October 4, 2009
Legal Contracts in the Kingdom - Mark 10:1-16
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadLeah and I will have been married for ten years on November 13th. I know that’s a drop in the bucket to some of you, but at least from my perspective, it’s a considerable milestone. We met each other when we were at Wofford. She was a year ahead of me, so she graduated in 1997 and I graduated in ’98. We led two very different lives from when she graduated in 1997 until we got married late in 1999. For a year of that time, I was still a college student and she lived and worked in Greenville. Then I graduated and moved to Virginia and then toTexas with the Army.
We got married that November, went on our honeymoon, and then the strangest thing happened. She came out to Texas and she moved in with me. It was the wildest thing. For two years before that, we saw each other maybe once a month, and lived a thousand miles away from each other. Now we were living side by side, together as husband and wife. And it never ended. We never had to say goodbye. I don’t mean to get all mushy on you, but it was like the honeymoon never ended. Sure we had to go back to work, and we discovered that we each had faults. I couldn’t even turn a screw and her cooking left a bit to be desired, but we did fine. And then the following January, we got a dog and named him Colby. We loved Colby. We took him everywhere. He even slept between us. We loved him so much that we got him a partner, and named her Katy. And then both of them slept between us, and Leah worked in Austin, and I worked at Fort Hood, and we lived in Georgetown and went to church there and had friends there. In short, we started a life together. That life has expanded now to two children, Julia & Caroline. Colby died last week, and we have very much mourned his death, but we’ve got another baby coming in late April.
We are, for good or bad, a family. We are husband and wife together. Theoretically I could go back to South Carolina where we were married and I could file for a divorce. We would have to wait for a little while, but according to South Carolina, we would no longer be husband and wife together. That’s perfectly legal for me to do, according to the state. It’s also perfectly legal in some cases according to the Bible, at least according to some passages in the Bible in Deuteronomy and Exodus. But the fact is, at least according to Jesus in this passage, regardless of any law, even regardless of any biblical law, we are still — and always will be — married.
The issue of divorce was hotly contested in Ancient Judaism. Certain sects of Jews, like the Essenes, held that divorce was never justified. The Pharisees on the other hand said that in some cases, it was. Herod in Mark 6, for example, divorced his wife so he could marry his brother’s wife, which, of course, he tried to justify. The Pharisees in this passage were not as concerned about marriage as they were trying to push Jesus in a corner, so he could alienate himself and hopefully get himself in trouble, as John the Baptist had done on that very same issue. In fact, John the Baptist literally lost his head over a dispute about marriage. Jesus told them and us in the passage, though, that marriage is beyond anybody’s attempt to legalize. Marriage is a gift. None less than God has ordained marriage as something that God intends for his creation. To find legalisms around marriage misses the point entirely. Marriage is a gift to be received, not a legal obligation to be met. If it was just a legal obligation, then if the legal obligation is not met, then the marriage could be dissolved. In that case, it would be like a legal contract, but it’s more than that. Legalism is beside the point in marriage. Legalism is beside the point in friendship. How many of you have made your friends sign contracts, with stipulations that if the following conditions were not met, then you would no longer be their friend? Friendship is also a gift. Marriage is a gift. Marriage is something that God himself has specifically ordered for us, for all of humanity. It may not be for everybody, and I understand that, but it does benefit everybody, which is why weddings take place within a community, within a church.
I also understand that sometimes marriages don’t work out. We live in a fallen world, and therefore, by definition, what God intends for us does not always happen. Sometimes we have to pick between the lesser of two evils, and divorce may well fall into that category. And sometimes in our past, we may have made mistakes which may have lead to divorce, so we have to seek forgiveness for that and grant forgiveness and move on. I understand all of that. The point, though, is that marriage is not about legal stipulations, and if it is, then from a Christian standpoint it really is not a marriage at all. Jesus is very concerned here with marriage. It’s a big deal for him. God intends marriage to be forever, regardless of all the legalities.
