He’s not mincing words. The Kingdom belongs to them. Not the disciples. Not the Pharisees. Not the Romans. The children. We need to hear these words.
How our focus on law and politics misses the real revelation
Proper 22B | Mark 10:2-16
The Long Walk is Almost Over
The walk from Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem is long. And so far, hasn’t been easy. Jesus has had to bring Peter back in line behind him, shown them GOD on a great mountain, overcome their unbelief with the healing of a boy, and predicted the passion a second time.
The story, and its theme of confused identity continues.
Jesus doesn’t just predict his death in a vacuum at the end of chapter 9. They are on the road, he has told them that GOD’s dream for the world is to have the poor be rich and the powerful to be brought low: the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Jesus has been preaching about the upside down economy. Then he goes into an extremely important detail of that economy: that they are to hinder no one in their faith that is smaller or weaker or doesn’t have what they have.
'Children are faithful already. We can learn from them.' Share on X
So how do they receive this message? They tell a man healing in the name of Jesus to cut it out. And Jesus rebukes them again, making the point with a child. Don’t mess with the children! he says to them. When you mess with them, you mess with Jesus. That’s a message we need to hear. Children are faithful already. We can learn from them.
Enter: The Lawyers
So we enter into today’s gospel missing the verse which connects last week’s gospel with this week’s:
He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.
So they are nearly there. They are in the country, Judea, nearing Jerusalem. And the people are gathering around. They have heard of him, and as usual, he taught them.
This is where the Pharisees enter the picture. We haven’t seen them in a little while. And we will be seeing a lot of them in the rest of the book. But they’ve been absent from the narrative for a while.
When we receive the Pharisees, let’s take note of what they bring to the story. If we recall, the disciples are portrayed as inept and foolish, that we might find kinship with the least likely followers of Jesus. But the Pharisees seem to be the opposite. Jesus portrays them as smart, knowledgeable, and wily. They want to trick and trap Jesus. They are educated, and when Jesus rebukes them, he does so often saying that they should know better.
So when they ask Jesus about divorce, the very last thing we should do is think that Jesus is giving out an abstract rule. This isn’t Jesus’s by-laws for his followers or canons for the church. He is responding to a trap by people with poor intentions, as he approaches the Passion. Context matters a ton here.
When asked by those trying to trap him, he doesn’t respond to their question. What are your thoughts on divorce, Jesus? And Jesus’s response is to say these two things:
- Moses gave the people divorce because we can’t hack it with marriage.
- Here’s what I think about marriage.
It is to the disciples that he calls divorce sinful, in private. Not to the crowds or the legalists. His close followers.
The Distraction and the Purpose
Jesus isn’t writing new law. He is responding to a trap diplomatically, but he also doesn’t respond to the human law with a replacement human law. He doesn’t say jack about the process of divorce, particularly given that women have no rights in the Mosaic form.
All he says is that it is sinful for a man to do it. And sinful for a woman to do it. Period.
This isn’t a new law. This is a description of the old law. There is no punishment, there is no delineation of how to prosecute it. This isn’t law like that. It is naming what GOD thinks of it, saying that this breaks relationship between us and between GOD. And what are we supposed to do when we sin and break relationship? We repent. He isn’t saying divorce your new spouse or punish yourselves forever because of this one thing. Remember, he doesn’t speak of punishment at all. He names what it truly is (sin) and he knows that we know how to respond (repent). That’s it.
Now Jesus returns to his point. He deals with this interruption that was the Pharisees, with the trick and the trap of their question and their naive teaching. Jesus didn’t come to split hairs about human laws, he came to talk about the upside down economy of GOD: the first are last and the last are first and he was trying to show them what this means with children in particular. The group with the lowest status in society. So Jesus gets back on pointe.
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them.
People are coming to Jesus to have their children blessed, to actually get their kids into the kingdom, right? It’s like coming straight from the hospital to get your kid baptized. They want their kids to be blessed. They aren’t bringing themselves, they’re bringing their kids and these kids, in this moment are embodying the kingdom because they are the last in Hebrew and Roman society, but these parents are putting them first in line around Jesus. And what do the disciples do?
They “spoke sternly to them.” Rebuke them. Shout at them. Get them to go away. Again, they’ve stepped out from their posture behind Jesus and get out in front of him. They aren’t trying to be disciples, but an entourage. Protection. Muscle. And Jesus just rebuked them for doing this very thing!Remember that dude who was healing in Jesus’s name last week? They’re doing it again. And again Jesus says these children are the kingdom, they get to be first because we don’t get it. But he takes it a step further.
“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
He’s not mincing words. The Kingdom belongs to them. Not the disciples. Not the Pharisees. Not the Romans. The children. We need to hear these words.
Children and GOD
Children, the kingdom belongs to you. Not the smartypants adults. You’re in charge of the kingdom of GOD. Our job is to serve you and GOD. It is not to make you smart like we are, but to learn how to love GOD like you do.
Jesus is talking about the kingdom and love and hope and the way to make GOD’s dream for us a reality. And he does this while showing us that we need to embody that relationship here in this world with one another. Not through church by-laws and teaching about when we’re allowed to serve GOD, but through living it out with one another now. To take responsibility now with our children and all the little ones who already possess the kingdom.
We don’t need new rules or initiatives or systems, we need to hear the gospel for what it is: the good news that the Kingdom already belongs to our children. Children aren’t our future. Or our present. Children are the only way all of us can see and know GOD.
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