This was a tough week to figure out what to preach on! There’s a lot of strange and difficult stuff here. There’s beginning of the book of Job – a piece of folklore probably much older than the rest of the book, in which an unknown author living perhaps 500 years before Jesus takes this darkly funny story of God allowing Satan to torment someone to prove his piety, and uses it as the jumping-off point for a staggeringly profound and unique work of ancient theology written completely in dialogic poetry. I’ll talk more about Job next week, I promise! 

Then there’s the first bit of the letter to the Hebrews, which is interestingly preoccupied by the relationships among Jesus, the angels, and humanity. The project of Hebrews – which is really more of a sermon or theological essay than a letter – is to explore the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross through the ritual practices of worship at the Great Temple in Jerusalem. It’s interesting stuff but requires a lot of context to follow, and we are not its intended audience. It was likely written for early Jewish Christians and seekers who were trying to fit Jesus into their existing religious framework. 

There’s plenty of meat there for a sermon. But then… there’s this Gospel. Let me tell you, the temptation to just edit out the divorce talk and focus on the little children is strong! But this week I read a short commentary that convinced me to talk about the whole thing. The commentary – on the Working Preacher website – was written by Phil Ruge-Jones, who’s a Lutheran pastor in Eau Claire and a Biblical storyteller. 

Phil’s specialty as a Biblical storyteller is the Gospel of Mark. He has memorized and told the entire Gospel – there are videos online. That commitment to Mark’s voice and Mark’s witness gives Phil a valuable lens on how any given passage fits into Jesus’ overall message as Mark understands it. 

In his commentary, Pastor Phil names the elephant in room immediately. He says, “Beware this week. As soon as you read the word ‘divorce’ aloud, a whole sermon will appear in people’s heads. Some will hear… sermons that were launched at them or someone they loved… Others will conjure up [judgment] based on this single word.” 

This is exactly why it’s tempting to skip these verses! I know that talking about divorce stirs up a lot of stuff for a lot of people. Pain, shame, defensiveness, judgment, fear, and more. I know people for whom divorce has been liberation, even salvation. I know people for whom divorce has been a bitter loss, a deep wound. And many experiences of divorce are complex mixtures of hurt and healing, grief and relief. Regardless of folks’ experiences: NOBODY wants me to try to preach about divorce. 

So let’s step back from divorce to the setting for this passage. Pastor Phil notes, “Our lectionary still has us in the section of Mark where Jesus is leading the disciples toward Jerusalem. He is also trying to help the disciples find their way into what God desires. Interestingly, he is not calling them to acts of spiritual prowess. Rather, he is asking them to live well in their common human condition and in such mundane realities as family, wealth, and their gathered community. Jesus has consistently asked them to use what they have in service of those who are most vulnerable: children, the poor, those denied status.”

Three weeks ago, in our Gospel, in Mark chapter 8, we heard Jesus say, What good does it do anyone to gain the whole world and lose their soul? Two weeks ago, in chapter 9, we heard Jesus rebuke the disciples for arguing about who’s the greatest, saying, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” and reminding them that greatness looks like welcoming those who are unimportant by the world’s standards. 

Last Sunday, still in Mark 9, we heard Jesus caution the disciples against being too eager to say who’s in and who’s out – “Whoever isn’t against us is for us!” And urging his followers to stay salty. 

In today’s text, the beginning of chapter 10, he’s preaching again, and some Pharisees have a question for him. Jesus and the Pharisees had a lot in common!  They were both interested in calling ordinary people into renewed relationship with God. They clashed a lot because of the overlap in their missions. And it’s helpful for us to understand that arguing about how to interpret and apply Scripture is a really core practice in Judaism, past and present. For example: The Talmud, a core source of Jewish law and theology, consists of a block of Scripture surrounded on the page by the commentary of generations of rabbis, debating with each other about what the text means. I think we tend to read these encounters in the Gospels as hostile when this kind of religious sparring was very normal. 

I’m not sure why the Pharisees ask Jesus about divorce. Maybe it’s because they’ve gotten mixed messages about whether he’s really strict or really lenient in his teaching – he is kinda both! – so they’re trying to suss it out. Maybe it’s because divorce is a difficult, tender issue, and they want to see if they can corner him into saying something awkward that will upset people. 

