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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. (Amen.)
Coming after a first chapter that describes each day’s creation as “good” (Genesis 1:1‑31), today’s Old Testament Reading from Genesis’s second chapter is especially striking for its saying that the newly‑created man’s being alone is “not good” (Genesis 2:18-25). Yet, from a piece of the man, God soon built a helper fit for him, or corresponding to him, just as the beasts of the field and birds of the sky had their counterparts. The man received his helper with delight and joy, and he exclaimed the bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh to be a “woman”. “Therefore”, the Divinely‑inspired Moses said, a man will leave his parents and hold fast to, or “cleave to”, the older translations say (KJV, ASV), his wife, and they will become one flesh. Together, they would have the privilege and pleasure of being God’s instruments for bringing up future generations of people to live in fellowship with God as they did. What blessings from a loving Creator to His unique creatures!
Moses tells us that the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed, but, beyond that, really, we can only imagine what their perfect union was like. For example, they probably were not awkward together, as some newly‑married couples might be awkward together. They would not have bickered like an old married‑couple. We might say both that he did not leave the toilet seat up and that she did not burn the toast. They were literally made for each other, and their life together would have reflected that complementariness, at least for a time, however much time passed between the end of Genesis’s second chapter and the beginning of Genesis’s third chapter, which narrates their—and so also our—fall into sin and its consequences.
After that fall into sin, God told the woman that He would multiply her pain in childbearing, that her desire would be contrary to her husband, and that he would rule over her (Gensis 3:16). God told the man that the ground was cursed because of him, that by the sweat of his face he would eat bread, and that he would return to the dust of the ground from which he was taken (Genesis 3:17-19; confer 2:7). We do not have to imagine what their imperfect union was like, for we see it in our own and others’ families. Those imperfect unions sometimes lead to separations. In today’s Gospel Reading, Pharisees asked Jesus about the lawfulness of divorce, with their finding lawfulness in a very specific piece of case law that God gave Moses in order to protect the land from abomination by the abuse of divorces that Jesus said were allowed essentially only to unbelievers (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). Marriage is more than a man and woman’s leaving their parents and cleaving to their spouses; marriage is also God’s joining the two into one flesh. So, expounding Genesis, Jesus said for people to stop separating couples, effectively making clear that people cannot truly separate them, for, as Jesus told His disciples, whoever divorces and remarries commits adultery, since the “one flesh” relationship remains.
Adultery is forbidden, of course, by what we number the Sixth Commandment (Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18), but that Sixth Commandment does not forbid only adultery. Also forbidden are any and all other forms of sexual immorality: lust, pornography, bestiality, crude talk, self‑pollution, inappropriate clothing, incest, pedophilia, pre‑marital sex, living together without marriage, rape (or other sexual abuse or assault), and any kind of homosexual, bisexual, or transexual thoughts, words, or deeds. Single or married, not one of us keeps the Sixth Commandment as we should keep it, much less do we keep all of the other Commandments as we should keep them. We all are sinful by nature, and we all sin, and so we all deserve temporal and eternal punishment, apart from God’s leading us to be sorry for our sins and to trust God to forgive our sins for the sake of His Son, our Savior, Jesus the Christ.
After the fall into sin but before God announced the consequences to the woman and man, God announced the Good News that the Seed of the Woman would crush the serpent’s head, though the serpent would strike the Seed of the Woman’s heel (Genesis 3:15). And, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, to redeem all who were and under the law, including us (Galatians 4:4-5). As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Hebrews 2:1-18), since we are flesh and blood, the Son of God likewise partook of flesh and blood, that, through death, He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil; the Son of God had to be made like His brothers and sisters so that He could sacrifice Himself for our sins; by the grace of God, Jesus tasted death for everyone, including us, and, resurrected on the third day and ascended into heaven, He is now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death. When we are sorry for our sins and trust God to forgive our sins for Jesus’s sake, then God does just that: God forgives us, our sinful nature and all of our sins, whatever our sins might be. The Kingdom of God is given as a free gift to those of us who receive it with true humble faith, like little children.
Although there is no difference if we are eight‑days old, eight‑years old, or eight‑decades old, the Gospel Reading’s mention of little children might make us think especially of our receiving the Kingdom of God in Holy Baptism, one of what, in the words of today’s Epistle Reading, we might call signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, by which signs still today God continues to work faith when and where He pleases in those who hear the Gospel. Those so baptized confess to their pastors the sins that particularly trouble them for the sake of Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. And, those so absolved are admitted to the Holy Supper, where bread is the Body of Christ given for us and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us and so give us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
So forgiven by God’s Word and Sacraments, we are transformed so that we at least want to keep God’s Commandments, including the Sixth Commandment. As we prayed in the Collect of the Day, by God’s Holy Spirit we think and do those things that are pleasing in His sight, including speaking as we should. “Our identity, worth, or completeness as human beings is not determined by our marital status” or whether or not we have children, but “Our identity, worth, and completeness as human beings [are] determined … by our Creator and Redeemer” (“An Explanation of the Small Catechism” [2017], #71, p.98). First and foremost, we are “Created and Forgiven”! While we recognize that marriage is not absolutely necessary for every individual but that Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions can exalt the single estate over the marred estate (for example, 1 Corinthians 7:32-34; Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXIII:38), in general, we value marriage as a good gift from our Creator and the only proper context for sexual intercourse, which is always with a view towards procreation. Now spouses live together in the forgiveness of sins that they receive from God and in turn extend to one another, but, as the first man and woman did before the fall, on the Last Day, if necessary in resurrected bodies and certainly in glorified bodies, so freed from the corruption of sin, believing spouses will live together perfectly for eternity.
We are “Created and Forgiven”. God has created us male or female, and, as we repent, He has forgiven us males and females, forgiven us of our sins against the Sixth Commandment and against all the other Commandments. And, we might add, we are also sanctified! Truly, as we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 128:1-6; antiphon: v.1), blessed is everyone who fears the Lord!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +