St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday sermon – 18th Sunday after Pentecost - Oct. 4, ’09
“The New Kingdom of God: Up On Marriage and Children!”
Text: Mark 10:14-16
This will sound pretty old to some of you but 40 years ago there was a best-selling novel that sold over 6 million copies titled “Up the Down Staircase” (author Ben Kaufman).
It was a novel about the struggles of a young idealistic English teacher at a fictional New York inner-city high school. This young teacher sought to nurture her students’ interest in classic literature - which was an up-hill battle to say the least.
The gist of this young English teacher’s story is that when she decides to leave the public school system to work & write in a smaller private setting, her mind is changed - when through a host of memos from the office, fragments of notes dropped in a the trash can, essays handed in to be graded, suggestions dropped in the class suggestion box - she realizes that she has indeed touched the lives of her students. Hence the book’s title, “Up the Down Staircase!”
Now generally with most of us in the church we like everything normal, right side-up, easy-to-see, easy-to-understand from a human perspective. But along comes Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel of Mark, especially in the 10th chapter of Mark, and as the young, exceptionally gifted teacher Jesus was & is, what Jesus teaches & what Jesus says to His disciples and others touches THEIR lives so that eventually their lives have a “upside down” look & feel to them too.
In Mark 10, Jesus is on the final leg of His journey to Jerusalem and to the cross that He knows is waiting for Him there. Jesus knows well that His one major aim & goal in His short life is to suffer & die & offer Himself for the sins of all mankind. But Jesus also knows that an equally important goal for Him is to nurture His followers’ interest & commitment to love & value & rejoice in the good things of God, good things in the Kingdom of God, good things that are not unlike “heading up the down staircase”
The two “ups” for Jesus in the Gospel reading for this Sunday are marriage and children.
We know when it comes to marriage & divorce today there’s no lack of trouble, no lack of legal advice, no small number of people who have been hurt by both – bad marriages & painful divorces.
At the beginning of Mark 10 Jesus concedes the point that sometimes divorce is a regrettable necessity because of the hardness of sinful, human hearts. Yet Jesus holds up the truth that where there is honesty, where there is godly repentance & forgiveness, where there is humility, where there is steadfast love & faith-fulness, that’s what Jesus calls God’s good will & original intent for the permanence of marriage and for the well-being of both husband & wife.
From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female,” said Jesus. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let not man separate.
Not long ago, Dale Meyer in one of his “Meyer Minutes” asked the question, what is it in marriage? “Me” or “We?”
In answer to his own question he quoted the following story: “A wife stopped at the grocery store on her way home from work. When she got home, she put the groceries on the counter and realized she had locked her keys in the car. Knowing how her husband would react, she decided not to call him. In due time, her husband came home, found out about her keys, and exploded, “How could God make anyone so beautiful & so stupid at the same time?” he asked. Feeling justified in what he said, he started to walk away.
“Wait a minute,” said the wife, “I want to answer your question. God made me beautiful so you’d love me and God made me stupid so I’d love you” Now where do you think that kind of arguing is going to end up?
“Doing forgiveness is not easy,” writes Dale Meyer. “Think of the suffering & death & all that Jesus went thru for us. Hopefully this husband had enough sense to seek forgiveness . . and it sounds like his wife had enough grace to give it.”
“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” the Pharisees ask Jesus. Jesus’ response is not a “yes or no” response but an “up” response. Jesus does not get into the situations & circumstances that allow men to divorce their wives, or wives to dump their husbands. Jesus holds up God’s original intention for marriage. Jesus speaks up for the permanence of marriage. Jesus lifts up the God-ordained uniqueness of marriage; that a man shall. .hold fast to his wife and the wife to her hus-band. .so they are no longer two but one flesh.
A wife had been trying for years to persuade her egotistical husband to change his ways. He was obsessed with being no. 1. He never stopped talking about being first in sales at the office. He proclaimed he was first on the list for the next promotion. He had to be first in line to buy tickets for a game and also the first to hit the parking lot after the game.
One day this man’s long-suffering wife watched with interest as he stepped on one of those fortune-telling scales. He dropped a coin in the slot and out came a little fortune-telling card that read: “You are a born leader, with superior intelligence, quick wit, and a charming manner. You have a magnetic personality and are attractive to the opposite sex.”
“Read that,” he said to his wife with a hint of gloating. She did, and then turned the card over and as she handed it back to him she said; “It has your weight wrong too.”
In other words, “Marriage is not a “me” experience. Marriage is a “we” experience, we, us, our, together, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer experience.”
Not “is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife” but with God’s grace in Christ “all things are possible.” Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. (Colossians 3:12-15)
Does not Jesus & His blood-bought gift of righteousness, Jesus & His saving us from ourselves, give us the will, the grace, the strength to make marriage “we” not “me”
As for children, Jesus is very “up” with children because what better example of what life is all about in the Kingdom of God could Jesus use than to call attention to a child. In Jesus day a child was not a symbol of status; a child was not a symbol of achieving. A child was not a symbol of establishing oneself but back then a child was nobody. Children were non-persons, having no significance of their own, totally at risk, totally vulnerable because they were de-pendent on adults to take care of them.
What does it mean to be a believer & follower of the Lord Jesus and belong to His Kingdom? It’s like these children, Jesus said. It’s not their innocence; it’s not their youthfulness, it’s not their energy & busyness that makes them special. What makes children good examples of what the Kingdom of God is all about is God the Father’s steadfast love & tender mercy is freely, completely available to them.
Jesus goes out of his way to include them. The Kingdom of God is not the kingdom of God’s grace & favor without them.
Were Jesus saying this to us today, he might say, “What is the Kingdom of God like? It’s like an orphan who is adopted: it’s like a teenager who is living with Crones disease: it’s like a helpless senior citizen or a lonely widow who longs to be included with others. For to such as these belongs the Kingdom of God.
What does this tell us about the Kingdom of God? It tells us being in the Kingdom of God is “being down & out in the eyes of the world, and the Lord Jesus says, “But I am here for you; I was raised up on a cross for you, I will raise you up!”
Living & serving in the Kingdom of God is not about greatness, not about status, not about control, not about me, myself & I. It’s about “we.” It’s all about grace, about loving God, loving others, and following Jesus. Most of all it is about God’s steadfast love and tender mercy never failing us.
Without a question, a failed marriage, a broken home, orphans & children at risk, people who get taken advantage of or fall between the cracks of our society is a tragedy.
Yet to all concerned it need not be the end of the world. The author of Old Testament Book of Lament-ations whose life had been turned upside down and who was tempted to despair of anything good coming ever again, might well have sub-titled his book, “Up The Down Staircase,” for he writes in Lamentations 3:19-24
I remember my affliction & my wandering, the bitterness & the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
In Mark Chapter 10, that is Jesus message too. In the Kingdom of God, there are things upside down that are good & right & salutary for us. And they all are tied to the cross of Christ.
