Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost Year B 2009

18 Pentecost B 09
October 4, 2009

Job 1:1, 2:1-10
1 There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.
1 One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. 2 The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." 3 The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason." 4 Then Satan answered the LORD, "Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. 5 But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face." 6 The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life." 7 So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 8 Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes. 9 Then his wife said to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die." 10 But he said to her, "You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Psalm 26
1 Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering. 2 Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and mind. 3 For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in faithfulness to you. 4 I do not sit with the worthless, nor do I consort with hypocrites; 5 I hate the company of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked. 6 I wash my hands in innocence, and go around your altar, O LORD, 7 singing aloud a song of thanksgiving, and telling all your wondrous deeds. 8 O LORD, I love the house in which you dwell, and the place where your glory abides. 9 Do not sweep me away with sinners, nor my life with the bloodthirsty, 10 those in whose hands are evil devices, and whose right hands are full of bribes. 11 But as for me, I walk in my integrity; redeem me, and be gracious to me. 12 My foot stands on level ground; in the great congregation I will bless the LORD.

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
1 Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. 3 He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
5 Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. 6 But someone has testified somewhere, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? 7 You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, 8 subjecting all things under their feet." Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, 9 but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. 10 It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11 For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, 12 saying, "I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you."

Mark 10:2-16
2 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" 3 He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" 4 They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her." 5 But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 7 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." 10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."
13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 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. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." 16 And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Tests

I hate tests.

I spent 20 years in school and every test I took was harder than the last one.

During my childhood, I remember the anxiety of bringing home my report card. In my home, a “C” was not acceptable, and I would be punished for getting one. “B’s” were worthy of no particular praise or admonishment; they were the least that was expected. Only” A’s” yielded parental approval and possible reward. For a “D” or lower, execution was the only option.

And so tests were the bane of my existence. Tests and papers and exams. I was always sure I wasn’t ready, always sure that I would fail, always thinking about the death sentence on the other side of my failure. I would often get physically sick in anticipation of a test.

It didn’t seem to matter that I usually did fine. I could never remember that yes, I’d been terrified the last time, sure of the end of my life, and not only had I gotten through it, but I usually got a passable grade. I graduated seminary at the top of my class, with honors. But I have never gotten over my horror of tests.

A number of us who are doing Discovering the Bible found a quiz on line that was given to evangelical freshmen at an evangelical college on basic bible facts. These kids had all been raised going to Sunday School every Sunday in so-called “Bible-teaching” churches. The professor reports that the average grade was 50. In my home, that grade would have resulted in my swift execution. I’m glad to say the average grade for those of our Discovering the Bible class who took the quiz was about 75, not including my own grade.

God’s tests, in any event, have a different focus, aim at different objectives, than the tests of our parents or teachers. God periodically chooses to test individuals, congregations, and even the whole church on earth. These tests are not the usual suffering that comes to everyone sooner or later. These tests seem particularly aimed at our willingness to keep to our faithfulness to God when a challenge to that faithfulness appears, when good reasons are presented as to why such faithfulness is undeserved. However, like the tests we get as children, the more we pass, the better we do, the farther down the road we go, the harder those tests get.

The Pharisees test Jesus on the subject of divorce. I’m not sure why. It doesn’t say. Much earlier in the gospel Jesus challenges notions of family when he redefines it as “those who do the will of my Father,” so perhaps they thought he could be tricked into undermining Jewish notions of family. Perhaps the reason was actually more in the spirit of a friendly competitive game. Maybe the Pharisees were simply challenging Jesus to grow, by laying a complex question before him.

But Jesus, as he so often does, changes the playing field. The Pharisees are talking about the world as it is. Jesus talks about the world as it should be, as he is in fact about the business of making it. Jesus is laying the pathway to the salvation of the world, the restoration of paradise, and so it is paradise that he talks about and not the world as it is.

The Pharisees were masters of the law. They knew the law of God inside out. Ask them anything. What is permitted? They know. What is not permitted? They know. In this case the law permitted a man to divorce his wife. It did not permit a wife to divorce her husband. Furthermore, a man could divorce his wife for any reason at all. She burned the eggs. Bad hair. Anything. It didn’t matter what he did to his wife, though. No matter how badly he treated her, she had no way to get out. This was all permitted by the law. You can look it up.

The Pharisees knew exactly how to get along in the world. Follow the law and things go well. Don’t follow it and things will go badly. It follows that if things go well, you must be following the law, and if you are doing poorly, well, you must not be following the law.

Job knew exactly how to get along in the world, too. He followed God’s law, pretty much perfectly. But the prosecuting attorney, in Hebrew, hasatan, or “the satan,” thinks he can expose Job’s motives. Everyone who reads Job it seems wants to say that the question of the book is “Why do bad things happen to good people?” But behind that question, and the real reason such a question even matters, is “Why is God worthy of our faithfulness?” The satan proposes a test. What if Job, who had followed the law perfectly, underwent great suffering? This would expose his heart’s true feelings about God. The satan is betting Job really doesn’t love God or even want to do God’s will, but only fulfills the law for the sake of his own success. God is betting Job’s motives are pure.

