Kendall's Notebook page 16
Sermon: "For Worldwide Communion"
By: Kendall Brown
Text: Mark 10: 1-16
October 5, 2003
Many Bibles title the verses we read this morning as Jesus’ Teachings on Divorce. Although divorce is the topic that jumps off the page and grabs us when we read today’s lesson, Mark was telling a different story when he wrote these verses.
For Mark, the opening verses of Chapter 10 present another incident where the Pharisees are doing all they can to undermine and destroy Jesus. The Pharisees are constantly walking on and off the stage in Mark’s story about Jesus ministry. This passage is their fourth or fifth appearance.
Previously, in Chapter 2, they appeared to question Jesus’ activity on the Sabbath and to criticize Jesus for being in the company of tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees favorite gripe is that Jesus is not obeying the law. In Chapter 7, they reappear with another legalistic matter concerning the disciples slacking off in the observance of hand-washing customs. In Chapter 12, the Pharisees try to trick Jesus with a question about the legality of paying taxes. In that scene they think that he will answer in a way that will either make him an outlaw in the eyes of the government or make him very unpopular in the eyes of the crowds gathering around him.
Today’s lesson is another of those scenes involving the Pharisees working hard to undermine or sabotage Jesus.
Their treachery is enhanced by attention to the details of geography. In verse one we are told that Jesus had just crossed over the Jordan and left Judea. People hearing Mark, the Gospel writer, tell this story would have known immediately that Jesus is geographically in the same place where John the Baptist preached and was arrested for chastising Herod Antipas for divorcing his wife and marrying his brother’s divorced wife. John lost his head for that political indiscretion. The Pharisees were trying their hardest to set Jesus up for a similar fate. So they asked him their question the answer to which they already knew as Jesus demonstrated.
This scene has its parallel in John 8 where the Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman who had been caught in adultery. They point out to Jesus that the law says that she should be stoned to death. They ask Jesus what to do – again trying to entrap him by putting a question before him that will either make him very unpopular with many people or make him in violation of the law by disputing the law.
The Pharisees are out to destroy the body of Christ with all their questions about law. What destroys the body of Christ is the embodiment of evil and in these stories the Pharisaic spirit is an evil spirit for its intention and design to destroy the ministry and work of Jesus.
That Pharisaic spirit, bent on destroying the body of Christ, is alive and well today. On this World Communion Sunday, it is grievous that so many brothers and sisters in the church today are at each other’s throats. The church is torn apart and in the church we tear each other apart.
Like the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, we hurl questions at each other and like the Pharisees, our minds are already made up as to the answers. Our questions are less exchanged pieces of conversation (in the spirit of Isaiah who wrote, “Come let us sit down and reason together.”) and more like bombs, bullets and arrows being hurled at each other. Our questions are about such things as divorce, single-parenting, inter-racial marriage, making a gay person a Bishop in the Episcopal Church, the right translation of the Scriptural texts, abortion, capital punishment, justice for minorities, the affirmation of women in the church and in the world, the use of language, and much more. When it comes to arrows of argument we have a very full quiver.
To sisters and brothers in a contentious and divided church, today’s lesson speaks with thunder and lightening. We have set before us in this lesson two different spirits, the divisive, undermining spirit of the Pharisees and the peace-filled spirit of Christ.Christ’s spirit calls to us through our arguments and questions. He calls to us to be with him in his non-judgmental stance. In today’s story, Herod was an easy target for judgment and condemnation under the law. But Jesus does not join John the Baptist in making that assertion of judgment. In the fourth Gospel, the adulterous woman had been caught in the act and stood guilty under the law, but Jesus does not join in the condemnation.
The Spirit of the Pharisees argues what is right under their law and tradition, assuming that the determination of rightfulness will grant to them the possession of truth with all of its presumed authority. In the 4th Gospel, we are taught that Jesus is the way, the truth and the light. Jesus is the truth, his spirit is the truth, not some point of law. In Jesus’ spirit, the object is not to establish one’s rightfulness of argument. Jesus leads us into righteousness over rightness. The word “righteousness” has gotten a bum wrap in our time by the association with self-righteousness and arrogance. Good old basic Biblical righteousness means simple to be right with God and right with one another. Righteousness is being at peace with God and with each other.
In all of the stories about Jesus encountering the Pharisees, the Pharisees are trying to trap him with questions about what the law says, which is in all these instances the law of Moses. You could prefer all of the Pharisees’ questions with the words: “Well Jesus, doesn’t the Bible say….?” And, in all of these stories, Jesus doesn’t engage in a conversation with the Pharisees about the law or particular points of the law. The spirit of the Pharisees leads them into a perpetual circling around and around the law. Getting nowhere fast. Jesus response, is to turn to the heart of God. In today’s lesson, he does that by turning to the creation story which is an incredibly revealing piece about the intentions of God’s heart. In doing that, Jesus affirms the sacredness of covenantal promises made in marriage and builds a footing in God’s creative love for love in marriage. He makes that affirmation without condemnation. He doesn’t condemn Herod. He doesn’t need to. Herod has already condemned himself. Jesus also sets before the church a spirit for the church’s ministry towards those who have been divorced. That ministry is described with these words quoted from The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. VIII, page 646. “A failed marriage represents a human tragedy for everyone involved. The pastoral responsibility of the church is to participate in healing, not in exacerbating or legitimating the tragedy…”
Jesus ministry is a ministry of grace. By God’s grace alone are we saved or made righteous, right with God and one another. We come to the communion via an invitation of grace not because we have earned our place here by being right and consequently having some claim on what is true. The Pharisees with all their questions and arguments about what the law says,constantly produce a class of losers. They were in their argument with Jesus to win, and winning for them meant losing for Jesus. The Pharisees’ way is appalling, Jesus’ way is appealing. As persons who gather around Christ’s table to be his disciples, it is much more becoming for us to follow in our Lord’s way. In Jesus’ way of grace, everyone wins. The way of grace works to produce winners. Jesus does not need to put others down in order to lift himself up. Jesus does not need to Lord it over others that his answer is the right answer for in his Dominion, there are things more important that being right. Being reconciled for one thing.
Jesus’ ministry is a ministry of healing, or restoring righteousness in relationship and individual’s lives.
Such is the ministry of oneness and unity that we celebrate around the world today.