Gordon McPhee

                                                Mark 10: 2-16

“JESUS SAID, ‘KEEP IT SIMPLE’”

Scripture:  Mark 10:2-16 [MSG]

From there he went to the area of Judea across the Jordan. A crowd of people, as was so often the case, went along, and he, as he so often did, taught them. Pharisees came up, intending to give him a hard time. They asked, “Is it legal for a man to divorce his wife?”

Jesus said, “What did Moses command?”

They answered, “Moses gave permission to fill out a certificate of dismissal and divorce her.”

Jesus said, “Moses wrote this command only as a concession to your hardhearted ways. In the original creation, God made male and female to be together. Because of this, a man leaves father and mother, and in marriage he becomes one flesh with a woman—no longer two individuals, but forming a new unity. Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate his art by cutting them apart.”

The people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus was irate and let them know it: “Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very centre of life in the kingdom. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.

SUMMARY:

In the middle of Marks's Gospel, we find a passing vignette in the life of Jesus. He rebukes his disciples for blocking little children from being brought to him, then gathers them into his arms and blesses them. This is a wonderful children’s story that even adults enjoy. However, as we can see, Mark has crafted his text and the whole Gospel clearly to point to this central theme. He records the words of Jesus saying, “Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” Preceding this, he shows that Jesus is the Messiah as spoken of by the prophets and that he will suffer, die and be raised up again. After he continues with all that transpired in Jerusalem, but here, in the middle of the Gospel, in the loudest and clearest literary forms he can muster, he states this simple message, “accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child [or] you’ll never get in.” May we be the “children [who] are at the very centre of life in the kingdom.”

INTRODUCTION:

Life is complicated, isn’t it? We dream of simplifying things, getting back to basics. Maybe disconnecting some of our connectedness to a world that demands our attention. As children, this may have been possible, although I’m not sure children today have the same opportunities to ‘just be children’ as we did. Our education systems grab them at a much earlier age, sometimes at only a couple of years old, and begin the indoctrination in the structures, mores, and ideologies given government sanction and approval. So even a child’s life loses that innocence born of trust so precious to their development. The character ‘childlike’ no longer applies, and play loses its abandonment to the moment.

What is truly sad, as we’ll see in our reading from the Gospel of Mark this morning, is that this simplicity of a child that we seem to have lost and reject as adults is absolutely vital and key for our relationship with the Lord, Jesus Christ, and our salvation. We desperately complicate our lives to avoid having to simply come to Jesus, as we are, weary and worn and sad, finding in him a resting place, so he can make us glad. May we this morning hear the voice of Jesus say, “Come unto Me, and rest; Lay down, you weary one, lay down your head upon My breast.”

SERMON:

When we prepare to write something, anything at all, a letter, a recipe, a story, or an idea, we begin by thinking about how we’re going to say what we want to say. It’s called structure. In a recipe, we usually start with a title that gives someone an idea of what will be produced. A stew, bread, vegetable or dessert. And then comes the ingredients, an orderly procedure to follow and maybe some helpful hints and suggestions. Even a casual email or letter has structure. You know the reason for the communication, but there are protocols to follow. A salutation followed by some polite inquiries and maybe some relevant personal information before diving into the gist of the matter.

I think it would be ungenerous and naive of us to assume that the author of Mark simply sat down with quill and parchment one evening and began writing “The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” off the top of his head, albeit inspired by and guided through the Holy Spirit. In good conscience or scholarship, we cannot approach the Gospel of Mark, or for that matter any of the Gospels, as a neat chronological day-to-day story of Jesus doings as we might approach Cervantes’ 1539 novel “Don Quixote.”

No, Mark had a purpose. His first words are, “The good news of Jesus Christ—the Message!—begins here, following to the letter the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.” Through the content and structure of this Gospel, Mark intends to show his readers that the message is the good news that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, precisely as prophesied by Isaiah. It’s not a diary; it’s an apologetic, theological argument to make his case.

So if that’s the case, then to “get the point,” so to speak, we need to pay as much attention to Mark’s structure as to his content. Otherwise, we’ll misunderstand or, at the least, miss completely the thrust of what he is saying. So, to that end, let me show you a possible structure around the passage of scripture read this morning.

This passage falls square in the middle of Marks's Gospel, which scholars have divided into 16 chapters. Today, we are taught to put the critical statement of our paragraph or paper first or last; it’s either the conclusive summary or the leading thesis. But in Mark’s time, Greek rhetoric normalized making one's point in the middle. And that’s what Mark seems to be doing. It’s a sandwich that begins and ends with the only two healings of the blind. As if Marks was saying, Jesus restores, literally and spiritually, the sight of the blind, so look closely at what's in between.

The number three is significant; in Hebrew scripture, it symbolizes certainty, wholeness and divine perfection. Peter’s dream in Acts 10:16 of the unclean animals occurred three times so that he would take it seriously. So, three times, Mark has Jesus telling the disciples what will transpire at Jerusalem, and there are three healing miracles, although the middle one is the casting out of a demon. Mark’s story structure is getting his reader’s attention, seriously. Peter declares Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus responds by explaining, “The Way of the Cross.” His deity is confirmed in the Transfiguration, and He declares the indomitable force of the Gospel in the world.

