(Mark 10.2-16)

I had the Reception and Year 1 of the Primary School in church last Wednesday. We did a picture treasure hunt where they were given photographs of objects in the church and had to try and find them. When the children were leaving one of them said to me, “I am so…proud”; a second one looked at me and said, “I love you”; a third child went through and said, “Goodbye Potato head”. |Each of them needed to put their experience into a set of words that made sense to them. They were only five and six and so they were picking out ideas at random.

This is not dissimilar to how we, as adults live our lives. We are obsessed with boundaries and definitions and instinctively try to put events into a familiar framework so that we can understand what has happened. This is what we would do if confronted by a type of situation outlined in either of these two passages – the Gospel reading is on divorce and the Old Testament reading is on the suffering in Job (neither of them are a bundle of laughs). Divorce is horrible. Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head (Job 2:8). When something difficult, painful or unexpected happens we struggle to make sense of things. We hold on to what we know and wrestle with what we do not understand – why is my father ill? Why has my marriage ended in divorce? Why has that person behaved like that towards me?

If we cling too tightly to our particular way of looking at the world then difficult situations can make us feel frustrated or bitter because the world is not how we think it should be. If we let go of all we know and understand then we get overwhelmed and depressed because there is nothing to help us to put things into perspective – people sometimes put up with being treated badly in a relationship because they feel that that is all they are worth.

As much as we may want to cling to certainties, the reality is that we live our lives in a state of permanenent impermanence. We live our lives in transition and each time something difficult happens we relearn how to relate to ourselves, to each other and to God. In the New Testament, the Bible uses the language of living exile to describe this - we are aliens and exiles with no permanent place, longing for home (1 Peter 2.11; Hebrews 11.13).

In the Old Testament, the Bible uses the idea of journey and movement to understand God. The Exodus is used as a repeated theme. The first of the Ten Commandments begins: "I am the Lord your God, Who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery (Exodus 20:1-2). It might have been more impressive to say "I am God who created heaven and earth, time, space, and all of reality itself?" Instead of this God uses the Exodus (an individual event pertaining to only one nation) to describe himself. In 587 BCE Babylonian forces destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and the Israelites are taken into exile. This tears apart the Israelite’s assumption that God needs to be worshipped in Jerusalem in the Temple. God has dismantled the previously unquestioned world of Jerusalem (Jer 1:17-18) and leaves the Israelites wondering how to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land (Psalm 137).

There are two traps that Israel needs to avoid in coming to terms with their new life in Exile. If they cling to memories of the past too tightly then they are unable to adjust to their new situation and move on. If they try and deny their past they lose their steer – their ability to make sense of the present. This is us every time we go through any intense, bruising, difficult period of trying to make sense things that have happened. We are learning how to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land (Psalm 137). I have seen people fall into both traps – People who wont let go of the past live in a permanent state of denial – their new reality will never live up to an idealised view of the past and this will eventually end up as despair or cynicism People who won’t learn lessons from the past can become serial victims with lower and lower expectations of themselves. If we miss an important opportunity to examine our lives so that we don't really 'move on' at all, but stay put, only to repeat the mistakes of the past.

We all have our ways of making sense of things; our version of the children saying, “I am so…proud”, “I love you” or “Goodbye Potato head”. The invitation from Jesus is that we do not need to feel afraid – we don’t need to be tied to hurt or abuse that we might have suffered in the past. We don’t need to be frightened of what might face us in the future.

One night a person had a dream.
They dreamed they were walking along the beach with the great spirit…
Across the sky flashed scenes from their life.
For each scene, they noticed two sets of footprints in the sand:
one belonging to them, and the other to the great spirit.
When the last scene of their life flashed before them,
they looked back, at the footprints in the sand.
They noticed that so many times along the path of their life
there was only one set of footprints.
They also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times of their life
This really bothered them and they questioned the great spirit about it:
"Great Spirit, you said that once I decided to follow you,
you'd walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that, during the most troublesome times in my life
there is only one set of footprints.
I don't understand, why, when I needed you most ,
.... you would leave me?"
The Great spirit spoke softly and replied:
"My child, My precious little one, I love you and I would never leave you,
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."

Anon