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Grace, mercy and
peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore
a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they
shall become one flesh.
Prayer: Dear Lord
Jesus, send to all of us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to
all of us that we may hear well. Amen.
You may have
realised by now that our readings for today are about marriage. Marriage is a
very contentious topic today. In polite conversation, people like to avoid
religion and politics. When you talk about marriage, you get to talk about both
religion and politics, all at once! It’s a topic that is not considered polite
– but Jesus didn’t say to Peter, “be polite”, he said, “feed my sheep”. This
means that when there are contentious topics that come up in our weekly
readings, it’s our duty as pastors to teach these things.
As I was preparing
my sermon, I was reminded of a Lutheran pastor, who wrote a lot on marriage,
called Walther Trobisch. Some of you might have read some of his books, maybe
his most famous book called: “I married you.” Walther Trobisch was a missionary
in Cameroon, in Africa. In one of his books, he tells about his speaking tours,
where he spoke about marriage both in Africa, and also in Europe and America
where the culture was very different. He found then when he was in Africa, the
Africans said that he didn’t understand African culture and was trying to
impose European thinking about marriage on them. But when he went to Europe,
the Europeans said that he had spent too much time in Africa. What he realised
was that God’s teaching on marriage in the bible completely cuts through all
cultures, and challenges all cultures, and no one “culture” on earth has got
everything right.
In our readings
today, we have a number of things about marriage. We have Genesis 2, the second
chapter in the bible, which speaks about the creation of Eve, and describes the
event where Adam and Eve first met in the garden and were given to each other
as a husband and wife. And also in our gospel reading today, we read about
where some people go to Jesus and ask him about divorce, and he teaches them about
marriage and also he blesses the children who come to him.
But I’d like to go
back a step and take a look at a whole picture of marriage. In fact, let’s ask
the question, “what is marriage?” Well, first of all, marriage is a public
thing. It’s not a private agreement where one day, someone decided to move in
with someone else and puts their stereo system on the shelf. No—marriage is a
public thing. It begins with a wedding. In our country, marriages are
contracted legally and registered with the government. In some other countries,
especially where reading and writing and public records are not kept in the
same way, local customs are sufficient. But a marriage begins with a wedding.
It happens in public. Even a private wedding with only a few people in attendance
is still a public thing.
But also, marriage
is entered into for life. A man and a woman promise to live together “until
death do us part”. I’ve recently been to a few weddings where people have said,
“I will love you forever”. This is sentimental, but it’s not actually correct.
If a person is married, and then their spouse dies, there’s nothing wrong with
them then getting married to someone else, if they choose. So people enter into
marriage for life.
But then also,
marriage is the union of a man and a woman. It is not the union of a man and a
man, and it is not the union of a woman and a woman. It can only be the union
of a man and a woman – and this is the only acceptable opinion to hold as a
Christian. Any other opinion is simply a rebellion against God’s law. But we
might ask: If Australia allows homosexual marriage, can’t the government allow
it even if churches have a different opinion? That might be the case – but we
have to understand one thing. The reason why we in this country have it defined
is law that marriage is between a man and woman, and have always understood it
that way, is because Christians were instrumental in forming the laws. So
people who are advocating for homosexual marriage are rebelling against
something that Christians had put in our laws on the basis of God’s word. But
even apart from that, many pagan societies, such as traditional Aboriginal
society, also understood from nature that marriage was between a man and a
woman.
I know that many of
you have gay friends or family, and many of you may in fact disagree with me on
this. I leave it to you to think about and for your conscience. Jesus died for
all people, and he paid for all sin, and all sexual sin. However, God’s love means
the forgiveness of sins, not the excusing of it. And the practice of
homosexuality is spoken of in a number of places in the New Testament as sin.
Romans 1 says that it is against nature, and also gives a word of warning to
those who give approval to those who practice these things. This is not hate
speech – but we Christians speak the truth in love. There is hope and there is
forgiveness.
So we believe
marriage is a public union, it’s a lasting union, and also it’s between a man
and a woman. And this union means that a married couple live together in the
closest fellowship, not just in their bodies but also in their whole lives.
