Hebrews 1.1-4,2.5-12, Mark 10.2-16
The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, 7 October 2018
Austwick
Jesus caused a scandal wherever he went. And if the events described by Mark happened today, he'd be causing a scandal again. Mark tells us that "He put his arms around the children, laid his hands upon them..."
But he hadn't been CRB checked. He was breaking all the Child Protection taboos. In our society, adults are actively discouraged from touching children. The implications are that we can't be trusted to be caring, to be intimate, with children; we are scared off showing our care for lost or distressed youngsters for fear that our holding their hand or our kindly hugs might be misunderstood: and so our young ones grow up untouched by us, distanced from us physically and emotionally.
"He put his arms around the children, laid his hands upon them, and blessed them." What right does he have to impose his religious beliefs on these innocents? That would be the cry today. How dare he presume to bless them: they should be left alone to find their own blessing in their own way and their own time, from their own God.
So Jesus' behaviour is scandalous behaviour, now, just as it was at the time it actually happened. Though the cause of the scandal was different then. As Mark describes it, people were bringing their children to Jesus to be blessed by him - and what sort of people would bring their children to Jesus for a blessing? It’s likely that they were society’s vulnerable ones, society’s struggling ones, society’s suffering ones. The sort of people who may have given up hope of a good life for themselves but who would try everything they could to try to provide a better life for their children.
These people - the poor of the world - had seen in Jesus something special, something wholesome, something holy, something which they wanted their children to have a share of. Just a simple blessing - it could make all the difference to their vulnerable youngsters’ lives.
It was the disciples who were scandalised by this: they saw this as a distraction from Jesus's main purpose, which was to engage the concerns of the privileged adults around, the law-makers and law-keepers who were, on this occasion, intellectualising around the thorny matter of divorce, and no doubt trying to trip Jesus up over his stance on the subject.
The disciples were comfortable with this sort of exchange, for to their ears the good news of the Kingdom of God was a grown-up message; the gospel was a serious business to be mulled over by thoughtful people in theological debate, not something to be interrupted by the messy, troubled poor and their screaming, wriggling kids.
But Jesus saw things differently. The disciples’ attitude towards these little ones made him angry. Jesus wanted his scandalised disciples to understand that the grown-up gospel was something which could be understood by the children of the poor; could be embraced by families who were suffering, and - astonishingly - that "the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these."
What Jesus wanted his disciples to hear on that day in Judea is what Jesus wants us to hear today: that the Kingdom of God belongs to the little ones, the struggling ones, those who our privileged conversations tend to neglect, sideline, demonise; the ones we'd rather ignore.
These untouchables; the ones we are frightened to engage with, the ones whose suffering makes us feel uncomfortable, the ones who disturb our self-indulgent ways: those who know they need to be blessed by God, those who aren't afraid to be touched by him, those who want to be embraced by him: the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
When we encounter suffering people, it disturbs us. Their struggles raise thorny questions for us and we struggle to find the answers, or to face the answers when they require a change of heart, or mind, or lifestyle, from us. In such moments we might recall how Jesus set aside the intellectual, theological debate of the moment to simply embrace these little ones who brought their children to him. Jesus was touched by these people, and he touched them. Not with answers to satisfy the troubled mind, but with an embrace and a blessing to soothe the troubled heart.
Is this what society’s troubled ones most want - someone to embrace them, to take them in their arms, to offer them a blessing? When we open ourselves to someone who is suffering, there is a blessing in our acceptance of them and in our listening to the cries of their hearts.
This is not to deny the little ones the terrifying questions raised by their situation. These remain to be addressed, for sure. I found it revealing to wheel back in this passage of Mark to the debate with the Pharisees about the legality of divorce. It is legal for a man to divorce his wife, according to the law of Moses, but Jesus privileges the law of creation - which says that when two come together they become one flesh, joined together inseparably by God. Jesus teaches that creation’s law intends that marriage should be indissoluble; the permission to divorce is not part of that fundamental intention, but an accommodation to the hardness of the human heart.
Jesus’ teaching may sound harsh to us; when it comes to divorce, we’re liberated people. But remember that the people around Jesus that day were not. I’d argue that Jesus is actually sparking some form of liberation here in what he says. For his strong emphasis on the high dignity of marriage could be construed as strengthening the position of women in the community. Where the divorce laws of Moses favoured men and made women vulnerable, Jesus’ suggestion that women could initiate a divorce was unusual, and his teaching that men and women were equals in marriage was unprecedented. [2]
So here in Jesus’ teachings which elevate women, and his actions towards the children which followed, he displays a remarkable compassion for the most vulnerable ones. The Kingdom of God is a community which embraces those who suffer most from the laws of hard-hearted men. The Kingdom of God is a community that welcomes and protects the weak.
Note
[1] A substantial rewrite of my earlier talk Touching the suffering, preached at Bratton Clovelly in 2012.
[2] See the discussion on this passage in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Reflections, Year B, Proper 22B.
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