This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am, and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 10.30am.
Grace, mercy and peace be to
you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
From the beginning of
creation, God made them male and female.
Prayer: May the words of my
mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord,
our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
It’s
a very interesting thing that the reading for this Sunday in the lectionary has
to do with marriage. We also have a very significant Old Testament reading
which has to do with the creation of Eve.
Now, as a pastor, it’s an easy thing to go along week
after week, and preach and teach on topics that are really not all that
controversial. However, Jesus didn’t just call us to go into all the world and
to teach a few things of what he had commanded us, but he said, teaching
them to observe all that I have commanded you. In the Book of Acts, when St
Paul was speaking to the elders from Ephesus, he said: I did not shrink from
declaring to you the whole counsel of God. If only we had more pastors in
our church like Paul who would not shrink from saying everything that needs to
be said. I confess that I have many times “shrinked”, and have not said what
needs to be said. It would be an easy thing to avoid controversial topics, and
then you don’t upset anyone, right?
Well, today’s readings give us controversial topics.
Particularly, Jesus teaches about marriage and divorce, and the relationship
between men and women in marriage. I think it’s fair to say that marriage is an
absolutely terrible state in our world today. It’s almost been forgotten what
marriage is. We play down marriage, and we play up sex. Sometimes I have heard
people say that in the past, the church singled out sexual sin too much. I
don’t know—I wasn’t there in those days. But what we have to realise is that
what God calls the sixth commandment—You shall not commit adultery—has
for a long time been promoted at the highest levels of our culture and society
as a human right.
A long time ago, there was an old Christian man called
Saint Anthony, who lived in the Egyptian desert, who said: A time is coming
when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will
attack him saying, “You are mad, you are not like us.” This prophecy from over 1500 years ago has
most certainly come true, and it has been true for many years.
Now, in the Lutheran Church, we always want to make a
very careful distinction between the law of God and the Gospel. The Law is
those things which God commands us to do and not to do. Even though the law
upholds the beautiful way in which God created and made the world and the universe,
because we do not keep the law, the law then condemns us. It finds us out, and
shoots us dead. But then God has another word for dead sinners—this is the
Gospel. This is a word which points to our dead Saviour, who died in our place,
who is no longer dead, but rose from the dead, and walked out of the grave, and
won the victory over sin, death, hell, the devil, and who greets us with peace
and with joy and says: I forgive you all your sins. In my father’s house are
many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you.
When we are talking about marriage and the sixth
commandment, You shall not commit adultery, we are talking about the
law. This is about what we should do and what we shouldn’t do. There’s
something particular about this commandment which hits us very deeply. St Paul
says in 1 Corinthians 6, where he says: Flee from sexual immorality. Every
other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person
sins against his own body. Notice here that Paul says that the answer to sexual
immorality is not to fight it, not to combat it, but to flee it. Run to the
hills! But we feel the condemnation against sexual sin very deeply because it
is very personal, it is sin which we commit against our own bodies.
Now Jesus talks particularly in our Gospel reading
about divorce. We read: And Pharisees came up and in order to test him
asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” [Jesus] answered them,
“What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a
certificate of divorce and to send her away.”
And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you
this commandment.”
Now, as a
pastor, I’ve often been asked if divorce is a sin. Of course, it’s a sin.
Everyone knows that it’s a sin—tremendous damage is done. People are hurt very
deeply. Everyone knows that. If we’re divorced and it’s still possible to
reconcile, then we should try our best to bring the marriage back together. But
many times, it’s not possible. One of the worst things that happens far too
often is that many people who have been abandoned in marriage, who didn’t break
up the marriage, who didn’t cause the divorce, are often left with a guilty
conscience, with a stigma hanging over them, and with a kind of public shame of
now being a divorced person. That’s very sad. Jesus met a woman like this once,
the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus said: You have had five husbands and
the man you have now is not your husband. What shame that she must have
had, with people thinking that she can’t be any good, because no man could live
with her. Jesus knows this kind of shame—people thought he was no good, because
even his own people rejected him. Jesus knows the deep pain that so many people
suffer all throughout our country—people who have been abandoned, people who
have had their families torn apart, and he calls us to repent and receive his
pure forgiveness from him.
Jesus is
often spoken of as a groom for his bride. He is a faithful husband, just as he
is a faithful shepherd, and he will never abandon his sheep. We read in
Ephesians that the mystery of marriage points to Christ and his bride the
church. He loves us more than any husband has ever loved any wife – St Paul says: He gave himself up for her,
that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with
the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without
spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Listen
to those words that Christ presents the church to himself in splendour. He
covers his bride, his church, with a wonderful robe of righteousness, a robe
which is not made or bought by us, but which is bought and made by him with the
price of his holy and precious blood. What a wonderful gift it is to have the
forgiveness of our sins, and to be clothed in the robe of Christ’s
righteousness.
Now, in our
reading, Jesus teaches us about marriage. He says: From the beginning of
creation, ‘God made them male and female’. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his
father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one
flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined
together, let not man separate.
Here we see a
very important part of the Christian teaching of marriage. First of all, Jesus
says: God made them male and female. Now, when we’re talking about
marriage, it’s very simple—a marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s not
between a man and a man, and it’s not between a woman and a woman, and—I never
thought I’d say this in a sermon!—but it’s not between an x and an x. I say
this, because now that Australia has changed it’s marriage laws last year, the
marriage registers ask us to tick one of three boxes: M, F, or X.