So we read in our
Old Testament reading: Therefore a man shall
leave his father and mother, and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become
one flesh. Jesus adds in our gospel reading today: So they are no longer two but one flesh. You can see when a couple gets married, they leave their parents (“therefore a man shall leave his father and mother”), and they are joined together (not just in a kind of agreement, but
also in love and respect), and they become one flesh. Isn’t that an incredible
mystery that Genesis speaks about there: they
shall become one flesh. Of course, it refers to sex,
but not just to that, but that the couple live in such a way, that they almost
don’t know where their own life stops and the other person’s life begins. In
Ephesians 5, St Paul says something really wonderful about this: he says: Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He
who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but
nourishes and cherishes it. You can see from
this passage, that love within a marriage has nothing to do with what a person
gets out of it, which is just selfishness, but it has everything to do with the
other person. Just as we look after our bodies and take care of them, so also
married couples take care of each other.
Now, whose idea was
marriage? Has it simply come about because of tradition, and customs? No… God
is the one who came up with the idea. Someone once said to me that marriage was
only invented in 700 AD – that’s a piece of rubbish propaganda. Because of
anti-marriage agendas, all kinds of people say all kinds of clap-trap about
this kind of thing. If you study history, you will never find a society without
marriage, and those that don’t would be the rare, rare exception.
Marriage was God’s
idea. He invented it in the garden of Eden as we read in today’s Gospel
reading, where God created a woman and brought Eve and Adam together as a
couple. And this is true for every marriage – it is God who joins a man and a
woman together. We read in Genesis 2: So the
Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one
of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God
had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then
the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Isn’t this a wonderful thing? Don’t you married couples understand what
it is to have someone who is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh!
Wouldn’t you want to treat each other just as if you had come from the same
body and simply prised apart to form two individuals? It really is a wonderful
thing that we read there.
But we also read in
Genesis 1 that God made man and woman in his image, male and female. And we
also read that he blessed them. This is the biblical picture of marriage—it
really is a wonderful part of God’s creation which he has designed in such a
marvellous way.
Now, we also learn
from Genesis 1 and 2, why God came up with the idea of marriage. We read in
Genesis 2, where God says: It is not good that
the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him. This word here means someone who complements – men and women complement
each other. Every married couple will say that they are different, and they are
able to think slightly differently. But they belong together.
Here we see that
marriage is the basis for the whole of human society. And now, we come to
another reason why God created marriage. It says in Genesis 1: And God blessed them and said: Be fruitful and multiply
and fill the earth and subdue it. Not only is there a
wonderful design for a man and a woman to live together in love, but also when
God gives them children for them to raise them together.
It’s interesting
that God says: Be fruitful and
multiply. This is something that human beings are actually
incapable of doing. Only God can make us fruitful and can multiply us. Only God
can create babies. And only God can create each child so uniquely that no
personality on earth has ever been quite like them, and nobody will be quite
like them again. Even identical twins are not the same person, and do not have
the same personality.
So a man and a
woman do not make the babies. All they do is go to bed, etc. This teaching is
made very clear in 1 Samuel, where Hannah, Samuel’s mother, prays to God to
have a baby because she can’t have one. Elkanah, her husband, had actually
married a second wife, because Hannah was barren, and this was something that
caused Hannah great sadness. When Hannah does conceive, it says: Elkanah knew his wife, and the Lord remembered her. Not that he had forgotten her, but that now it was the time for God to
act and give her a child. Also, I say to couples who can’t have children – God
has not forgotten you, but he knows your sadness and he still has wonderful
things in store for you. So in marriage, the only thing a couple can do in
order to be fruitful and multiply is to be open to receiving children. And even
though having and raising children comes with its crosses, the bible constantly
calls children a blessing.
When a couple
shares the news of their pregnancy, the thing to do is to congratulate them.
Sometimes we get things so muddled up—when a person dies, we don’t want anyone
to mourn, so we say that we’re celebrating the person’s life. But then when a
couple is expecting a child, people sometimes pay their condolences and their
sympathies. No—it’s the other way round—when people die, mourn for them and
grieve. And when someone is expecting a baby, congratulate them and celebrate.
Psalm 127 says: Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit
of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of
one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! Or Psalm 128: Your wife will be
like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.
We live in a
society that hates children. If you don’t believe me, I’ll read you the
abortion figures. If you’re looking for some cause to support, defend the
rights of children—defend their right to live, their right to have a mother and
a father, look out for children who are unloved and need a friend. There’s so
much good work to be done there—thankless work, but good work. God will thank
you for it.