What Jesus does is actually really interesting. He knows the Law perfectly well; he knows that Moses, the great interpreter of God’s laws for God’s people, allowed for divorce. But, Pastor Phil writes, “Jesus relativizes the law of God in light of the story of God. (Repeat.) Jesus argues that God’s creational desire for integrity in our relationships remains. While Moses might have made allowances in some cases, this does not nullify God’s original intent.”

Jesus says: the Law is secondary to God’s intentions for humanity and creation. God’s underlying purpose and desire for the cosmos is for right relationship, mutual flourishing and joy – whether that’s between nations and peoples, between humanity and the non-human created order, between members of a household or partners in a marriage. 

For all kinds of reasons: right relationship and mutual flourishing often fail, and so, God through Moses permitted divorce, among other concessions. But that doesn’t change what God wants for us: wholeness together, for many different togethers. 

One of the reasons mutual flourishing often fails is the development of social structures that give some power over others, because of wealth, anatomy, skin color, etcetera. Pastor Phil notes something about the dialogue in today’s Gospel that I had never noticed: what Jesus does with the pronouns. The Pharisees want to keep their question abstract, theoretical. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” They say, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

Jesus is having none of it. He says, “What did Moses command you?” He says, “Because of your hardness of heart [Moses] wrote this commandment for you.” He refuses to let this be abstract. In Judaism at the time, a man could divorce a woman, but not the reverse. Jesus’ questioners are men.

So Jesus is saying: Moses made an allowance for divorce because dudes like you didn’t want to commit to love and to cherish, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until you are parted by death. You want to be able to nope out if you start to find her annoying or boring or burdensome, or just spot someone you like better….  

And that’s cruel, because the way things work here and now, she has no protection and no livelihood, outside of a father or husband. So: Yeah, divorce is legal, because some of you are jerks. That’s a paraphrase and expansion of what Jesus says, but I think it’s the gist. 

Then Jesus goes home, and talks more with his disciples. So maybe this next scene with the little children is the next morning – or maybe it’s a thing that happened a lot, and this passage records what Jesus had to say about it. There’s no obvious connection with the divorce conversation… but then again, maybe there is. A social system in which women are often made vulnerable is also a social system in which children are often made vulnerable – true in Jesus’ time, true today. WayForward Resources, our local food pantry and resource center, regularly reminds us of the high numbers of children among their clients. And I think that, in both parts of this text, Mark wants us to hear Jesus’ insistence that his way is a way that cares for and honors those seen as less important, or pushed to the edges.

When Jesus holds up little children – literally and metaphorically – and says things like, “Whoever welcomes a little child in my name welcomes me,” and “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” he is profoundly challenging a social order in which adult men made most of the decisions affecting the welfare of others. Pastor Phil writes, “Marriage, as well as relationships between adults and children…, are proposed as spheres where we can live toward the other in the promise of our divine image.” 

It’s an election year, beloveds. I know that’s on many of our hearts and minds. I don’t talk about it a lot when I’m standing up here. I think it’s more important for us to pray through this season together, than for you to hear me hold forth about what I think. 

But our way of faith does have some big things to say, in seasons like this. And this year, here we are in our Sunday readings, deep in these chapters of Mark’s Gospel where Jesus keeps talking about the fact that wealth and power don’t mean you’re God’s favorite. About the ways our hardness of heart have distorted God’s intentions for our common life. About mercy, justice, love of neighbor, as the path to true greatness. About how a community that seeks to follow Jesus needs to look to those often pushed to the edges, and call them to the center, to care for them and learn from them. About how we can continue to live toward the other, toward one another, in the promise of our divine image. 

Jesus didn’t live in a democracy. But for us, using our votes and voices as citizens is a really important way we can practice our faith and love our neighbors. Who’s vulnerable in our world today? Where does your faith inform – or challenge – your opinions and convictions on the big issues in the public square? How does this election season call you as a person of faith, as a follower of Jesus, to show up and speak up?

May God guard us, guide us, and empower us, for the living of these days. Amen. 

Phil Ruge-Jones’s commentary on this Gospel: 

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-mark-102-16-6

My sermon was written as an outline this week so this version is a little sketchy, but you get the idea! 

