Mark 10:2-16
Divorce. It's all we seem to hear in this section. How wrong it is, how much of a failure we may feel because we've been through one. We get lost. So we need to hear and remember, Jesus has been talking to the disciples and teaching them and they just haven't been getting how God is. What Messiah is, what the greatest is, how someone who is doing something for us is not against us, so don't rebuke or restrain them, and remember the little child. Whoever wants to be greatest must welcome them.
So this week we have still further patient teaching from Jesus, this time to the Pharisees. We have to remember what divorce meant to the woman in the ancient world. It was about being homeless, uncared for, becoming a prostitute in order to make money because there were no other jobs and a woman had no equality. The man could marry again, the man did not have to leave his home, support his children, or give her anything. She was out on her ear in the streets, with nothing, period. So Jesus explains how this question regards their hardness of heart more than it addresses their compassion on one another.
Paul writes to us about marriage and how it represents Christ and the church. Marriage should reflect love, the love Jesus has for us, the love God has for the son, the love they have in the unity of the trinity, that love doesn't want to hurt someone else, that love wants to heal, that love is the one God intended us to give to one another from the beginning. When we put someone away like their welfare doesn't matter to us then that is wrong.
How we treat one another matters, it matters to God. Because this passage ends again with children, they are coming to Jesus and the disciples try to discourage them. Jesus is too important to want to see them, and yet he admonishes the disciples to let them come to him. By valuing the ones everyone wants to turn away Jesus shows us we shouldn't harden our hearts to others. We never can just take these scriptures alone, or on their own. They are interrelated. This is why we have women like Rehab, a prostitute who helps the Hebrew people to get into the promised land. Or someone like Moses who can't talk, doesn't dare to go out on his own, and is still called by God.
Every time we think of someone as worthless or less than deserving is when Jesus gently points out to us we are to reach out in welcome. To the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the leper, and on and on. God's love is bigger and more abundant than we can imagine, we just need to open our hardened hearts.
So in what ways is your heart hard? Who would you turn away, keep from getting to Jesus? Then ask yourself is this your hard heart? Then open it and let God's love grow your heart.
Divorce. It's all we seem to hear in this section. How wrong it is, how much of a failure we may feel because we've been through one. We get lost. So we need to hear and remember, Jesus has been talking to the disciples and teaching them and they just haven't been getting how God is. What Messiah is, what the greatest is, how someone who is doing something for us is not against us, so don't rebuke or restrain them, and remember the little child. Whoever wants to be greatest must welcome them.
So this week we have still further patient teaching from Jesus, this time to the Pharisees. We have to remember what divorce meant to the woman in the ancient world. It was about being homeless, uncared for, becoming a prostitute in order to make money because there were no other jobs and a woman had no equality. The man could marry again, the man did not have to leave his home, support his children, or give her anything. She was out on her ear in the streets, with nothing, period. So Jesus explains how this question regards their hardness of heart more than it addresses their compassion on one another.
Paul writes to us about marriage and how it represents Christ and the church. Marriage should reflect love, the love Jesus has for us, the love God has for the son, the love they have in the unity of the trinity, that love doesn't want to hurt someone else, that love wants to heal, that love is the one God intended us to give to one another from the beginning. When we put someone away like their welfare doesn't matter to us then that is wrong.
How we treat one another matters, it matters to God. Because this passage ends again with children, they are coming to Jesus and the disciples try to discourage them. Jesus is too important to want to see them, and yet he admonishes the disciples to let them come to him. By valuing the ones everyone wants to turn away Jesus shows us we shouldn't harden our hearts to others. We never can just take these scriptures alone, or on their own. They are interrelated. This is why we have women like Rehab, a prostitute who helps the Hebrew people to get into the promised land. Or someone like Moses who can't talk, doesn't dare to go out on his own, and is still called by God.
Every time we think of someone as worthless or less than deserving is when Jesus gently points out to us we are to reach out in welcome. To the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the leper, and on and on. God's love is bigger and more abundant than we can imagine, we just need to open our hardened hearts.
So in what ways is your heart hard? Who would you turn away, keep from getting to Jesus? Then ask yourself is this your hard heart? Then open it and let God's love grow your heart.
Comments
Post a Comment