The sequential reading of Saint Mark’s Gospel on each of the Sundays after Pentecost brought us, two Sundays ago, to a section of that Gospel, which is customarily called “Mark’s Little Catechism”.  It starts at Chapter 9, verse 30, . . . and goes through to the end of Chapter 10.  It commences with a question which asks:  if you believe that Jesus is the Christ and your Saviour, . . . then who are you!  . . . Jesus suggests (Saint Mark says); Jesus suggests that who you are ought to have something to do with Humility; . . . that the object of God’s Kingdom isn’t the personal greatness of attaining to it, . . . but the object of Heaven is to appropriate and manifest God the Father’s uncommon love.

    And then Saint Mark’s Little Catechism undertakes to use the words of Jesus to explain the disciplines necessary to attain to the Humility of Heaven, by which we appropriate that uncommon love of God.  Last Sunday Jesus told us about the necessity for moral and spiritual Chastity; . . . that Humility is attained by means of the discipline of Detachment; . . . that if you allow your hand to become an instrument of moral and spiritual superiority, . . . if you allow your foot to defeat God’s love, . . . or if you use your eye to attach yourself to disordered affections, . . . you will become like the city dump that is in the Valley of Gehenna, south of Jerusalem, Jesus says; . . . you will become inaccessible to God, being a mere spiritual and moral rubbish heap, afire with passions and constantly writhing with the restless motion of the maggots of cupidity.

    Today Saint Mark’s Little Catechism uses the words of Jesus to discuss a second discipline of body and soul to attain to the Humility of Heaven.  Saint Mark introduces the subject by telling us about a time when Jesus was approached by a number of Pharisees, who ask Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”  … Now, you might think that an odd question to ask Jesus out of the blue, but what the Pharisees have in mind, you see, is to test Christ’s sanity.  Because, for the Pharisees, all of reality is defined and governed by certain and absolute laws which have been promulgated by God and spoken to Moses.  The Law of Moses holds sway over all of reality.  And what these Pharisees, who bring this question about divorce to Jesus; . . . what these Pharisees want to know from Jesus is, “what is the authority by which you teach; . . . is your teaching grounded in reality?”  . . . And at first blush Jesus seems to have it together, because he asks an agreeably sane question in response to the question asked of Him:  “What did Moses command you?”, Jesus asks.  And the Pharisees, with great confidence quote from the Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 24, verses 1 to 4, where specific protections are provided for women in a society which guaranteed them very few rights.  And so, the Twenty-fourth Chapter of Deuteronomy says that a bill of divorce may not be drawn up for anything frivolous . . . but may be issued only for reasons of “indecency” -- some essential immorality which breaks the bond of trust between husband and wife.  Moreover, the Law goes on to say that once the divorce has been issued it is final.  There can be no “change of heart.”  You can’t play little emotional games and go jerking the other person around.  So, if you say something you’d better mean what you say, because what you say the first time is irrevocable in the eyes of God.

    And so, Jesus says, “You know, . . . it was because of the reality of sin that Moses gave you this law.  It is sin which evokes indecency, and it is a reciprocal sin that makes a person’s heart so hard that there is no forgiveness.  But let’s suspend reality for a moment,” Jesus says, . . . “let’s suspend reality for a moment and think about how it was when God created us; . . . how it was before sin muddied the waters,” and then Jesus reminds everyone of what the Second Chapter of the Book of Genesis says:

for the man there was not found a helper fit for him.  So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs . . . and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman . . . Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh.

“What therefore God has joined together,” Jesus says, “let not man put asunder.”

