Sermon - Pentecost 21 - Mark 10:23-31

On the heels of Jesus’ interaction with the rich young man, he sees the crowd looking on and continues the teaching moment.  In fact last week’s reading and this can really be thought of as a unit – on the dangers of riches and how difficult it is to enter the kingdom.

Some have said that the camel going through the eye of a needle here is really not a sewing needle, but the small door in the side of the walled city.  Not the main door for armies and caravans to come in easily, but a small door, big enough for one man to come through – and not much more.  Strategic for defense in time of siege warfare, it is suggested.  And if that’s what Jesus means here then it is quite a laughable picture.  Imagine some poor fellow pulling an irritated camel from the front (camels spit, you know) and another sad soul assigned to push the camel from behind.  It’s ridiculous, and laughable.  But you just might imagine with enough effort and cajoling they can squeeze that camel through and then be exhausted for the rest of the day or week. 

A modern analog to this might be, “It’s like trying to fit a sumo wrestler into a clown-car” or Andre the Giant into a coach seat on a commercial airliner.  It’s just not really designed for that sort of thing.

But in my study this week, I’ve seen some other convincing suggestions that this small-size-door explanation is really somewhat doubtful.  That it’s been around as long as maybe the 9^th century, but that it likely isn’t what Jesus was talking about here.  That he really meant the actual thing - the hole in a sewing needle.  Something so small you can barely see it.  Try getting your camel through THAT!  Heck, most of us have a hard time even getting the thread in there.

Maybe the sewing needle is a better approximation of what Jesus is getting at here anyway.  He doesn’t mean to say it’s merely a challenge, to get into the kingdom.  It’s not just something that takes a lot of effort, or great reason or strength.  A really tough task, but, “you can do it eventually!”  Rather, he’s driving home the impossibility.  He’s driving us to despair of our own merit or worthiness.

You see, in ancient Israel they viewed the wealthy somewhat differently than many of us do today.  Today, the rich are often demonized in popular culture.  Or, on the other hand they are thought to be recipients of their own hard work and labor – good for them.  Or maybe you don’t think much of them at all, they are just like everyone else but happen to have more money.  Hey – maybe you are one of the rich!

But in Jesus’ day and age it was different.  The rich were seen as special.  They were to be looked up to and admired.  They were the best of the best, after all they had been blessed by God with earthly riches.  How much of a leap to assume, then, that he would also bless his favorites with blessings in the hereafter?  So the disciples would have reasoned, if ANYONE has a chance to make it into the kingdom of God, it’s the rich.  Right?

Wrong, Jesus says.  By this teaching he pulls the rug out from under one of their great assumptions.  It’s not the wealthy who have a leg up with God.  In fact, wealth is so often a distraction, a road block, an obstacle to even getting in the door.  And Mark says they were astounded.

If the rich have a hard time, then who, if anyone can enter the kingdom?  If they can’t do it, then where does that leave me?  Now you’re thinking the way Jesus wants…

Who can enter?  Jesus says, “with man it is impossible”.  Did you catch that?  It’s not just the rich anymore.  With man it is impossible.  No man can enter the kingdom.  No one is good enough, holy enough, without sin enough to enter the kingdom.  Rich or poor, mean or nice, loving or hateful – these are all human comparisons to other humans.  With man it is impossible, because just like the rich young man from last week, we can’t keep the commandments.  We don’t love God, and we don’t love our neighbor as we should.  We serve other gods and we serve ourselves rather than others.  We are helpless and hopeless and salvation, in this little phrase, Jesus says, is impossible.  No chance.  Out of luck.

With man.

But with God, all things are possible.  And friends, if you are with Jesus, you are with God.

Think of all the impossible things Christ has done for our salvation:

The virgin will conceive and bear a son.  God himself taking human flesh in the womb of Mary.  “How can this be?” she asked.  And the angel answered, with God all things are possible.

This Jesus, this humble man from Nazareth in Galilee, does all things well – he completes the perfect 10 of the law, fulfills all righteousness and is perfectly obedient to his Father.  No one else could do it, but with Christ, all things are possible.

And then this Jesus takes and drinks the cup of God’s wrath down to the bitter last drop.  He absorbs all sin in his body, he who had no sin is made to become sin for us.  And then he takes all that sin to a Roman cross and sin itself is dead, in him.  How can this be?  With God all things are possible.  After all this Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.

And of course that impossible miracle of Easter would follow.  For death cannot hold the Lord of Life!  And he would impossibly ascend into heaven, and he impossibly sits at God’s right hand and he impossibly rules over all things and will impossibly, but just as certainly, come again – to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.

