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I begin with a bit of a prelude. This morning’s Gospel
lesson must be handled with gentleness, love and compassion. It must be
preached faithfully, and it must be heard with prayerful humility. It needs to
be carried by the Spirit of God from the words in Scripture to the hearts and
minds of all of us gathered today. While this is true every day we open the
pages of God’s Word, it is especially true today for this morning our Lord
speaks of marriage and of divorce.
“Is it legal?”
Lawyers, accountants, cops – even pastors – we get this question all the time.
What does the Law say? Inquiring minds want to know. It’s a question that seeks
to define and determine the boundaries. How far can I go? It’s also a question
that determines the exceptions to the rule, the case studies when it’s
acceptable to step over the line – for a good reason, of course. The pharisees
want to talk about divorce. “Well, Jesus – what do you say? Is divorce legal?”
Divorce was allowed by Moses – you can read it in
Deuteronomy 24 – if the husband found out about an indecency on his wife’s
part, then he could write her a certificate of divorce. I said, “indecency,”
think indecent exposure, not necessarily adultery. Adultery would not have
needed a divorce – that was handled by stoning. Gives new meaning to, “Til
death,” doesn’t it? Divorce was intended to be the exception to a faithful
marriage because unfaithfulness was also the exception. But by the time of Jesus, it had gotten to
the point where the Pharisees would allow this to happen: Couple A and Couple B
are neighbors. Husband A grows dissatisfied with his own wife – maybe she’s a
terrible cook, or she can’t get the stains out of his good robe, or her mother
drives him nuts – so he writes a divorce against her. In the meantime, he notices
how great Wife B is and how much happier he would be with her at his side. So,
he gets another friend to make a charge against Wife B – maybe she was showing
off too much ankle at the community well - so, to save his own honor, Husband B
divorces Wife B, now freeing her to marry Husband A. That mindset might make
sure things are legal, but make no mistake: Lawful is awful.
The Pharisees said it was legal, but Jesus calls this
exactly what it is: hardness of heart. The heart is where compassion, mercy and
grace are to flow from. If a heart is hard, these cannot flow free and freely.
This is true of the pharisees and this is true of our own hearts. A
compassionless heart is an unloving heart is a hard heart. Hard hearts do not
receive the gifts of God, including the husband or wife God has given you.
“Not so from the
beginning,” Jesus says. He jumps from the accommodating loophole to the gift.
“But 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 they shall
become one flesh.” That’s what Moses said about husbands and wives in the
beginning. Before there was sin. Before the Fall. Before Adam and Eve become
self-absorbed, self-oriented, self-justifying rebels. Before the notion of
divorce even existed.
And then Jesus adds His own personal clincher. “So they are
no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not
man separate.” Back to the original question. Is it lawful for a man to divorce
his wife? Answer: No. They are one flesh by the word of God, and that cannot be
undone. They may divorce, and Moses even accommodates and legislates their
divorcing, but divorce is never lawful no matter what the circumstances. It may
be tragically needful, it may be inevitable, it may not be possible even for
two baptized children of God to put marital Humpty Dumpty back together again.
But it is never lawful.
The disciples asked Jesus about all this privately, behind
closed doors. They were clearly bothered by this. Troubled. And Jesus doesn’t
pull any punches with them. Instead, he turns up the volume. “Whoever divorces
his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces
her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” That goes beyond Moses.
Jesus just sealed Moses’ loophole shut. No divorce. No remarriage. Gifts
refused. Hardened hearts. You remember how the vows go: Until death us do part.
Death, not divorce, is what ends the one flesh of husband and wife. Anything
else is adultery.
I imagine that there are some of us who are starting to
squirm a bit. Please – know you are not alone, that most of us have been
touched, directly or indirectly, by the dissolution of marriage. Our children,
our parents, our siblings, our grandchildren, our friends, we all know the pain
that sears the heart when what God has joined together is torn apart by the rap
of the judge’s gavel.
And in case you are sitting there smugly with your happy
marriage and thinking, “I thank God I’m not like those losers,” well, remember
what Jesus said about that stray look and that adulterous thought. You’ve
already committed adultery too. And maybe now it’s beginning to sink in just a
little more about this fearsome Law that has no loopholes, that crushes the
sin-hardened heart to pieces, that brooks no arguments or self-justifications.
Think about how far Sin has corrupted the good that God
gives. Think about how Sin has dulled that joy that Adam spoke of when he first
laid eyes on Eve and said, “Finally – bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!”
Think about how Sin takes the joy of the wedding day and turns it into a
drudgery and weariness so that religious people can come up to Jesus looking
for a reason to divorce their wives. That’s Sin at work in our old Adam who
turned his back on his bride and left her alone and isolated, who pointed the
accusing finger and blamed her for his own sin.
It’s played out in so many broken homes and in families just
barely glued together. What a great and deep sadness it is, uprooting families,
leaving children without father or mother. Husbands and wives, who are one
flesh, at each other’s throats, looking for a way out. And even in homes that
appear to be intact, there are the undercurrents of discontent, boredom,
complacency, neglect, abuse. Affections alienated by pornography and dulled by
alcohol and drugs. “It was not so from the beginning.” This is not the gift God
had given.
In Ephesians chapter 5, St. Paul quotes this verse from Genesis,
“that a man leaves father and mother and clings to his wife and the two become
one flesh,” and he says a remarkable thing. This is about Christ and the
church. That might not be immediately obvious on first reading. Or even second.
This Adam and Eve thing is about Christ, the second Adam, and His Bride, the
Church.
It was the strangest wedding celebration in the history of
the world. There was the perfectly faithful Groom who was given to the
perfectly unfaithful wife. She constantly demands her rights, she selfishly
takes what isn’t hers to take, she misuses the freedom her Husband lovingly
gives her. She cheats on Him with other lovers, none of whom really love her,
only using her for their own twisted pleasures. Adultery, remember, deserves
death. So, there stands the Groom, dressed in His finest. The bride isn’t
dressed in the finest of white – she’s soiled and dirty and filthy and deserves
to be taken outside the city and put to death.
The Groom loves the bride too much. He goes down to her. His fine linens
are removed from Him and He assumes her guilty verdict. Her adultery is charged
to him; her death sentence is given to Him. His life is given her. His
faithfulness is charged to her. His holiness is poured upon her. Her filthy
rags are lovingly stripped away and His white robes of righteousness are wrapped
around her. And she takes His name. The transformation is so complete that the
Groom’s Father cannot see her tainted past. All the Father sees is His Son’s
love for her.
Here we see God in action, redeeming, restoring, raising up
from the dead. Christ is the one who leaves Father and mother at the cross. He
is forsaken by the Father, and He gives His mother to John. He leaves His
Father and His mother in order to cling to His bride, the Church, who is
created out of His own sacramentally wounded side in the water and the blood.
Marriage can’t save us. Marriage is not a means of grace; it
is in dire need of grace. And marriage is not eternal. In the resurrection, we
neither marry nor are we given in marriage. But there is a marriage that does
save. There is a one flesh union that cannot be destroyed. The marriage of
Christ and the Church. The union of Christ with His baptized believers. The
communion of Christ with His communicants who share in His Body and Blood and
so are one Body with Him Not sexually, as in our marriages. But sacramentally,
in the one marriage that counts for eternity.
There, not in Moses, not in legalistic loopholes, not in the
Law, is your hope and your certainty. In Christ and His marriage to His Church.
In the name of Jesus,
Amen
Amen
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