[Scripture readings for the day are at the end of the post]
A number of years ago I was over in England and had a few hours with nothing to do, so I turned on the TV and came across a show called Ready Steady Cook.
It was like a cross between a cooking show and a game show. The contestants were chefs who were given five pieces of food that were completely unrelated to each other: something like (for example) a chicken breast, a chocolate bar, two slices of bread, an orange, and an avocado. And the challenge was to make the best-tasting meal possible using all five of ingredients, in a half-hour’s time.
I fell in love with this show! The creativity was amazing. And if I had been a professional chef I would not have been able to tear myself away from it.
Well, along the same lines, a couple weeks ago, I came across a similar kind of challenge, only using scripture verses instead of food. Just a moment ago you heard those four passages read: one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, one from the Psalms and one from the Gospels. The Old Testament reading talks about the first man meeting the first woman; the Psalm is a song of praise written by King David; the Gospel is Jesus’ teaching on divorce; and the reading from Hebrews talks about how God’s salvation will become reality when time on earth runs out and we move into the kingdom of heaven.
The challenge: to find common ground between these four readings, and to explain why, and make it stick. So I wrote my solution in the form of a sermon, which I wanted to share with you today. See if it makes sense to you, if the reasoning holds together.
There is, of course, more than one possible solution to this challenge (just as a person could conceivably have more than one recipe on hand that contains both chicken and chocolate). But the answer I came up with is the title of our sermon today: “Hesed”.
Hesed is an ancient Hebrew word that is found almost 250 times in the Old Testament. It’s usually translated “loving-kindness” but it means far more than that. It is one of the characteristics of God, and it includes attributes like mercy and kindness and patience, and most especially a loyalty that never quits.
Hesed is also a quality God wants us to imitate. We, as God’s children, can watch how our Heavenly Parent cares for others and then learn to do the same: showing faithful love to God and to each other. But hesed is beyond the power of imperfect human beings; and our constant inability to reach God’s standard – in spite of our best efforts – is why we need Jesus. That’s the big picture.
But in just saying that much I’ve gotten way ahead of myself! So let me back up and look at the readings, beginning with Psalm 8.
Psalm 8 is one of King David’s hymns of praise to the greatness of God. He starts out singing “How majestic is your name in all the earth!”. And David uses the real name of God in verse 1: “Yahweh Adonai”. This is rare, because most Hebrew writers felt the actual name of God was too holy to speak out loud. But David speaks it here, calling on the glory of the name – “I AM” – to proclaim God’s greatness. In verse two this great God is seen standing as a defensive wall between us and the enemy who would destroy us.
Then David turns his eyes to the night sky – as I’m sure all of us have done at some time or another – and he looks in wonder at the moon and the stars. He calls them “the work of God’s fingers”: not even God’s whole hand, just the fingers, implying God could do even more than this! And here’s tiny little David by comparison. Or tiny little us. What are we, compared to such greatness? We’re just tiny specks on a planet in an obscure corner of the galaxy; and the more science discovers about the universe the greater God becomes, and the smaller we become. “What are we that you are mindful of us?”
David leaves us in that smallness for a moment before he answers: “but you have made us little less than Elohim” – that’s the Hebrew word, sometimes translated ‘angels,’ sometimes translated ‘God’ or ‘deities’. “You have made us little less than the heavenly beings.” The meaning is clear: God has crowned human beings with glory and honor.
I can remember one time years ago visiting Colorado. We were staying in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. That’s another awe-inspiring view: hundreds and hundreds of miles of mountains and trees and wilderness, and little tiny us on the side of a mountain. And as I was offering a prayer of praise to God, a thought came to me through the Holy Spirit saying: “see all this grandeur? This is nothing compared to the grandeur God has created in every human soul.”
That’s why we’re here, by the way – here worshipping at church, and here reaching out for God in our neighborhoods. But I’m getting ahead of myself again. Here in Psalm 8, in true Hebrew poetry form, David has placed the most important thought in the middle verse of the psalm, and this is his point: that God has made each one of us little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned us with glory and honor.
This glory includes, but is not limited to, dominion over God’s creation – “the work of your hands” as David says. This includes all living things. And what a gift God has given us, and what a joyful task it is to take care of! Plants that come up every spring, and the company of animals, living beings who can communicate with us (somehow, without language) and who look to us for care. Anyone who has ever been owned by a pet – a dog, a cat, an iguana even – knows what an amazing thing it is to look into the eyes of an animal and listen to its voice, and wonder what it’s thinking. And so we say with David: “O Lord our Lord how majestic is thy name in all the earth!”
God giving the animals into our care links Psalm 8 to our reading in Genesis. In Genesis chapter 1, God created everything: the sun and moon, the stars, the earth, the waters, the heavens, the plant life, the animal life. And at each step along the way we hear God say – seven times we hear God say – “and God saw that it was good”. But in chapter two of Genesis we hear God say, “this is not good,” referring to the fact that the human being God created is alone. So God first brings the animals to the man. Wonderful companions, and the man gives them names, and doing so enters into a relationship with them. But as wonderful they are, the man is still alone, in the sense that he hasn’t met anybody quite like himself yet.
