Park Avenue Presbyterian Church; Des Moines, Iowa
Texts: Job 1: 1; 2: 1-10
Psalm 26
Hebrews 1: 1-4; 2: 5-12
Mark 10: 1-16 *
“Sclero-cardia”
--} A lot of lectionary preachers woke up this week wondering how in the world it could be World Communion Sunday—one of the great pinnacles of Christian unity—and the assigned gospel lesson being Jesus’ declaration about divorce—one of the great human acknowledgements of the need for divisiveness. Most of you, I imagine, didn’t wake up this morning yearning for a sermon on divorce. And while there’s some irony in what we celebrate today compared to the assigned gospel reading, the real irony I find in the gospel story itself.
It seems ironic to me, that in answering the Pharisees, Jesus makes a claim that God’s intended “unity” should stand over and against human divisions. Yet at the same time, those who would doggedly pursue Jesus’ words—that divorce is adulterous, or wrong—would with that teaching, create lines of division among human beings, suggesting that “some are better than others.”
The good news for us today, however, is that Jesus isn’t focused so much on divorce; instead, he suggests that the plight of human beings is found in a common condition for all of them known as “Sclero-cardia”—hardness of heart. “Sclera”—as in hard, or hardening; “cardia” referring to the heart. If you’ve ever heard the medical term, “arterio-sclerosis”—that’s the hardening of the arteries. “Sclero-cardia” refers to hard-heartedness. And when the Pharisees pose their “tricky” question to “test” Jesus, he tells them—not so much to answer their question as to point out their weakness—that their problem is an old human nemesis, “Sclero-cardia”.
“Sclero-cardia” is maybe best thought of as a kind of “resistance.” A hardening or hardened “heart” can no longer function well to pump blood through the body, and as such, this is a condition that can be fatal. Some people believe that “sin” is a sign of one’s “resistance” to God’s will and God’s ways—a turning against God. Like the Pharisees, they use the law to determine who’s faithful and who isn’t. Yet such a reaction is “divisive.” It ends not in determining who has done well or not, but in people being divided, and separated—like the sheep from the goats! Believing some are better than others, the Pharisees would have Jesus believe the law is God’s vision for the world. Jesus, however, would show followers that the law—however well intended—seems to supersede God’s vision for the world where human beings ought to live far more connected, united, and remain “un-divided.” So that to my mind, “Sclero-cardia” has to do with the human condition of dividing ourselves; believing that some of us are better than others of us. It’s a way of keeping score, of trying to assure ourselves that we’re in the “right” that we’re the “deserving,” that we’re more “loved.”
So, even on World Communion Sunday, “Sclero-cardia” fences the table; keeps some people out. “Sclero-cardia” breeds division—like divorce. “Sclero-cardia” keeps us from being united to one another and united to God. The irony being that if we wish to fight “Sclero-cardia”, we have to find another way of understanding the story than what Jesus seems to say on the surface.
For each of the last three Sundays, the gospel reading from Mark has offered stories that begin with Jesus teaching, then concluding with a kind of object lesson with a child or children. As with the last two weeks, today we again see the same kind of formula at work. When the disciples obviously aren’t getting what Jesus is about, Jesus has to finally tell them more directly—correcting their misperceptions by welcoming children, by taking children in his arms and blessing them. While it makes for a nice scene, seemingly reflecting Jesus’ love of children, the true intention points at a far more difficult lesson for adults. It isn’t just that Jesus welcomes and blesses these children, it’s that he does it—intentionally—in the context of human brokenness—striving, it would seem to drive us toward unity, not division.
What we should notice is that the children are welcomed, received, and blessed by Jesus—with no questions asked or judgments rendered. This isn’t a demonstration of the child’s “faith” is it? At best, I think, it could be a demonstration of the parents’ faith; but if so, what does it mean? Would “blessing the children” mean that the children are kept safe from difficulty or sin all their days? Not likely. If anything, doesn’t Jesus’ “blessing” come not as a promise of what will happen, but as a reminder of to whom the children ultimately belong?
