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.” (Mark 10:14)

Have you noticed that we don’t live in an ideal world? That’s a fact. It may be a frustrating fact, but nonetheless true. For most of us, our vision of an ideal world would be one in which all people would live in peace and harmony, in which every marriage would last happily until death, in which every child would grow up healthy and happy and successful.

            But we don’t live in that world, do we? We are all acquainted with brokenness and failure. Hopefully, we’ve known forgiveness, too.

            In today’s text, wrong-spirited questioning runs into unexpected ideals, which then beg for interpretation in the face of reality.

Jesus and legalists

(vv. 1-12)

The wrong-spirited question had to do with divorce. Mark tells us that Jesus had set out for “the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan,” one of several geographical notes in the gospel (see also 7:24, 31; 8:22, 27; and 9:30, 33). [DD]

            Crowds gathered around Jesus, Mark said, “and, as was his custom, he again taught them” (v. 1). We might love to know what Jesus was teaching, but Mark does not say: he uses the occasion to set the stage for a conflict story between Jesus and a group of Pharisees who had less than admirable intentions.

Mark says they came “to test him,” hoping to catch Jesus in a trap by asking him to take sides on the hotly debated topic of divorce: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” (v. 2). Jesus exposed their hypocrisy by requiring them to admit that they already knew what the law said (vv. 3-4). Deuteronomy 24:1-4 allowed a man to divorce his wife if she displeased him because he found “something objectionable about her” (NRSV). Wives did not have the same privilege.

            Jesus went a step beyond their legal debate by raising the issue of what God desired. Divorce was allowed only because the Israelites were unable to fulfill the ideal of a permanent marriage, Jesus said (v. 5). He then combined two snippets from Genesis 1 and 2 to argue that God’s desire is for marriage to be permanent, adding “Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate” (v. 9). [DD]

            When the disciples pressed Jesus for a further word later on, he took the surprising step of declaring that divorce, whether initiated by the man or the woman, would lead to adultery against the first spouse if either remarried (vv. 10-12).

            What do we do with a text like this? Are Jesus’ words to be taken as a law that Christians must follow? Are divorced persons who remarry condemned to a life of either celibacy or adultery?

            We note first that the teaching reflects a new reality: Jewish law allowed only men to obtain a divorce, but Roman law allowed a woman to do the same. This teaching puts men and women on the same level.

            Secondly, recall the background story of Herod Antipas and Herodias breaking their previous marriages so they could be wed. This, and a popular interpretation of Deut. 24:1-4 that allowed men to enjoy serial polygamy through easy divorces, showed the negative side of divorce, which needed a corrective.

            The Pharisees’ use of a serious question in a trivial way, combined with the conflicted approach to divorce among the legalists, led Jesus to leap past the quibbling of “what is permitted” to focus on God’s ideal desire that marriages be for good.

            We know that many couples fail to live up to God’s ideal – indeed, to their own ideals. But does getting married automatically mean that God has joined a couple together? Some marriages are ill advised and doomed from the beginning. Others begin well, but over the course of years, one or both partners change in ways that can make continuing the marriage more harmful than ending it.

            We know this, and God understands this. Jesus was far more prone to utter words of compassion and forgiveness than of condemnation and judgment. We fail to live up to God’s ideal in many areas of life, not just in marriage. When we fall short, God offers forgiveness and the opportunity to start anew. It is reasonable to believe this includes the area of marriage. Jesus confounded the Pharisees by upholding God’s ideal over human legalism, but that does not condemn people in bad marriages to a life of misery, or sentence remarried persons to a life of adultery. [DD]

Jesus and children

(vv. 13-16)

From a teaching on divorce, the narrative moves to a lesson from children, and from their parents. “People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them. . .,” seeking Jesus’ blessing (10:13a).

            We know what it is to want the best for children. We want them to have decent living accommodations, adequate food, and meaningful work. None of those things matter, however, as much as providing them with inner security and spiritual nourishment. If we work to give our children a better education and better employment prospects, but give them no purpose in life, we have failed.

            Some denominational traditions use this text to support infant baptism, but Jesus’ acceptance of children does not require baptism. We cannot baptize a baby and assume she is set for life. Nor can we relax our concern when one of our older children expresses faith and seeks baptism. Christian adults have a responsibility to continue bringing the children of this world to Jesus, and not just by bringing them to church, but also through living as appropriate examples.

            From the disciples we learn a more negative lesson: the serious danger of keeping anyone from Christ. When the parents brought their children to Jesus, the disciples tried to keep them back, and Jesus became “indignant” – a word so strong that neither Matthew nor Luke repeats it in their version of the story (Matt. 19:13-15; Luke 18:15-17).

            I have known men who stood guard at the church door to make sure none of the neighborhood’s black children tried to come in. I have known other adults who took a much less overt role in hindering children, but their general apathy and unwholesome lifestyles served to the same effect.

            For Jesus, those who keep children (or others) away from him are working against him. This story is separated by only a few verses from Jesus’ earlier warning about the danger of being a stumbling block to children (9:42).

            Jesus used the occasion to insist that we cannot enter the kingdom of God unless we enter it like children: “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (v. 15). English grammar eschews the use of double negatives, but both Hebrew and Greek employ them for emphasis. In v. 15, the Greek could be read to say that those who don’t come as children “will not never enter” the kingdom.

Jesus’ words suggest that there is something about the character of a child that enables believers to experience God now in kingdom living now as well as sharing Christ’s life in eternity. [DD]

            I once studied this passage in 30 commentaries written over a period of 150 years. Nineteenth century scholars writing in the 19^th century described children as pure, humble, or meek. Current commentaries rarely describe children in similar ways.

            What childlike qualities did Jesus have in mind? He knew that children have an innate openness and ability to trust that adults tend to lose along the way. They are not so cynical that they cannot believe, or so rational that everything has to be fully explained before they can accept it. Childlike faith must grow into a mature faith, but faith begins on a child’s level – in simple trust.

            Children can accept being accepted. Adults who are aware of their sin often worry if they are “good enough” to be accepted by Christ, but children do not worry about such things. A healthy child does not think “Why should Jesus love me?” She knows that she is lovable. [DD]

Like children, we cannot understand who God is or where God came from or how God works or even why God cares about us. There is little we can do with that from a logical, analytical, adult perspective. If we are going to receive the presence of God in our present lives and be assured that we will one day enter the presence of God in glory, we must open our minds to wonder, and we must open our hearts to trust. Just as a child trusts her parents implicitly, so we learn to trust in God, and so the kingdom becomes a part of us, and so we become a part of the kingdom.

            We should not overlook an additional lesson from Jesus, whose angry rebuke points to the inadequacy of our value systems. People commonly grow angry from affronts to self, but Jesus’ ire was provoked when harm came to others.

            Jesus’ response to the children also shows a love that goes beyond what we might expect of him. The parents in question had hoped that Jesus might simply touch their children (v. 13), but Jesus “took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them” (v. 16). The word for “blessed” is actually a strengthened form of the usual term: he fervently blessed them.

            Jesus truly cares for all of the children, no matter our age, and he desires to bless us all. How great is that?