Soften Your Heart

Biblical Text: Mark 10:2-16 (Parallel Matthew 19:1-15)

Of all the ethical teaching of Jesus, this is probably the most consistently rejected throughout all time and space. And not because it is false, but exactly for the reason Moses felt moved to regulate it – “the hardness of our hearts.” The text in Mark and the Matthew parallel are first about divorce, but in Jesus’ teaching about divorce you have his entire sexual ethic. And he doesn’t ground it in any petty legalistic scheme or regulation. Jesus is not getting pulled into our Overton Window fights. His response is so far outside of acceptable opinion that even Jesus adds the note of despair, “Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

What this sermon attempts to do is build the case for receiving it, even if it convicts us. Grounded as it is in natural law it is part of the deep magic of this world. And the law is good and wise. If we conform ourselves to this, things go better. But that is still the law. Why we should receive it, even if we cannot keep it, is because the gospel itself is unthinkable without it. Marriage is the image, the icon, that is given of Christ and the Church, of God and his people. And Christ loves the church with his steadfast love, his covenant faithfulness. We don’t want a world where God can divorce his love. And we do not have one. Receiving this teaching is receiving the invitation to the eschatological wedding feast. We may never live up to it, we might be cracked icons, but the icon is always imperfect. The perfect itself will come.

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Grace was Never Practical

Biblical Text: Mark 10:2-26
Full Sermon Draft

This sermon is a little longer than my typical one. The subject from the gospel text is marriage and divorce. Because the contextual density of the topic and because of its high profile in our general culture this sermon takes its time and spells out all the steps. I believe I arrive at the proclamation of the gospel, but it might not be the gospel we always want to hear.

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The City of God

Text: Mark 10:2-16
Full Draft of Sermon

Augustine is one of those people who even if we have never read him still influences our thoughts. He influences the categories that place things in without us knowing it. Two of those categories are the City of God and the City of Man. We tend to slip into a little too dualistic thinking, making the City of Man all bad or evil. That isn’t really the case. The City of Man has its good and proper things. In fact it is usually good enough that we refuse to consider something else and spend out days desperately grasping what we have in the City of Man.

In Mark 10 Jesus lays out core distinctions between the Kingdom or City of God and the common perception. And he starts with marriage and divorce, which to be polite, Jesus is beyond the bounds of polite discourse.

But core distinction that he is trying to get at I think is this. The City of Man runs on accommodation. Because everything in the city of man comes with an expiration date, everything runs on making accommodation. The City of God runs on absolution. Accommodation hides. Absolution reveals. Accommodation eventually fails. You run into something that can’t be accommodated. God never runs out of grace. And that’s it, the currency of the City of God is grace. It buys nothing in the City of Man; but its what opens out eyes to something better.

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The Elephant in the room…Mark 10:1-16

Full Text

This sermons subject – sexuality and specifically divorce – is a hard word in our culture. Jesus doesn’t allow it – divorce that is. Divorce is not in God’s plan. And we can’t keep that – neither in what our society formally calls marriage, nor in our sexuality that assumes marriage rights without the committment. And it is a standing judgment against us – sexual sins are those we can’t fix, are those we commit against our own bodies. Wouldn’t it be easier if Jesus was just more laid back about divorce? Go that way if you want to lose the Gospel. Marriage is how God describes his relationship with His people – and he took reconciliation all the way to the cross – no divorce indeed. We are sinners, but our God’s grace and mercy are much larger than our ability to mess it up. Trust in that faithful relationship sealed on the cross made sure at the resurrection.