It seems capricious of God to make such a wager, to put this poor man through such terrible things. We need to remember that this scene is a cosmic image, a way of talking about something that is really nearly impossible to talk about.

There’s a show on TV called "Supernanny." Anybody seen it? It’s about parents that have lost control of their children and call on this British woman, the Supernanny, to come to their rescue. Supernanny comes into the situation and almost always the problem is not enough rules, not enough bad consequences for bad behavior. She gets the chore list up on the refrigerator, finds a place for the time-out chair, cunningly figures out what the children really value so as to threaten its removal if they’re naughty. She then lays out the law and puts the whole family to the test. Will the parents stick to the plan? Will the plan work? Of course, it always does. The show always ends with the well-behaved children happily gathered with their parents, shouting, “Thank you, Supernanny!”

The law of God is like Supernanny. It’s necessary because the children are out of control, because they are in complete rebellion, because they have no real interest in pleasing or obeying their parents. Jesus’ response to the Pharisees is that Moses wrote the law because of their hardness of heart. The law is only necessary because we don’t want to do it. As long as we don’t want to do it, we need that Supernanny, the law.

But in the world that Jesus is preparing us for, there will be no further need of Supernanny or for the old satan, because the world he is preparing us for is paradise restored. In such a world, laws about divorce will not be necessary. This is the amazing and wonderful and magnificent power of our high priest, Jesus, the pioneer of salvation.

Anyone who has divorced has been to hell and has suffered there in agony, along with their whole family. There are plenty of jokes about this. “Why get married? I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and give her a house.” I have a friend who’s about 30 and hasn’t gotten married yet. When people ask him why, he says, “I think I’ll sit the first one out.”

But the reality of divorce is truly horrible. It’s horrible because in the midst of it, we are most keenly aware of how far from paradise we are. It’s in the midst of such failure that we deeply understand God’s vision of two becoming one flesh, because we feel like we are being ripped apart.

Jesus is not condemning us to hell. He is simply describing the reality of the world as it is, a world under the rule of law, a world requiring a Supernanny to punish our transgressions.
In contrast to this, Jesus admonishes his disciples to allow the children to come to him, because, he says, “to such as these the kingdom of God belongs. Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” What does he mean by this?

My father was gone before I can remember. Some of you know that I was adopted twice; the father I’m referring to is my legal father, the second father (or perhaps the third if you include my biological dad). I haven’t seen him in years. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. When I was a kid I thought he was my biological father. I don’t know why. I think my mother explained adoption to me, but I don’t think I got it.

Anyway he was gone from before I can remember. All through the years I was growing up, he rarely visited. He would sometimes promise a visit, like during Christmas or something, and Mom would get the house ready for him, and we’d buy presents for him. The day he was supposed to arrive, we’d be waiting with excitement and anticipation, and he wouldn’t show up. We’d talk about it. We’d go back and forth talking about how his job was so demanding or about how his car might have broken down.

We might get a call, maybe that night or the next day, with the story about why he couldn’t make it. And I’d accept the reason pretty much without question. He’d feel bad about not being there, and I’d do my best to make him feel better.

He’d send checks to help out and they’d bounce.

My father was a charming man. He had a beautiful smile and sparkling blue eyes. Whenever he did manage to visit, my whole world lit up. If he called, my mom would put me on the phone with him and I’d talk with him sometimes for hours. He had a slow West Virginia drawl that I could listen to forever. One of our favorite things to do was to play chess. He was a very capable chess player and I almost never won. Somehow, though, that seemed just fine to me.

He had two daughters by a previous marriage with whom I lost touch long ago when the marriage had fallen apart. After college, while I was working as an actor in Pittsburgh, by a strange sequence of events, I connected with them. We got together and caught up with everything that had happened in our lives. At one point we all fell silent and sat together a moment, and then my younger step-sister said, “What do you think about having such a jerk for a father?” Of course, she didn’t use the word “jerk.”

The question utterly shocked me. Such a thought had never once entered my head. I had spent a large part of my life deeply considering the many reasons he had done the things he did, all based on the assumption, which I never once doubted, that my father truly loved me, and that I loved him.

To this day, if he called, I would do anything for him.

My love for him has passed every test. Of course, today I know that he was, and continues to be, unworthy of the love I have for him. My father is a human being and not God, and God certainly doesn't expect us to tolerate those who mistreat us. My point is that love is always a gift, both in the heart of the one who loves and to the one who is beloved. If love must be earned, it is not love. Children know this, perhaps better than we.

“It is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”

Amen.