Lectionary for Oct. 6, 2024
20th Sunday after Pentecost
Job 1:1, 2:1-10; Psalm 26;
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
As I’ve drifted around different parts of the body of Christ throughout my life, I’ve seen that some (non)denominations argue for the centrality of nuclear families. I’ve always found that a little strange. After all, Jesus and Paul advise remaining single and celibate if possible (Matthew 19:11-12, 1 Corinthians 7:7-8). Jesus blesses those who leave their families for ministry (Matthew 19:29). Finally, Jesus distances himself from his own family to make a point about prioritizing the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 12:48-50). Making the umbrella claim that Jesus uniformly and uniquely supports relatively modern notions of a two-parents-and-a-couple-kids nuclear family doesn’t really fit comfortably with the witness of Scripture.
At the same time, Scripture speaks volumes about family, belonging and household identity. This week the lectionary passages point to specific teaching that simultaneously upset and reaffirm family cultures and beliefs in the first—and 21st—centuries.
The author of Hebrews begins her letter (I’m in the Priscilla-authorship camp) with a Christological bone to pick with some of her contemporaries. Philo and others had been teaching that the angel of the Lord (Genesis 16:7-14, 22:11-15 and 31:11; Exodus 3:2-4; Judges 6:11-23; Zechariah 1:12, 3:4) was the Logos or the Word/Spirit that John’s Gospel says “was with God and was God.” Several Christian patriarchs, such as Justin Martyr and Tertullian, saw the angel of the Lord as a preincarnate Christ.
Hebrews argues forcefully against this belief, claiming that Jesus was ever an angel and insisting that he is the son of his Father (1:4-5). Most of the first two chapters, including the verses that the lectionary skips, draw a purposeful distinction between Jesus the Son who sits upon the throne and the angels who serve both Father and Son. Indeed, Jesus, in his incarnation, was temporarily “made a little lower than angels” (Psalm 8:5) so that he might be exalted above the angels and be crowned with glory.
But Jesus doesn’t enter glory alone. Instead, he brings many children into glory as the pioneer whom we follow. Then Jesus declares that we are his siblings before God the Father (Hebrews 2:10-11), citing Psalm 22:22: “I will declare your name to my siblings, in the assembly I will sing your praises.” The author of Hebrews creates an if-than argument that goes like this: If Christ is not an angel but the Son of God, and if Jesus is a human and sibling to all humanity, then when Jesus the Christ is raised to glory with his Father, he will bring all his siblings with him. This is how God’s family works!
As a necessary consequence of recognizing our place within the household of God, we should seek to love and honor our commitments to one another.
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus entered a contemporary debate about how human families work. Religious leaders were debating the circumstances in which divorce should be allowed. The Pharisees weren’t of one mind on this issue. Some followed a teacher named Hillel the Elder, who interpreted Deuteronomy 24:1 to say that a man may divorce his wife anytime she doesn’t “find favor in his eyes”—basically for any reason. Other Pharisees followed the teaching of Shammai, who interpreted the same verse to say that a man may only divorce his wife if he finds some “indecency”—read as adultery—in her. The particular Pharisees who approached Jesus at this moment seem to have followed the school of Hillel, because they didn’t limit a man’s prerogative to divorce his wife (Mark 10:4).
Jesus disagrees and sides with Shammai—and goes even further. Shammai permitted a man to divorce his wife if she had committed adultery. Jesus says that if a man—or woman! (Mark 10:12)—divorces her or his partner in order to marry someone else (we must read the Greek kai here as cumulative), that person has already committed adultery against their former spouse. A simple piece of paper or divorce certificate doesn’t protect one’s heart from committing emotional adultery!
This is a highly technical conversation among people who were debating fine points of the law, not the general ideas of divorce. The context of Deuteronomy 24, after all, is about the case of spouse-swapping in which someone divorces his wife to marry another woman but realizes his mistake and wants to return to his first wife. Jesus knows this, and his teaching prevents altogether the sad situation of betraying a spouse for a “better option.” Jesus points to what families are to be like—deeply committed to one another and not entertaining the possibility of breaking a commitment because of a new infatuation.
The lectionary passages go out of their way to locate Jesus—and us—in God’s family. Jesus is not and has never been an angel, but he is the son of God and the elder brother of all his human siblings. As a necessary consequence of recognizing our place within the household of God, we should seek to love and honor our commitments to one another—not in a slavish way that leads to abuse or dehumanization (God forbid!) but as siblings in Christ who want to bless each other and love each other as Jesus first loved us.
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