Reading Mark 10: the contradictions of grace
When I last preached on the lectionary reading, Mark 10.2–16 (as many of you lot might but accept done) I felt not a little intimidated by the challenge. It feels though there was a time when reading and preaching on this passage was a lot more than straightforward than it feels now. (Life equally more often than not a lot less complicated ten, 20 [insert your chosen effigy] years ago.) But both halves of the passage have been given a hard time by our culture.
The commencement half, Jesus' teaching on divorce, has with many passages been dragged into the fence virtually sexuality—doomed planets of exegesis circling a black pigsty of ethical quandary. Jesus' didactics here is plain (it is claimed), and the churches take as plainly disregarded it, since either nosotros don't exercise what we preach when it comes to submitting to the moral teaching of the NT, or considering we rightly come across that changed social circumstances mean that the evidently education of the Bible tin can no longer be applied in our context.
The 2nd half, Jesus' welcome of children, has also been coloured past this argue: his obviously unconditional credence of children means that the just response we tin offer people is an equally unconditional welcome, no questions asked. Any suggestion of putting up barriers or getting people to 'jump through hoops' of attendance at church or affidavit of belief is a contradiction to Jesus' radical message of unconditional grace. On the other hand, culture has dealt this passage quite a different blow, since nosotros no longer appear to believe in childrenevery bit children—but equally mini-adults who are nascent units of consumption. They don't need to be protected from any bug in the adult globe (how patronising would that be)—they but need to be properly educated about them, at equally early on an historic period as is needed.
Can nosotros even so hear these passages speak to us through the gimmicky clamour? Yep, I think we tin, if we sit quietly for a moment, determined to hear what they have to say to us.
The first matter I notice is that both episodes form a kind of test. Mark tells us this explicitly in the kickoff one-half: the Pharisees inquire him the question to 'test' him, the same word used of his being 'tempted' or tested in the desert at the outset of his ministry. It Matthew'south account (Matt 4.three) Satan is characterised as 'the tempter' or 'tester', which is actually non a bad translation of the Hebrew termsatan. Woe to u.s. when, similar the Pharisees, we utilise the real pain of other people as a testbed on which we can work out our theological ideas. And however these questions oftentimes come to the church building as exactly that—tests to see whether we conform to the accepted standards of autonomy, gratis choice and the right to happiness which are often held up as the highest skillful.
But the second striking thing is the one about celebrated in this passage. Jesus dismisses the lax teaching of Moses, given 'because of your hardness of middle', and points the Pharisees to the original cosmos teaching. At first, this sounds unquestionably virtuous; God'due south intention has been spoilt past man failure, and Jesus comes to restore God'due south original, pristine pattern for our man flourishing. Except that this is not the way this text has been applied and then often. Allow me put it some other way. God's control was too demanding in reality for people to keep, so Moses introduced a concession to our real lives in order to brand this command workable. Jesus has now come forth and removed that concession. Understood in this mode, Jesus is a lot less gracious and welcoming of human weakness than Moses—and that is how many people have in fact experienced the church building'due south teaching in this expanse, defective in grace and agreement, and without any accommodation of failure. It feels though Jesus' teaching is also difficult, and with many of his followers at the time, we might exist tempted to ask 'Who can have it?' (John 6.60).
To answer this question, nosotros need to look at the parallel account in Matthew nineteen. (The gospel writers offering us only condensed and edited accounts of Jesus' ministry building and instruction, and they often abridge in different ways to make unlike points.) The TNIV of Matt 19.3 draws out the result rather nicely: 'Can a man divorce his wife for whatever and every reason?' The question is less about divorce in itself, and more about rabbinical debates between the followers of 2 influential rabbis, Hillel and Shammai. The Business firm of Shammai held that a man may only divorce his married woman for a serious transgression, but the House of Hillel allowed divorce for fifty-fifty fiddling offenses, such as burning a meal. Jesus is here clearly siding with Shammai; he is not making union the absolutely binding, indissoluble thing that Mark's text has been used to create, and Matthew makes this quite clear. (It is worth noting, though, that Marking 10.12 adds a liberality that Matthew omits from Jesus'southward teaching—the assumption that a wife might divorce her husband, so divorce is no longer a male prerogative.) He is making marriage something that involves serious responsibilities, and should not be entered into 'lightly or selfishly but reverently and responsibly in the sight of almighty God' says the C of E marriage service.
