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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Samantha and Seth; Brothers and Sisters in Christ; and family, friends, and guests
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Samantha and Seth, when so many other people in our time choose not to get married in a church, if they get married at all, you are to be commended both for choosing to get married and for choosing to begin your marriage in the Lord’s Name and with His blessing. Preparing you for your marriage over a number of sessions this past year was my privilege and pleasure. As you know, we did not have premarital “counseling” sessions, but we had sessions of premarital “catechesis”, or “instruction”. In that instruction, we talked quite a bit about the essence of a marriage; not a fancy dress, big cake, or anything else like that, but the essence of a marriage is your willing consent and your solemn, public promises. I pray that the Holy Spirit used our instruction sessions to help you grow in your faith in God and in your relationship with each other, even as I enjoyed getting to know you better over our weeks together.
One of the things I think I knew but forgot until a comment Samantha made yesterday, was that she sometimes likes to do math in her head. Now, different people like math more than others, even as some people are better at math than others. There is some math in the Third Reading appointed for today that would seem to leave the least-skilled mathematician scratching his or her head. That least-skilled mathematician could probably tell you that one and one make two. But, in answering the Pharisees, Jesus says that with God one man and one wife make one flesh. That statement prompted me to title this sermon “Marriage Math”.
Now admittedly, that Third Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark is not a very popular one; it may be the least popular of the three Readings we heard today. We here at Pilgrim already this year heard that same Third Reading from St. Mark, when the regular series of readings that we use on Sunday mornings placed it before us in early October. Then, as today, we heard Jesus teach that God wants a man and a woman to be exclusively committed to each other in marriage and that any attempts to get around God’s good intention only brings condemnation. The Second Reading appointed for today may not be much more popular with some, for in it St. Paul writes by divine inspiration that wives are to submit to their own husbands as they submit to the Lord. (So, that word “submit” not surprisingly shows up in the bride’s marriage vow, and not very many brides like it, tending to overlook that husbands are told and vow to love them sacrificially as Christ loved the Church.) The First Reading gives the nice account of God making “a helper fit”, a “woman”, for “the man”, and, long before Jesus quoted it, it tells how the man leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife, and, in so doing, how God makes the two one flesh. That far, at least, the account is a happy one, but the man and the woman hardly lived happily ever after.
Most of you probably know what comes next in Genesis: the story of that man and that woman’s falling into sin. Their sin had consequences for their relationship with each other: her desire was for her husband, and he ruled over her. And, their sin had consequences for their descendants’ relationships with one another, all the way down to you and to me. More significant than their sin’s disrupting their relationship with each other or even its disrupting our relationships with one another, however, is their sin’s disrupting their and our relationship with God. Their sin earned them death in time and for eternity, and their sin’s corruption leads us to earn ourselves death in time and for eternity. In the Third Reading, Jesus talked to the disciples about the specific sin of adultery after a divorce and remarriage, for people cannot separate what God joins together, but we can also think of all other sins against the Sixth Commandment, the Commandment both for us to lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do and for husbands and wives to love and honor each other. Who keeps that Commandment perfectly?
Divorce and remarriage, pre-marital sex, rape, homosexual activity, incest, sexual child abuse, obscenity, pornography (on the internet and in other media), sexually impure thoughts and desires—they are all forbidden, and there is not one of us who has not sinned against the Sixth Commandment in some way, just as we sin against all the Commandments in some way, for we are all sinful by nature. Not one of us is good enough to earn any sort of favor from God, much less to earn the Kingdom of God, eternal life. So, God calls us all to repent of our sin—not only of our sins against the Sixth Commandment, but also of all our sins against all the Commandments and of our sinful natures themselves. He calls us to turn in sorrow from them, to believe that He forgives them for Jesus’s sake, and to want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. Though believers most likely will still suffer death in time, we no longer will suffer death for eternity.
