Rev. Betsy Aldrich Garland
October 4, 2009
Mark 10:2-16

Arms Around Each Other

We have held five Cottage Meetings with more than 30 people in all. I began each session by giving participants a piece of white paper and crayons – that took us all back a few years, don’t you just love the smell of a box of crayons? – and asked them to draw their relationship to Edgewood Church – with their left hand. They could use stick figures, letters, diagrams – whatever they needed to do – to show their relationship to the church. As you can imagine, we laughed a lot, shared memories, and told stories about what the church means to us.

One of the participants drew giant arms that curled around to embrace a “hug.” Edgewood Church is a place where we have our arms around each other, providing shelter and safety, offering support and consolation, sharing the love of God.

This image of the encircling arms, cradling a hug, came to me when I read the gospel lesson for this morning. The text in Mark’s gospel really contains two different matters – first, the question of whether or not a man could divorce his wife, and second, the place of children in God’s kingdom. While these two scenarios may not seem to belong together, they both have to do with two classes of the most vulnerable people in the ancient world – women who are alone and little children.

Jesus treats these situations as an appeal to God’s mercy. And it reminds us why we find so many references in the Bible to caring for widows and orphans. Women in the ancient world depended on the men in their lives – fathers and husbands and brothers – for the necessities of life and for protection in a patriarchal, violent world. The Jewish code allowed a man to divorce his wife for any reason: Perhaps another woman had caught his eye, or he wanted a wife who could give him a son, or someone prettier to show off. No matter what: he could simply write out a certificate of dismissal – and out she went into the cold – homeless, vulnerable, destitute!

This text on divorce often has been used by churches to keep couples in unhappy unions, even in marriages that are abusive and dangerous. Too many women have been told by their pastors that they must suffer beatings and alcoholism and philanderers because Jesus says that, “...what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

But there is a higher standard than marriage for Jesus. The interpretation that divorce is always wrong, progressive scholars might tell us, comes from a narrow and superficial reading of the text and a misrepresentation of what Jesus was saying about relationships.

The authorities we know were always trying to trap Jesus with questions that had no easy answers. In this case, Jesus gives them the legal answer – yes, one may divorce his wife according to Moses’ law. Then Jesus reframes the debate and gives them the pastoral answer – God’s intention is wholeness in relationships, mutual respect, and kindness of heart – for ourselves as well as each other.

Some of us here this morning have been divorced, myself included. I went into my marriage with the expectation that I would be married to this man for life, that I would raise my children with him, that I would live out my days in that relationship. I had grown up in a happy home, and I expected my marriage to be happy. It was not, and I knew that I would need to end it for everyone’s sake; perhaps my husband would find someone he would like better than me. One night at dinner, my three-year-old Sarah leaned over in her highchair and put her sticky little hand on my arm and said, “I know daddy doesn’t love you, Mommy, but I love you!”
It took me a few years, but what gave me both the courage and the rationale to do what needed to be done was a verse from Deuteronomy, “. . . I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live . . .” (30:19). I hung onto that Bible verse as I found a place to live and a full time job and childcare before and after school for Craig and Sarah. Somehow I managed, and, eventually, thrived – but that was due to having an education and loving parents and, yes, perseverance and stamina.

Yes, divorce is tragic – but perhaps not the worst that can happen to us, and it may be the life-giving choice. Like the Sabbath, one might ask whether the human was created for marriage – or the marriage for the human.

The second part of this morning’s text is about little children being brought to Jesus for his blessing. It’s hard for us, who are devoted to our children, to understand that in the ancient world, children were not important – except perhaps to their mothers. They were really non-persons. So the disciples try to shoo them away.

Here again, Jesus uses this situation as a teachable-moment to describe what the kingdom of God is like – where innocence and simplicity, trust and wonder say more about what God values than the political snares of the Pharisees. “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” The measure by which Jesus judges situations is the measure of love.

I am not suggesting here that divorce is the right answer to every situation or that we should not discipline our children. I am suggesting that the Christian community is called to hold each other in holy, loving arms, regardless of the circumstances, and not only the members of this local church but the larger community, wherever the vulnerable, the least of these, are found.

And the gospel calls us to go farther on this World Communion Sunday, not only to have our arms around each other, but around the whole world.

We hear this urgency in Jesus’ response to the question about which commandment is the greatest. You know the answer: “You shall love ... God . . . and your neighbor as yourself.” Who is our neighbor? The one who is hurting, the one who is lonely, the one who is going through a divorce, the one without health insurance, the one who is homeless, the one who is hungry, the one who is not allowed to go to school, the one who is orphaned, the one trapped under debris, the one who has lost a loved one, the one wounded by a roadside bomb, the one whose village has been washed away.

Jesus calls the church to be one body and to wrap our arms around the world. We may not always agree; we may not always even like each other. But on this Sunday, and every Sunday, we come together as one family to eat the bread and drink the wine and to remember what unites us – and who calls us.

Edgewood Church is not called to be perfect; we are called to be a family, and when we wrap our arms around each other, to hold on tight!

May it be so.
Amen.