Mark 10:17-31.  In yesterday’s post I mentioned that the Pharisees thought that their system of following the Old Testament was the way to be sure of spending eternity with God in Heaven.  I also mentioned that in today’s reading we would see that people were not entirely sure about what the Pharisees were telling them.

In today’s reading we see Jesus on the move again.  The scenery may be changing physically but I think it is not changing too much with respect to the disciple’s spiritual or learning journey.  As Jesus begins this journey he as approached by a man.  The man comes up quickly and bows down at Jesus feet.  He wants to know how he can be sure he has “eternal life”; that is a forever relationship with God in Heaven.  The man addresses Jesus as “good teacher”.  Jesus uses that greeting to get the man’s attention of God.  Bowing was a way of showing extreme respect for someone; even worship.  Although from other parts of the New Testament we know that Jesus is God and worthy of worship the man was probably looking at him as a great man rather than God.  Jesus responds in a way to get the man to clearly focus on God.  Jesus doesn’t say he isn’t God or isn’t good, he just points out that only God is good.  Then he goes on to answer the man’s question, sort of.  Jesus basically quotes part of the “Ten Commandments” from Exodus 20:3-17.  Those Ten Commandments were seen as the foundation or a summary of the requirement of the Old Testament Law.  The first four deal with our relationship to God and the last six deal with our relationship to each other. Jesus is referring to the first five of the last six, he leaves out the last commandment, “You shall not covet (strongly desire) your neighbor’s wife, house, servants, or stuff.”

The man responds to Jesus that he has done all of these things since he was a young man.   Jesus appreciated his response, the Bible says he felt “love” for the man.  In Greek (the language of the New Testament) there are four words for love.  This one speaks about a sacrificial dedicated love, the same kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13.  Jesus love motivates Jesus to inform the man what he was lacking in his devotion to God, Jesus told him to sell all of his stuff and give it to poor people.  Through Christian history there have been groups of believers who though it was a mark of great devotion to God to be poor; take a vow of poverty.  Our relationship with God is more complicated than just making up a bunch of rules and following them, that is what the Pharisees were doing and it wasn’t working.  This man certainly had heard the Pharisees take on how to have eternal life and was not satisfied.  Jesus answer was personal and related to where this guy was spiritually.  The guy really wanted to live for God, he had kept all those rules since he was young, but he was missing one key thing he had at least one false God in his life, money.  He had a lot of money and wanted to hold on to it at all costs.  That is why Jesus was pointing him to the one true God.  Unfortunately the man left.  The Pharisees were busy holding on to their traditions for security and this man was busy holding onto his money for security.  Neither was like the little children who lived life by faith.

In verses 23-27 Jesus turns from the rich man’s spiritual journey (which had just taken a very serious wrong turn) to the spiritual journey of the disciples.  He told the disciples that it was hard for a rich person to go to Heaven, clearly he was implying that the rich man was going the wrong way, all the good that he had done was not enough.  His response to the rich man amazed his followers.  He took his answer even farther by telling them that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.  Bible scholars debate whether Jesus was being literal or was using a metaphor.  In those days cities often had walls around them with large gates in the walls to enter through.  At night the gates would be shut and not opened until the following morning.  If someone came after closing time they had to stay outside the city.  Some cities had a way around this by putting a smaller gate in the large one, a door really.  That door could be easily opened form the inside to allow a person in.  It waas small and easily defended.  Some scholars claim this small door was called “the eye of the needle”.  Although difficult it is possible that a camel could go through one of these doors (perhaps in pieces).  Jesus was probably talking about a real needle used for sewing though.  You can see this in the rest of the conversation.  The disciples responded by asking, “Who can be saved then?’”  Clearly they understood the answer to be, “No one.”  Jesus supports this answer by telling them that it is impossible for men to save themselves, but there is hope, salvation (spending eternity with God) is possible if God does it for us.  And that is exactly what Jesus’ journey to the cross was going to be about, a fact he was trying to get the disciples to understand.