Now we tin see the 'hardness of middle' that Jesus was rejecting. Information technology is not that Moses was making impossibly idealistic teaching realistic. It was that he was pandering to men'due south (note the gender) inability to take their responsibilities seriously. Divorce, even if for 'good' reasons, is desperately dissentious and enervating, and should never be treated trivially. In particular, in Jesus' civilization, divorce was an instrument of male power over women, who depended on their husbands for provision and protection. Jesus is not being indifferent to the struggles we face, just it attending to them. Perhaps Jesus is being more gracious than Moses after all—only it is a grace which holds united states of america accountable for our responsibilities.
That leads us to the 2d half of the reading. It is fascinating that Mark (and Matthew) keep these ii episodes together, though I am not certain if there are any clues in the text equally to why they practise it. But for us, information technology is fascinating considering it offers united states the other side of the coin of grace—God'southward plush welcome of people who haven't achieved annihilation to warrant information technology. There is lots of popular speculation well-nigh what virtue children have that makes Jesus accept them—they are and then innocent, so cute, so trusting, so unspoilt. In my feel five minutes in whatsoever master schoolhouse play ground puts such thin illusions to flying—and they miss the point of the passage. Jesus welcomes the children precisely because they practisenot have whatsoever virtues to commend them. For kickoff century Jews, children didn't really count until at age 13 they could take on the 'yoke of the law' and go a son of the commandment(southward),bar mitzvah. And for outset-century pagans, children counted even less. Until they could speak, they had no reason (logos), and were mostly thought to be expendable, hence the widespread practise of infanticide.
This is to whom the kingdom comes: those who do non have any virtue to deserve information technology. This is grace. And we are to receive the kingdom every bit children—not as wide-eyed, open up-faced and trusting (though that might not be a bad thing) only as recognising that the kingdom has come to usnot because of any virtue that we possess, but simply that God has prepare his dear on united states, poured his love into our hearts by his Spirit (Rom 5.5).
There's something else important tucked away here which nosotros might not detect on a commencement reading. Jesus has business organization to get on with, and no doubt the disciples were nifty to help him keep on message and on his agenda. Yet, as elsewhere in Mark, Jesus is happy to be distracted from his agenda by the people in front end of him. To attend to children is costly; information technology means leaving what you recollect it of import and attention to what they call back is important. It ways dethroning the cocky and placing some other at the middle—which at times we find so difficult. And nevertheless this is what God has done for us. He has sacrificed himself in order to be able to welcome united states of america. In the OT design of things, to be right with God I needed to take time out, become to the temple and provide a sacrifice. In the NT pattern of things, God is the one who has taken fourth dimension out; he has become the temple (Rev 21.22); he has provided the sacrifice.
We are now left with a quandary. Is the gospel free and gracious (equally Jesus teaches the disciples) or is it plush and demanding (as Jesus teaches the Pharisees)? Is there a manner that it tin can be both? I am however thinking nigh this—and I suspect I will go on doing and then. Only my ain feel says 'aye'. On the one hand, I am very aware that I came to organized religionnot because I deserved anything, but only because God invited me to know something of his love and acceptance. Just I also know that the invitation to 'Come up, follow me' has meant leaving backside things I was fond of, walking a path that I might not have chosen, and painfully confronting my ain failures and responsibilities. Through this, I am pretty sure it has meant living a dissimilar life to the one I would otherwise have done, and Jesus calls this 'Life in all its fulness' (John 10.x).
It tin can exist something of a platitude to say that God loves united states of america every bit we are, but loves united states too much to get out us as we are, only I think it is true. God offers us an open invitation, with no preconditions. Just it is an invitation to be changed and transformed, walking in a new way of life that might plough out to be more than we can ask or imagine.
(First posted in October 2015)
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