If only we would
allow God to open our minds to just how beautiful the human race is. There’s a
wonderful poem from a 4th century writer, Ephraim the Syrian, who
speaks of the human race flowing like a wonderful river from the garden of Eden
watering all the orchards and forests and fields that it passes through. Mother
Teresa once said: How can you say there are too many children in the world?
That’s like saying there’s too many flowers.
If only we saw the
world like God sees it – if only we could take every unloved lonely little
child into our arms and love them with all our might. If our idea of Christian
love started there, wow, what a powerful force the Christian church would be in
the world! In the Anglican Church in Walkerville, there is a beautiful stained
glass window which depicts Jesus giving the blessing with his hand, and all the
while he is covered with little children climbing all over him. In our Gospel
reading today we see Jesus’ love for children come forth, where he says: Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to
such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive
the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. And he took them in his
arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them. What children do you know, upon which you can lay your hands and bless them
like Jesus?
Our attitude in our
country surrounding children being a burden and a pain and a problem are so
strange – and they are out of harmony with the attitudes of most Christians who
are alive today throughout the world and most Christians who have ever lived.
But before we
finish, there’s a third reason why God establishes marriage, and this is a
consequence of sin. St Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7: Because of the temptation to sexual immortality, each man
should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. There is such a thing as temptation, and in order to protect people from
falling into all kinds of sexual temptations, God has given marriage as the
solution. This is one of the reasons why the Lutheran Church makes sure that
pastors can marry, unlike the Catholic Church where priests have been forced to
be single. If only the Catholic Church had allowed its priest to get married,
there might not have been so many scandals surrounding sexual abuse.
Now there’s all
kinds of other things that I could talk about—we could talk about how Christian
husbands and wives relate to each other, we could talk about the divorce, and
we could talk about the single life. We have many wonderful people in our
congregation who are single, and are of such incredible blessing to God’s
kingdom in that state. But all that we will have to leave for another time.
Before we close, I
would like to say this: when we talk about marriage, we’re not trying to put
together a check list about all kinds of rules that you can tick off to make
yourself feel good about yourself and then go home feeling smug and satisfied
that you’re not like that “tax collector over there”. God wants you not simply
to be pure in your actions, but also in your heart. Sexual purity, chastity and
modesty, are things which are so desperately needed in a world that is becoming
increasingly self-obsessed and saturated with smut. You know that, I don’t need
to tell you that. If you don’t realise that you’re living in Sodom, you’re
living in a fantasy world, and you must wake up and save yourself from this
crooked generation as St Peter told his hearers on the day of Pentecost.
Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece were full of their orgies, and now there’s
nothing to show of those civilisations but a few ruined old buildings. And
Australia, America, Europe are all going the same way—straight to hell in a
handbasket. Are you going to go with them, or will you say with Joshua: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Think about Christ
on the cross. We read how in the Gospel of John, how after he died, a soldier
went up to him and put a spear in his side, and blood and water flowed out. Just
as Eve was created out of Adam’s side, so also God puts Christ into a deep
sleep, the sleep of death, and makes out of his side a wonderful woman, a
wonderful bride, the church. And you became part of that church through
Christ’s blood and through water, the water of holy baptism. Christ makes his
church to be fruitful and multiply, and bring forth many sons and daughters, he
creates new sons and daughters to be part of his family through Holy Baptism
and through the hearing of the word of God. But we sin and fall in so many
ways. We are adulterous and we seek after many gods and all kinds of things
that will keep us entertained rather than faithful. But Jesus is a faithful
husband like no other. No matter how many times we lust and sniff after other
gods, Jesus is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all our sin,
even of adultery.
It’s hard to
believe, but Jesus’ love and its heights and depths is so incredible that no
human heart can even begin to comprehend it. We must trust that the precious
words of Jesus never lie, and that he is a faithful Saviour, and faithful
forgiver, and a faithful husband of us, his wayward bride. God’s richest
blessings to you, and may he send you his Holy Spirit to empower you and
strengthen you in his word and in truth and in love. Amen.
Dear Jesus, we
confess to you our sins of adultery. We have not loved you with our whole heart
or our neighbour as ourselves. Cleanse us in your blood, and enable us to be
pure of heart. Bless all of us in our congregation who are married and all of
us who are single, and pour out your Holy Spirit upon us. Amen.
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