So God puts the man into a sleep, and after a bit of poetic language dealing with ribs, God wakes the man up and presents to him… a woman! And his reaction is, literally translated, “this time! (we might say “At last!”) “A real partner! This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” – or as we would say it today, “this is my blood relative.” And he names her ‘woman’. And the author of Genesis says, “therefore a man forsakes his father and mother and sticks to his wife.” “Sticks to” is the literal translation. Just as the Twelve Tribes stick to the Promised Land, and just as Israel is told to “forsake all other gods” and “stick to” the Lord: as in be glued to, as in can’t ever separate. This is a picture of hesed. Covenant love. Steadfast love that will not let go.
As an aside: I should mention here that there is a difference between hesed not letting go, and human stubbornness or obsession not letting go. Hesed comes from a place of strength and wellness and wholeness, not sinfulness or sickness or a desire to control.
So getting back to our passage: this reading in Genesis is not about romance, and it’s not about any of the modern-day debates on sex or marriage. All these things have to do with self-fulfillment. Hesed is about self-giving. And it’s best understood in terms of sacrament: that is, an earthly representation or picture of a heavenly reality. As Methodists we only observe two sacraments, baptism and communion; but marriage is considered a sacrament in the Catholic Church, and this verse helps explain why. The unity of the first man and the first woman in marriage is meant to give us a picture of the unity of God and God’s people in hesed: an unbreakable, covenant love.
This is why Jesus is so adamant with the Pharisees in the reading from the Gospel of Mark. The Pharisees (like many people today) were completely missing the point. They came to test Jesus, and they ask him, “is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” It’s a question that can’t be answered without starting a debate for which there is no resolution. They’re putting Jesus in a no-win position.
So Jesus bounces the question right back to them. They’ve asked about the law, so Jesus refers them to the law. He says: “What did Moses command you?” And they answer him, “Moses allows for a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”
Now that’s true, that IS what the law of Moses says. But Moses meant this to be an exception to the rule, and the Pharisees know it.
So Jesus gives them an answer that comes from before Moses, an answer that comes from God’s perfect creation, before the fall, back in Genesis. Jesus says: “Moses allowed this because your hearts are hard. But in the beginning God made them male and female, and the two are to become one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together let no one separate.”
I want to add quickly: in a congregation of this size most likely we have a few divorcees among us, and I want to say right away this passage in Mark is not meant to pile guilt on you. The fact is nobody lives up to the Genesis standard. Nobody. Because the Genesis standard is hesed – unending, unfailing covenant love, at all times – and mere mortals can’t do that. We do the best we can but none of us hits the mark 100% of the time.
What Jesus is saying to the Pharisees (and to us as well) is that God doesn’t grade on a curve. Just because we can’t live up to God’s standards doesn’t mean God is going to lower the standards. Hesed is the goal. Hesed is the standard. Covenant love. Promises kept. Faithfulness and trust and loyalty, between married couples, and between us and our God. And if one partner should fall short of that goal – as we have done with God – is divorce the answer?
Jesus says No. God has the ability to do what we mere humans don’t have the ability to do. God is going to make the impossible, possible. God is going to soften hard hearts, and forgive us, and heal us, and lift us up to God’s standards. Our God is a God of miracles.
If anyone ever had grounds for divorce, it would be God. Humankind has been worshipping anything but the one true God for millennia. We chase after what God tells us not to chase after. We make other things more important than God. Our spiritual leaders, the ones who are supposed to know God best, are caught doing unspeakable things. And when God’s son Jesus came to earth, we killed him. God would be perfectly justified in saying “I give up” and walking away.
But God has better things in mind for us. And God’s hesed is more stubborn than any sin you or I or anyone else can come up with.
Psalm 8 gave us a picture of God’s intention for us. We are created by God to be little less than the angels, crowned with glory and honor. So how are we going to get from where we are, on the brink of divorce in the gospel of Mark, to Psalm 8?
That’s where Hebrews comes in. Declared by Jesus, attested by the disciples, proven by God through miracles and by the Holy Spirit. The writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 8 – the part about being little lower than angels and crowned with glory and honor – in Hebrews 2:7-8, and then adds, “we see Jesus who, for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” (Hebrews 2:9) Jesus becomes the first of God’s children to step into glory. And he calls each one of us ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, saying “here I am, and the children God has given me.”
Jesus was sent, not for angels, but for us. And in the final order of things, Jesus brings us to where he is. Verse 17 in Hebrews says, “he became like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people.” A high priest full of mercy and faith – that’s hesed.
And so, in the words of Hosea chapter 6: “Come, let us return to the LORD… that we may live before him. Let us know, let us press on to know the LORD; his appearing is as sure as the dawn…” (Hosea 6:1a, 2)
In God’s faithful loving-kindness – in God’s hesed – God has crowned us mere mortals, each one of us, with eternal glory and honor. This is our hope, and this is the message we carry to the world. AMEN.
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Preached at Incarnation Church (Anglican) 10/7/18, Fairhaven United Methodist Church and Spencer United Methodist Church 10/14/18
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Genesis 2:18-24 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” 19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “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.” 24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Psalm 8:1-9 Psalm 8:1 To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted 2 by the mouth of babes and infants, thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; 4 what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? 5 Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. 6 Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet, 7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea. 9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!
Hebrews 2:1-18 Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it. 2 For if the message declared through angels was valid, and every transgression or disobedience received a just penalty, 3 how can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? It was declared at first through the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, 4 while God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will.
5 Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. 6 But someone has testified somewhere, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? 7 You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, 8 subjecting all things under their feet.” Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, 9 but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
10 It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11 For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, 12 saying, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.” 13 And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again, “Here am I and the children whom God has given me.”
14 Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. 16 For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. 17 Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.
Mark 10:2-9 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
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