October 8, 2006

Pr. Per Inge Vik Text: Mark 10, 2-16 "Christ in Our Home"

The devotional "Christ in Our Home" is being used at the beginning of every Tuesday Open House here in Mindekirken. And hopefully in many homes. "Christ in Our Home" might also be an appropriate headline for this Sunday. On this 18th Sunday after Pentecost, Jesus approaches us as the friend of our homes, our marriages and our children.

Let me at once say that it is a great challenge to preach today, for there are so many women and men that carry wounds and have negative experiences or a bad conscience concerning Jesus' word this Sunday. They feel condemnation, either from their own heart or from their surroundings. How to preach so that it is not received as condemnation, but as support and encouragement? How to make the Creator’s care clear for us, that he created in his own image, and his endless forgiveness when we fail?

Above all we should remind each other that the one that talks here, is He who paid for our sins. And we know that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1).

So, in the first reading, we heard that God is concerned about relationships. It is not good that the man should be alone (Gen 2,18). God wants us human beings to have close relationships, with one another, and to him. And children are included. He wants them to come to him, and that we do not hinder them.

To you who have small children, I will say with the words of the Swedish bishop Martin Lonnebo: "The most important altar in our time, is the child’s bed." This might also be a word for grandparents, and also anybody that has the chance to serve at a child’s bed.

Surely I know too little about how widespread evening prayer and Bible reading at a child’s bed is in American homes. But at least in Norway this kind of prayer is a support beam of Christian education. Anyway, to build the church of God is to hand our faith over to the next generation.

It is in the close relationships in our homes and families and neighborhoods that people are being formed. I claim this, even in this flourishing time for the media. The mass media do have a strong influence. But even so it is in the close contact with good teachers and Sunday school teachers, with parents and close relatives that we are being formed at the deep level of our personality.

At the start of the 21st century, the number of cohabitant homes and single parent homes has grown, and many children also experience their parents changing partners. Then Jesus’ words about divorce and remarriage might feel embarrassing. Anyway, in a time with much departure, it is important to sketch the ideals anew.

So what? We are very wrong, if we imagine that everything was so much better in the old days. In earlier generations, there was a lot of abuse and violence that never was brought to the surface, but kept in the dark.

Perhaps it surprises some of you to hear that the question of cohabitation between man and woman was a very hot topic in the Jewish environment at the time of Jesus. The Law of Moses allowed for divorce under certain conditions. The interpretation of a verse in Deuteronomy 24 (v.1) was the origin of the debate at that time. There it is said: If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house..

Two leading rabbis at that time had two different opinions about what this was all about. Rabbi Shammai and Rabbi Hillel. Shammai was the stricter of them. He and his supporters believed that the only reason for divorce was if the wife had been unfaithful.

On the other hand, Rabbi Hillel gave very wide interpretations of what could be a reason for divorce. Thus he claimed that it was enough that the wife burns the "rommegrot"! But the woman had no rights. Notice the expression the Pharisees use when they come to tempt Jesus: Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? The opposite was no option at all. The wife's rights were not in their consideration.

Jesus cuts through that time’s debate about divorce. He even goes behind the word of the Law of Moses, back to the idea of marriage in the thought of the Creator. But 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.

He who says these words, also sent out his disciples in pairs, 2 by 2, as he knew that we human beings get stronger when we do not stand alone. Today we face a text that wishes to come into dialogue with our time and society. Because we live in this world, and as the partners in a marriage are sinners, or to use Jesus’ own words, because of the hardness of our hearts, divorces happen. That is why law paragraphs are needed to regulate, and to dam up the consequences of our sins.

But Jesus’ words about marriage are not only utopian. God so loved the world that he came and made himself one of us. To spouses I will say: He who ties us together will also help us to stay together. To those who have no spouse: God is able to bless you right where you are in your life today.

And the God of the Bible is dynamic, not static. So many times he has created something completely new when we have thought that our sins and trespasses had destroyed everything. He, the Creator, merged with his creation when his eternal Son became one of us. In Christ, God's Kingdom has come close with its healing and renewing power. The fellowship of a Christian congregation has qualities that we have no idea about until we experience it on our own.

A summary: God ties together, he wants relationships. The triune God is a God of relationships! From the very beginning, before everything was created, God has always been a triune Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in a harmonic fellowship. Glory be to him who always was, now is, and shall ever be one true God from eternity and to eternity.

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