this solemn promise to us: that the blood of the covenant, poured out in Jesus, is poured out for many, for all whom God has drawn in to this body, for all who have been separated from God.

At the end of the day, we, as the church, and in our life’s relationships affirm the covenant renewal Jesus gives us when we are there for one another. When we say that we do not believe in a God of pure feelings, or of pure power, or of pure wealth, we affirm our baptismal belief in God whose bottom line with us is not feelings, or power or wealth—but a covenantal coming down to us. When we say we believe that God’s covenanting down with us means God in Christ Jesus will be there for us at all times, we affirm that it is God in Christ Jesus forms us and motivates to be a whole community who at the end of the day, regardless of whatever may come between us is there for one another. In so many ways, I have seen that covenantal promise between members of United Lutheran Church lived out.

Whatever our future holds, as a people, as a church, may we continue to live, and trust, and be molded and shaped as a whole people in the covenantal grace with God who has covenanted down with us. God will continue to pour out a Son to us, to make fresh and to make new, to speak to us a promise that will not be broken. Amen.