Unfortunately they were still being held back by their traditional views of how to get to heaven a little.  Maybe they thought that the rich man hadn’t done enough but that they had.  Peter started talking, reminding Jesus how much they had already given up.  Jesus’ answer assures Peter that he knows they have made sacrifices, and God isn’t about them being in poverty; giving up stuff doesn’t make us better, it may be necessary sometimes, but it doesn’t make us better.  Remember the problem with the rich man was that he had other gods in his life, he was a spiritual cheater.  The disciples on the other had had given stuff up and were faithful to God, though confused.  God would take care of their needs now and would give them a place in Heaven.  Jesus ended the lesson by telling them Heaven doesn’t work on a whose done more basis, it’s about putting your faith in God to take you there.  That is what he is getting at when he tells them that the “first will be last and the last first”, he is turning their traditional ideas inside out and upside down.  Some of the first people in their society (like Pharisees and rich rulers) will have the hardest time getting into Heaven because they will need to abandon their adult pride and become like dependant children.  This lesson would have probably been very comforting to the believers in Rome, many of not all of whom were last in their society.  Most of whom had only been believers for a short time and not “kept the commandments from their youth up.”  To them and to us the message is, it’s all God’s doing and we just need to receive the Kingdom of God as a gift from Him.

God thank you for heaven.  Thank you that I don’t need to earn it.  Thank you Jesus for paying my way in.  Help me have no other gods in my life.  Help me trust you for now and for eternity.

Mark 10:1-16.  Today’s reading has two parts.  The first part involves a teaching of Jesus in response to questions by some religious leaders, Pharisees.  And the second part involves the sort of attitude people need to enter the kingdom of God.  Remember that Jesus is on his journey to Jerusalem and he as his followers on a spiritual journey to prepare them to continue sharing the good news about what he is doing to open Heaven (eternity with God) to people.  I think there may be a very subtle contrast in these two parts of the reading.

Pharisees were a particular “sect” or group of Jewish people.  Just like in Christianity today we have different groups, Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, etc., there were different groups of Jewish believers in Jesus day.  The Pharisees were a very conservative group.  They were very careful in how they read the Old Testament (the only part of the Bible they had in those days).  They made up lots of rules to help them obey what they had read. Although they were very careful in how they read the Bible they still did not “get” it all, just like the disciples of Jesus they had a limited view of what the Messiah (or Christ) was going to do.  They also believed that by being very strict about the rules in the Old Testament they could spend eternity with God in Heaven.  As we will see in tomorrow’s reading, though, that question was not entirely answered in everyone’s mind.  If you have been reading along in Mark you might also remember that members of this “sect” were not happy with Jesus doing miracle on the Sabbath (a violation of their interpretation of the Old Testament) and were getting together with another one of the groups, the Herodians, looking for a way to get rid of Jesus (Mark 3:6).

So in the first section of our reading today one of the Pharisees is part of a crowd in Judea and he asks Jesus a question about the Old Testament rules.  Some translations say that the Pharisee “questioned” Jesus, others say he “tested” him.  The word used in the Greek indicates that this was more than just a casual question but it was more like an interrogation.  That would be in line with the attitude that the Pharisees were starting to have in Mark 3.  Judea was a part of the land of Israel around Jerusalem, sort of a county or state.  Jerusalem was the capital of Israel when it was a nation.  It was also the city where the temple was and would have been the center of everything for a dedicated Jewish person.  Although Pharisees could have lived anywhere in the land or beyond most of them would have wanted to stay close to the Temple where they could practice their strict beliefs more easily; this was their “home field”, their “turf”.

