Year C Lent 5 WED 2022 Conditioned to Trust

 Year C Lent 5 WEDNESDAY 2022 

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Conditioned to Trust”

Mark 10:1-16

1 He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.

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.’ 5 But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6But 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.’

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.’

13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ 16And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Like so many things, we condition ourselves to respond. Our reactions are often the truest sense of who we are and how we think.

I remember one time this came into the starkest of realities. I used to work at a camp for inner-city kids in Richmond. Many of them came from very hard realities. And this shaped who they were and the adults they would become.

One fall I was asked to come back to the camp and work an alumni weekend, when former campers would come back and relive the glory days of their summers there. We took a canoe trip, and stopped to grab lunch at a swinging bridge. While I was coming down the steps in my size 13s, much too big for these steps, my gumboot got snagged a couple of steps up, and I started to fall. There was a woman there who could have stopped it, and in that slowing down of time that happens when you are mid-accident I looked her dead in the eye and she in mine. Instead of slowing or stopping my fall she took a step back, flinging her hands up saving herself, and I proceeded to fall flat on my face busting up my shin and doing a number on my ankle in the process. Now, I am big, but back then I was much smaller than I am now, and she could have thrown an arm up to slow my descent or something, but her response was conditioned. My expecting her to help me was conditioned, too. It broke my heart, not to mention my banged up shin, to see how little trust she had or willingness to help. We are shaped by experience, and how we are shaped as children, it sticks.

“[W]hoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

How does a child enter anything? 

Curious. Hopeful. Cautious. Trusting. I love how children sense who is safe and who is not, unless they are taken advantage of. My brother is not a very affectionate person, but I remember one holiday he was with us. Sojo would always squeeze in next to him, even if there was plenty of room. She would take his hand. She would crawl on his lap. He would look at me like, “Hey, I am not encouraging this.” I would nod and smile. I know, I know, my glance would tell him. She just knew that he was safe, and probably that he was alone and needed some love and attention.

Children, ones who have been raised in love and safety, enter the world that way. Jesus says we need to enter the Kingdom of God that way, too.

Jesus teaches on divorce, and this is such a hard text. I makes Jesus look judgmental. I can see that. But I have to read the first story filtered through the second.

Jesus says we have divorce through hardness of heart. We have a hardness of heart in things like divorce when we do not enter into things like a child enters into things, lovingly, trustingly, carefully, and caringly. Divorce is there when the trust goes away. That is not God’s hope and dream for us.

God’s hope is that we will get it right the first time, but alas, that is often not the case. Like so many things, we condition ourselves to respond. Our reactions are often the truest sense of who we are and how we think. Like the woman who did not help me when I was falling.

Jesus invites us to change our conditioning. To come to things as a child, and to enter the Kingdom and to take the Kingdom to the world that way. It takes faith, the faith of a child to do so. May we have that, always. Amen.