A Question of Identity

Ordinary Time XXVII; October 8, 2006

Mark 10:2-16

Our hearts are all broken this week. The image of mourning Amish families going to their daughters’ funerals in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania on Thursday and Friday is difficult to accept. On Thursday, also, Platte Canyon High School in Colorado re-opened; that is the school where girls were sexually assaulted and one of them killed a week earlier. There can scarcely be a more contrasting picture: men attacking children, and Jesus blessing children. You don’t need to be a follower of Jesus to be dismayed by these attacks on children or disgusted by lurid emails sent by a member of the House of Representatives to pages; our reaction is from the gut.

Yet Jesus’ response to the children and his response to the question about divorce invite deeper reflection than simply our emotional reactions. Here’s my plan for this sermon: to skate along the top of the text, with a comment or two and then to dig into the way of thinking Jesus is teaching. In brief, it’s a question of identity: Who are we?

Skating along the top, we see the Pharisees asking Jesus a question, hoping to catch him saying something either heretical or that would get him in trouble with the government. Do you remember what happened to John the Baptist for telling Herod Antipas that he should not have divorced his wife and married his sister-in-law? (He lost his head.) Perhaps the Pharisees are hoping that Jesus will also offend Herod Antipas and have a similar fate, or at least will say something that they can use to accuse him of loosening the Law of Moses. Jesus seems to have a tendency to loosen the Law, for example, on Sabbath-keeping, so that hope would not be misplaced. Instead Jesus appears to tighten the Law; I suspect that the disciples ask him about his statement again privately in the hope that he would loosen up in private. No, Jesus stands firm in what he says about marriage.

About that time some moms and dads bring little ones along, hoping that Jesus will touch them. It caught me by surprise, reading this text, because I thought of the parents bringing their tots for Jesus to bless them. You and I have heard this story all our lives, and I always hear it, at least in my head, as “they brought the children for Jesus to bless them.” And he does bless them; but what Mark says Mom and Dad are hoping is that Jesus will touch the kids. Still skating along the surface of the text: people are awfully reticent about touch in our day. For a while, I made a really bad decision: I decided I would not touch children at all, lest a mom or dad accuse me wrongly. That didn’t last long, because children like to be touched, and they seem to know when a touch is nurturing and positive and when it is bad. When I was volunteering in inner-city schools in Cincinnati, Ohio, often children I did not know would run up to me and hug me. They didn’t get very many hugs from grown men, and they took the opportunity. Anyway, I changed my mind about that decision and went back to hugging children, although I ask them first if it’s all right, because children are blessed by that attention from adults who care about them.

It’s no surprise that the disciples asked Jesus about his answer to the Pharisees on marriage; I suspect they were hoping he would tone it down in private. No such luck; Jesus stands fast on what he says, “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” If you tie his thinking about marriage to what he says about children, you come up with a deeper insight than simply another regulation. Gratuitous aside: I’m getting tired of people using the words or even the implications of Jesus as an excuse to make rules for how someone else ought to behave. Jesus’ words and the implications of those words are ideal guidance for how you and I should aspire to live. Yet people seem all too quick to find in the Bible justification for doing whatever they want to do, and reasons for why others should be prohibited from doing what they want to do. End of rant.

Jesus is making a deep comment about God’s understanding of the nature of human relationships in the kingdom of God. This is a question of identity. Hard-hearted human beings look constantly for ways to do what we want to do and still feel good about it. Any given person bases decisions on what feels right for him, on what will give her a sense of closure – whatever that is – or on what comes naturally: revenge, self-satisfaction. Jesus points to something deeper: what does God assume about us? What do we look like in the eyes of God? This is a question of identity: are we hard-hearted people, or are we citizens of the kingdom of God?

Perhaps that’s what Jesus means by saying that we can enter the Kingdom only if we receive it as a child. In his culture, at least, children really have no identity: they get their identity from their parents. Perhaps things have not changed all that much; I began to realize I was a real person when I was no longer referred to as “Paul Keefer’s son” and instead he was referred to as “Bob Keefer’s dad.” So to receive the kingdom of God as a child means to take our identity from the kingdom of God. Oh, you have a family name, which you received at birth or marriage, but that is not as important as the name “Christian,” which you received at your baptism. You belong to a political party (unless you are a stubborn Iowa independent), but that is not as important as your membership in the Church. You may be someone’s husband or wife, or someone’s mom or dad; you are certainly someone’s child. None of that is as important as this: child of God.

You may have seen on the news or read in today’s paper about the funeral of Charles Carl Roberts, IV, the man who killed those children in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Half of the persons in attendance were from the Amish community he attacked; they were there both to forgive and to support his devastated family. Now, when faced with such a situation as the non-vindictive, forgiving response of the Amish community, people often say to me, “I could not do that.” My usual answer is, “You do not know what you can do until you have to.” But there is a better response: Yes, you can do that. You can respond to heart-break with forgiveness and without vindictiveness if you think of yourself not as a typical, hard-hearted person, but as a child of God. You do not need to do as the Amish do – separate yourself from the outside world – to think of yourself, day by day, minute by minute, wherever you go and whatever you do, as a child of God.

I thought I was being flippant, but the answer was appropriate for the late sixteenth century. At the workshops I did for schoolchildren at the Ohio Renaissance Festival a little more than a week ago, from time to time some kid would ask me, “What are you?” I was wearing my outfit as Lord Mayor, a rather outlandish combination of kilt, brightly-colored shirt, leather doublet and black hat. “What are you?” I knew that what they meant was, “Are you a peasant? A member of the nobility? Part of the Queen’s Court? Or maybe a pirate?” But what they asked was, “What are you?” I thought I was being flippant when I always answered them, “A child of God.”

When I started studying this text I learned that I was not being flippant, I was merely summarizing today’s sermon. So, what are you? A child of God.

Loving God, thank you for touching us and looking out for us. We are indeed your children and we pray that you will lead us to live as your children. In the name of our eldest brother, Jesus. Amen.

Robert A. Keefer

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Clarinda, Iowa