22 Days

Mark 10:17-31

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

Jesus said, it’s easier for a real, live, long necked, large humped, vomit spitting, 1300 lb. dromedary to go through the eye of a standard No. 5 sewing needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.  Some folks like the idea  that the “Eye of the Needle” is actually the name of a gate in Jerusalem that you can get your camel through if you just unload all the stuff it is carrying.  Maybe.  But I suspect Jesus was being more hard-core than that.  I think Jesus was talking about both, a real three quarter ton “ship of the desert” camel AND a literal, tiny sewing needle.  So the question remains… how will we get THAT camel… through THAT needle AND how are we going to do the thing Jesus says is HARDER THAN THAT, which is to get rich people (who, if we’re honest, is ALL of us)… how are we going to get all of US into heaven?

We can assume the rich, young man in this story had tried all the usual ways.  He had tried to PAY to have his camel pushed through.  He’d tried to be good and virtuous enough to EARN his camel passage through.  I’m sure he had born the guilt and shame he thought might get his camel through.  He might have even tried to lie and say, “We have the greatest camels and we got them all through.”  No matter what he tried, in the end he found… you can’t do it.  YOU can’t get your camel through the eye of a needle and YOU can’t get yourself into heaven.

 

You see, he was (like us rich folks usually are) used to solving problems on his own.  He had jumped over countless challenges and been successful without any help.  Whether it was his money, talent, privilege, experience or a combination of all of the above, he was used to… convinced even… that HE could tackle anything the world might throw at him BY HIMSELF.  You can see that in the way he asked the question of Jesus, “What must I DO to inherit eternal life?”  What must I DO?  

Jesus knew, that because he had been successful in so much relying ONLY on himself, it would be almost impossible for him to believe there was anything he could NOT do by himself.  Jesus told him, “To get your camel through the eye of that needle you’ll need to GIVE UP.  Give up the idea that YOU can make it happen.”  This guy had never given up!  All his success had been built on the fact that HE could make anything happen.  So he turned his back on Jesus and walked away to keep looking for a way that HE could buy, earn, fix, wheel, deal, scheme, or lie HIMSELF into an inheritance of eternal life. 

In this parable, Jesus is asking us to believe what that rich, young man just couldn’t:  That for mortals, it’s impossible to buy, earn, fix, wheel, deal, scheme or lie yourself into eternal life… but it is not impossible for God.  For God ALL things are possible… it’s possible for God to pull a 1300lb. camel through the eye of a No. 5 sewing needle.  It is EVEN possible for God to pull the likes of you and me through the needle’s eye of death and into eternal life.  

But wait, there’s more!  For God it’s not only POSSIBLE to do all that… but as it turns out for us… God’s already done it!  God’s reached through the eye of that needle that we call the Cross of Christ, grabbed hold of you and me, and whether we like it or not, God’s even reached through and pulled that rich young man through as well.  God, in fact, has pulled ALL of creation through, from death into life.  And if God can do THAT… then… well, what other completely hopeless, terribly frightening, totally impossible thing for YOU to fix, turns out to be something that God can handle without even breaking a sweat? 

So, what is one, horrible, anxiety flooding, sleep depriving, totally out of your control thing that you find yourself facing today?  Hmmmm?  I wonder?  Golly, what could it be?  Maybe something, I don’t know, let’s just pick a random number… how about something maybe, oh, I don’t know… 22 days away?  Anything?  Any worry?  Anything out of your control?  Well, if you come up with something let me know.  In the mean time though, for us mortals… the first take home from this sermon is that ALTHOUGH… YOU OR ME trying to get ANY of those hope stomping, joy trampling, justice wrecking camels that we might think up later through the eye of the needle is soul crushingly impossible… NONE OF IT!  NONE…OF…IT... is impossible for God! 

That was SO hard to believe for that rich young man that he went off sad and alone and the second take home from this sermon is THAT might very well have been his BIGGEST mistake.  Because, here’s what I want you to remember over the next 22 days at least (remembering this for more days would be better, but we can start with just 22).  What I want you to remember is that when we face the impossible, one of the reasons God has given us one another is so that we can get together and remind one another that when we face the impossible GOD HAS…. GOD IS…. AND GOD WILL… do whatever needs to be done… including pulling what appears to be hopeless, horrific, and dead, through the Cross of Christ and into eternal life.  Let’s all do our very best NOT to go off alone in these next few weeks but to gather here in these next 22 days so we can remind one another that God really does have the whole world, in Their Loving, Divine, Hands, okay?  Okay.  Amen.  