    Now, . . . think about that conversation.  The Pharisees (those pious gentlemen who believe themselves to be grounded in reality) . . . the Pharisees say that certain realities are a fact of life, . . . indecency being one of them, . . . and so, God, in His Wisdom (the Pharisees say); . . . God, in His Wisdom has made provision for the facts of life; . . . God has made provision for indecency with divorce.  . . . But Jesus says . . . that the Lord God Almighty, who created reality; … Jesus says that the Lord God Almighty didn’t even imagine divorce when He made us.  When God decided to provide for the man He had created a “helper fit for him,” He formed all the beasts of the field and every bird of the air, . . . but when God brought them to the man, the man named them.  The man assumed power and dominance over those creatures.  And so, the Book of Genesis tells us, God created the next creature out of the rib of the man himself.  . . . And when she is brought to the man, he responds with joy and relief.  Virtually laughing and weeping at the same time, the man says, “Now at last, I am me and this is myself!”  . . . The man does not name the woman; . . . he does not assume power and dominance over her; . . . they are, instead, a unity, Jesus says.  In fact, the man does not name the woman; the man does not name the woman “Eve” and assume power and dominance over her . . . until after the Original Sin had been committed by both.  . . . “So, you see,” Jesus says, “divorce is something that had to be contrived to compensate for a failure of Obedience; . . . something that had to be contrived when the man and the woman failed to obey the Heart of God.”  . . . Because it was in the Heart of the Lord God Almighty in the beautiful creating of a human being in two volumes . . . it was in the Heart of the Lord God Almighty that if a man and a woman decide to cleave to one another; . . . if they decide to become an organic unity:  that both volumes become one complete set; . . . one complete story, . . . it was in the Heart of God that they keep to the journey.  . . . “And it still is,” Jesus says.

    In the Northeast corner of England, just off the coast, is the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.  You can only get to the Island of Lindisfarne when the North Sea is at ebb tide.  And then you must walk a mile or so across cold, wet sand and icy, slippery mud and through frigid, shallow pools left behind by the retreating sea.  When Fran and I walked to Lindisfarne we belonged to a busload of thirty people.  The day we arrived within sight of Holy Island was a cold one; made colder by a very stiff breeze approaching gale force.  We were some thirty people, . . . but only seven were willing to walk out to Holy Island.  . . . So, the seven of us left the bus, took off our shoes, rolled up our trousers, said a prayer together asking God’s grace that we might complete the journeys we begin in His Name, . . . and we began the walk.  And as we began . . . the bus drove away.  . . . That is what marriage is, Jesus says.  To swear yourself to the sacred vow of marriage is to begin a difficult walk to a Holy Place.  But once you’ve sworn in the Holy Name of God that you will do it; once you’ve indelibly sanctified yourself for the journey with the Sacred Name of God, you can’t become who you were before you began.  There’s no retreat backward . . . because the bus isn’t there!    Neither is there any stopping, . . . because you only have a little while before the sea returns; . . . and if you’re still in her bed when she gets there . . . you’ll be drowned.  Either way, whether you stall or retreat, . . . if you do not fulfill the journey you began, . . . you’ll be lost.

    Jesus tells us, in the Gospel appointed for today, that the making of a sacred vow -- any sacred vow, really; . . . the vows of Holy Baptism and Confirmation and Ordination to the priesthood or diaconate come to mind; . . . the Pharisees only happened to pick marriage -- . . . Jesus tells us that the making of a sacred vow is to begin a difficult walk to a Holy Place.  The making of a sacred vow is to begin a journey toward God.  But it is a journey toward God, Jesus tells us, which is in fulfillment of the Heart of God; . . . for it is the Heart of God which has called you to the journey in the first place.

    Now, indeed, the Pharisees are right:  some of us get it wrong the first time.  Either we mishear the Heart of God . . . or, as more often happens, we slip in the slime and fall along the way.  But the Word of God Incarnate -- Jesus; the Word of God Incarnate has come to us to tell us . . . that reality as God made it to be . . . is that you don’t focus on the fall . . . but you pick yourself up and keep to your journey . . . keep to your journey toward the Holy Place; . . . keep to your journey toward God.  . . . The Pharisees think Jesus stark raving mad that He should consider the safeguards of divorce with such contempt.  But Saint Mark’s Little Catechism wants us to understand that the thing for which Jesus has such contempt is not the Law of Moses . . . but the absence of the discipline of Obedience in lives that aspire to the Humility of Heaven.  . . . Because, in order to appropriate and reveal the uncommon love of the Father (which we vowed to do at our Baptism and its Confirming); . . . in order to appropriate and reveal the uncommon love of the Father . . . we must allow the disciplines of moral and spiritual Chastity and holy Obedience; . . . we must allow the disciplines of Detachment and Obedience to make us Humble.