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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 Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 2:18-25), that the man was alone at first was certainly not good, at least not in terms of God’s intention for humankind to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moved on the earth (Genesis 1:28). So, the Lord God made a helper fit for the man, a woman, taken out of him, and then joined to him in the first of what God no doubt intended to be many holy and never-ending one‑flesh unions between subsequent couples (remember that marriage was instituted before sin brought death).
Yet, you probably know how that turned out. Maybe that the man was not alone was also not good! For, not long afterward, tempted by the serpent, the woman disobeyed the Lord God, and so did the man, and they tried to hide themselves from His presence (Genesis 3:1-8). They brought about separation, but the Lord sought them out with a remedy! The consequences of their sin included the woman’s multiplied pain in childbearing, her desire contrary to her husband, and his ruling over her (Genesis 3:16). And, that is not to mention the man’s pain in eating of the ground, until he returned to it (Genesis 3:17-19). Of course, before announcing those consequences to the woman and man, the Lord God had said to the serpent that the woman’s Offspring would bruise (or “crush” [NIV]) the serpent’s head, though the serpent would bruise (or “strike” [NIV]) the woman’s Offspring’s heel (Genesis 3:15).
So much did Adam and Eve cling to that first Gospel promise that Eve may have thought her firstborn son was already the promised one (Genesis 4:1)! But, Cain did not bring the remedy, only more separation, having risen up against his brother Abel and killed him (Genesis 4:8), and having been cursed and driven even from the ground that he worked and away from the presence of the Lord (Genesis 4:2, 11, 14, 16). Long before the accusations against the latest U.S. Supreme Court Justice, before the [hashtag] “Me, Too” movement, and before society’s “no‑fault divorce”, the Fall brought blame between spouses and family dysfunction the likes of which most of us can only imagine, though, to be sure, everyone’s family is dysfunctional in its own way (or ways). Yet, Adam and Eve did not divorce, and, despite their sin, the Kingdom of God belonged to them and to their children, as they like children humbly received that Kingdom by faith in the Offspring of the woman, Who was still to come.
In the fullness of time, that Offspring of the woman, Who was still to come, came (Galatians 4:4), as the God‑man Jesus Christ. And when He came into Judea and beyond the Jordan, crowds gathered to Him, and He taught them (Mark 10:1). As we heard in the Gospel Reading, Pharisees came up and in order to test Him asked whether it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife. Jesus corrected the Pharisees’ false misunderstanding of a very‑specific piece of case‑law that, because of the impenitence and unbelief of some, God through Moses had given, explicitly in order to protect the land from abomination, but probably also in the process in order to protect women who were being denied their rights and exploited (Deuteronomy 24:1‑4). Jesus pointed the Pharisees back to the beginning of creation and to God’s one‑flesh union in marriage, which people should not try to—and, in fact, cannot—separate. Jesus’s disciples, perhaps shocked at what Jesus’s teaching meant for the prevailing practice in society, themselves asked Him about it again privately, and they heard Jesus clearly state that whoever divorces his or her spouse and “marries” another commits adultery against the spouse, not to mention what he or she does to their children, who immediately afterwards occupied Jesus’s attention.
When are you and I most likely to ask whether or not something is “lawful” or “okay” for someone to do? Probably when we already know the answer that it is not lawful or okay, right? In the case of “remarriage” after divorce, we hardly need to ask, for Jesus’s statement in today’s Gospel Reading could hardly be clearer that remarriage is wrong (confer Luke 16:18). Of course, divorce itself is sinful, though not by itself necessarily the ongoing sin of adultery. But, even if we are not “remarried” or even divorced, none of us perfectly keeps the Sixth Commandment, the Commandment not to commit adultery, as well as to live a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, with husband and wife loving and honoring each other. We do not perfectly keep that Commandment, nor any other Commandment, because we are sinful by the nature we inherited from our first and so also our most-immediate parents. For our sins and sinful nature we deserve death in time and torment in hell for eternity, unless we like children humbly receive the Kingdom of God and its forgiveness by faith in the Offspring of the woman who came in order to save us. We bring about our own separation from God, but He seeks us out with a remedy!
