Hard and Soft Hearts
Mark 10:2-16
Sermon
by Steven E. Albertin

Probably one of the most frustrating responsibilities I have as a parish pastor is officiating at weddings. I would rather do a funeral than perform a wedding. It's not because I am filled with a great sense of morbidity. It's not that I delight in other people's suffering. Rather, it has to do with how receptive people are to ministry. At the time of death, people are much more receptive to facing the ultimate issues of life. They have a far greater sense of their need for the gospel. They have just experienced the limits of life and are primed to listen to the word of hope in Jesus Christ. However, at a wedding there are so many distractions that the last thing anyone wants to hear about is their need for the love of God in Jesus Christ. The focus is on the flowers, the dresses, the music, the reception, the party, the photographer. I think the time spent with the photographer is usually two or three times as long as the service. And you begin to wonder what is more important.

My frustration usually begins with the first premarital counseling session. There they sit like two lovebirds, usually holding hands and sneaking loving glances at one another.

"Why do you want to get married?"

Why, what a dumb question for the pastor to ask. They love each other! They love each other passionately. They can't stand to be separated from one another. They can't keep their hands off each other.

"Do you know what you are getting yourself into?"

What is wrong with this guy? They thought that he was in the business of marrying people. He should be glad that they are even deciding to get married. Why, they could just go off and shack up together. In fact, they would not even be there if it wasn't for some parental pressure.

"If anyone knew what they were getting themselves into, they probably would never want to get married."

Now the pastor has really gone off the deep end. What is wrong with him? They are in love. They are enjoying the height of romantic bliss. They are anticipating one of the most happy days of their life and now he seems to want to spoil it all for them. It's almost as if he doesn't want them to get married.

Such an approach to premarital counseling may seem like I am trying to talk them out of getting married. It may seem like I am a spoilsport trying to ruin all their fun. It may seem like I am not even interested in marrying them. But that is not the case at all. I am deeply interested in helping them begin this new adventure in their lives. I want them to be happy. I want them to succeed in their marriage. It's just that marriage is such a wonderful gift from God. I what them to take full advantage of its benefits.

Our culture so distorts the true nature of marriage. And all the glitter and glamour associated with the wedding doesn't help the couple to realize what marriage is all about. Frankly, much of it is just a big distraction. It is sad to admit, but some of the most spectacular and expensive weddings I have participated in over the years of my ministry have resulted in marriages that were disasters.

Marriage is hard work. A friend of mine, who is a psychologist and counselor, once remarked to me that marriage is really "unnatural." Things that are natural come easily. But marriage is such hard work that it can't possibly be natural.

In the course of premarital counseling I often tell a couple: "You may think that you are getting married because you love one another. No, in fact it is quite the opposite. You are getting married in order to learn what it really means to love one another. Throughout your courtship you have probably been lying to one another. You have probably been patently dishonest with one another. When you date, you want to impress the other. You dress up in your best. You are on your best behavior. You make sure every hair is in place. You wear the cologne to make sure no one catches a whiff of any embarrassing odors. Tell me this is being honest with one another.

"Ah, but when you get married, the truth starts coming out. Then you can no longer so easily hide the truth. Then you discover what the other is really like because now he/she has promised to be with you until death parts you. Now you discover his/her stinky feet. Now you discover his/her short temper. Now you discover his/her disgusting personal habits. Now you get to see him/her early in the morning, sleep still blurring his/her eyes, sitting there on the toilet. Doesn't sound very romantic, does it? It really takes a lot of love to hang in there when your spouse is so unlovable. But it is then and only then that you begin to discover what marriage is really all about. Then and only then do you begin to discover what it really means to love."

Given those sorts of realities, I guess we should not be surprised that our society has become so littered with the rubble of broken marriages. According to the latest divorce statistics, half of all marriages end in divorce. The number of couples living together without the benefit of marriage increases daily. People have become so fearful of marriage that prenuptial agreements, unheard of a generation ago, are becoming much more common, especially among the middle and upper classes. In recent years the disastrous social consequences of being a single parent have been widely acknowledged. Yet, the mortality rate of marriage remains high. All of our families have been touched by the pain of divorce. We have come to accept it as a fact of modern life.

The moral stigma of divorce has all but disappeared. Our divorce laws reflect a society in which divorce is no longer the exception. The laws assume that divorce is "no-fault." Relationships change. People need to move on with their lives. Marriages can die. It's no one's fault. Don't make such a big deal out of divorce. In today's "no-fault divorce" world Jesus' words in today's Gospel are troubling and unnerving. These are hard words. They not only challenge our society's ideas about divorce, they also raise some very troubling questions about our relationship to God. They remind us that none of our human relationships are trivial. They all ultimately reflect our relationship to God.

Today's Gospel begins with another confrontation between Jesus and those guardians of public morality, the Pharisees. We need to remind ourselves again and again that in the eyes of the common people the Pharisees were the good guys. They were the ones who took their religion seriously. They were first century Judaism's version of "Dr. Laura." They valued morality. They believed in character and integrity. They were serious about right and wrong. In the case of divorce, they had developed a complicated system of rules and regulations defining under what conditions divorce was right and wrong.

They came to test Jesus. They came to check him out on divorce. Jesus had created quite a controversy by hanging around with people of suspect moral character. He had even chosen a tax collector to be one of his disciples. He seemed a little too liberal, a little too permissive, when it came to the moral issues of right and wrong.

Jesus' response must have shocked them. Jesus absolutely prohibits divorce. Under no circumstances can divorce be justified before God. Quoting a portion of today's First Lesson from Genesis, Jesus shows that God's intention for marriage is that the union between man and woman be permanent. What God has joined together, no one else should separate.

In fact, it ultimately is a misunderstanding of this text to see it as Jesus providing moral advice on the issue of marriage and divorce. Jesus is no Dr. Laura, Ann Landers, or your friendly marriage counselor. Jesus wants to direct the Pharisees' attention to a deeper problem, their relationship to God. The Pharisees had staked their lives on the importance of knowing the difference between right and wrong. For them the question, "Is it lawful?" is the most important religious question you could ever ask. Your relationship to God is dependent upon being able to answer that question correctly. You couldn't do what was right if you didn't know what was right.

Jesus points out that they are missing the point. The problem of divorce reflects a far deeper problem. Moses permitted divorce under certain circumstances not because it was the right thing to do but only as a concession to human sin. Divorce can never be "justified." On the contrary, its very existence stands as an indictment of the human condition. Divorce reflects the pervasive reality of sin. Divorce reflects your "hardness of heart."

"Hardness of heart" -- how many of you have ever heard sin described this way? I suspect not many. Usually we make the same mistake that the Pharisees did when it comes to sin. We think that sin is just a matter of do's and don't's. Sin is failing to do the right thing.

But Jesus calls it "hardness of heart." It is a condition of the heart, a condition that exists even before we do anything wrong, even before we commit sin. A diseased tree produces bad fruit. In order to get good fruit, the condition of the tree needs to be changed. Sinful people commit sins. The quality of people needs to be changed before sins will no longer be committed. "Hardness of heart" results in a life where divorce becomes necessary.

What is "hardness of heart"? A rock is hard. It is impervious to outside influences. Water cannot penetrate it. The hard heart is the heart that always wants to be right. The hard heart insists "I'm right and you're wrong." The hard heart knows it all. The hard heart is unwilling and unable to concede any weakness or failure on its part. The hard heart wants to know, "Is it lawful?" because the hard heart always wants to be right. The hard heart always wants to win, to succeed, to be on top.

The hard heart is the enemy of marriage. When a spouse always has to justify himself, when a spouse never can say, "I'm sorry," when a spouse always has to win, when a spouse always has to be right, when a spouse insists that her needs are most important, when a spouse can only think of defending his rights, the rights to his fulfillment and happiness, then a marriage is doomed to failure. Then the divorce is not so much the thing that destroys a marriage, but it provides the public recognition that marriage has ended. It reveals the hardness of heart that has been the cause of this disintegrating relationship.

The hard heart is unwilling to be soft. In other words, the hard heart has got be in charge. It is afraid of being soft, of becoming vulnerable and dependent, of conceding that it needs to trust anyone other than itself.

Jesus raises the stakes in this whole issue. The hardness of heart that leads to distrust, conflict, and selfishness within a marriage is also the hardness of heart that leads to the distrust of God. That is the ultimate indictment of what Jesus has to say here. Sin is not just our mistreatment of others. Sin is our mistreatment of God. God wants us to trust him, to count on him, to hope on him more than anything else in this world. But that takes a soft heart, not a hard heart. That takes a heart that is willing to depend on and trust in someone else. Ever since the Garden of Eden, the descendants of Adam and Eve have refused to do that. We have hard hearts. We want to do things our way.

