Proper 18 B (7-8 October 2006)

Genesis 2:18-24, Mark 10:2-16

Pr. George L. Murphy

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron OH

PRESERVING CREATION

Today’s Gospel reading is about – what? Divorce? You could put it that way. Or you could say that it’s about family values. That puts a different twist on it. But neither of those answers gets to the heart of the matter. The text is about creation – and threats to creation – and what God does about those threats.

And so that our view not be too limited, I want to include a short story from Mark’s Gospel that comes just a few verses after our reading. In fact, in the Revised Common Lectionary that many churches use the whole thing is the Gospel for today.

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 to come unto 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.

If you’ve been paying any attention to the news recently, you’ll see the relevance of that story, and I think you’ll understand what I mean by threats to creation.

It’s a platitude these days to say that children are at risk, but it’s true. Some are at risk because they live in poverty. There are internet predators – including until recently one in the United States Congress (“allegedly”). There are other dangers – perhaps most horribly, someone walking into a school and molesting and shooting students.

If children are at risk, the human race is at risk. And if we’re an important part of creation, as our reading from Genesis suggests, then creation is under threat.

Am I being too dramatic? Consider that in the recent school invasions the evildoers end up killing themselves. We may say “Good riddance,” but that’s ominous. The person who does such things, to others and himself, is overcome by nothingness, by the denial of being. It’s what Jeremiah saw in the crisis of his time: “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. ... “I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.” It was an undoing of creation, a return to “without form and void, and darkness ... over the face of the deep” at the beginning of Genesis.

In the Bible, creation is in jeopardy. The raging sea was for Israel a symbol of the ocean of chaos that attacked God’s world, threatening to return it to the primordial Deep.

“Nothingness” seems like a pretty abstract concept and you may be more used to language about the devil when evil things are discussed, but the basic idea is the same. Goethe called the devil der Geist der stets verneint, “the spirit who always denies.” Evil always says “No” to God’s “Yes.”

In one of his letters to Corinth St. Paul said, “The Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him in is always ‘Yes.’” Against all “the powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God,” Jesus Christ is God’s “Yes.” In the gospel story in which he walks on the sea, he is the One who holds back the chaotic forces of the Deep. On Easter he is God’s affirmation of life against death.

The story of Jesus letting the little children come to him isn’t as dramatic as his walking on the sea or resurrection but it’s also an important affirmation of God’s creation project. Children are not just potential people, or property, or ways for adults to fulfill their dreams. They are persons in their own right, the image and likeness of God. And because of that, Jesus, who came into the world like all of us as a child, welcomes them as he welcomes all people.

The account of Jesus and the children isn’t just a sentimental feel-good story. It’s the only time in the gospels when Jesus is said to have become “indignant,” as he does here with the disciples who are trying to keep the children away. It’s an important matter. The children have to be allowed to come to him. There is something wrong with keeping them away.

And like so many of the stories in the gospels, it’s one that pulls us in to. If children are to be affirmed as full-fledged members of the church and full-fledged members of the human race then we have to affirm them. That means, among other things, that we will do what is necessary to protect them from the people and the forces that threaten creation. If we are to care for God’s creation then we will be tough minded about children not don’t having to grow up in poverty, or be exploited, or be threatened with violence. We will not let “freedom of expression” be an excuse for child pornography. And on the positive side, we will do everything possible to see that they learn and practice respect for others and for the natural world. Soon they are going to be the adults who will be concerned for the welfare of their children.

Having seen this gospel context of God’s affirmation of creation, we can look back at those opening verses about marriage and divorce in perhaps a new way. People tend to think of these words of Jesus simply as a prohibition, as a negative legal pronouncement: “Don’t get divorced.” But Jesus begins by reminding us of the second creation story in Genesis. It is in fact the high point of that story, the creation of human community in marriage. It’s a very positive promise: “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

God gives what could be just a brief biological encounter the possibility of permanence, “As long as you both shall live.” That’s kind of remarkable, because when you think about it, there aren’t many things in our lives that are permanent. But this can be. And when Jesus says, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate,” it is to protect that possibility of permanence. It’s a statement in defense of creation – a necessary defense because marriage and all the other structures of society are threatened by human sin.

It doesn’t always work. Sometimes keeping a marriage together is more destructive to the people involved than allowing the union to be dissolved. Moses allowed divorce “Because of your hardness of heart.” “Because you know so little of the meaning of love” is how Phillips paraphrases it. Preserving creation requires more than just stubbornly saying “No divorce.” The early church recognized that. While Mark’s Gospel allows no grounds for divorce, the later Gospel of Matthew changes the text a bit so that divorce is allowed on the grounds of unfaithfulness. While the breakup of a marriage is never a positive good, we’re called to use our brains and discern when a divorce may pose the lesser threat to what God intends for creation.

And what God intends for creation is standing right in front of us in Mark’s Gospel. The One who controls the raging of the sea is the One who calls the children to him and blesses them. It’s a picture of what God wants creation to be. It’s a picture of what creation will be.