Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (proper 22) October 8, 2006.

Genesis 2:18-24

Psalm 8

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

Mark 10:2-16

These are the kind of pericopes that inspire well-timed vacations. The readings for this Sunday carry great weight and possible contention in our communities as we have conversations about who is able to marry, how that marriage is to function, and what happens when it doesn't anymore. But, more than marriage and divorce, these texts speak to the ordering of all our relationships.

While we might be tempted to take the Sunday off, in doing so we would miss great stories in which we experience God entering our humanity. God mixes God's hands in the dirt to make us and continues to put God's flesh in the world in Jesus, "the exact imprint of God's very being" (Heb 1:3). God is present with us in our relationships with our partners and calls us to pay attention to the children, the ones who know in their vulnerability, play, and trust the intimacy of God's presence in our midst.

Genesis offers two versions of the creation story, and today's first reading comes from the story written by the Yahwist. In the Hebrew in this text it is very interesting to see the way in which the human creatures come into being. In the part of this story just prior to our pericope, God creates the first creature ('adam) made from the soil of the earth ('adamah). In the Hebrew, there is a deep linguistic connection with the soil; a better translation for this first person would be "earthling."

After giving the earthling the vocation to serve and till the earth, God realizes that it would not be good for this earthling to be alone, and God makes the creatures from the soil of the earth, just like Adam/earthling. Adam/earthling, in an act of recognition and relationship building, names the animals; but none of the animals is a suitable partner. So God makes for Adam/earthling a partner from his side, and the earthling's name is changed; now it is man (ish) and the woman (ishshah). And they are suitable partners.

God is deeply bound up in the creation of men and women and the creatures. All are made of the same dirt of the earth. This is a powerful story of God's creativity and the beauty and joy of our interconnectivity not only with one another as men and women but also with the creatures of the world and the earth. God cares about the fullness of life of God's people, which grows from human relationships and relationship with all God's creatures.

Today's epistle reading, the first of a series from Hebrews, sets the tone for the entire letter: the superiority and finality of Christ as prophet, priest, and sacrifice. While the remainder of our readings from Hebrews in the coming weeks focus on Christ as the new high priest, this text sets forth some important theological themes for the writer of Hebrews: the understanding of perfection through suffering, the exaltation of Christ above the angels, human beings, priests, and prophets, and the sacrificial nature of Christ.

The writer of Hebrews declares that God has subjected all things under the feet of human beings, offering humanity a great sense of how much we are honored and loved by God ("Who are we that you are mindful of us?" Heb 2:6/Ps 8:4). For the community to whom this letter was written, a community experiencing persecution and suffering, this would have been a great word of hope. At this time they have nothing subject to them, but there is hope that, through their sufferings, they, like Christ, will be glorified. Still, it is a difficult text to read, at least from my own privilege and mindfulness of human dominance that bore destruction on this earth. Perhaps while claiming our belovedness in God we can accept this challenge to serve the world and all its creatures with sacrifice and thanksgiving, as Christ did.

The beginning of the reading from Mark demonstrates that even at the time of Jesus the rules of divorce were not clear. The Pharisees sought Jesus out to answer their question, and they did so to test or entrap him, saying "is it lawful for a man to divorce a wife?" The Greek here is from [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], which means to release from, loosen from, dismiss, set free, or divorce. Jesus speaks God's vision for commitment and faithful relationships but does not become trapped by rules and easy morality.

There was no easy answer to the question of divorce then, and there is none today. Perhaps, as preachers, we can listen to the way that Jesus responds to the questions that seek to trap us in boxes of easy answers. Jesus responded to their question with a question: "What does Moses command you [pl.]?" Perhaps Jesus models the best way we could respond to our communities as we live into difficult questions about sexuality and permitted partnerships. How do you hear Jesus speaking to us? What might Jesus command us, these days, around these issues? The good news I hear in this text is Jesus' refusal to give an easy answer. For, in opening conversation, in living into questions, we are opened to the possibilities, to one another and to Christ.

Jesus says that the commandments are given out of our hardness of heart. This is a fascinating word, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and is basically a direct translation from the Greek. It is used only one other time in Mark (16:14), when Jesus reproaches the disciples for not believing the women who had seen him after he had risen from the dead. Jesus calls them hardhearted because of their lack of faith and stubbornness. How might our dependence on the law and quick answers to rules make us hardhearted in hearing God's word of forgiveness and resurrection? How does the grace of Christ open our hearts to life and questions? While these words could offer a rigorous command about marriage and remarriage, they also offer the good news of Jesus' refusal to answer questions with Yes or No; rather, Jesus answers with a question to the community and with a challenge to hardheartedness. Perhaps, by God's grace, we might live these questions with our hearts released.

This way of living into questions takes vulnerability, the vulnerability that the children and parents of the children demonstrated in the second half of the Mark reading. In a time when the rate of childhood mortality was so very high, when children were as precious as always and the world so much more dangerous, the risk that it took those children (and their parents) to let Jesus touch them is miraculous. Yet, this very risk drew them to him for protection and blessing. While we live with our own fears, questions, and doubts, Jesus most assuredly reaches into our lives and blesses us. SKO