The question the Pharisee tests Jesus with was about divorce.  In the Old Testament Law God instructed the Jewish or Israelite people that they could only divorce their wife if they found something “indecent” about her (Deuteronomy 24:1).  Evidently the word translated “indecent” in our English translations could mean “something he didn’t like”.  At the time of Jesus there was a debate between two different groups of Jews, followers of two important teachers.  One group said the idea in Deuteronomy 24 was if the wife (or husband as we will see) cheated on their spouse.  The other group said a guy could divorce his wife for spoiling a part of dinner. The interesting thing about Jesus’ answer is that he doesn’t really answer the question about which group is right, at least not at this point.  He tells them that the real reason a divorce would happen is because of the hard heart of the offended person.  Jesus makes it very clear that God invented marriage and intended it to be a life long relationship.  Jesus even seems to indicate that God is involved in each particular marriage; when a pastor or other person says, “What God has joined together let no man separate’ at the end of a wedding ceremony, it’s not just a traditional saying, Jesus’ answer indicates that God is really involved.  It is clear from the New Testament (and even the Old Testament for that matter, consider Hosea) that marriage was invented by God not just so we could have fun, or a helper in life, or a family, or kids but to give us a way of understanding part of our relationship with Him.  In the case of Hosea God used marriage and cheating to help the Israelites (and us) understand what it is like when we honor false gods.  God is offended like a husband or wife is offended when a spouse cheats on them.  But from Hosea we also learn that God is willing to forgive and take us back if we return to him.  In today’s reading Jesus points out that humans fall short of God’s perfect example because sometimes we just can’t forgive.  Because we are that way God allowed for divorce in the case of cheating but he would rather have us follow his example and forgive and keep the marriage together.  That is the better picture we can paint for the world of our relationship with God through the example of our marriages.

After teaching the crowd and answering the question of the Pharisee Jesus and his followers go off for the night.  As was common the disciples were still confused and Jesus explains his answer a little more.  Maybe they didn’t think Jesus had cleared up the debate between the two schools of thought. He makes it very clear that the first group was closer to the truth, a marriage could only be ended over adultery (cheating).  Interestingly Jesus tells them a man can divorce his wife if she cheats and that a wife can also divorce her husband if he cheats.  Notice that the Pharisee only asks about the husband starting the divorce because in that day and in the Jewish culture it would have been very unusual for a woman to make such a move.

The next part of our reading seems kind of disconnected but I think it does relate.  Some of the crowd seem to follow Jesus and they start bring some children to him, so he can touch them.  There is no indication that these children were sick or diseased so it was probably not for physical healing.  Touching them was one part of giving someone a blessing, sort of wish or prayer for a good life.  That sort of thing was very important in the Jewish culture and often in the Bible it would have a sort of prophetic result.  God is not bound by our prayers but often honors them.  The people obviously saw Jesus as being close to God and wanted him to speak some “good words” over their children (the word “bless” in the New Testament means “good words”).
The disciples seemed to think this was a waste of Jesus’ time and tried to stop the people.  Jesus on the other hand stopped his disciples and informed them that they had a lot to learn from these children.  If they wanted to be a part of God’s forever kingdom they needed to be like children in some way.  The idea here probably involves obedience and trust.  Remember that the children were brought to Jesus, probably by their parents; they seem to be submitting to their parents direction in their lives.  But Jesus challenges his followers that they need to “receive” God (actually the Kingdom of God) like these children are.  That is where the idea of trust comes in.  It is interesting that in Mark 3:7 right after we learned that the Pharisees and Herodians were plotting a way to destroy Jesus that we are told it was because they had a hard heart; were unwilling to see things the way God intended and rather clinging to their own ideas.  Now here Jesus used the same idea and the question by the Pharisee to challenge the disciples to think outside their “box”.  They needed to be less stubborn and more submissive like the children were.  In away Jesus was telling them to look at life and their actions in light of eternity and not to get stuck in spiritual ruts of their own making.  This would have been good advise to those troubled believers in Rome, especially some who might have been married to unbelievers and it is good advise to us too.  We need to remember to see the bigger picture of our lives and live to show God to the world.

God help me use this life you have given me to teach those around me about you.  Let me trust and obey like a child.  Help me know that you will bless my life.  Let my life be an eternal blessing to those I meet.