Hardness of Heart

Mark 10:2-16

Does it ever frustrate you when the church seems to get caught up in political issues, and wind up getting involved in things that should be someone else’s business?

 

As often as not, it’s because people come – as they do in today’s gospel story – and demand an opinion on the issues of the day:

Tell us, Jesus, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?“Is the king’s marriage legal?” they are asking. “Is it holy?”

 

Herod Antipas, after all, was a divorced man married to a divorced woman (a woman who had been previously married to Herod’s brother).
Jesus’ cousin John has already gotten himself beheaded for his fierce criticism of this post-divorce marriage (among other things).

And now, we’re demanding that Jesus publicly wade into this mess.

 

There’s no good answer to this question. So Jesus, as he usually does, takes the intended trap as a starting place, and leads off into a wilderness no one was planning to have him get us into.

 

He starts with “well, what does the scripture say?”

He knows – and his questioners know perfectly well – that the Torah, the law of Moses, accepts divorce as a fact.
For as long as God’s people have had written law, written guidance on relationships acceptable to God, divorce has been a part of the fabric of society.

That’s the “don’t bother to try to trap me” part of Jesus’ response. And then he launches his real point.

 

It’s lawful; it always has been, because of your hardness of heart.

Marriage, in its right and holy state, is a lifetime unity. That’s the whole and perfect relationship God created to nurture and strengthen humanity. That’s what we dream of, what we intend, every time we come to God, to the church, to enter marriage these days, too.

 

But humanity is broken and imperfect. And God knows it.

Knows it, and creates a set of systems and holy law around our broken imperfection.

 

Jesus has not sought out an opportunity to shame people who have experienced divorce; or to scold those whose marriages are broken – or those who are broken by a marriage that’s not whole, not perfect.

Jesus responds to those who want to use divorce as a political trap, and chooses to remind us that none of us live up to the wholeness and perfection that God creates.

Because of our hardness of heart.

 

Our cardiosclerosis (almost literally, in the Greek).

The drying and hardening of the muscle of life and of love.

All the kinds of love that connect us in human relationship, not just in marriage.

 

For all that Jesus is laying down the law about divorce in the story we read today – and laying down new law, more egalitarian and more stringent about the possible injuries to others – I don’t think that divorce itself, or the institution of marriage, or the preservation of any particular marriage, is the point he’s focused on.

 

Instead, I think his focus – the focus he wants us to have – is on generosity of heart. Lively flexibility of heart. Like the heart of God.

The heart that flexes, grows, and strengthens in the face of humanity’s constant imperfections and failures and breakages, as well as in joy and in unity and completeness. The responsive and generous heart of God, that does not clog and dry up as our human hearts so often tend to do.

 

Our hearts – mine at least, and I suspect I’m not alone – our hearts do get broken.
In marriage and out of marriage, in all our human relationships.
And many of the injuries to our hearts – the little ones, the daily ones, often – scab up; harden. Clog up, just a little bit, our empathy, our generosity toward others.

It’s our self-protective instinct to not get hurt again.

 

Or we clog with just a garden variety solidifying of a resistance to irritations and annoyances. Because all these humans we live with and try to love are…full of annoying or irritating habits and needs.

 

Or there are times when the muscle of love for our siblings, our neighbors, feels overworked; when our compassion feels weakened because there are so many demands on our empathy and generosity.
So many devastating losses to the winds and waters in our news feeds and our family and friend stories.
So many illnesses and injuries and losses that come to friends and family members in waves and floods – that we want to support, to respond to with generous hearts, and are just too much at once, and our hearts feel stiffer and slower when the next one comes, or the first one drags on. And we ourselves get tired, and sore, and brittle and clogged.

 

And sometimes, honestly, our hearts get stiff and slow because we don’t take them out for exercise often enough. Just like my physical joints and heart and lungs, my emotional heart, or yours, can get slower because it’s more comfortable to sit still than to seek out the emotional exercise – the new relationships, the hard conversations, the actions of giving and caring, the sharing of joys – that keeps our muscles pumping and compassion flowing.

 

Jesus pushes us – today, all the time – to expect more from our hearts than we are used to. To expect and intend our hearts to be more and more like the heart of God.

That’s often not an easy thing to do. It requires attention and intention.

