Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Gospel reading today was used by the church in a way that I think was counter to the meaning of scripture. The main subject is divorce but the general subject is the family. The passage was/is used by the church to totally outlaw divorce. Even in my youth I can remember how stigmatized divorce was in the town. It did not matter whether a husband abandoned his wife or the wife was unfaithful to the husband. The divorced woman was treated as though she was the problem. Often the woman was so tainted that she no longer was welcomed in the congregation.

It was almost as if adultery was some unforgivable sin. You could break the other commandments, but if one broke the 6th Commandment, one would have hell to pay. Thankfully this is no longer the situation. The pain of divorce is so wrenching that the church has now understood our ministry to those who suffer the effects of divorce. We may grow in our ability to live with the pain of divorce, but the pain seems always to remain and needs the mercy of God.

If one observes the train of thought in today’s passage, the problem of divorce is handled as an issue of equality among the sexes. I am not trying to make Jesus into a modern person. I am simply trying to read scripture faithfully.

Background: What do we know of marriage customs in the time of Jesus? Adultery was viewed as an injury done to the male by injuring his honor through the act of unfaithfulness. The wife and the other man had sinned by disrupting the family, and society itself was threatened by disregard for the rules and the injury done to the honor of the man whose wife was adulterous.

This meant that the man did not necessarily commit adultery, when he had sexual relations outside the marriage bond, as long as it was not with someone else’s wife. There appear to be some remnants of this thinking active in our own society today.

Now the religious authorities use the question of divorce to trap Jesus, but he did not fall for the ruse. Jesus’ opponents ask, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" (Vs. 2) They do not ask if it is lawful for a woman to divorce her husband. When Jesus asks them what Moses said, they answer that a man is commanded to write out “a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” (Vs. 4).

Jesus affirms the marriage covenant. There is no question about it. He goes back not to the law, but to the foundational story of marriage found in Genesis 2 which we also read this morning. Jesus repeats the Genesis story.

'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." (Mark 10:7-9)

Jesus does not deny the reality of divorce, but what he does do are two things:

1. He extends the right of a woman to divorce.
2. He also forbids that the divorced persons re-marry.

Now it is obvious that we no longer practice the rule forbidding re-marriage. The reason for this seems to be that marriage is understood by us as a mutual contract between two persons. That is not how it was understood in Jesus’ day.

Marriage in the time of Jesus was a family affair, but I don’t mean that in the way we say it now. Marriage was an arrangement between two families.

Under normal circumstances, individuals really did not get married. Families did. One family offered a male, the other a female. Their wedding stood for the merger of the larger extended families and symbolized the fusion of the honor of both families involved. It would be undertaken with a view to political and/or economic concerns. . . Divorce, then, would entail the dissolution of these extended-family ties. It represented a challenge to the family of the former wife and would likely result in family feuding. (Malina & Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, p.188)

Having insisted that both the man and the woman have the right to divorce and are prohibited from re-marrying, Jesus turns to those who are most affected by divorce, the children. Here children are not idealized as beings that you and I would not recognize in our daily lives. A child in this society was a “non-being.” Children had no rights. They suffered the will of their parents. They were truly the least of society.

The people were bringing their children to Jesus for him to touch them. The disciples, not understanding the new demands of the kingdom of God, rebuke the parents (just like Peter rebuked Jesus after the first prediction of Jesus’ death). Jesus then takes a child into his arms and blesses the child.

Jesus tells the disciples, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." (Mark 10:15) Jesus once again embodies the interests of God who comes to the sinner, the tax collector, the sick, the lame, the blind, the divorced and the children. All of these represent those who we would cast “outside,” all the while God is drawing “inside.”

Dear congregation, Jesus does not come bringing new rules by which we can work our way to God. Jesus comes proclaiming the new kingdom which is drawing near. This kingdom turns everything and everyone on its head. We understand that we no longer receive the blessing because we got it the old fashion way: in other words, we earned it. No, we got it because Jesus takes us up into his arms and gives the blessing.

And [Jesus] took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. (Mark 10:16)

Is this the kingdom to which we belong? Or do we still struggle in the old kingdom to earn our blessing, a blessing that will have little value once we think we deserve it. Better that we accept the blessing unearned and filled with grace so that we in our brokenness may still cling to the hope, the joy, and the peace that is ours through God in Christ Jesus.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.