Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.
Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
“What did Moses command you?” he replied.
They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”
“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.”

Mark 10:1-11

My message today is not about divorce. It takes two to get married but only one to get divorced. I would not be surprised to learn that there are divorced people in our church, just like in all other churches. Statistics show that at least one in three marriages will end in divorce. We presume nothing about these break-ups. If a spouse is abusive, divorce might be the only reasonable option. The legal and social implications of divorce are far different today.

I might use this scripture to counsel a married couple that wants to stay together. I would never use this scripture to condemn a divorced individual. Jesus spoke to a Samaritan woman who had been married five times and was living with a man out of wedlock, and even then he did not condemn her.

Pharisees were legalists, and they often used scripture to condemn other people. Every time they did in Jesus’ presence, he turned the tables to correct their understanding of God’s Law.

So what does this scripture say about the Law? Jesus is unequivocal: To divorce one wife and marry another is an act of adultery. That means the Law of God handed down by Moses way back in the book of Exodus is a permit to commit adultery. In Malachi 2:16 God says, “I hate divorce.” – but God’s law makes legal divorce possible. What does this say about God and God’s law?

It says that God is loving and forgiving. It says that the human heart is hard and stubborn, but God won’t let that separate him from his creation. The law of Moses that permits divorce is an act of compassion on the part of God, because nobody is served by being trapped in an abusive partnership.

The scripture is a little different in Matthew 19. There, the Pharisees ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” Because Moses didn’t say you had to have a reason; he just said you had to put it in writing. (Matt. 19:3)

The ending in Matthew is different, too. In Matthew 19:10, “The disciples said to him, ‘If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” We know from scripture that Peter was married before he became a disciple, but this passage makes me wonder if some of the disciples had been previously divorced. It certainly implies that some were not yet married.

When Jesus taught scripture, it was usually to condemn the way others were abusing it. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’” (Matt. 5:38) That was also in the Law: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. People were using that to extract their revenge, and even today we use it to justify our actions. But the law doesn’t say you have to extract revenge. It is really putting a limit on revenge – you can’t take two eyes for one, or two teeth for one.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” (Matt. 5:43) That’s in the law, too. But Jesus is saying that we should not only love neighbors and friends, but also strangers and enemies. He is asking us to hold ourselves to a standard even higher than the Law.

The question for us is not about divorce, or neighbors, or even revenge. The question is about a hard heart. In Mark 8, Jesus told the disciples to watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod (8:14). They thought he was talking about bread, and he said, “Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened?” (17)

In the book of Acts, Stephen said, “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit!”

The book of Romans quotes Isaiah to say of those whose hearts were hardened, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear, to this very day.”

With a hard heart and a stiff neck, we need miracles to believe and laws to keep us in line. The terms “hard heart” and “stiff neck” are used to describe people who refuse to listen, people think we know it all and we don’t need to learn more.

Paul’s first letter to Timothy goes beyond calling it a hard heart. Paul calls it, a conscience seared as with a hot iron: “The Spirit clearly says that in latter times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.” That seared conscience is making its own laws, apparently to make up for a hard heart. People with soft hearts do the right thing out of love for God and for others. Paul says, and Jesus seems to agree, that the Law was written for hard hearted people who don’t believe. Believers are held in line not by the law, but by the Love of God.

Hebrews quotes Psalm 95 when it says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion. … So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.” (Hebrews 3:15,19)

Jesus holds us to a higher standard than the Law of Moses. But Jesus also gives us a better way to please God than just following the Law. Jesus gives us a reason to believe. Jesus shows us that God loves and forgives. Jesus tells us to love and forgive. Jesus gave his all to reunite us with God. We should give our all to be reunited with God.

Jesus replaced the Law with faith, hate with love, and discipline with passion. As Paul said in Romans 13:9-10, “The commandments … are summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore Love is the fulfillment of the law.”

It’s an odd truth, but it’s one we should remember, and one for which we thank God. You don’t have to know the law to fulfill the law. All you have to know is that Jesus commanded us to love one another. That is the fulfillment of the law.

Mirror, mirror looking good in that frame
Of cast iron, aluminum, wood, plastic –
Doesn’t matter how you’re wrapped, all the same,
Every mirror I see looks fantastic!