That kingdom that it was so hard, impossible, for you to enter – but in which you now stand by the grace – the impossible grace – of Jesus Christ our Lord.

He puts is grace in humble means for you – so that in a word, you are forgiven.  His name and some simple water wash away your sins.  And under bread and wine he himself comes to be present, truly, for you.  And yet with God all these gifts and blessings are not only possible – they are promises.  More certain and sure than the sun rising and setting each day.  More reliable than death and taxes.  God’s grace for you in Christ is the foundation of everything.

Sounds good.  Sounds like it’s worth leaving everything else behind and following Christ.  The disciples did.  And we do, too, by faith.  When you trust in Christ as your ultimate good, your only God, none of the riches of this world truly matter.  And then he sets another impossible surprise before us:

“Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”

The blessings of his kingdom are many, and they begin even now.  The blessings of his kingdom are far more, far greater, than even the best things of this life – family, lands, treasures, whatever.  You may not see the hundredfold and more with your eyes.  But the promise of paradise the blest is already, even now, your own.  The inheritance of the kingdom, you have already received.  After all, the one you inherit from has died – though yet he lives!

Jesus does slip in this little phrase, “with persecutions”, to remind us that this side of heaven, this will sometimes be rough.  Part of our inheritance is to get what Jesus gets – and so he received scorn from the world, so do we.  He was persecuted by his enemies, so is his church.  He had to carry his cross, and he calls us to take up our own and follow him.  The Christian way is the way of the cross, with all that it entails, even persecution.

But we also inherit life from him, eternal life.  Just as he is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity, so shall we.  He is the firstborn of the dead, we will certainly follow.  We already have in baptism.  We are buried and raised with Christ.  When we die we Christians rest in peace in the arms of Christ.  But one day even our graves will open, and he will call us forth to eternal life in all its fullness. 

Does it sound impossible?  It is.  But with God, in Jesus Christ, all things are possible.  And his impossible promises are instead a sure and certain hope.  Therefore put your trust in him, and you will never be disappointed. 

Sermon - Pentecost 19 - Mark 10:2-16

 

Holy Matrimony was instituted and blessed by God.  It’s his invention, his creation.  In marriage, therefore, it is God who joins together man and woman in a one-flesh union meant to last a lifetime.  And it’s a very good thing! 

Marriage is full of blessings.  It provides companionship so that we are not alone in this life.  It affords help – one to another – through the difficulties that are sure to come.  Marriage is also the cradle into which children are to be born and raised – and taught the fear and love of the Lord.  Even secular studies have shown us that it is in a home with a mom and a dad that children are best poised to thrive.  It’s God’s design, after all.

Marriage is also meant for the delight of man and woman in each other.  That love that is shared and grows year over year – that’s not an accident either.

As much as we joke about the drudgeries of marriage – the old ball and chain and such – perhaps we ought to think again and treat this institution of God’s as the holy thing he has made it to be. We honor God when we honor marriage.

But like all of his gifts, we find ways to ruin it.  And if we had to discuss the difficult teaching of hell last week, then we better not shy away from the difficult teaching of divorce today. 

What did Moses tell you?  Jesus answers their question on divorce with a question.  Which they, of course, get wrong.  They blather on about some certificate of divorce, an accommodation to human sin that Moses conceded in order to protect poor women who were victims of their husband’s abandonment. 

But what did Moses tell them?  “You shall not commit adultery!”  The sixth commandment!  Moses told you what Moses hear from God.  That’s the foundational answer.  That’s the answer to the question of divorce. Back to basics.

And Jesus goes back even before Moses, back to creation, back to the very beginning, when God made them male and female.  When he instituted marriage – when he made a suitable helper because it was not good that man should be alone.  (And by the way, another reason the doctrine of creation is important – it is the foundation on which marriage rests!)

In the beginning, before sin entered into the world, there was marriage.  But like everything else corrupted and tainted by sin, even marriage, the very heart of the family, the foundation and building block of human society, is now tarnished and stained and broken.  And sometimes, in this fallen world, marriages fail.

But they don’t fail because of some accident of nature, like a tree falls and randomly crushes a car during a storm.  Marriages fail because husbands and wives are sinners.  Sinners make messes of everything.  No married person can honestly say they have loved their spouse as they should.