As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Hebrews 2:1-18), God’s great salvation has been declared and attested by signs and wonders. The Son of Man, the God‑man Jesus Christ, for a little while was made lower than the angels, in order to suffer and experience death on the cross for everyone. Jesus shared our flesh and blood so that, through His death, He might destroy the devil and his power of death. Jesus was a merciful and faithful high priest, making propitiation (reconciliation, atonement, forgiveness) for the sins of all people. Now, because He Himself suffered when tempted, He not only is able to help but also actually does help those who are being tempted. Enabled by God, we humbly receive His Kingdom by faith in Jesus Christ. We trust God as children ideally trust their parents, and so we are forgiven of all of our sin. Then, Jesus sanctifies (that is, “makes holy”) those who are being sanctified (that is, “being made holy”). God enables us to come to Him, forgives us, and sanctifies us, all through His Means of Grace, His Word in all of its forms.
In today’s Gospel Reading, St. Mark uniquely reports Jesus’s indignation over His disciples’ rebuking those who were bringing children to Jesus that He might touch them. So, Jesus told them to let the children come to Him and not to hinder them, and Jesus took the children in His arms and blessed them, laying His hands on them. The Church has long associated this blessing with Holy Baptism: water and the Word which, no matter our age, give birth to us from above by the Holy Spirit and enable us to enter the Kingdom of God as we humbly receive it in faith (John 3:3, 5). At the Font, God forgives all our sins and rescues us from death and the devil! We who are so baptized come to our pastors, not to send away spouses, but to have our sins forgiven. We privately confess our sins to our pastors for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself! And, we who are so baptized and absolved, come for the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body and Blood of Christ given and shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. This Sacrament is a foretaste of the feast to come, the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom that has no end.
St. Paul writes that in Christ there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28), but as we relate to one another the distinctions and order of creation remain. By God’s grace this past week the Lutheran Church of Australia in convention lacked sufficient votes to approve the ordination of women that contradicts God’s created order (1 Timothy 2:11-15). In contrast, we honor that created order, for example, when women concentrate on their God-given callings as daughter, wife, and mother, perhaps also squeezing in time, as the ladies of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League do, to support the mission of the Church with their mites and to carry out other works of love and mercy. Christians who are married do not separate from or divorce their spouses, unless they have to, and even then they remain “unmarried”—living, enabled by God’s gift (1 Corinthians 7:7), as a “eunuch” for the Kingdom (Matthew 19:11-12)—or else they are reconciled to their spouses (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). If there is separation, there is a remedy! And, spouses and children can be sanctified (“made holy”) in the process (1 Corinthians 7:13).
Spouses and children—marriage and procreation—have been connected from the beginning of creation, including in their respective roles accomplishing God’s plan for our redemption, God’s remedy for our separation from Him and from one another. God repaired what separated and hindered Adam and Eve’s relationship with Him, as God also repairs what separates and hinders our relationships with Him and one another. As we humbly receive the Kingdom, we are forgiven of every sin, but we are not given license to go on sinning in any way. The appointed Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 863) was reportedly written to fill an Espiscopal hymnal’s need for a prayer-hymn on the family. In meeting that need, hymn-writer Francis Bland Tucker, a descendant from a sibling of George Washington, addressed each Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity in successive stanzas. (Precht, #465, LW:HC, 482, 786‑787; confer Brauer, #815, Hymnal Supplement ’98: Handbook, pp.76-77.) Perhaps the last stanza, addressed to the Holy Spirit, is worth our praying again now:
O Spirit, who dost bind / Our hearts in unity,
Who teachest us to find / The love from self set free,
In all our hearts such love increase
That ev’ry home by this release / May be the dwelling place of peace.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +