Pentecost 21 Mark 10:22-31

How do you know if you have been blessed by God? 

Consider your life, for a moment, stop and think about the gifts the Lord has given to you and ask yourself, has the Lord blessed you? 

When asked like this, I think most of us would say that the Lord has blessed us.  Typically we will stop to consider things like our families and those we love, and those who love us.  We will remember those material gifts, our house or home our car our job.  If we are particularly pious we will remember those who are less fortunate than we – the sick, the impoverished, those who live in the 3^rd world and then, when compare ourselves to these we are doubly blessed.  And so when asked if we are blessed by God, these are things that we count as blessings and so we would answer the question affirmatively. 

Has the Lord blessed you?  Has He blessed me?  Yes, we will say, the Lord is good.  We are definitely blessed by God.

But are we still confident of the Lord’s blessing?  When asked in a rhetorical sort of a way, when we have time to stop and think, and I suppose when we know what the answer to the question is supposed to be, we can usually come up with the right answer.  Are we blessed by God? We know God gives us all we have.  We know that we should remember what he has given – but does it ever happen that you just aren’t sure?  I mean, do you ever wonder if God has truly blessed you? Do you ever think maybe he isn’t blessing you?  That he has forgotten to bless you? Or that your blessings have run out for a while?  Do you ever wonder if God has blessed somebody else more?  With greater blessings than what he has given to you?

Sometimes I can’t log on to Facebook without getting a little jealous of the blessings God has given to other people.  I get to see the finishing times of all my friends who are running races that I haven’t been able to run lately, my friend who just got a new Ford Mustang – he like to post pictures of it.  Those of you who follow my on Facebook might have seen my post this past week - I got a major break on an insurance bill, and my car repair was significantly less than what was first expected.  Did you see that?  It was great.  All that kind of makes us a bit jealous doesn’t it?  My brother in law responded that his car also needed a repair and his went the other way – wound up being way more than he expected.  Are you tempted to measure your blessings from God this way?

I have a friend who put it this way.  The 9^th and 10^th Commandments warn us of the sin of coveting.  Coveting, she has a daughter.  Her name is complain.  And coveting also has a mother – her name?  Compare.  When we compare our blessings to those that others have received we begin to covet.  When we covet, when we think about those things we do not have, it is then that we complain.  Don’t want to complain? Then don’t covet.  Don’t want to covet? Then don’t compare.

The trouble is, that comparing, that is how we measure God’s favor; that is how we measure God’s blessing.  We are sure of God’s presence and action and opinion of us according to how easy our lives are or how comfortable or how well appointed or luxurious they are.  The more things go our way, we assume the greater the blessing.

Isn’t that error of the disciples?  Last week in our Gospel text there was a rich man.  He came to Jesus and said to him, “What must I do to be saved.”  You see, the man thought that if he kept all the commandments and got a perfect score the Lord would let him into heaven.”  The man was sure of his own righteousness and the goodness of his own heart, and his confidence was in his riches.  But then Jesus pulled that confidence out from under him.  The Lord told him, “Go sell everything you have, give the money to the poor and then come and follow me.”  The man went away disheartened.

In our text today, after having watched the man go, Jesus turned to his disciples and said, “How difficult it is for the rich to enter in to the kingdom of heaven.”

The disciples heard this word of Jesus and they were shocked.  You see the disciples were a lot like us.  They spent their time measuring and comparing…  and then coveting and complaining.  And this rich man… well, he was rich.  It was obvious that he had found God’s favor…  Right?  Kind of like “He’s a pastor. No wonder he gets a break on his health insurance.”  Same thing, isn’t it?  And so Jesus instructs us.  Worldly wealth doesn’t make it easier for us, it doesn’t mean we have more blessing or even greater blessing.  Worldly wealth, having lots of stuff, having all your needs met with no lack for anything, rather than making our salvation more sure, it can be the opposite!

Now, don’t misunderstand.  It’s not that worldly wealth is sinful or that it is wrong to be rich.  It isn’t.  God made this world and it is a good world. And to have and enjoy things in this world is to have and enjoy things that God has made and that God has given.  The problem is not with the stuff.  The problem is with the people who own it.  The problem is with you. 

Let’s face it, you love your stuff.  You and your wardrobe, you and your machines – your tractors and trucks.  You and your gadgets and  gizmos, your toys and treasures.  You love those things.  You treasure those things.  Its like Jesus said, where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is.  We take our heart away from the Lord and we give it to our stuff.

The problem with being rich doesn’t have anything to do with being rich.  The problems with being rich has to do with the fact that we are sinners.  We place our confidence in God’s promises or God’s favor in being rich.  Either that or we place our lack of confidence in God’s favor in being poor.  We are confident when things go our way, we are nervous when things don’t go our way.

 “Oh you of little faith.” Says Jesus.  ”Why do you doubt.  Why do you stress and strain and worry and fret.  Consider the lilies.  They never toil or spin.  Yet not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.  And consider the birds of the air.  The don’t plant or harvest or gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them.  If this is how your heavenly Father feeds the birds or dressed the weeds in the field, won’t he so much more take care of you?”  And we know the answer.  The answer is yes.  The Lord will take care of us.  He will provide for us.

“Give me neither poverty or riches.  Feed me with the food I need.  Or I might get full and deny you and say who is the Lord. Or I might get poor and steal and profane the name of my Lord.” (Proverbs 30:8-9)

The one big strike that the rich have against them is that they are full.  They have everything they need.  All their material needs are met.  Their bills are paid.  Their expenses are accounted for.  They are not afraid of taxes or tuition or sudden repairs.  Unexpected expenses aren’t a worry – just write a check and you’re done with it.  Wouldn’t that be nice, we say?  Wouldn’t that be a great problem to have? We think to ourselves.  Perhaps.  But there is blessing in our stress.  You see stress and worry, while they can lead us to sin, they can also be gifts that lead us to pray.  This bill, this expense, this car repair, this low yield, it is all too big for me to handle.  Lord, I need your help.  I need your intervention.  Lord, save me.  And while it is too big for you, it is not too big for the Lord.  He can help.  He can intervene.  He can save.  And he does.  He provides.  He who clothes the grass and feeds the birds will also feed you, he will also clothe you.  He will provide for you.  Sometimes when we are full, when all our material needs are accounted for so that we don’t worry, sometimes we assume we do not need the Lord.  Sometimes, in fact, we believe, like the disciples believed, that wealth and riches are a particular honor given by God to those who are especially righteous.

Remember their question?  Remember their surprise?  Jesus said, It is easier for a camel to fit through a pin hole then for a rich man to get into heaven.   “Blessed are the poor in Spirit,” Jesus says, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  So often poverty on earth is accompanied by humility.  Humility lends itself well to repentance.  But pride, self-satisfaction, self-righteousness, being self-fulfilled – those things work against our faith.  Those things can squelch and squeeze our faith.  We put less confidence in Jesus because we are so sure of our wealth. 

So are you rich?  Good.  That is God’s blessing to you.  God has given that blessing to you.  But it is not yours.  Don’t get too comfortable with it.  Don’t put too much of your confidence in it.  Use it.  Manage it.  Serve your Lord and your neighbor with it but don’t let it own you.  And be aware, your wealth will cause you to sin so  be prepared to repent.  But receive the Lord’s forgiveness.

Are you poor?  Good.  This too is God’s blessing to you.  When you worry or fret, when you have bills to pay that you aren’t able to account for, be confident that the Lord will provide for you.  Trust him.  Cast all your worry on him because he takes care of you.”  And the Lord who clothes the weeds and feeds the birds will put a shirt on your back and food on your plate.  But also be aware, your lack will also lead you to sin – to worry, to covet, perhaps even to steal.  So repent and receive the Lord’s forgiveness.

Because you are forgiven.  The Lord has told you, the rich are not able to enter into heaven.  The poor are not able to enter into heaven – even the middle class, who our politicians are so intent on saving these days – with all the help they are promised to receive from either candidate, it still won’t be enough.  On our own, or even with a little help from the president, we can’t make it into heaven any more than a camel can make it through the eye of a needle.  But God can.  God can do anything.  There is nothing that is too hard for him.  No bill that is too big for him to pay, no creditor he is not able to fend off. 

We have all seen those movies where someone has borrowed money from the wrong person and owes a debt that they cannot pay.  And Johnny or Vinnie or whoever sends his big goon to bang down the door and squeeze the money in whatever way he can get it out of you.  That is the devil’s work.  You owe a debt of sin.  Pay up or die. 

But the debt has been paid.  The bill has been settled.  There is no more debt to be satisfied.  Because Jesus has paid it.  Jesus has put down the full amount with his very life.  He sacrificed himself, he gave his blood to settle accounts with the Father so that the Devil has no work to do.  No accusations can stick, because all the debts have been paid.

We are so often tempted to misplace our confidence in the Lord’s promises.  But that confidence and that assurance is found squarely in Jesus.  It is found in the one who gave up every thing even and especially his life so that you could receive forgiveness and salvation.  Our confidence stands securely on the cross of Jesus Christ.

And that confidence was made yours at your baptism.  Your baptism is the place where God said to you, ‘you are my child.” And where you have received the guarantee, not just of a discount off a car repair, not just a gold watch or a diamond ring.  The Lord has given to you all the riches of heaven.  The kingdom of heaven is yours.  For sure.  Guaranteed.  

Pentecost 19

“Marriage is an outdated institution.”  “Marriage is a lingering vestige from a patriarchal society used by men who wanted to possess women.”  “Marriage should be open to all people regardless of your orientation.”  “Marriage is what happens when two people love each other very much and just want to be together all the time.”

Friends, don’t you think it’s time we reclaim the institution of marriage from the world?  Marriage is none of those things.  Rather marriage is a good gifts of God that he has given for our good, for our protection, but also for our joy, for the procreation of children, for the institution of societies most basic of structures – the family.  Don’t you think its time we reclaim the institution of marriage.

Our Gospel text is about marriage.  Mark tells us that the Pharisees came to Jesus with a question, but not like you and I come to Jesus with questions.  We carry our questions to Jesus all the time – we do it in prayer.  We pray when there is something we do not understand or when we need help with something.  We go to Jesus in faith knowing that He knows what to do or that he knows the answer and we know that Jesus can help us.  The Pharisees went to Jesus in unbelief.  Wanting to test Jesus, wanting to prove him wrong.  The Pharisees intended to compare what Jesus taught to the teachings of the experts.  The experts that the Pharisees had in mind were the Rabbis.

We have our own experts these days, don’t we?  People we trust to be always right.  People who have the authority to evaluation the teachings of the Bible.  These days we call them “scholars” or “scientists” or “psychologists”.  These are our modern-day rabbis.  The Pharisees wanted to debunk the teachings of Jesus by comparing his word to that of the experts.  We do the same thing today.

But with Jesus the last word goes to him who gave the first Word, and that is the author of THE Word.  The Lord himself has the last word on things like marriage, what it is or is not.  What it should or should not be.  What are the appropriate uses of it. 

The Pharisees asked about divorce, a topic still timely for us today.  In addition, we deal with the topic of gay marriage or living together without marriage or pre-marital sex.  The world has its word on all of these things.  The World is consummately and continuously wrong.  Jesus goes back to the beginning.  He goes back to the Lord’s Word given in the Garden of Eden, when there was one man and one woman – Adam and Eve, and the Lord made them, one for the other;  first Adam and the Eve from Adam’s rib.  The Lord brought the woman to the man and he commanded them to be fruitful and multiply.  And then the Lord gives this word: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:24-25 ESV)

This is the Lord’s Word about marriage.  A man leaves his father’s house and he joins himself to his wife so that they who were two have now become one. 