Even more than marriage, though, Jesus is also talking about the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is also not about legal stipulation eithier. God’s Kingdom is not about conditions to be met, or bills to be paid, or deadlines to be adhered to, or standards that we must keep. That’s a hard concept for us to grasp. We want to earn our way into things, to meet our obligations, to pay our dues, to hold up our end of the deal. When it comes to the Kingdom of Heaven, though, it’s not about a deal. It’s not about what we meet or what we do or what we pray or even so much what we believe, as much as it’s about who and whose we are and what God has done for us. We are heirs of this great faith, of this Amazing Grace that God has given us. We do not sign a dotted line to get into it. And we don’t live up to it to stay into it. It’s who we are, and it’s what we are. All legalism aside, all law aside, it’s grace, God’s grace that allows us to be connected with God, just like God’s grace allows us to be connected with each other, including marriage.
Maybe the best example of what Jesus was talking about is childhood. As much as I am my wife’s husband, I am even more my child’s father. Now legally, I think, I could go to a courthouse somewhere and sign away all my parental authority. I could legally divorce myself from my child and become something other than my child’s father. But if I did, I could get that piece of paper and present it to my girls. The youngest one would tear it into shreds. That’s what she’s into these days. The oldest one would draw all of it. And then, they would look up at me and say, “Hey, Dadda!” It’s not about legalism. I am their father, and they are my children, and nothing can ever change that.
One of the most beautiful things that I get to see as a pastor is how the parent / child relationship changes, and yet how it stays the same. Nothing is more helpless than an infant. So parents do everything at first. They change their diapers, take them to the doctor, feed them, buy their clothes…, everything. They live for their children. Even when the children grow up and become self-sufficient, the parents still feel responsible for their children. I am always my parents’ child. I always will be, which is why it’s so strange for me to preach to my parents. I’m not their preacher. I’m their son. At some point, the tables turn, and it’s the children’s job to care for their parents, often times even to the extent that the parent becomes as helpless as the child once was. And yet, as much as the relationship changes, it stays the same. You will always be your parents’ child. And if you have children, you will always be their parent, all legalities aside. Children seem to have a natural instinct for that, which is one reason that Jesus was always so adamant about accepting children, and in this passage, blessing them. Children instinctively know what we adults have forgotten.
I’m not going to tell you that because the Kingdom is not about legalities then anything goes. In fact, if anything it’s the opposite. We have been given grace, so much grace that, as one of my favorite hymns says, “love so amazing, so divine demands my life, my soul, my all.” In fact, the implications of God’s amazing grace are much harder to fulfill than any legal code. I once heard a preacher comfort his congregation by telling them that it’s not about “Thou shalt and thou shalt not.” We just have to love one another, he said, like we love ourselves, as if that’s a piece of cake. It’s not. Just like a marriage, we never live up to our Baptism vows. We never live up to what we say we believe, which is why we can never base our salvation off belief. We never fully believe, and therefore we never fully live like we should.
Which is why grace is so amazing. We had a session retreat last weekend, and we ordered food for Friday night and Saturday afternoon. We wanted something nice for Friday night, so we called John’s Restaurant. And sure enough, John slaved away at a dinner and fed us royally. As we went to pay him, he said, as he has said before,“your money is not good here. Enjoy the food.” He refused to charge us. So I wrote him last week and I wanted to tell him that because he had been so gracious to us, that I owed him something and if he could ever figure out what that was, to let me know. But that’s not what John had given us, you see. It was not an exchange, it was not a contract where if I can just guarantee him X number of people eating at his restaurant, we’d call it a deal. That would have missed the point entirely, because it never was a deal. It was a gift. It was grace. And all I could do was to tell him, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
And that’s ultimately all we can do with God. God has given us, even though we have long since failed to deliver any side of our bargain, grace. And God’s grace has saved us. All legalities aside, God has given us, even though we could never have earned it, grace. And even though when we accept that grace and respond to that grace, it certainly changes everything about our lives, especially how we treat one another, it’s not about meeting the mark. It’s about grace. So may we all give thanks that we are all God’s beloved children whom he has adopted and made his very own, and that we will continue to be his forever.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