Proverbs, the Biblical book: A collection of proverbs – sayings about life and how to live it – from the ancient Near East. There are six or more sets or sections within the book, anthologized in the time of Exile or even later. Focus on teaching and instruction. Fundamentally pragmatic sense of wisdom as something that helps you understand self and others, make good choices, and live a better life. To the extent that God is present, mostly as the originator and maintainer of a system in which good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people… even if it sometimes takes a while. 

Artfully written and poetic. Mostly couplets, two-line forms. Lots of evocative metaphors. An example: “Bread got through fraud is sweet to a man, but in the end it fills his mouth with gravel” (20:17) Using this image to say that what you get dishonestly may seem great at first, but…! 

Some are shrewd and funny; some offer genuine insight. Many boil down to, “Work hard and make good choices,” which I guess is the kind of thing parents and grandparents have always told children and grandchildren? 

Chapters 10 to 22 claim to be the wisdom of King Solomon, in particular – some of the 3000 proverbs that he composed, according to 1 Kings.

Proverbs, the thing: A proverb is a short saying that condenses some general truth, guidance, or advice. Wisdom distilled into something portable and concise. 

These past couple of weeks I’ve been noticing how many proverbs circulate in my household and our world! We learn them from our parents. A few from my family of origin: Pretty is as pretty does. That’s why God makes Fords and Chevys…  We learn them from our friends. I’m particularly fond of “Clear is kind,” from Cecilie B… We pick them up from the culture. “The morning is wiser than the evening” – Regina Spektor song.

But! It’s not that simple. Just because something makes a snappy saying doesn’t mean it’s true or wise. “God won’t give you anything you can’t handle” is one that particularly annoys me. First, because it implies that anything bad that happens to you is God’s intention for you, which I do not believe. And second, because it’s manifestly untrue. People are dealt situations they can’t handle all the time. That’s why God tells to look out for one another.

When I was in my teens – series of fantasy books popular at the time – line: “No evil ever came of a thing done for love.” I loved that; carried that around for a while.  … Then at some point in my late teens or 20s, I thought, Wait. That’s actually not true at all. Evil comes from things done for love all the time. 

Some of the proverbs we’ve inherited might be a little conditional in their application. For example: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” – That’s meant for situations like discouraging gossip, or not telling your friend that her new dress looks awful. But it can be misapplied to discourage people from speaking up about actual bad stuff. Contrast that with Proverbs 10:10: “The one who rebukes boldly makes peace!” 

Turning back to the Biblical book of Proverbs… it’s really interesting to read through! There are proverbs that still work, all these centuries later… Robert Alter: some of the proverbs “appear to derive from shrewd and considered reflection on moral behavior and human nature.” (351) 

One of my long-time favorites: “Better a meal of vegetables with love than a fatted ox with hatred.” (15:17) – better to live simply with love, than to have material plenty but no peace in your family or heart. One I read this week for the first time: “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or pours vinegar on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.” (25:20). Now, singing to someone sad could be nice, but I think the implication here is of somebody being aggressively cheerful at someone else who’s really burdened or struggling. We’ve all been there, and yeah, it’s rough. 

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion.” (18:2) – We all know one of those… 

We had a youth retreat on relationships, last winter – Proverbs (and Sirach, another Biblical Wisdom book) had a lot of useful material! Proverbs 17.9: “One who forgives an affront fosters friendship, but one who dwells on disputes will alienate a friend…. 18: Some friends play at friendship, but a true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin…” Working with the youth: lots we could relate to! 

There are proverbs that we maybe CAN’T relate to so much, but that give us a glimpse into life 3000 years ago… “Cheating scales are the Lord’s loathing, and a true weight-stone His pleasure” (11:1) – several versions. Reflect a time when weighing things out was a key part of any transaction, and false weights was a major form of economic dishonesty. “If you find honey, eat just enough – too much of it, and you will vomit.” (25:16) Probably about more than just honey, but still makes me curious about the backstory.

And there are proverbs that make us grateful that times have changed… 11:22 – “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without good sense…” OK. 13:24 – “Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them…” Meaning: You have beat your children to raise them right. Some of y’all were raised like that. But that’s not how most folks choose to parent today. 

And of course there’s a whole boatload of stuff that only sounds wise, but doesn’t actually hold up if you give it a hard look. A biggie: Proverbs’ confidence that if you work hard and do what’s right, you’ll get ahead in life. Robert Alter: “[Proverbs]… evinces great confidence in a rational moral order that dependably produces concrete rewards for virtue and wisdom.” That is just… not reliably true!! But we still speak and act as if it were, sometimes – thereby adding to human suffering.The book of Job, which comes along later this fall, will bring us some wonderfully complex wrestling with the idea that good people always have good lives.

