When I was in high school, I had a solid group of friends. We got together multiple times a week to hang out, watch movies, and play games. Most of my friends went to youth group with me. When I graduated high school, I was really worried about leaving my friends. It scared me to think about not having them to hang out with. We’d shared our lives and our struggles with each other. In order to hang on to that a bit longer, I went to community college and lived at home. Most of my friends were younger than me, so we were able to keep most of the group together. But eventually, I reached the end of my time in community college, and my friends all graduated and were ready to move on. So I embarked on a new adventure as I left for college.

Quickly finding activities to immerse myself in, I began making friends at college pretty quickly. We weren’t quite as close as I had been with my high school friends, but it was still a great group. For my three years there, I always felt supported and loved. When I graduated, once again I was scared to leave my friend group. As a last ditch effort to stay connected to them, I re-enrolled in another semester of college post-graduation. It meant taking out quite a bit of money in loans, but I felt that the relationships were worth it. And it was a great semester. Not academically, I stopped going to classes and failed them all. But relationally, I had really connected with people. But that too had to come to an end. Having failed all my classes, I was not able to stay after that semester. So…I got a job working at the college. It didn’t pay much, but it allowed me to maintain some of those connections. It wasn’t the same though, and I soon left for something else. After that, I struggled to make friends. Any connection I had with people, outside of dating relationships, was only surface deep. I always told myself it didn’t matter, that I was fine on my own. I mean..I had my family. I didn’t really need anyone else. It wasn’t until a few years ago, when a new friend walked into my life, that I realized how truly important relationships like that are. Humans are meant for relationship.

You may be wondering at this point what all of this has to do with our Scriptures for this morning. The connection for me lies in the focus of these texts: relationships. In Genesis, we read an account of the creation of humankind. The story tells us about Adam needing a helpmate. So God creates animals and brings them, one by one, before Adam, but Adam rejects them all. So God causes Adam to go into a deep sleep and removes a rib from Adam’s chest. From that rib, God creates a woman. And Adam says of her, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” In Hebrew, the man is ish and the woman is ishah. Adam has been waiting for someone he can have a true connection with.

When Adam says, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” he is talking about their substance being the same. He uses the Hebrew words etsem and basar. Etsem, translated as “bone,” is really talking about the substance of a person. Eve’s substance is the same as Adam’s substance. The word used for “flesh” is basar. This word is almost always translated as flesh, but the depth of its meaning extends beyond just the physical skin and muscle of the body. We see this in the ways that the Psalmists use this word. Psalm 27: “When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh…they shall stumble and fall.” Psalm 38: “There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin.” Psalm 54: “In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I am not afraid; what can flesh do to me?” Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Psalm 84: “My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.” And Psalm 145: “My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever.” You can see in those verses the depth of the meaning of flesh. Adam and Eve share the same substance and the same life force. They are equal in quality and in value. Humans are meant for relationship.

That brings us to our passage from the gospel of Mark. Most of the time, we focus on two things from this passage. The first and probably the main one is divorce. And the second one is the innocence of a child. We often tend to look at this passage as being about rules, about what is right and what is wrong. This passage has and continues to be used to condemn. We focus more on the brokenness than on the relationship.

So, this morning I want to look at this passage a little differently. I want to start from that place of brokenness, that place of damaged and divided relationships. But I don’t want to stay there long because I believe this passage is more about what life SHOULD look like rather than what it SHOUlDN’T. We’re going to take this passage in three chunks. First, we will talk about broken relationships, then we will talk about healed relationships, and finally we will look at the blessing of inviting those on the margins to come close.

First, we think about broken relationships. Jesus is approached as he is teaching and is asked, “‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ [Jesus] answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.’” Traditionally, this passage is interpreted as Jesus saying that it is NOT lawful for a man to divorce his wife. And I think we would all agree that that is an ideal situation. But life is much messier than that. And Jesus most certainly recognizes that. So when he is asked that question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” I don’t actually think Jesus’ answer is NO. Listen to what he says. First, he asks what Moses commanded, because the Torah, the books of Moses, is the center of the rule of life for Jews. And the questioners answer, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” And Jesus replies, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.”

In order to fully discern the meaning of this passage, we need to understand the context a bit. In that day, a man could divorce his wife, but the wife had no avenue by which to divorce her husband. If a woman was divorced, she became an outcast. And all a man had to do to divorce his wife was shout it out in the streets three times. So when Moses made them write a certificate of dismissal instead, perhaps that deterred some men from going that route and destroying their wife’s life, making her poor and an outcast. Men needed no reason to divorce their wives. They could divorce her because she made a bad meal or because she sweated when she did chores, or because she looked at him funny. And that wasn’t right. And I think Moses saw that and I am certain that Jesus did.

And divorce in that day had an impact beyond just the couple (and does today too, but in less noticeable ways). The family of the couple and the whole community were impacted by any broken relationships within its body. It was not so much about rules as it was about relationships. And I think Jesus shows that when he talks about the creation story we looked at earlier. Jesus talks about how we were created for relationship. Jesus uses that word “flesh” again, saying, “the two shall become one flesh.” This is a return to that creation story where Adam says, “this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” We were created to be one with each other, to be unified despite our differences, because we are all of one substance.

But we humans are stubborn and fearful, and push people away who are different from us, who we view as less than ourselves. This reality is exemplified in the short story that ends our reading. People come to Jesus as he is having the conversation about divorce. And while he’s talking, there are children running around trying to get to Jesus. But they are being prevented, either by their parents or by the disciples or by someone else. Children in that society were viewed as lesser beings. So, just like the lepers and the Samaritans and the tax collectors and the prostitutes who the Jewish leaders thought Jesus shouldn’t associate with, the children were to be kept away as well. But just like with the others, Jesus doesn’t want barriers to relationships. So, he says, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”

Children don’t discriminate against others. They seek out relationships with anyone who is near them because they have not yet been tainted by the pain and hatred that exist in the world. And Jesus says, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Do we treat others the way we would if we were little children? Are we resilient in our relationships and forgiving like little children are? Do we seek to be one flesh or do we simply perpetuate the brokenness? Humans are meant for relationship. It is how we were created to live. So, I ask you, “Can you relate?” Can you relate to one another in ways that are just and kind and loving and compassionate? Can you relate to one another to seek healing and wholeness for each other? Can you relate to one another in such a way that some of the “one flesh” that we were created to be starts to re-form in our bones, in our flesh, and in our love for each other? Humans are meant for relationship. So can you relate?