You see, the Lord does math differently then what we do.  One and one in our minds makes two.  A couple.  Individuals.  And because we think of a couple still as two, two is a number easily divided.  Yet in the Lord’s math, one and one makes one.  And one is a number that is fundamental.  To divide it is to break it.  To divide a marriage is to do violence against the union that the Lord has created.  The Lord sees divorce as violence.  In Malachi, the Lord says, “The man who does not love his wife but divorces her covers his garment in violence.” (Malachi 2:16)  We should not be so quick to destroy what God has made to be one.

The Lord has a better way.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.  (Ephesians 5:22-33 ESV)

The way of the Lord begins with a word that for us today is offensive.  In these days of liberation and personal autonomy the word “submit”? Why that’s a dirty word.  You could fill a speech with all kinds of profanity and no one would think twice about it, but tell a woman to submit to her husband and people will get angry.  We hate that word, “Submit”.  We hate it because we assume that the Lord uses it the way that we use it. For you to submit to me, means that I am master over you.  It means that I control you and dominate you and bend your will to mine.  It means you are my servant and I can make you do whatever I want you to do.  This is how the Old Adam understands this word.

The Lord uses it differently.  Rather than a hierarchy or pecking order, it is just order.  It is just being who God made you to be in the role that God made you to fill.  God made men to be men and as men to occupy a specific role in the family.  God made women to be women and to occupy that role in the family.  Wives, do you ever look at your husband and think to yourselves, “He is a lousy husband.  He doesn’t know the first thing about what I need or how to take care of me or of our kids.”  Wives keep in mind that the Lord has given to you a husband, and that the Lord has given that husband to be head in your family and that the Lord works through him to protect your family and that he is worthy of honor and respect.  That requires humility and meekness.  That requires that you set aside your pride, your personal demands.  That requires that you die to yourself.  Take up your cross and follow where the Lord would lead you.

One reason that this text about submission is so offensive is because people read up to the word “submit” and it offends them so they close the book and don’t read any more.  If they would, they would realize that in the husband and wife equation, the wife has the lighter load to carry.  Wives must submit and that is difficult. Husband, the Lord call you to be head of your wife, but to do that in the way Christ is head of the Church.  And remember what Christ did for the church?  He sacrificed his very life for her to protect her and to preserve her.

You see, men, you are tempted by the World to be masters of your domain.  To be lord in your house so that your word is the last word and so that your will is the dominant will.  To be head of the house is to be the chief servant.  It is your job to give the most, to bend the furthest, to sacrifice the greatest.  Your job is to be to your wife as Jesus is to you.  Sure, it is her job to submit, but it is your job to die.  And so die you must.  Every day.  Die to yourself; to your plans, to your impulses, to your desires, to your expectations, to your needs.  Lay them all aside.  Lay them down.  When there is work to be done, get up and do it.  When there are children to instruct or to care for, go do it.  The world has determined that the women are the more spiritual or that spirituality is more feminine.  As a result it often happens that taking the kids to church or family prayer and devotions is viewed as the responsibility of the wife.  The Word of God gives this task to you, men.  You should do it and make sure it gets done.

The Pharisees test Jesus, asking him if it is lawful to divorce your wife.  Jesus reminds the Pharisees of their hardness of heart.  Jesus reminds us of ours. The Lord has given marriage as a wonderful institution that is for our good and each of us, husbands and wives have sinned against the Lord and against one another.

But rest assured.  The Lord is husband to the church.  He has loved the church and he has given himself up for us, to cleanse us and wash us and purify us from our sin.  He has washed away those sins we have committed against him, he has washed away the sins we commit against each other.  And now he presents us as his spotless bride, dressed in a righteousness not our own.  But purchased and won for us by his sacrifice on the cross. Christ has already done for us what he has asked us to do for each other.

In the name of Jesus.