The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost | October 6, 2024 | Genesis 2:18-24 and Mark 10:2-16 | Ryan D. Mills |

¹⁸The Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” ¹⁹So 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. ²⁰The 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. ²¹So 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. ²²And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³Then 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.” ²⁴Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh (Genesis 2:18-24, NRSV).

²Some Pharisees came, and to test [Jesus] they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” ³He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” ⁴They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” ⁵But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. ⁶But 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, ⁸and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. ⁹Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

¹⁰Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; ¹²and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

¹³People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. ¹⁴But 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. ¹⁵Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” ¹⁶And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them (Mark 10:2-16, NRSV).

 In the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last Saturday Jon and Terri were married here at the Church. They had a beautiful service, and an amazing reception, and when I left tired in the early evening the party was still going strong. But lo and behold, guess who walked into church bright and early the very next morning, but the happy couple! Jon said that when he woke up Sunday morning he turned to Terri and said, “You wouldn’t believe the dream I had last night!”

Our first lesson from Genesis chapter 2 today we hear about God’s dream for his creatures, God’s dream for us. This chapter of Genesis follows God’s work in creation, where God has been busy majestically speaking life into creation, saying again and again “it is good, it is good, it is very good.” Until today God finally comes to the first moment of calling something “not good.” “It is not good that the man should be alone,” God says. It is not good for us as human beings to be alone. Being solitary is fine, being single is fine, and an honorable Christian calling for some, but it is not good to be isolated, lonely alone. We are made in God’s image as the Holy Trinity: you are made in the image and likeness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which means we each are made like God for deep communion, for community, for relationship, we are made for companionship, for friendship, and it is not good for us to be alone. The worst punishments we have in society force us into loneliness—think about solitary confinement—and we know unfortunately that we also live today in a culture of loneliness, of disconnect, of separation from each other. This loneliness we feel? “This is not good,” God says.

So God goes about finding a helper for this first person, a “helper,” which is a name reserved everywhere else in the Bible for God himself. So God causes the man to sleep, and does a little surgery, “Count back from 10 and I’ll have a surprise for you!” God creates the last and crowning work of creation, the woman. And God brought her to the man. And then in the line that my wife Kathleen says is the most romantic in all the Bible, the man responds, “This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” That moment of recognition that we are made for each other, that we come from each other, that we depend on one another, that out of loneliness and nothing God has given us to each other and made us to be one flesh.

In our gospel lesson today, the Pharisees approach Jesus to test him, to trap him, by asking him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” These are not good people, asking honestly about divorce, having struggled and prayed and suffered through that journey. They are self-interested legalistic scholars, trying to trap Jesus and show him up. But there are a lot of folks here today, and folks you love, who do really agonize over these questions, whose marriages, with as good as intentions as they may have once had, have failed, have broken, and have fallen apart. In marriage we promise “‘til death do us part,” marriage is a lifelong bond and covenant, but sometimes the marriage can die before we do. So the first thing I want to say about this Scripture today, for all of you who are feeling hurt and judged already by this subject, is that, “In the Name of Jesus Christ and by his authority, yours sins are forgiven—to you being penitent, I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins.” Because these scholars are not agonizing today about what they should do, they’re asking what they can get away with! “How much divorce can we get by with, Lord?!” It’s like the person who once asked me how many Sundays a month he could skip church! These are the kind of questions that are the old sinner’s “death throes”, the things we ask to protect ourselves from the living God. In this case, it’s a question asked by a man, about what *he* can do to a woman. Divorce in ancient Israel was simple: three times a husband said, “I divorce you,” and then handed over a piece of paper, called a “get”, a certificate of divorce. And then you’re divorced! And the man would move on, never mind his part in it, to the next unsuspecting spouse. And in that world divorce destroyed women, even as today in our “enlightened” times the vast majority of women who go through a divorce still fall into poverty, it’s still women and children who are left holding the bag for men’s relational freedom. And I don’t know anyone, even if they absolutely had to get a divorce, who recommends the process afterwards, or who doesn’t feel its hurt, or recognize it at some level as sin—a breaking of God’s good will for us. We are made for communion—and our hearts hurt when it’s broken.

And Jesus sees our broken hearts, however they’ve been broken, with whatever we’ve done or have had done to us, and Jesus shares in your broken heart, even as on the Cross he was abandoned by those he loved, even as he endured the shaming and judgment of others, even as his own heart was pierced with a spear, even as he forgave those who sinned against him. And so Jesus comes to defend his little ones, he comes to defend you today, to defend each and every little one who this world is done with. And Christ closes this loophole the lawyers want to walk through, Christ blocks our hurting of one another today! “Divorce may happen,” he admits, “but this is because of your hardness of heart, for from the beginning God made us for each other, even in our brokenness he gave us to each other, so that the two shall become one flesh, and those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder, let no one separate.”

And as if to make the point that Jesus is out to protect his family, is out to protect every vulnerable one who trusts in him, the Bible then tells us people started bringing little children up to Jesus. But the disciples spoke sternly to them and blocked them. We all know this story, right? “Kids should be seen and not heard—we want your kids in church, but they better be perfectly behaved and silent.” Shame on us, when we judge children. For children are the other “throw-away” in our culture, for in a culture that says it loves kids we still stack the deck against them, we stick them with the bill for our sins, we make them pay the price for our actions. Even Jesus’ disciples say of the children today, “No room, Jesus is too important, get those kids out of here!” But Jesus rebuked the disciples, even as he rebukes us every time we can’t make space for children in our lives, welcome their little voices and busy bodies and protect them and honor them, and so taking the children into his arms, hugging them (!), Jesus blessed them. “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” Whoever doesn’t receive my Kingdom as a little child, with this kind of openness and trust, will never enter it, Jesus says.

For Christ himself has given himself, for all his children, upon the Cross. He, the Heavenly Bridegroom, has given himself for his bride, for the Church, for you, for me, for all who bear his Name. We belong to him, regardless of our relationship status, we have been chosen in love by him, united to him, for he has given all he is and all he has, out of love for you and for me, and even death could not part him from you. And now he has placed us within this family, his church, where we can support and care for one another in love. So no matter who you are, or how you have struggled or failed, Christ is full of forgiveness today, he opens a new beginning for you today, and he is not ashamed of you, is not ashamed to claim you and call you his very own.

We gather now at his wedding supper, at the marriage feast of the Lamb, God’s dream for all creation. And with all our loved ones who have gone on before us, and with the whole company of heaven, we join in the foretaste of the marriage feast that will have no end.

And the Peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, Amen.

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The Rev. Dr. Ryan Mills

New Haven, Connecticut