But we do not have to do it alone.

 

For many of us – not all, but many – marriage itself can be the relationship in which we renew, and heal, and strengthen our hearts, growing more generous and flexible in a working, living love that mirrors the generous heart of God.

 

For many of us – intentionally, for all of us – the community of disciples, the household of God should be a place of heart renewal. A place and a practice of softening and strengthening our muscles of compassion and trust and generosity, of love. Love for one another, and for God.

And of flexing that muscle of life inside us that receives love from God and one another.

 

I look for that, and I find that at Trinity.

At our practices of exercising our compassion and generosity together, seeking out ways to care for strangers, and for one another.

At our common prayer, meant to heal and stretch our scar-tissue and give us flexible hearts, more ready to love, and give, and receive.

I hear the strengthening beat of our shared heart, as we meet challenges together, adapt to changes together, welcome new friends, nurture our children together.

I hear the sound of God’s whole and generous heart in our shared song and praise in worship, and in the joys we share with one another.

 

I recognize myself, broken and imperfect, in the hardness of heart that Jesus calls out, today.

I recognize us, together, in the whole and generous heart of God that Jesus reminds us we are created to share.

The divine heart that doesn’t harden, but makes space for our broken imperfections. And still demands that we grow, no matter how often we break. Grow stronger, and truer, and more whole and perfect and holy, together.

 

The Good Life

Mark 9:30-37, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Proverbs 31:10-31

Who wouldn’t want to live “the good life”?

 

Searching that hashtag on Instagram gives results that are at least two-thirds pool and beach-related. A quick “good life” browse on Facebook trended more toward photos of food.

But the good life comes in many varieties, and lurks in the subtext, if not the actual text, of the scripture readings assigned for today.

 

If you were to ask Jesus’ first disciples about the good life – at least at the beginning of today’s story – they’d probably tell you about being recognized in their rank and status – holding positions of honor and greatness.
Any one among us or our friends with an eye on a particular promotion at work, or an award in our field – or anyone unironically enjoying their “World’s Greatest Coach” or “Grandpa” coffee mug – might be sympathetic to how those early disciples were thinking.

 

Jesus isn’t, of course. He has no hesitation in telling those first followers – and us – that lack of status is an earmark of the holy life – or at least the kind of holy life Jesus expects us to want and to imitate.

(Of course it didn’t take long for the corporate followers of Jesus – the church – to start reinventing servanthood as a status symbol of its own. There’s probably a set of “world’s greatest servant-leader” mugs out there by now. It’s hard to resist imagining some kind of recognition being part of the good life.)

 

And nobody asked James, the epistle-writer, to describe the good life, but he calls it out today, inviting us to display our “good life” rooted in “gentleness born of wisdom” – rooted in the inner peace of a life devoted to God.

And there’s a portrait of that wisdom-life in the final poem of the book of Proverbs, which we started with, today.

 

The one about the amazing woman who does everything well.

The “capable wife” language in our English translation transforms a call to seek a “woman of valor” into a dryly functional, colorless job title. But the job description – the portrait of this woman of valor, the good life to be fervently sought – is full of color and detail.

 

This is the woman who has it all.

Or, maybe, the woman who does it all.

It’s an extraordinary list of tasks and accomplishments: executive management, sharp business leadership, active charity and service, excellent handcrafts, teaching and coaching - a role model – whose lamp never goes out and who is never lazy. No personal days and me time, just success and fulfillment in everything she touches.

 

You see versions of her on Instagram these days – at the head of an “influencer brand” everyone’s supposed to want to imitate.
See versions of this woman whipping up a picture-perfect breakfast for her smiling, prompt children with one hand behind her back prepping a several million dollar presentation at her high-powered job, organizing a food drive at the kids school and a benefit gala for a medical charity, while supporting her husband’s run for governor or something.

 

I

Am

Exhausted

just reading this scriptural portrait.

Or contemplating the current-day equivalent.

 

I’m from a generation that grew up shaped by the expectations that wherever our mothers fell short of having it all, we would cross the finish line and Win Everything.  That we’d be the ones who finally made having a perfect family and high-powered career (and perfect body, but we didn’t talk about that explicitly) all at the same time normal and achievable for every woman, and the promised land of Equality would be come.