Digging Required

Genesis 2:18-24

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Mark 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Last week was millstones around the neck and cutting off body parts.  This week it’s gender and divorce.  Bishop Jack and I laughed about these kinds of weeks last week at coffee hour but in the end we both agreed that even in these sorts of weeks, there is Good News to be found.  It’s just that in weeks like this, a lot more digging, a lot deeper in the mine, is required!

So the first bit of digging we need to do this week is into the word “man” in that Genesis text.  Dig into the original Hebrew and you’ll first find that the word Adam is NOT best translated as “man” as in a gender.  The Hebrew word A-dam best translates into English as, something like, Earth Person.  In my mind I imagine the A-dam 1.0 model as a sort of proto-human, a person containing the entire spectrum of human gender but without a specific gender or sexual expression.  Why did God create the A-dam this way?  Because, God thought that was the way to go!  So what happened?  The A-dam turned out to be lonely.  Loneliness was not God’s intention.  God had made a mistake!  Gasp!  So what did God do?  The Divine worked out a fix!  And God’s fix for loneliness was and is… relationship!

To do that, God took a rib out of A-dam 1.0, right?  Actually, the Hebrew implies that God cut A-dam 1.0 right down the middle and therefore made two, completely equal “flesh and bone” beings to be in relationship with one another.  Humanity 2.0 was created to have multiple beings, which together would make a fully equal, not lonely, relational whole.  This wasn't about sex or gender.  Let me say that again... This wasn't about sex or gender!  It was ALL about creating a fix for the human problem of loneliness.  How beings should or shouldn't be mixed or matched with regard to sex and gender in the future in these equal, mutual, loneliness-fixing relationships isn’t addressed here at all.  Worth the digging, right?

The next digging to be done is into Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees.  What you find with just a little shovel work there is that divorce in their time was like Trump vs. Harris in our time... An all consuming political issue filled with fear, anger, rage, and divisiveness.  The pharisees knew if they could get Jesus to commit to one side or the other, (they didn’t care which) the other side might just rid them of their Jesus problem.  The pharisees were picking a fight but Jesus chose not to show up for it!  Jesus told them, “It is your hardness of heart” that has you asking this question!  You are trying to use the wonderful, divine gift called “RELATIONSHIP”… God’s fix for humanity’s loneliness… and twist it into something that does the exact opposite!  You’re trying to use it to divide and conquer!  That, Jesus says, is some heard hearted nastiness right there!  

The last bit of digging we need to do is into the conversation Jesus had with the disciples about divorce.  In Jesus’ day we need to remember that women had no legal status.  Without care from a man… father, brother, son, or husband... women could be left literally homeless and destitute.  That gender inequality is NOT how God created humans to live (we learned that digging in Genesis) but it WAS the reality in Jesus’ day, SO that’s the reality Jesus had to address.  Therefore what Jesus was forbidding in this lesson was a man (who in that culture held all the power) FORCING the fate of homelessness and destitution on a woman (who in that culture had absolutely no power)!!  That’s it! 

Now, here’s what Jesus was NOT saying:  Jesus was NOT saying people should stay in intentionally or unintentionally abusive or irreparably broken marriages of any sort.  He was NOT saying that people should stay in a relationship when, for whatever reason, that relationship is no longer able to DO what God created relationships to DO... to cure loneliness and help one another toward becoming the fullness of what God created them to be.  Jesus is NOT saying people must stay in a relationship, when for millions of different reasons, that relationship is no longer able to build one another up in an equal, mutual, and jointly beneficial way, but instead (intentionally or unintentionally) is tearing one or the other, or both, down.  Divorce is always painful but that does NOT mean it is always the wrong thing to do.  Sometimes, one of the hard facts about being human is that doing the painful thing is sometimes the absolutely RIGHT thing to do.  

Relationship and every sort of Gender expression was created as a Divine GIFT from God!  God created those things as tools to move all human beings toward the wholeness and abundant life God created us each to live!  They were given and meant to be shared equally with one another.  They were NEVER meant to be used as a means to denigrate or to dominate the other.  They have always been meant to be tools to lift one another up!  Never were they meant to be used to tear one another down.

These are very hard texts.  Mostly because they have been badly misused for thousands of years.  Undoing all of that damage and pain will take a very long time.  Much longer than one Sunday sermon can possibly last, so with that... let's call this sermon done for now, and say... Amen.