Proper 22B
October 8, 2006
Mark 10:2-9
“Rummage Sunday”
First off, I need to clarify that it is only by coincidence that the new curate is preaching on Rummage Sunday, and that the rector’s out of town, and that the Gospel reading is about divorce! At least, I think it’s only coincidental….
Well what do you say church? Clearly Jesus does not like divorce. But I wonder what Jesus would have said if he hadn’t been provoked by those pesky Pharisees? Do you think his answer would have been so pointed if it had been a person from among the crowd asking the same question, rather than a delegation from this rigorist and legalistic sect of Judaism? I don’t know. You know, like when you’re at the Rummage and someone comes up after already knowing what the price of his Tupperware is or the price of her scarf, and knowing fully that the Tupperware is 25 cents and the scarf is 2 dollars, the person asks how much their respective item is—just to see if you will slip up, make a mistake and give them a leg-up? I think that Jesus is having a Rummage moment, but more importantly there is meaning to be found deeper than just the words we have before us.
But you do have to admit it, Jesus lets them have it. He answers their question with a question but then he goes a step further. When we look at his first question, “What did Moses Command?” Jesus strikes a decidedly pointed and provocative question to the Pharisees. His question implies that the Pharisees are more rightly followers of Moses, the Lawgiver to the Israelites and the Torah, than they are of God’s overall commandment of love, mercy and mutuality. Effectively making the Pharisees worshippers of religious legalism and ritual, than of their God. But Jesus calls them, and us, to go beyond the human made constructs of religious legalism and ritual over reconciliation and love; calling them to reconcile devotion to rite-that’s R-I-T-E- with what is right-R-I-G-H-T. Jesus rightly takes issue with the ritual and ‘commandments’ and fixation over the death of a relationship. Jesus’ ire is raised because of his faith’s wholesale pessimism and focusing on the end of a relationship.
You’ll notice the Pharisees go back to the Book of Deuteronomy, that’s where they get their reference to Moses and the ‘allowance of divorce’, a book written at the time when Israel was wandering in the wilderness, before they reached the Promised Land. The end a marriage in ancient Judea essentially was a severed a legal contract between a man and the ex-wife’s father, a contract and covenant that had been established at the outset of the now failed marriage; as you may or may not know marriage was a contract between a husband and the bride’s father, or at its most extreme or hyperbolic a contract between the bride’s father and the head to the groom’s family. Only the aggrieved husband could proceed with the divorce; the results of which rid him of any obligation to his former wife, returned the dowry from the first contract, and literally gave the ex-wife her walking papers, allowing her to be married again. All obligations of the husband were null, money was exchanged and the end came. And all of this was recognized and overseen by ritual and the religious establishment.
But Jesus, forever the optimist and the abundant lover of humanity, goes further back to a time of paradise when all was right with God, and Jesus goes back to the lovely Garden, to the point were all humanity lacked their hardness of heart. When all was right between God and humanity, and where man and woman were equals and partners in mutual affection.
Jesus says that Moses only permitted divorce to occur because of the Israelites hardness of heart. The Greek word for this phrase is unique because it is the only time it is used in all of the New Testament, here and Matthew’s identical parallel of this story. The word used is sklerokardian. It is literally seen as a condition of the heart, like a diagnosed ailment. In ancient Judea, the heart was not only the seat of all emotion but it was also the residency of all reason. Jesus is saying that by having this condition there is a fundamental short-circuiting of the person, effectively a sickness. And for the Pharisees to elaborate this sickness from an occasional allowance into a full religious ritual is the real problem Jesus has with divorce.
Jesus does not call divorce a sin, but what he does perpetually calls in all of our relationships away from division and actions that strip one another of their humanity, in order to live boldly in reality of love, mutuality, equality, and partnership. These are not terms applied exclusively to married couple, but the divine potential that all Christians are called to embody in all exchanges with our brothers and sisters. Last Sunday, Jackie’s sermon reminded us that our rituals in our faith are done out of love. They are a reflection of the abundant love shown us by God through Jesus. We are called to love because we are loved, that is the real commandment here. Not what Moses writes about a piece of paper, or how to sever all legal obligation’s to one’s ex-spouse. Our rituals here at God’s table best feed us à when we are feeding others with God’s abundant love; when we are willing to extend the same grace given to us to another brother or sister. We all saw glimpses of that this past week at Rummage and we will continue to see that abundant love --as Christ Church gives back what God has given us; in our tithes and offerings, in our benevolence grants and in our ministries throughout the greater community and world.
This past week while our church was in the midst of Rummage, our calendar of saints remembered Francis of Assisi. Francis’ life demonstrated the ardor with which we in our faith journey are to live fully into our lives as Christians, not as guardians of legalism or of ritual, but of fully living into the call of reconciliation and love. His compulsive and even reckless love for Christ and God’s word called him to a life of love, pacifism, and as a reconciler of peace—even attempting to broker a lasting peace between the Ottoman Empire and the Vatican. While negotiations failed, it wasn’t without seeing the fruits of a life fully lived in love, mutuality, respect and the desire to move beyond the expectations of his day and to choose right over ritual. His love for God gives us a living example and a glimpse of what it can mean when one Christian focuses on the desire to return to the Glorious Garden, to try to make Eden visible once more.
Live a life of love, live fully into a life of divine optimism, strive to tend to that Garden from which we all came; for the God who is always more ready to hear than we to pray, and the God who is always more willing to give more than we deserve, will pour upon us an abundance of grace and fortitude to make it happen. Be like Francis, a broker of love and an emissary of reconciliation and an apostle of Jesus, Our Christ.
