(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Yeah, Sin”, originally shared on September 27, 2021. It was the 152nd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
We don’t hear too much human behavior being
called out as “Sin” in our culture or our Church these days. Unless it’s as the
sin of some political or social injustice being either worse than all other
sins, or something not to be called sin
at all because that would make it easy to forgive but not to change. Both teach
a very non-Biblical understanding of Sin. Today, we’re going to find out why that
is, and what it has to do with our three trash containers.
First of all, let me be clear that the title of this video is “Yeah,
Sin” not “Yea, Sin!” They mean two very different things. 😊
I thought just titling this video “Sin”,
would be melodramatic, or at least sound outdated or provocative, so I
anticipated that reaction with the title “Yeah, Sin”. That is to say, “Yeah,
you read that right”, because I don’t think we hear about it very often.
Too judgmental. Too “Scarlet Letter”. Too,
Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:5, “5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own
eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your
neighbor’ eye.
In Mark 10:2-12 (there are parallels
in Matthew and Luke), Jesus speaks about divorce in what seems like a very
judgey kind of way. Isn’t this the same Jesus who prefaces those words above from
Matthew 7 with,
“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” in Matthew 7:1?
And yet, here are Jesus strict words on
divorce. Can we reconcile all these verses by simply saying that we are not to
judge what is reserved for God to judge and, after all, Jesus is fully God (as
well as fully a human being) so it’s OK if he does it? Or is it something else?
The Pharisees who pop up at the very beginning
of this text are testing Jesus by getting Jesus to make a judgement. It was a
difficult topic then, just as it is now.
The
Pharisees were among the most respected men, and certainly the most respected
lay men, of Jesus day. Yet, Jesus seems to be always knocking heads with the
Pharisees. Why is that?
We see in Mark 10, starting at the 2nd verse:
2 Some Pharisees came, and to test him
they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them,
“What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a
certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”
The Pharisees were the most righteous people among the Jews. Every young
man wanted to grow up to be a Pharisee. They got respect.
They were not clergy. Pharisees were lay men (this was patriarchy,
remember) who had come to a point in their lives where they could afford to
retire. Turn the business, or the trade, or the skills, over to the kids, and
do nothing but study the religious law and live it. There were so many laws,
over 1,000, to keep track of, that it was a full-time job, and that’s just what
they did.
Jesus didn’t have a hard time with the Pharisees because they were
righteous, but because they were self-righteous. They loved the respect they
got, and they let everyone know that they were righteous.
They loved the letter of the law but didn’t care about the spirit of it.
It’s like a parent who tells their children, “Don’t eat cake before dinner. It
will spoil your appetite.” The children say “OK”, but when the parent walks
into the kitchen, they find them stuffing themselves with cookies. “What’s
going on?” the parent says. “You said, “Don’t eat cake before dinner.” But you
didn’t say we couldn’t eat the cookies.
The children kept the letter of the law, but they ignored the spirit of
it.
Likewise, the Pharisees had only become concerned with regulations and
appearances. They were not concerned with what the law pointed to, why the law
was given: the transformational living relationship with the one true living
God for which human beings were created.
They were masters of the “gotcha” questions. They lived for them
That’s where we find them in this reading from Mark 10.
The Pharisees were a religious party.
We know about political parties, but the religious parties included the
Pharisees, the Herodians (who had a Greek origin), the Zealots (who the Romans
would have called terrorists), the Sadducees (who didn’t believe in
resurrection so they were sad, you see 😊). And here the Pharasees were trying to
stir things up. Do you know anybody like that? 😊They wanted to force Jesus to take a
side.
Jesus does, continuing with verse 5:
5 But Jesus said to them, “Because of
your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the
beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a
man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife 8 and the two
shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore
what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Did I mention that, in Jesus’ day, it was patriarchy? Women had no
rights. There were some religious scholars who said that the words, ‘Moses allowed
a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.’, which was not a
law but a commentary on current practices with reference to Deuteronomy 24:1-4,
24 Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman,
but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her,
and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends
her out of his house; she then leaves his house 2 and
goes off to become another man’s wife. 3 Then
suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in
her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her
dies); 4 her first husband, who sent her away, is
not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled; for
that would be abhorrent to the Lord,
and you shall not bring guilt on the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession.
They said that it meant that, first,
only a man could end the relationship and, second, that he could end it for any
reason: burnt toast, bad posture, mother didn’t like her, anything. So, Jesus’
words, while harsh to our ears, actually had the effect of protecting women.
And the provision for divorce was given to limit the human effects of
human sinfulness, not to condone it.