Now in
Australia—and in a minority of countries around the world—we don’t know what
marriage is anymore. The reality is that marriage is instituted by God amongst
other things to be the place where children are nurtured and raised—and this is
the only reason why the government should have an interest in protecting
marriage, because it should protect children. The people who will suffer now
are going to be children, most of all. The marriage of a man and a woman was
created to be fertile and to receive children—some people can’t have children,
but that’s a different issue. Gay couples are not fertile, and can never be,
and that’s the fundamental difference. To make the two things the same and call
both situations “marriage” is not honest and it’s not true.
We might also
think the “horse and bolted”. Yes, the horse has bolted, but it bolted off a
plank and into the sea. As Christians, we have to remain firm on this, not
because we should hate gay people, but because when people in our society wake
up to themselves and the madness, they need to be able to find the truth taught
somewhere. We shouldn’t hate gay people either—they are created by God and
Jesus died for them too. They need to hear the message of repentance and
forgiveness just like everyone else. We’re no better than them, and we’re all
sinners. The real lonely ones are the ones who come out as gay and then decide
later on that they don’t want that lifestyle anymore. But if we’re ever going
to have any hope as Christians of helping anyone with anything, we can’t shift
what’s right and wrong, but we need to be very clear about things. An archer
who uses a bow and an arrow needs to have a strong grip on his bow, a sharp
eye, and a strong hand on the bow, otherwise the arrow won’t go in the right
direction. So also, the church needs to have a strong hand, a sharp eye, a firm
grip on reality, on truth and error, on right and wrong, otherwise we’ll shoot
arrows in the wrong direction. But as Christians, we don’t have a true
understanding of sin if all we can do is respond to people with judgment and
condemnation. We have a true understanding of sin when we respond to people
with sympathy and compassion. This is the way that Jesus responds to us, who
are so wayward, and must be so unbelievably painful to him. He leaves the
ninety-nine sheep in the field, and he goes after the lost one, and when he has
found us, he carried us home on his shoulders.
Now, at this
point, I could go on and explain and preach about all kinds of things to do
with marriage. I’d like to, but there’s so much that the bible says about it,
that it would take too long to do that. But what I will say is this—the
Christian teaching about marriage is a beautiful, beautiful thing. God created
marriage and he is the only one who knows completely how a man and a woman can
live together in harmony. But what is more important than this is the fact that
everything we teach about marriage in the church is just a reflection of the
wonderful relationship that Jesus has with his church. He is the bridegroom,
and we are his bride. Our human, earthly marriages are only a pitiful taste of
the wonderful marriage that we have with our Lord Jesus, who has baptised us in
the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and has joined us to
himself. This wonderful marriage feast in heaven is what we receive a little
foretaste of when we come to the Lord’s Supper week after week to eat and drink
his body and blood. Jesus says: This is my body for you, in a similar
way as a married couple promise to give their bodies for each other, their
lives, their whole selves. In the book of Revelation, we read: Blessed are
those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Now, I’m
going to mention something that has happened in the last week. Our church body,
the Lutheran Church of Australia, met together as a synod this week in Sydney.
One of the issues that was discussed was whether women should be ordained—this
is the fourth time it has been put to a vote. A few weeks ago, I preached a
sermon where I explained that I believe that having women serve as pastors is
against the clear teaching of the bible. Now this doesn’t make sense to our
culture—there are lots of things in the bible that don’t make sense to all
kinds of cultures. This one doesn’t make sense to us, because it sounds to us
like its misogynistic, as if the church hates women, and doesn’t value women.
It’s got nothing to do with this—we know very well that Jesus treated women
with great dignity and respect. But this issue is connected to the way in which
Jesus relates to his church as a groom relates to his bride. The wonderful way
in which Christ speaks to us as our husband, as our bridegroom, who loves us
far beyond what we could possibly expect or deserve or imagine, is reflected in
the relationship between a pastor and a congregation.
Fortunately, the LCA synod did not achieve the
required number of votes to pass this change. I believe that God has graciously
allowed us to dodge a bullet. In the meantime, our church, which was once known
as the church of the word, with the conviction and the boldness of Martin
Luther, is no longer what it used to be. Repentance is the only way the church
can be renewed—when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in
Wittenberg in 1517, the first sentence said: When our Lord Jesus told his
disciples to “repent”, he meant that the whole of our lives should be one of
repentance. In the meantime, let’s continue to pray to our Saviour to preserve
the unity of our church, and steer us clearly through these troubled waters. It’s
not easy when people in the church don’t agree. As St Paul says: I appeal to
you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and
that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind
and the same judgment.
In the meantime, we have a faithful Saviour, a
faithful shepherd, a faithful bridegroom, who loves us and cares for us much
more than we deserve. He has died for us, he has risen again, he has baptised
us into his kingdom, and he has forgiven us all our sins. God has joined his
Son and the church together in a holy, perfect marriage, and what God has
joined together, no-one can separate. He will never let us down, and he says to
his church: Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
Amen.
Dear Jesus,
our heavenly bridegroom, bless us. Bless our homes, bless our marriages, bless
our church. Amen.
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