And then, right smack dab in the middle of all this amazing theology, Mark inserts an obscure legalistic conversation with the Pharisees concerning the rules for divorce and then follows it with this children’s story about Jesus accepting and calling to himself the children. It’s almost like Mark went to bed at the end of chapter 9 and the next morning just grabbed a couple of Post-it notes randomly off the fridge and started chapter 10 with them. But that’s not what happened. And not just because Post-it notes and refrigerators didn’t exist yet.

No, Mark is screaming at us with all the rhetorical structure he can muster to pay attention to these two episodes, saying, “This is the point of the message, and you need to get it right!” In the middle of these revelations of Jesus' Messiahship, the proofs, the costs of discipleship, and the sacrifice Christ will make, the Pharisees are inquiring about a minor matter of Jewish tradition and Torah law. The Jewish sect most closely aligned with Jesus' teachings who should have been most able to grasp the truth of who the Messiah is and what it would mean to follow him, just don’t get it.

Jesus entertains their questioning knowing full well their deception and purpose. They try to trick him into denying the Law of Moses or alienating him from his followers. But Jesus sets aside the complexities of the law that enwraps their thoughts and turns their attention to the simple truth of God’s creation. God makes man and woman one flesh, and cutting them apart is desecration. Divorcing your spouse to marry someone else is adultery. The high-minded and high-sounding manipulations of tradition, doctrine and law are all trumped and put in place and perspective by the simple light of truth, at least for those who can see it.

And then, out of the blue, Mark shifts the scene to a place where “people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them.” We should understand this as parents or nurses bringing children in their charge to Jesus in the capacity of a rabbi, a respected teacher, to receive a blessing from him. For some, most notably those who were following him around, this may have been an act of devotion to Jesus, but there is also the sense of many who would have viewed Jesus as a shaman whose touch would evoke blessings on the child and the household, hence the disciple's penchant to push them away. However, Jesus isn’t discriminating or selective. It’s the children he wants to see.

In fact, Jesus was irate, very angry, that they would interfere with the children coming to him, and, as it says, “He let them know it! ‘Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me!’” We could probably fill a whole sermon just talking about the ways in which our church communities put up barriers that keep children from knowing Jesus’ simple loving care. You do not want to make the Almighty creator of the universe irate because a child’s childishness annoys you in church.

“Jesus gathered,” what a wonderful picture that is—so much love and compassion in it. Not Santa Claus taking and blessing the children one at a time on his knee but falling on the ground and reaching out with wide outstretched arms gathering into his breast as many grimy, giggly, slimy, gurgling children as he possibly could at once and then blessing them; no questions of faith, baptism, catechism, or belief, just unbounded love overflowing to all who would come. And Mark is telling you, this is the good news of Jesus Christ that begins here. This is Jesus.

Listen to Jesus’ words, “These children are at the very centre of life in the kingdom. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” Never! You’ll simply never get in. It doesn’t matter how pious you are or how much theology you know. Recite the catechism, say wonderful prayers, preach a good sermon or sing like an angel; it is to no avail. As Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel, “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. (7:22-23)” This is not where we want to be.

In these two seemingly out-of-place and maladjusted vignettes, Mark has skillfully contrasted the war within each one of us. In fact, it’s a problem that has assailed church history from the beginning. What are the requirements for membership? Who gets baptized? Who gets to see Jesus? The disciples set themselves up as the arbiters of who had access to Jesus. The Pharisees met with no interference; they walked right up to Jesus and tried to ensnare him. The unruly mass of children, uneducated, unimportant, merely children, these they obstructed. In everything we do, we judge wrongly. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts; neither are our ways His ways.

My dear friends, brothers and sisters, don’t confuse your faith in Jesus that brings you to your knees in love of Him with the principles, theologies, doctrines, procedures and rules that men use to govern and manage access to our Lord. Be on guard, for it happens more subtly and easily than you might imagine. It overcame the apostles. The story Mark relates after this one is of James and John vying to sit at Jesus' side when he comes into his Kingdom. We are tethered by a bungee cord to this desire to set boundaries on our love of Jesus. We love Him but want to maintain some control; otherwise, how will we know how far to go?

If you don’t fence in the Holy Spirit living in you with rules and doctrine, intelligent decisions and good counsel, that would be like abandoning yourself to love without restraints. That would be like Jesus opening his arms wide and gathering the children to himself. Where might this take us? What might God ask us to do? It frightens us, and rightly so, except if we abandon ourselves to faith in Jesus like little children. That’s the only way it can work. If the only thing in your mind and heart is the present moment and your need to rush into the arms of your waiting saviour. Nothing else to distract or deter you; in the simplicity of a child.

Oh, brothers and sisters, stop worrying about your rights and your wrongs and run to the open arms of Jesus that he may gather you up in His arms and lay his healing hands of blessing on you.

Amen