But it was a question for which there was no religious or cultural
agreement. Jesus had taken a side, but he had based his “side” not on the law,
or on a loophole in the law, but upon the nature of relationships in God’s
creation.
As usual, we get some of the details clarified in reading Jesus’
explanation to his disciples, privately, continuing here with verse 10:
10 Then in the house the disciples asked
him again about this matter. 11 He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and
marries another commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband
and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Jesus said, “No divorce”.
Jesus went with God’s intention. Human beings were created in God’s
image and, whatever else that means, it means that we were created for a living
relationship with the one true living God. Marriage is a reflection of that
relationship. Breaking that relationship is a reflection of our rebellion
against God. Marriage, Jesus said, existed under God’s authority, not human
beings’.
The Pharisees were looking for loopholes. Jesus cranked the law down
even harder. Why?
Because Jesus, who was fully God and fully human being, saw the real
problem.
The problem was Sin. Sin entered, and continues to enter, the world
through a one-way door: our rebellion against God.
That rebellion is Sin, with a capital “S”. It separates us from God. Sins,
with a small “s” are what we do in this state of separation, to reject God. And
we, who are all sinners, continue to separate ourselves from God. Sin, as it
has from the fall of human beings from the perfect relationship with God that
God had given them, means death. We deserve only death.
But Jesus, in describing his purpose vs. all the forces that seek to
defy God, said, in John 10:10,
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and
destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
God’s answer to Sin, with a capital S, is not “You have to be better.”
That would be bad news. God’s answer to Sin in the abundant life God gives is
the cross.
God’s answer is not, “Quit your job and learn all the laws so that you
can keep them.
God’s answer is not, “You need to do better.” God’s answer is, “You need
a savior.”
Most Christians know John 3:16, here it is, but pay attention
also to John 3:17,
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone
who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,
but in order that the world might be saved through him.
We rejected God, but God did not reject us.
Instead, God pursued us. This is the gospel, a word that means “good news’. We
see it in Romans 5:6-8,
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time
Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will
anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone
might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his
love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
God hears the prayers of the sinner. Pharisees were considered models of
the godly life in Jesus’ day, while tax collectors were despised as sell-outs
to the Roman empire robbing their own people. Consider Luke 18:9-14,
where Jesus tells a parable,
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two
men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax
collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself,
was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues,
adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I
fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But
the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was
beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I
tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for
all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be
exalted.”
The Christian life is a response to something we didn’t earn and didn’t
have to because of Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus said, responding to a
Pharisee named Simon who had invited Jesus to share a meal at his house and
objected when a woman who was a known sinner, came and wept over Jesus feet, in
Luke 7:47,
47 Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many,
have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little
is forgiven, loves little.”
The forgiveness of sins, the overcoming of our Sin, and our eager response,
in this is the Christian life.
I heard a story once about a little girl who was learning the Lord’s
Prayer from what she had heard. Her hearing of, “and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;” was repeated as “and forgive us our
trash baskets, as we forgive those who pass trash against us;”
That’s actually not
a bad rendition.
We have three trash
baskets at home.
The first one is waste
trash. If we kept that trash, it would be a danger to us. This trash will be
taken away and dumped at a landfill where it will be discarded and rot for a
very long time. Likewise, sin must be taken away or it will harm us and
ultimately kill us. The image of hell sometimes used in the Bible was of a landfill,
full of worms and spontaneous combustion.
The second one is
our green trash. We don’t want it anymore, but it will be used to fill land, to
make it more fertile or to make topper to hold in moisture and helping food or
beauty to grow. In the same way, public sin if it becomes known and results in
negative consequences in this life can be a warning to others not to follow the
same path, but it too must be taken away from us or it overwhelms our life and
we become nothing but a bad example.
The third is our recyclable
trash. We don’t want it anymore, and it must be taken away, but someone else
might be able to make some useful product out of it. Likewise, public sin can
serve as a blessing to others if we do something with our changed lives by turning
away from that sin and being a blessing to others in our response to what God
has done for us.
This is what Jesus,
the sacrificial lamb, has done for us on the cross. He takes away our trash. As
John the Baptist said when he saw Jesus of Nazareth, in John 1:29,
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and
declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
Our three trash containers tell us something about our sin. We all sin. We
all need a Savior. And we are the transformed people of God. What Jesus does
with our sin makes all the difference. He takes it away.
Open your heart to God. Confess your sin and repent of it. And live with
joy, trusting in the mercy and grace of God. Jesus condemned divorce not, I
think to make life harder, but to teach us to not live self-righteously, but to
trust in our Savior to make us righteous, Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world.
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