Mirror, mirror on a wall, in a stand,
On a door, where you are doesn’t matter.
Mirror, sweet mirror, I’m your biggest fan!
Be secure, for sure. Don’t fall and shatter.

Mirror, mirror, strangely, some don’t like you.
They see you but they don’t like what they see.
I don’t get it! No one waits in my que.
Envy dampens their curiosity!

Like Narcissus falls for his reflection,
I just have a thing for my perfection.

Late night TV is better than sleeping,
It’s good for the brain to be coasting instead
Of tossing, turning, dreaming, and keeping
A fidgeting soul confined to a bed.

Papa’s recliner, off-balance and worn,
Attempting to cradle this foreign frame,
Like trying to line-dance a waltz, reborn
In the day of flyers walkers are lame.

This is the hour of disjointed thinking,
Bone-on-bone cracking beneath twisted spine,
An hour that drives others to drinking
To chase evening cocktail with midnight wine.

Oh how the mighty have fallen to crews
Who document failings on late night news!

Maybe I should just be a rapper
Stringing rhymes within my Trapper
Keeper. But never going Deeper.

Maybe I should be a poet
Trying not to let you know it
Matters. It’s just how language shatters.

This one doesn’t count because
The pattern hasn’t found the pause
On paper. It’s just a language caper.

This one doesn’t make the cut
Because it doesn’t take time but
It shows. That’s just the way it flows.

Fools rush in, and now I’m bolder
Than when I was 12 years older
Than a baby. That’s when I said maybe

I should put it in a book,
So I did but now it all looks
Scrappy. It’s just a little crappy.

Words deep fried, cooked in lard,
And drained upon a greeting card
For later. You shread it in a grater

And serve it up with grits and cheese
Then sit around and shoot the breeze
About the story. You can’t take the glory

Because it’s all been driven
By the rhyme that we were given
From the culture. I’m just a language vulture.

Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Mark 3:31-34

At Mark 3:20, we learn that Jesus and His disciples had entered a house, just after Jesus appointed 12 as apostles, and the crowd that gathered was so thick that the He and his disciples could not even eat. His family went to take charge of him and they said, “He is out of his mind.” Apparently, the crowd was so thick that Jesus mother and brothers could not even enter the house.

This was an example of Jesus seeking first the Kingdom of God. He wasn’t interested in eating. It was not that He never got hungry, but Jesus knew that God would provide. Jesus was practicing what he preached in the Sermon on the Mount. Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or drink. (Matt. 6:35) Jesus knew that there would be time to eat after the crowds went away.

There is a law in the book of Leviticus that says the Israelites are to farm the land for six years, then let it go unplanted and unharvested in the seventh year. God promised a blessing in the sixth year that would get the children of Israel through the seventh year. Orthodox Jews are adamant about keeping the Sabbath – performing no work on the seventh day – for the same reason. They do no work on the seventh day to demonstrate that God ultimately, God takes care of us, even when we exert no effort.

It’s also worth noting that Jesus and the disciples are in a house. They are not in a Synagogue or a Temple. In a synagogue and in the Temple, men had authority over women, Jews over Gentiles, and Priests over laity. In a house, there is no such restriction.

Consider what Jesus says in our scripture. There are many places in our Bibles where “brothers” is translated “brothers and sisters.” That’s appropriate because it actually meant all siblings, or everyone of the faith, and not just male believers or siblings. The same problem arises with “deacons”, which is always masculine but meant both. In Paul’s letters, the King James translators used “minister” where it referred to men and “servants” where it referred to women. Today, we might use “deacons” and “deaconesses” to make the point that women are included. But the very reason we debate this is that in Paul’s letters, men and women ARE included as deacons, or ministers, or servants, or whatever you want to call them. We are not doing something weird by including women in church leadership – they have always been in church leadership.

But here, we don’t have to politically correct the translation. In the original manuscript, Jesus actually says “mother and brother and sister”. He didn’t say father, because as he had taught, “you have one father, even God,” and that’s certainly how Jesus identified Himself. But the inclusion of “mother” and “sister” in this scripture is from the lips of Jesus, and not some modern addition by the translators. I’m certain that Jesus looked out over the crowd in that house, saw many women, including women followers, and spoke about what he saw. He intentionally said that those who do the will of God “ARE my mother AND my brother AND my sister.”