 

And when I saw this scriptural Woman Who Does It All coming up in the assigned Sunday readings, I cried.

 

The lived experience of a generation – or a hundred generations – has affirmed that this glorious portrait of the woman of valor is fantasy. A standard to which no actual human woman can live up.

No human person, female or otherwise, honestly.

 

None of these scriptural descriptions of the holy human, the person of wisdom, fit normal human beings, honestly.

James tells us a life rooted in “the wisdom from above” is pure, peaceable, gentle, open and flexible, full of mercy and good results without a trace of bias or hypocrisy.

Raise your hand, would you, if you know people just like that: Universally pure, peaceable, productive and perfectly, constantly objective and always sincere.[know more than one person like that?]

 

We do need ideals to strive for, and a life that’s halfway to peaceful, fruitful, gentle, welcoming, honest and generous is a more pleasant life to live than one that’s a quarter of the way there, or one that’s mostly disrupted, cranky, hostile, shady and distorted.

 

But what James, and Jesus, and the compiler of the book of Proverbs need us to do when we read their words is to desire that good life of wisdom, to seek that fruitful, generous, welcoming life as a gift of God, as the way of life of God’s household that embraces and supports our faithful living. 

Not as some accomplishment or goal we create, achieve, or own for ourselves.

 

The faithful reader and responder of Proverbs is the one who seeks, loves, and makes a commitment to a life with the wisdom of God – the wisdom which is and does all those glorious things. The wisdom of God protects, provides, gives, produces, cares for all – not we ourselves, as individuals. We seek to join her household. To move in to the world shaped by this pure peace, this fruitful gentleness, this wholehearted openness and grace.

 

To let go of having the success for ourselves, and commit to supporting God’s success in everyone around us, participating in God’s generous care for everyone unworthy of that extraordinary glory.

 

In that household of God, we find ourselves becoming more like that amazing woman, more steeped in James’s “wisdom from above”. We become more fruitful, peaceable, generous, capable, oriented to the service of all, not by our individual efforts and achievements, but together, as the household of wisdom we become extraordinary. Together, in the household of God, we become the people of valor. 

 

That good life is waiting for us.
Calling to us.

Inviting us to welcome it as a gift, and to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to join in.

To become a part of the whole of God’s wisdom, protecting and promoting and providing for the strength and joy of all God’s people.

High Expectations

Mark 8:27-38

What are people saying?

What are you hearing about me?

Jesus seems to be conducting something of an opinion poll as our story opens today. And the responses place Jesus solidly in the long tradition of God’s prophets – those who bear God’s Word to God’s people. This is old news to many of us, listening and watching. Interesting, but impersonal – like a lot of contemporary opinion polls.

 

When Jesus turns the question to “Who do you say I am?” some of us may take it more personally, checking in on our own confidence or doubts about who Jesus of Nazareth really is and what he’s all about, while others of us still feel like comfortable observers – we’re watching a conversation from a long time ago, with Jesus’ special chosen disciples, after all.

 

And then the story takes a turn (the same turn it always takes, but a sharp turn nonetheless).
From focus group or theological teaching moment to a hard and direct conversation about death.

Many of us are squirming now. Or should be.

 

Because death is uncomfortable to talk about in the midst of life.

And it doesn’t sound especially friendly, or welcoming, or, for that matter, sane to announce that you’re going to be arrested, rejected, murdered, and resurrected.

Or to encourage everyone around you to do the same.

 

I’d be quietly unfriending that person on Facebook, if someone I knew was doing that. Or checking to see if they’ve got mental health support services. Peter tries a bit of that with Jesus, and is told in no uncertain terms to butt out. This is for real.

 

It’s a stark statement from Jesus: that the popular man who heals and inspires people, and brings us right in touch with a sense of holiness and God’s care for us is expecting, shortly, to be suffering, killed, and resurrected.

And that he expects other people – us?!? – to do the same.

 

Does Jesus really want us to embrace rejection, the loss of all we have and are, and literal death?

Want you and me – not just his specially chosen few, but us – to die for or with him?

 

Yes.

 

And yes, my gut lurches every time I look straight at that possibility.

But I’m convinced this is a real ask, a real expectation Jesus has.
That if we want to follow him, we will actually reject, renounce our selves, and deliberately accept death.