Already by asking the "Is it lawful?" question, the Pharisees revel their hardened hearts. Hard hearts are determined to do things right. Hard hearts want to be right. Hard hearts want to show God how right they are. Unfortunately, the disciples' similar question about divorce in today's Gospel reveals that they are afflicted with hard hearts just as badly as the Pharisees. They too have hard hearts. They, like the Pharisees, want to be right. They too completely misunderstand what Jesus is all about.

People of Epiphany, this text is not just about marriage and divorce. This text is not advice about under what conditions divorce is permissible. This text is not a pat on the back for all of us who have managed to do everything right and are still living in intact marriages. This text is about exposing the hardness of hearts. This text is seeking to expose every one of us -- Pharisees, disciples, and even you and me -- for the hardness in our hearts, hardness that not only has put us at odds with one another but also with God!

Boy, are we in trouble!

The last section of today's Gospel seems to be totally unrelated to the first section. What does Jesus' blessing the children have to do with marriage and divorce and hardness of heart? It has everything to do with them!

People were bringing little children to Jesus so that he might bless them. I fear that we have romanticized this picture much too long in the church. We read our modern social situation back into the social situation of the first century. We tend to romanticize children in our society. They are so cute, so innocent, so lovable, so unspoiled. Psychotherapists remind us that we would be healthier adults if we would only allow our "inner child" to express itself. We adults would be better off if we could only be more like children.

Children were not so admired in Jesus' world. Children were not romanticized. Adults were impatient with them. They needed to hurry up and become adults. You had children because you needed the economic contribution they could make to family life. You needed them to work on the farm or to help with the business. Children were to be seen and not heard.

No wonder the disciples were upset with all these children being brought to Jesus. If Jesus was to be the Messiah, if he was to be a powerful leader for his people, he didn't need to waste his time on the weak and vulnerable. He needed the strong and powerful on his side. When you have hard hearts, you can't afford to give anyone the impression that you are soft. What would this tough, hard world think of Jesus if he had time for the weak and vulnerable? Why, they might think he was soft. And those tough, hard-hearted disciples couldn't have that.

But Jesus is determined to make his point. Mark says Jesus was "indignant" with his disciples. In other words, Jesus was ticked off. When would these dolts ever catch on? And so, as a kind of object lesson, as a visual illustration of what kind of messiah he was and what his kingdom was all about, Jesus insists that they let the little children come to him. It is to such weak and vulnerable ones, to such marginalized and outcast, that the kingdom belongs. And to make his point, he takes up those little children in his arms, puts them on his lap, and blesses them.

Believe it or not, this is a very fitting way for Jesus to respond to the hard-hearted "Is it lawful?" questions of the Pharisees and disciples. You don't get into the kingdom by being able to answer the questions correctly or even by being able to do everything correctly. The truth of the matter is that we can never do everything correctly. And our persistent search for the right answers and the right actions only reveals our refusal to recognize the truth about ourselves: we too are sinners. We too have hard hearts. We too want to be in charge of our own lives. We too want to show how right we are when it comes to marriage and divorce. There is no room for such hard hearts in God's kingdom.

But for those whose hearts are soft, for those who have been wounded, whose hearts are cracked and bleeding and pulverized and bruised, those who have been ostracized and rejected, those who find themselves standing on the outside with the children, those who have nothing else to depend on in life, those who find themselves bloodied by the divorce wars, it is for them that Jesus has come. It is the soft-hearted whom Jesus embraces and blesses. They have got nothing to offer Jesus. But that's all right. Jesus has got everything to offer them. Jesus offers himself. And that makes them blessed. That makes them members of the kingdom.

Jesus doesn't want to hear our questions about "Is it lawful?" as if somehow in this divorce-riddled world our hands could be clean. All of us have dirty hands. Even if our marriages are still intact, they are all still less than what God wants them to be. But that's okay. We can admit that. We can acknowledge that our hearts are soft, broken, wounded, bleeding. We can let ourselves be vulnerable. We can say, "I'm sorry." For it is for just such soft hearts that Jesus has come. It is to just such people like us that Jesus says, "C'mon, kids. Have a seat on my lap. Let me bless you. Let me love you."

CSS Publishing, Lima, Ohio, Against The Grain -- Words For A Politically Incorrect Church, by Steven E. Albertin