I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. That means that I am not going to take what it says lightly, and I try not to spin it to personal advantage. We all know that there are denominations who read the translators instead of the word being translated, and by doing that, women are barred from leadership. I think we also go wrong when we read the culture instead of the message. In so many places, the culture of the Bible says that women and gentiles and persons with physical disabilities are less than holy. But in many other places, the Word of God breaks through the culture of that day. We read at Pentecost how the prophet went out of his way to say “sons AND daughters”, “servants, both male AND female.” And if you read Paul to restrict women, then you also have to read how he said that in Christ there is neither slave nor free, Greek nor Jew, male nor female.

The stories of Jesus dining with sinners, calling tax collectors, healing Gentiles and including women are not beside the point; they ARE the point. The Bible sets the scene of a society where normal is one way, then God intervenes to break out of that mold.

Before our scripture today, Jesus has designated the 12 apostles, and we all know that they happened to be men. One was a traitor too, by the way, so we know better than to think that Jesus was selecting the holiest of people. He was choosing those who could move freely in that day, across boarders and into the synagogues and the temple. But at the crucifixion, in Mark 15:40-41, we read this: “Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdaline, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him from Jerusalem were also there.”

In Luke 8:1-3, after the story of the woman who anointed Jesus feet, we read this: “After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and villagte to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, the Manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.”

Please don’t think I’m trying to be feminist or politically correct. What I’m trying to say is we accept women as equals not because it is politically correct, but because it is ACTUALLY correct. Because in the text of a male dominated religion from a male dominated society, scripture written by men has to report on women in leadership or fail to tell the whole story.

This is not about women. When Jesus healed ten lepers, He marveled that the only one who returned to say thanks was a Samaritan. When a Roman Centurian asked Jesus to heal his beloved servant, Jesus praised him as having greater faith than all in Israel because that Gentile came with humility and believed that Jesus could heal without even coming into the house. When Jesus called the first disciples, he didn’t call priests and politicians, but fishermen and tax collectors. Sages from the East followed a star to the newborn Jesus, but the Angels in Heaven appeared to unclean, common shepherds.

There are a lot of scripture that talk about being separate – separate from the world, separate from gentiles, separate from nonbelievers. There are scripture that say touch no unclean thing, and I know we all have heard that the “holy” means “set apart for God.” My grandfather was taught that these scriptures meant that people of different races, nationalities and denominations, and he didn’t shake that until very late in life. He didn’t reject scripture, but he did study it for himself and made up his own mind. Jesus didn’t break the Sabbath and dietary laws; he just took the true meaning of scripture instead of what everyone else said it meant.

My point is not to sow seeds of doubt in the Bible. As I’ve said before, I bow to no one in deference to what scripture says. But I do emphasize what it actually says, and not what people think it says. If you use a scripture to make your point, you have to know and understand all the verses that make the opposite point. And in the end, we have to be humble enough to say that we don’t know everything about the Bible.

Last week, we talked about how God looks beyond outward appearances, how God sees the diamonds while we see the Dixie cups. The Bible has a lot to say about those Dixie cups, but the important part is what it says about those diamonds in the Dixie cup. Peter said scripture is spiritually discerned

The Bible is the story of the family of Adam, then the family of Abraham, then the family of Israel, and finally the family of God. The first three families were by birth, but the last is by faith. Jesus was the son of David and the lion of Judah, and he rightfully claims both titles from his family lineage. But here he tells us that those titles won’t get us into heaven, or keep us out. “Those who do God’s will are my mother, and my brother, and my sister.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, may we all be accepted as brothers and sisters of Christ by doing the Father’s will: Working together, loving one another and walking humbly with God.

Amen.

Today, I remember a friend who died of clutter. He saved everything that might fit his dream future, everything that might sell for more than it cost, and everything that had sentimental value. His stuff tied him down, stole his money, chipped away at his fragile health and separated him from family and friends.

In the end, it was clutter that took his life. I don’t know what happened to all his stuff. It was probably bulldozed into a ditch or sold to a salvage yard for pennies on the dollar.

My friend was not unkind, but in this matter, he was unwise. Jesus warned us not to store our treasure on earth, not to let riches choke out our ministries.

Dear Lord, don’t let us die of clutter! Give us the faith to let go of the things that trip us up and hold us down. Let our time be spent loving others. Take away our love of stuff and replace it with a hunger to know and serve You.

“The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

— Luke 12:16-21 (NIV)