When Jesus reflected on the sins of the powerful people in his world he prayed these words from Matthew: I thank you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you haven hidden knowledge of the kingdom from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed this to infants; for such was your gracious will. I paraphrased it a little, but this is a prayer from the Gospel lesson for the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, which we are celebrating today, October 4th. The Kingdom of our God of Heaven and earth is revealed to infants: shorthand for the suffering, the poor, the humble, the innocent and those who serve them, and that was Francis of Assisi. He was a deacon in the Catholic Church and the founder of the Order of the Friars Minor commonly called “The Franciscans”. In 1776, the Spanish explorers established a fort at the Golden Gate of California and a founded a mission named for Francis of Assisi. And that is how San Francisco was named. St. Francis was born of wealthy parents, but rebelled against a life of luxury after experiences in the military and of illness himself. He had great compassion for the poor and suffering and so left his wealthy family just as Jesus sent out the disciples without cloak or sandals or money. Francis devoted his life to “Lady Poverty”, as he called his mission, and his followers grew in number all over Europe. He lived a life of strict and absolute poverty to remain close to those whom he served. Francis and his brother friars were notably cheerful and full of song. There are many apocryphal stories about Francis’ relationship with animals – particularly wild animals, and how they loved him, and would willingly come to him. There is even a story about him baptizing a wolf. Francis followed his call from God to a life lived in Christ’s image in solidarity with the forgotten and disadvantaged people in his world. Last week we read the Gospel from Mark where Jesus tells us that it is better to lose a foot or an eye than to cause harm to one of the “little ones”. Which is, in my way of thinking, the least we could do in our call to further God’s Kingdom on earth by serving the marginalized! Then we move on to today’s reading which at first seems to hold two unrelated stories. In the first part the Pharisees seek to know Jesus’ view on divorce, trying to trap him into saying something they view as “illegal” under Mosaic law. In the second part Jesus stops the disciples from shooing the children away from him and blesses them as examples of the rightful inhabitants of the Kingdom of God. If we dig a little deeper under the surface of this reading, we find Jesus addressing the plight of two vulnerable, marginalized groups in the society of his time – women and children. Neither of these social groups had any inherent power or status in the world Jesus lived in. A woman’s sexuality belonged first to her father and then to her husband. Children, a great percentage of whom died before their first birthday, were powerless and at the mercy of their father or other guardians. Let’s first consider Jesus’ view on divorce in this reading. He dismisses Moses’ certificate of divorce as Moses giving in to the pressures of male society to be rid of an unwanted wife. His concern is for the peril in which this places the woman, who may be, with or without the certificate, left without a place in society – for no woman had a place without a husband, father, or adult son. Unless she can find a new place in her world she will be left with few avenues for support for herself and her minor children. It often meant prostitution, slavery, death, or loss of her children. By standing up for marriage as a life-long commitment, Jesus stands up for the only hope a woman of his day has for a decent life, even if there is no love between her and her husband. In fact, this is not about a love relationship; it is about the life and death of a woman in a male dominated society. The marriage is a social and financial commitment that protects her from the harsher realities of the world. It is not a pretty picture, but Jesus is standing up for women in the reality of the world they lived in. This was the only way to prevent gross exploitation of women at the whim of their husbands.
Over the past 4 or 5 decades in our time, our attitudes toward divorce have altered greatly. When I was growing up I didn’t know anyone who had been divorced and only heard whispered conversations between my mother and grandmother about a cousin who was divorced. It was all shameful and hush hush. Then we had the great sexual revolution of the 1960’s when women started to take their destinies into their own hands, demanded equal pay for equal work (which we still haven’t achieved) and decent childcare, and adequate birth control to free them from the slavery of yearly pregnancies and in some cases their total financial dependence on abusive marital situations. It is still true that women die trying to escape abusive marriages, some women can’t find employment that would allow them to support their children after they have divorced, and that some women around the world still lack any of these rights at all. We have a long way to go – and yet. There is hope. I am very grateful that I was able to escape a financially and emotionally abusive marriage through the avenue of divorce, and grateful that I live in a society where I had a chance to make another life for myself, even if it has been hard at times. I know other women have not had that chance or the opportunities that I have had due to education and social status. Would Jesus have wanted me to stay in a marriage that hurt me and my children? I don’t know what Jesus would say to me today, but I believe that Jesus wanted to save women from exploitation and let’s include exploited men and children in that salvation as well. Marriage as a social institution that supports each person as an individual and protects their rights in their relationship is good, and as a Christian community we must support married people in their desire to remain married, as we promise when we witness marriages in this church.
Now let’s look at Jesus’ attitude toward children. “Let the little ones come to me. Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Normally when we hear this admonition from Jesus we think of sweet, open, loving children gathered up in Jesus arms, children of all colors, representing the innocent world at its best. But in light of the section of the gospel on divorce, perhaps this isn’t exactly what Jesus has in mind when he talks about children and the Kingdom. In this reading from Mark, Jesus says, ‘Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. Maybe in this reading, Jesus doesn’t mean sweetness, or openness, or even innocence. We all love our children, but we also know that they are not all sweetness and light! Perhaps, instead, he is talking about the vulnerability of children, their innocence exposing them to all kinds of exploitation at the hands of those with less than wholesome motives. We need look no farther than our local newspaper for examples in our time of the horrific exploitation of children. As parents we work for years to protect the children growing up in our lives from potential harm, and sometimes, no matter what extreme precautions we take, they still get harmed by strangers or even by someone they know very well. Are we to come into the Kingdom only in the state of this kind of vulnerability? Why? Why would Jesus require such open vulnerability as a condition for entrance into the Kingdom of God?
One of the themes of our reading from Hebrews and a matching theme from the Gospel of Mark is that of suffering for the sake of love – taking up the cross of Jesus as a requirement for discipleship. Jesus became lower than an angel temporarily to join us in the human condition. Not the human condition of kingly power to rule over peoples’ lives, nor even the condition of power of a husband to force an unwanted wife into the streets, but the human and vulnerable condition of a child. This is how Jesus entered the world – a child vulnerable and poor, born to a poor woman of low social status, whose husband stood by her faithfully though he could have legally sent her away because the baby was not his. She might have been stoned to death for that. This is the vulnerability into which we are invited as disciples of Christ. We are invited to share Jesus’ life if we can enter the kingdom as vulnerable and at risk of exploitation as he was. And this is how St. Francis entered service to God – as poor and vulnerable, without money or shoes, like a beggar. He was just as vulnerable as the weakest members of our society today. We are invited to stand with them as Joseph stood with Mary, as Francis stood with the poor and marginalized people and creatures of his day, as Jesus stood with the women, children, sick and other marginalized people of his time. This is a gift from God, our invitation to compassion as we join Jesus as vulnerable as a child and enter into God’s great Kingdom of mercy and love. Let’s pray together the Prayer of St. Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.
Hebrews 1:1 - 2:12
Mark 10:2-16
Matthew 11:25-30
