October 7, 2018
Pastor Robert McCarty
Kingdom Building
Preaching Texts: Mark 10: 2-16
Every week, just about every week, I live with a gospel text and other pieces of scripture. I live with them daily. Read them, try to listen to what God wants to say. I am called to read this text as part of a community of faith. This week I have had to live with the Psalm verse “O Lord, Our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!/You whose glory is chanted above the heavens out of the mouths of infants and children.” I have lived with that psalm verse alongside of Jesus convicting us. “It is because of your hardness of heart.” With those words, Jesus convicts us. Jesus points out the brokenness of our community.
By the way, don’t be distracted by the divorce topic. Jesus addresses the Pharisees because they ask that question. But then we see the disciples hardness of heart towards children, Jesus gets indignant to them as well.
Let the children come. Children anticipate the Kingdom of God which is not broken. Hardness of heart means more than just a failed marriage. Hardness of heart means failed communities, if not failed certainly broken communities. Discord. Unrest. Think Charlottesville last year. Or less traumatically think Lexington when the Martin Luther King Jr. parade was scheduled for the same day as the Lee Jackson parade.
I could not help but wonder how many laws lie in the scripture because of our hardness of heart. I guess most of them, people steal because of hardness of heart, a disregard for people and property. Thou shall not covet. Honor thy parents. Remember the Sabbath. All of this has to do with hardness of heart.
One might find it difficult to understand hardness of heart. We see it in others more than we see it in ourselves. Thomas Aquinas, a 12th Century Christian priest and scholar, summarized that all sin stems from self-love, placing our own selves ahead of others and of God. Yet, slowly we learn how to expand our sense of self to include others. Aquinas recognized this complication, that self-love helps us to love others as we expand our sense of who we are. Families would be one natural extensions as well as a church family or friends (another extension), and then perhaps communities or nation or God. Hardness of heart then might begin at that limit where we can no longer stretch ourselves. When we start putting boundary lines on our own sense of community. Hardness of heart begins when we start placing people outside of our limits.
So consider this. The old testament has a law about leaving the corners of your field unharvested for the poor and the widow and the foreigner in your midst. So that they can glean from the corners and have food to eat. That law set precedence for our understanding of charitable giving. Not just supporting the church with our tithe but also caring for the poor in our midst.
Yet that law, also helped the landowner expand his sense of self. The crops on his land helped to support him, his family, including perhaps mother, brothers and sisters, but also his hired laborers were part of his sphere of concern who benefited from the land. And then because of the corners and the edges of the field, landowners out in their fields would see the gleaners coming and would or at least could treat them with compassion.
In that act of leaving the edge and corners of the field unharvested, God has the farmer expand who he cares for. Care leads to relationship, relationship leads to concern, concern leads to compassion, compassion leads to love. (Well, maybe not love. I would settle for compassion.) Through these fields, God brings into community people that the landowner might otherwise not invite. Through these fields and their edges and corners, God builds community including those whom we might be tempted to keep out. Except, we do not have such fields anymore to expand our sense of self.
Our community right now is broken. This high school name situation has hardened our heart. I have walked with both sides of the issue. And the grief on both sides is powerful, deeply felt hurt and grief. I went to one of the listening sessions over at the Gypsy Hill Park gym this summer. There I heard the language of grief and anger, and concern and compassion. At the listening session, people, even the angry ones, chose their words carefully, politely. I mentioned that I went to the prayer worship last Friday with the African American pastors of our community. That is one of my roles as pastor, to walk alongside people in the midst of their grief. I will say that the leaders offering prayers last week did an admirable job of choosing their words carefully. They set aside their pain and their rhetoric and strived to offer prayers for our civic leaders, mayor, school board, children, that everyone could say "amen” to.
Our common prayer in Staunton, as we struggle through our brokenness, don’t let us be like Charlottesville. Charlottesville was in the news again this week as the federal government arrested four men from California and charged them with inciting violence. We pray don’t let that happen here. Three people died last year in Charlottesville, one pedestrian and two police officers whose helicopter crashed.
Perhaps that imagery helps us understand Jesus’ death as a cure to the brokenness. That Jesus died so that others would not have to. Jesus died so that his blood would have power to soften our hearts. And somehow make our brokenness something other than a competition between future winners and future losers. That we together could grieve for him and hope in him.
Maybe you saw this in the news last weekend. Vanderbilt beat Tennessee State in a game of football. And after the game, the teams from both sides met at midfield to pray for Christion Abercrombie. Abercombie, a linebacker at Tennessee State collapsed with a headache and was rushed to the hospital nearby and as of Thursday was still in ICU. I showed the picture of the post game prayer at midfield to our small group prayer study on Tuesday. R-- mentioned that some teams come together before games to pray. That is what happened yesterday when Tennessee State played Austin Peay. I have seen soccer teams gather for prayer before games.
Jesus and prayer has the power to break down the boundaries of us and them. Jesus and prayer has the power to expand our sense of self, to help recognize the humanity in all of us. Jesus and prayer has the power to soften our hearts towards one another.
Jesus sees the brokenness in the community that surrounds him. He names the problem. The Pharisees, sadly continue their journey with Jesus to the cross as adversaries. The disciples stand corrected and journey with Jesus to the cross with their hearts softened. At the cross they will abandon him, but then later have their grief turn to joy as they gather around their living Lord. And that joy of Jesus overflows into the world throughout time. You are here today because you know that joy is stronger than your grief. You are here with one another, and with Jesus, building an eternal and universal community to be a part of the kingdom of God. As that Kingdom is not broken, Jesus says “let the children come.” Let all of God’s children come.
Amen
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