And if you, personally, have not been divorced, consider your attitude toward marriage and divorce.  Do you take it lightly?  Have you become numb to the great evil divorce is?  Do you hear of divorces and simply shrug, “oh well, life goes on” with no more concern than if someone stubbed a toe?  People grow apart.  Life’s twists and turns.  Or how did one famous couple put it when they announced their split, “we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”

Our attitudes toward this holy thing of God are part of the problem, friends.  While you may not have hired the divorce attorney, you may just as well be contributing to the culture of divorce by your own sins of thought, word and deed.  Sins of commission and omission.  Whatever your posture, God’s mind is clear on the matter.  In Malachi 2, God puts it simply, “I hate divorce”.  There aren’t many things he speaks about in such strong terms as this.

And then for you who have been divorced, have experienced a divorce – I’m sure this hasn’t been a pleasant sermon to sit through so far.  I’m sure it would be more comfortable to hear about some other sin – any sin.  Maybe, humanly speaking, you were the victim of your ex’s infidelity, abuse, or abandonment.  Maybe you tried your hardest and it still failed, and yet you might still feel guilty about it.  Or maybe you were the guilty party in every way, and made a mess of marriage that you cannot go back and fix now even if you wanted to.  The truth is often somewhere in between.

Nonetheless, Christians have but one thing to do when faced with our sin – whether the sin of divorce or the sin of contributing to a culture that despises marriage.  Whether failing to love our spouse as well as we ought, or dishonoring marriage by our fornication, adultery or lust.  The answer is the same:  repent.  Turn from sin.  And turn to Christ in faith.

Christ, who comes to join together what man has put asunder.  Christ, who comes to heal and reconcile the great divorce between God and man.  Christ, who alone can restore, renew, and revive, who can clean your conscience and balm your guilt.

Jesus dealt with people who had made a mess of marriage, too.  Remember that Samaritan woman at the well?  He called her out on her adulterous living, and yet he still spoke kindly to her and revealed his identity to her as the Christ and called her to worship in spirit and truth.  Remember the other woman, the one caught in adultery?  They were trying to stone her to death, and Jesus pointed those accusations back on the crowd, “let him who is without sin cast the first stone”.  And then he said, “Who condemns you now?  Then neither do I condemn you.  Now go and sin no more”.

The same Christ deals with us.  He doesn’t wink at our sin, nor does he want us to pretend it’s not there.  He calls us, rather, to bring that sin to him in contrition, and confession, and faith.  And he forgives.  He doesn’t cast stones at us, his people, for our sin, or condemn us as we deserve.  He speaks kindly, and calls us to worship in spirit and truth.  And then he sends us to go and sin no more.

Christ knows of marriage not only because he founded it with the creation of Eve.  He also knows it as he himself is the true bridegroom.  And he has come to court and win his holy bride, the new Eve, the church.  With his own blood he bought her, and for her life, he died.  No look at Christian marriage is complete without this major biblical picture – of Christ and his bride, the church.  One might even say that all earthly marriages also point to this heavenly reality – this eternal love story.  Though even the happiest marriages on earth are tainted by sin, the heavenly marriage of Christ and his bride is pure and true and holy.  Though earthly marriages end in divorce, or when death do us part – there will be no end to the marriage feast of the Lamb in his kingdom which has no end.

And now let’s visit the second part of this text, which deals with children.  It’s likely no accident that Mark places Jesus’ comments about children after some talk of marriage – for marriage and family go together, and it is in the bound of marriage that God blesses new families with children. 

Jesus invites the children to himself.  He rebukes the disciples who would hinder them.  He lays his hands on the children and blesses them, and commends their faith, “of such is the kingdom of heaven”.

You know, we often point out that children have a faith that is so much simpler and straightforward than adults, they seem to trust as a matter of course.  And Jesus wants us to trust him with a similar child-like faith. 

But consider this, children also take correction more easily than adults.  Maybe because they are more used to it.  But children quite often hear both the correcting word of their parents, as well as the kind and loving word.  They trust that even when a parent is telling them to do this, do that, do the other thing – that parent loves them and wants what is best for them.  Not always, of course, for children are sinners too, but they do seem to have a higher tolerance for correction than so many adults.  Adults, in our pride, are often so much harder to correct.  We feel we’ve outgrown such things.  We know better. And we are outraged, offended, indignant(!) if some other person should dare to correct us!

Rather, receive the kingdom of God like a little child – in both correction and love.  With the discipline of God’s word, and with the promises of his gospel.  Trust him as a dear child trust his loving Father.  For he desires only your good, and he has procured it in Christ.