And, that when we lose self, life, everything, we also – gain it?
But not by avoiding death?

 

It’s weird, hard to understand. And just plain hard.

I don’t want to.

 

Rejecting your own life, your whole self, is a really stark and repellent demand.

It’s a wonder Jesus has any followers if this is what he’s asking for.

His expectations are too high for reasonable people to meet. And he’s talking about being ashamed of us at judgment day if we don’t meet them.

What happened to the nice, welcoming, loves-everyone Jesus we’ve heard about? The one who wants to save us?

 

Good news and bad news, friends.

This demanding, stark, potentially terrifying Jesus is precisely the radically loving, welcoming, generous Jesus.

The demand to give up our lives entirely is a demand to live in that radical, divine, extraordinary, generous love that Jesus brings us.

 

Tough as it is, it is welcoming in a profound way, because Jesus is opening this invitation to anyone.

“If any of you want to become my disciple,” he says.

I’ll take anybody. Garbage collectors, the neighbor with the tackiest yard signs, Wall Street tycoons and day laborers, tax accountants, immigrants, girls… even politicians.

In a context where to be chosen as a disciple of a popular and well-known rabbi was probably the end result of a lifetime’s focused education and training and the kind of family investment now reserved for beating the odds into an Ivy League university, Jesus standing in front of a random crowd and saying “if any of you want to be my disciple, you can” is bombshell-radical welcome, generosity, and empowerment.

 

Nobody is disqualified.

Not the person who has been bored out of their mind by church and Jesus’ other followers, not the person who’s been insulted and rejected, not the hopeless underachiever, not the person who’s broken all ten commandments (or all 613 in scripture, depending how you count) just to keep score.

Anybody can be a disciple – an apprentice – even a close personal friend of this miraculous, popular, powerful Jesus.

Anybody can decide to follow Jesus, which means to become like Jesus.

Which means to become deeply, personally close to God, to become a human being infused with, filled with, the presence and power and love of God’s own self.

 

And here’s the thing – the thing that I think is so obvious to Jesus he doesn’t do a really good job of explaining what happens when you renounce yourself and lose your life for and with him. It’s that this incredible closeness to God, to God’s self, enables all the self-sacrifice as well as demanding all the self-sacrifice.

The renunciation, the losing of our selves, is the same thing as experiencing the glorious, rich, soul-filling closeness to God Jesus shares. The same thing as the deep, joyous, earthshaking love obliterating all our selfishness and fears.

 

And Jesus is telling us that that’s what he expects from us.

Expects that we lose ourselves in love.

 

Sometimes, we give ourselves up because the love takes the lead. Sometimes we get to feel the warmth  and joy of love making it almost easy to give up time, or wealth, or choices or opinions or kidneys or other things we take personally, other elements of ourselves.

 

Other times, the hard decisions of self-denial come first – and then love reveals itself to us.

A bone marrow donor discovering after the difficult process of donation a sense of deep, supportive, familial love and friendship for the stranger who received that physical part of her self.

Someone slowing down his frantic rush out of a burning building – deciding to risk his life – and discovering that he feels no resentment or fear, just love and hope, as he helps lift the office’s most annoying colleague out of danger.

You, reluctantly choosing to go to a movie or concert you expect to hate, because it’s what your child or spouse or friend has been longing for. Then realizing that though you’ve been dreading it for so long (and it is pretty terrible), you’re feeling the peace of love in the experience of it. 

Or resenting how much laundry detergent costs, and then – after you grumpily add two more bottles to your cart to bring to the Trinity household needs pantry – feeling your heart lift. And realizing that’s God’s love taking over your heart, whether you planned for it or not.

 

Renouncing ourselves – giving up our life for love – doesn’t just happen once, in one decision to follow Jesus.

It’s such a big deal, such a high expectation, because Jesus is calling us to a constant attitude of choosing to step away from our self-interest, self-protection, and right into the proactive, generous, overwhelming love of God, whatever it costs us.

 

Over, and over, and over, and over, no turning back.

Until our whole lives become a sacrament of that generous, welcoming, hope-fueling, divinely joyful love that doesn’t need to protect ourselves, but delights in giving up our selves.

 

Because we have become like Jesus.

Become love.