In that sense, Jesus’ “blessing” is like “baptism.” Baptism is not just an event with water dribbled onto a person’s head; we believe it’s the mark or “claim” of God upon that person’s life. For me it’s kind of like that “baggage tag” that you put on your luggage, so the airline knows where to send it. Baptism is the “mark” and “reminder” that “we belong to God.” And that no matter what happens in life, that always stays with us.
At one time, people equated “baptism” with the “forgiveness of sins;” so “baptism” only occurred at the “end of life” so someone could die and jump straight up to heaven—not having sinned again. But because it’s hard to tell when the “end of life” is, and because “baptism” was thought of as a ONE TIME forgiveness of sins, some people were baptized, but sinned again, rendering the baptism useless to them. Today, we understand far better. Baptism is God’s claim upon our life, a mark and reminder of whose we are—not just that we’ve had our sins forgiven.
“Sclero-cardia” is a human condition. Like original sin, it affects all of us. No one is immune; none of us are better than others. And what Jesus says to the Pharisees is that when Moses wrote the law about divorce, Moses was somehow accommodating our “human condition”—“Because of your hardness of heart,” Jesus tells them, “Moses wrote this commandment”—even though it went against God’s vision for the world described at creation when human beings were created male and female. Jesus tells the Pharisees, that the law about “divorce” WAS NOT divinely inspired; instead, it was created because the Creator loves the creature in spite of the creature’s mistakes. Jesus would remind the Pharisees, that God’s relationship with the world isn’t all about judge and arbiter and how some people break the commandments; God’s relationship with the world is a love story—where hearts are broken and mended in God’s goodness.
In Luke’s gospel, there isn’t this story where Jesus seemingly lectures to us about divorce. But Luke offers another story that I think should carry the same weight—the familiar story of the Prodigal. We all know the story about a man with two sons, and the younger asks for half of his father’s estate, and when the father grants it, he takes the money and squanders it. Then, having come to himself (and because his luggage tag reminds him about “whose” he is), the son returns home to a hero’s welcome—even before he can get out the words, “I’m sorry.” The father refuses to hear about what he did or how low he’d become, or all of his various conflicts with the law. The father refuses to call him an adulterer, a thief, a fornicator, a liar—all the things we know he was. Instead, the father treats him as a lost son who had been found! The luggage tag of grace!
Here’s the parent who perhaps had taken the child to Jesus and had him blessed—which was no guarantee against sin and wrong-doing, but was a reminder about to whom the child belonged. Because the antidote for “Sclero-cardia” isn’t in identifying wrongdoing and handing down justice; the antidote for “Sclero-cardia” comes in the reminder that we belong to God—and so does everyone else.
The irony of this passage is that I believe Jesus would rather have us see that “divorce” isn’t the enemy. That God’s love for human beings supersedes divorce—and whatever else we might try and use to put in God’s way. That God has already “tagged” us with the grace of being able to return, to find God, to come to table together, and be united with God and for God—not as an antidote to future sin or only as a forgiveness for past sins, but as the promise that God’s love for us supersedes every human weaknesses.
In other words, the refrain goes something like this. Part of what it means to be a human being is that we are already infected with original sin; that we already have, “Sclero-cardia”. The good news, is that God loves us anyway. If we read between the lines just little bit:
Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart, 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.”
God has joined human beings to God’s own self in the gift of Jesus Christ. This is the gift of unity we celebrate at the table together. Bread is body; blood is cup. Taken inwardly, they become a part of us—by which ministry is passed to us as a blessing—no questions asked, no faith demanded—as if we were children in the arms of almighty God, already tagged by grace and promised that the one to whom we belong will always claim us—no matter who we are, or what we’ve done. Even, if there’s such a thing as divorce.
So come. Human beings are human beings—God loves us anyway. Let’s eat. Come to the Lord’s table. Let’s eat.
--+ AMEN.
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