Believers no longer will suffer death for eternity because that eternal consequence of our sin has been removed by the perfect life, death, and resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ. As we heard in the Second Reading, Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for Her, becoming its Savior. He lived the perfect life we fail to live, and then, out of His great love for you and for me, He carried our sins to His cross and died there for them. Then He rose from the dead, showing that God the Father had accepted His sacrifice for our sins. We cannot do anything to save ourselves, but there is nothing for us to do: Christ has done it all. He freely gives us everything; it is all a gift through faith—faith like the kind of trust a child normally has for a parent, in such a way Jesus says we receive the Kingdom of God. Believers have no reason to fear death in time, for we know we will not face death for eternity. By God’s grace for Christ’s sake, through faith in Christ, God the Father forgives our sins, whatever they might be—He forgives our sins against the Sixth Commandment, He forgives our sins against all the other Commandments, and He even forgives our sinful natures themselves. And, He gives us that forgiveness in specific ways.
In the Second Reading, we heard about one of those specific ways God gives us forgiveness. St. Paul describes for the Ephesians how Christ cleansed the Church “by the washing of water with the word”. Through Holy Baptism God makes us holy and without blemish. At the Baptismal Font God works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe. Likewise, after private confession in individual Holy Absolution God, through His called ministers dealing with us by His divine command, forgives the sins penitent sinners know and feel in their hearts. Finally, in Holy Communion, the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is given under bread and wine for us Christians to eat and to drink and thereby to receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. We are never of ourselves worthy enough to receive such great gifts, but we are worthy by faith in Christ’s words that they are given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins. Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution and Holy Communion are the specific ways God gives us forgiveness, and they are the ways God enables us to live with one another in the forgiveness of sins, especially in the holy estate of marriage—that is why regular church attendance with regular reception of these means of grace is so important for you, Samantha and Seth, as for all the rest of us.
When we receive God’s forgiveness through His means of grace, we are forgiven. We can be at peace with God, with ourselves, and with one another. The relationships that the first man and woman’s sin disrupted are by forgiveness restored—both those relationships with God and with one another. Samantha and Seth, hold fast to one another first, and then look to your other family members. The Holy Spirit is not only active in calling us to faith and thereby saving us, but the Holy Spirit is also active in keeping us in the true faith and in our becoming more and more holy in this lifetime. Though we are still sinful and so still sin, the Holy Spirit keeps us connected with the Church, in which He daily and richly forgives our sins. That forgiveness is the greatest blessing God has for your marriage! The Holy Spirit also produces the fruits of faith in our lives according to our respective vocations. Your vocations, Samantha and Seth, now include husband and wife, as well as employee and student, daughter and son, grand-daughter and grandson, and, maybe some day, as God wills, they will also include the vocations of mother and father. Any children that God grants you will be living examples of the one-flesh union He this day creates in your marriage.
Again, today we are here to celebrate your willingness to join together here, seeking God’s blessings on your solemn, public promises. God’s “Marriage Math” is that one man and one wife make one flesh. In a few moments, Samantha and Seth, you will acknowledge in your vows, that the circumstances around your union are all “according to God’s holy will”. Included in those circumstances is how long you have with each other here on earth. I know the “till death us do part” phrase in the vows bothers you a little, as you think of your love for each other as “forever and always”. Truly we pray that “forever and always” is what God’s will for you both actually is. As I have told you, I am sympathetic to your discomfort with the “till death us do part” phrase in the vows, in part because such a phrase is traced back only to the sixteenth century. On a defensible interpretation of the Bible, earlier church fathers held that the one‑flesh marriage relationship lasted eternally, as some give an eternal or infinite interpretation to the meaning of the wedding ring. Perhaps that particular infinity is part of God’s “Marriage Math”, too. Time, if you will permit the play on words, will tell! Until then, may God through His Word in all its forms, even less-than-popular Readings, bless you and all who are married, as well as all bless all of us who live in the at‑least‑equally‑acceptable single estate, with the forgiveness of sins and its fruits of faith in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +