Josh Bascom, “To Whom the Kingdom of God Belongs”
Today’s gospel reading is one that makes us all pretty nervous. Divorce is a fairly taboo topic, despite how common a thing it seems to be. Hearing someone bring it up makes us anxiously squirm a bit, especially if that someone bringing it up is Jesus.
Because either you yourself are divorced, your parents are divorced, someone else close to you has gone through a divorce, or maybe you’re married and you fear that divorce may be in your future. The pain of divorce touches us all, and my family tree and friend group are certainly no exception, but I’m also particularly nervous about this topic and speaking about it from the pulpit today because I know how painful the topic can be and how quickly we can feel judged and how swiftly we can be filled with shame at just the sound of the word “divorce”.
So, I’m going to offer a bit of relief to us all here at the top of this sermon by saying I promise, what Jesus is saying and revealing to us in this passage is actually a deep word of comfort and grace for you. Regardless of your marital or family history, regardless of what season of life you find yourself in, Jesus’ words are for you, and they’re good words of hope and peace.
Let’s take a closer look at what’s going on in this passage: We see Jesus once again being tested by the Pharisees, who truly don’t care about Jesus’ actual answer to their question on whether or not a man can divorce his wife, instead they just want to be sure that Jesus is keeping to the legal standards set by Moses and followed by the Israelites for thousands of years. And Jesus knows this of course, so he responds to their question with a question; “what did Moses command you?” Jesus asks. And they respond, “Well, Moses allowed for a man to write a certificate and get a divorce.” The background here is important. What they’re referring to, and what Jesus calls out as the hardness of their hearts, is that Moses allows this loophole in the law that allows for a man to divorce his wife for any conceivable reason if they just get a certificate. And the issue that Jesus sees with this is twofold: for starters, the Pharisees, and many before and after them, are guilty of viewing marriage as Moses’ institution, as a human, legal institution, that can be manipulated and wiggled out of. And the second issue with this was what would happen to a divorced woman; she would become destitute and would be cast out into the world and viewed and treated as an adulterer and a prostitute. And these two problems are certainly related, if marriage is a human institution then whoever finds themselves in the place of power will use that power against their spouse without being questioned. This was a terrible thing two thousand years ago and unfortunately it still goes on today.
Jesus calls all this out as wrong, he says marriage is not Moses’ institution, it’s God’s institution. “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.”
Jesus is putting us all back on the same playing field here. If a man leaves his wife, he’s committed adultery, and if she leaves her husband, she’s committed adultery.
Everyone is the same in the eyes Jesus, which is really good and powerful news, but there is also no doubt that this is a painful and heavy word for us to receive from Jesus. He’s saying to the Pharisees, to the husbands and wives, you’re both adulterers. Once again Jesus is elevating the law, beyond Moses, just as he did at the Sermon on the Mount. But he’s not doing so in order to shame everyone, he’s simply not letting anyone off the hook from the profound pain and suffering that comes with every separation in marriage and in other relationships. Marriage is God’s institution, and when that union is broken, regardless of the reasons, be it an affair, or a disagreement, or good forbid some form of domestic violence, there is always heartache. Jesus is not saying you should feel shame, instead he’s naming the uncomfortable truth that you do feel pain. Every divorce is a tragedy, there is no way around it.
And this is where the good news of this passage comes in, I promised you it would. You see, Jesus is elevating the law and naming the suffering that surrounds every divorce, because by highlighting the bitter taste of our helplessness before the law, he’s directing us to the sweetness of his grace.
We are all helpless to heal ourselves from the wounds brought on by divorce and broken relationships. But in this difficult passage from the Gospel of Mark today we aren’t left alone in our helplessness. We aren’t left alone in our shame, our pain, or loneliness. Instead Jesus immediately and famously says this; “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” Jesus calls the children to himself, not because they’re innocent, but because they, just like us, are people in desperate need. It’s to people in desperate need that the Kingdom of God belongs. Yes, to the children, to the messy, crying and lost little and grown up children of God, this is who the Kingdom of God belongs to. To sinners, like you and me who have been forgiven, who have reached out to God in desperate need like a child, desperate for a touch and for a word of mercy—and that’s exactly what we’re given.
In the 1979 film Kramer vs Kramer you catch a glimpse of this grace at work in the arena of divorce. I recommend the movie, but I also recommend that you have some tissues close by, because I cry about every five minutes when I watch it. It’s a movie about Ted and Joanna Kramer, played by Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. Joanna tells her husband Ted that she’s leaving him and their son Billy so she can figure things out and find herself. Ted goes on to fail and succeed and connect with his son in beautiful and painful ways now as a single father, until Joanna returns and says she wants her son back. A heated custody battle follows—hence the title Kramer vs. Kramer—and you see the wounds deepened that were caused by the separation.
In one scene, Ted goes to the park in New York City with Billy and a neighbor named Margaret. Margaret is another single parent who actually helped convince Joanna to leave Ted in the first place, but Ted and her have become friends as they commiserate about the struggle of single-parenthood. They sit there on a bench laughing about an unsuccessful date that Margaret just went on, how she feels like a crazy person for wasting time dating when she should be with her own child. As they talk, Billy climbs to the top of an old metal playset, holding his plastic airplane toy high up into the sky. Ted and Margaret notice it—“Billy get down from there”, Ted says. And as they continue to talk Margaret says I’ll get him, but she doesn’t move fast enough and Billy falls, slamming his head into the ground and the toy plane.
The scene dramatically shifts to Ted racing through the streets of New York, carrying his son, his face covered in blood, dodging taxi cabs and yelling, “where is the Emergency Room?! Someone, tell me where the Emergency Room is!” Billy ends up needing ten stitches, and Ted demands that the doctor allow him to stay with Billy as they both cry and the doctor stitches him up.
Back at his apartment, Ted closes a children’s book and tucks his son into bed, and then slips out into the kitchen of his tiny New York apartment. And he sees Margaret standing at the kitchen sink, they’re both still covered in tears and blood from the day, and Margaret is trying to wash the dishes, apologizing through tears, feeling full of the shame and defeat she feels as a parent and a friend. And Ted, standing in the doorway in his bloodied sweatshirt, softly interrupts her:
“Margaret, I’ve been thinking. If something were to happen to me, I’m not saying it will, but if it does, I’ve been thinking that I want you to take care of Billy. I want you to look after him. You’re a good mother Margaret, you’re a good mother.”
With the desperation and scars from the day and the last few years on her face and his, Margaret is met with Ted’s touch and word of grace.
Maybe you feel like a helpless child, bloodied and bruised from a fall, or perhaps you feel more like the parent, full of shame and equally helpless to protect and provide for the ones you love. Jesus says that it’s to you that the Kingdom of God belongs. On the Cross, Jesus’ arms were opened wide, taking the weight and shame of our lives off of our hearts and placing them onto his. On the Cross, Jesus’ arms were opened wide, calling, gathering and pulling all of his desperate little children unto him and into his place of mercy and peace. It’s to people like you and me, lost, anxious and hurt, carrying the shame and failures of our lives, it’s to people like you and me that the Kingdom of God belongs.
Amen