Let me pause here for a brief detour into the book of Ecclesiastes, or Qohelet; I’ll use the Hebrew name because it’s less confusing, since there’s another Biblical book called Ecclesiasticus. Every adult here has heard a few verses from Qohelet: To every thing there is a season… Let people finish the sentence. That’s a lovely passage and some durable wisdom, I think. That life has different seasons can be a helpful reminder sometimes. 

But the book as a whole is interestingly ambiguous in terms of what lasting wisdom it offers. Qohelet written centuries after King Solomon, but presents itself as the voice of Solomon, late in life, reflecting back on life – and forward towards death. 

There’s a core word, throughout the text, that’s traditionally translated as Vanity – not in the sense of excessive pride in one’s own appearance, but in the sense of something futile or pointless. Listen to part of the first chapter… 

“The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
at which they toil under the sun?… 
I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.

I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’… [But] I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow…”

It is a loss that Qohelet is barely in our Sunday lectionary. It’s such a human text. Many of us have those thoughts and feelings at times. What is the point of it all? Where is the deeper meaning? And yet we might quickly find ourselves arguing with Qohelet’s sense that because death comes for us all, nothing matters and everything is pointless. I would love to do a study on Qohelet. I think there’s a struggle at the heart of that text with which we could be in fruitful conversation. But for now, let me just hold it up as another example of something that feels or sounds wise… and yet is missing something, at its heart. 

Proverbs are meant to distill wisdom – and there are different things that we call “wisdom.” Last week, we saw that Solomon’s “wisdom” included prudence, political savvy, strategic effectiveness. 

James – wonderful, vivid passage today on how much our tongues and our words can get us in trouble – follows that immediately with a passage we’ll hear next week, in which he says there are two types of wisdom: An “earthly, unspiritual, devilish” wisdom that has to do with envy and selfish ambition. And a wisdom from above, that is pure, peaceful, gentle, obedient, filled with mercy and good actions, fair, and genuine. You can recognize that kind of wisdom, says James, in a good life, and a spirit of gentleness. A person formed by this kind of holy wisdom will sow the seeds of justice through their peaceful acts. That sounds like somebody I want to be around. 

If we are lucky, and pay attention, we may meet a few people in life in whom we can see this kind of wisdom… and we might stumble upon and gather a few proverbs that capture that kind of wisdom. Bits and pieces we can carry with us to ground us and guide us. 

Beside my desk in my office, I have a cork board that’s covered with a lot of things – some proverb-length, some longer – that I have found to be true and reliable enough to use as touchstones, and that contain something of which I need to be reminded – something that’s not already built into my worldview and way of being. For example, there’s a simple prayer of gratitude and openness from Dag Hammarskjold – you can learn about him on our prayer table today: For all that has been: Thanks! For all that will be: Yes! 

There are other thing I carry inside me as sayings or songs – like the one that goes: You don’t have to know the way; the Way knows the way. These things meaningfully capture something important that helps me be a better priest and a better person. 

But I have wrestled a little, in these weeks of exploring the theme and the literature of Wisdom, with whether all this is God-y enough. Have I ditched my responsibility of calling us to turn our hearts towards the Love at the heart of the universe, in favor of insightful aphorisms and good advice? 

And yet! There is ALL THIS wisdom literature in the Bible. It’s a big chunk of the book, if you add it all up. And there are repeated reminders that Wisdom – true wisdom –  is a gift from God, even an emanation or aspect of God; and that the pursuit of wisdom is a holy and righteous path. 

God says through the prophet Isaiah, My thoughts are not your thoughts; but the Wisdom texts of the Bible suggest that there’s at least some overlap in the Venn diagram of God’s thoughts and our thoughts! 

And the fact that God gives us this capacity to become wise – to recognize and to share wisdom – true wisdom, the kind of wisdom James is talking about that’s peaceful and gentle and merciful and fair and genuine and just – the fact that God gives us that capacity is just such a beautiful sign of the intimacy and partnership that God wants with us. We were never made to be puppets or subjects, unquestioningly following divine degrees. We were made to be children, and co-workers, and friends of God, in the holy work of ordering all things well.