20 Pentecost Cycle b proper 22 October 6, 2024
Genesis 2:18-24 Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12 Mark 10:2-16
What are some age old human questions? Why do bad things happen to really good people or just ordinarily good people? Why does good luck and prosperity happen to some really bad people and to greedy people? Can I believe in an all powerful, all loving God when injustice and incongruence in the natural award system seems to be a common human experience? How are we supposed to live when human sin and failure seems to be the norm? And in a world of constant trouble what should be a chief value for people?
Our appointed lessons from Holy Scripture for today provides us with some insights to these recurring questions for living.
The wisdom story of Job provides a corrective rebuke to some very shallow views of interpreting events as God's providential specific blessings and curses to be corresponding responses to good and bad behaviors. In short, people with simplistic theology state that good things and blessings happen to good people, while bad things and curses happen to bad people. The wisdom writer of Jobs knows that such simplistic views are not only wrong but also cruel, and in the end do not present God in a very wise and good light.
In the Job story, God is seen as the one above the other higher agents of good and bad heavenly beings. In a world of true freedom, the higher freedom of God is a weak and restrained freedom, not a sign of being without power, but the sign of allowing lesser agents of freedom the opportunity of true moral worth and validity.
Another issue which faced the people of Israel and which often faces anyone regarding their belief and faith in God. Should one only have faith in God when things are safe and successful? When my only luck is bad luck, should I curse God and die? Do I impart a explicit divine motive on every event which occurs and assess God's view towards me based upon my immediate comfort or discomfort?
The message of Job in wonderful poetic dialogues is to come to the insight of mystery about how all the agents of freedom interact in this grand world. One should have faith and worshipful respect for the Grandness behind it all, while being very humble about specific certain knowledge about all the motives behind causality of the events of our lives and the lives of others.
How do we live in the face of all probable conditions in life, some good, some bad, and some received with indifference?
We mostly live by common sense which is gained by observed and taught experiences based upon repetitions in what occurs. Common sense on steroids is what we call the scientific method which is a deliberate stating of statistically approximate rules of causality of how thing have occurred, are occurring, and will occur.
In human behavior within community, such scientific exactness cannot be attained because the sentient freedom of human beings is of a different order than the behaviors of molecules and atoms of the material world.
Science and common sense in human behavior is known in what we call the Law. The Law for the people of the Hebrew Scriptures was the discovery of wise behaviors for good community living, the communities as they knew and understood themselves in their time.
What is the difference between a scientific law and a law for human behaviors? A scientific law has been stated because there has been an observed consistency such that the law will not be broken. Scientific laws are descriptively accurate laws and so stated in the positive. One does not says to water molecules, "Thou shalt not boil at 200 degree Fahrenheit at sea level."
But one of the Ten Commandments is, "Thou shall not commit adultery." The law is stated in the negative because people have the freedom to fail in their loving relationships and vows. Since people have the tendency to sin and to fail, it would seem to be more actuarially prudent to make sin and failure the normal goal of life.
This brings us to the divorce issue raised in the Gospel reading. The issue is that the rules of human failure are more controversial than the rules of human success. Why is it not controversial that people live in love and harmony in maintaining vows for their life? Why should we be upset about the way things are supposed to be?
I think that the church has misunderstood the Gospel words of Jesus when they have reduced it to prohibitions against divorce and canonical machinations for annulments and remarriage.
The words of Jesus rebuke his interlocutors for their elevation of divorce to the supreme position. What Jesus is saying, people may fail in love and there may have to be Mosaic allowances to deal with human failure, but that does not change the main principle, which is the endurance of love and unity. Jesus is saying that human failure to love cannot change the normalcy of our call to love.
Jesus was rebuking the notion that rules for the divorce permission were being regarded as the superior principle over the supreme rule of the call to love. Love is the standard, love is the motive and any failure at love does not change the positive principle of love to which we are called.
The Gospel reading concludes with the task of love, namely tending to children and the childlike in society. Failure at love leads to making the vulnerable even more vulnerable.
The rule of Christ is love, and what love means in practice is that children and the vulnerable get taken care of. Caring for the vulnerable is a chief value of the law of love. So, do not make human failure at love a replacement for the eternal principle of love. Amen.
Job 1:1; 2:1-10
There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.
One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.” Then Satan answered the Lord, “Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.”
So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.
Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
Psalm 26
Judica me, Domine
1 Give judgment for me, O Lord,
for I have lived with integrity; *
I have trusted in the Lord and have not faltered.
2 Test me, O Lord, and try me; *
examine my heart and my mind.
3 For your love is before my eyes; *
I have walked faithfully with you.
4 I have not sat with the worthless, *
nor do I consort with the deceitful.
5 I have hated the company of evildoers; *
I will not sit down with the wicked.
6 I will wash my hands in innocence, O Lord, *
that I may go in procession round your altar,
7 Singing aloud a song of thanksgiving *
and recounting all your wonderful deeds.
8 Lord, I love the house in which you dwell *
and the place where your glory abides.
9 Do not sweep me away with sinners, *
nor my life with those who thirst for blood,
10 Whose hands are full of evil plots, *
and their right hand full of bribes.
11 As for me, I will live with integrity; *
redeem me, O Lord, and have pity on me.
12 My foot stands on level ground; *
in the full assembly I will bless the Lord.
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. But someone has testified somewhere,
“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
or mortals, that you care for them?
You have made them for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned them with glory and honor,
subjecting all things under their feet.”
Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, saying,
“I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters,
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”
Mark 10:2-16
Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “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.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
