Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Impressive Clergyman stood up
in front of the Prince and his soon-to-be wife and intoned, “Marriage. Marriage
is what brings us together today. Marriage, that blessed arrangement; that
dream within a dream….”[1] To borrow from his sermon,
as we heard in this morning’s Scripture readings, God’s Word about marriage is
what brings us together today.
Marriage is a life-long walking together of husband and wife, monogamously united together, one man and one woman, in the one-flesh union that God established in the Garden of Eden. A marriage is not the same thing as a wedding, although most marriages legally begin with a wedding. A wedding is an event, hopefully, prayerfully, a once-in-a-lifetime event. It’s the stuff that girls daydream about have women studying brides’ magazines and websites. With tuxes and dresses, venues and caterers, florists and DJs, weddings are big business. But at the end of the day, it’s a singular event; relatively speaking, it’s just a moment in first chapter of the wedded couple’s life. A marriage begins as the wedding event comes to its completion.
Marriage began because God saw
that it wasn’t good for man to be alone. It would be better for him to have a
female companion, a helper, a comforter, someone like him but also different
from him, someone to walk alongside him through life. All the living creatures
on earth and in the air were brought by God to Adam for them to be named. Do
not read into this that God was authorizing some kind of weird, perverted
human-animal relationship, the kind that twisted minds today call “love” as if
it were the same thing as that between man and woman. This animal roll call and
naming process was God’s way of demonstrating to Adam the need for
companionship to defeat loneliness, setting the stage, so to speak, so Adam
would appreciate all the more the gift that God had in mind for Adam, His son.
After placing Adam into a deep
sleep, God took one of Adam’s ribs and used it to make a woman. I say “make,”
but I kind of like the literal Hebrew translation better: to build. God built
the woman from Adam’s rib. That might sound rather industrial, but think of it
this way: while you might make a cake or make a blanket, you build things of
significance and power – you build a home, you build a nation. Adam was created
from dirt – that is what his name means, Adamah, dirt – created in God’s
image of holiness. God builds the woman, carefully, deliberately, from Adam’s
side. She is not inferior to him, as would be if she was taken from a bone in
the foot; rather, she is built from his side, bone of his bone, flesh of his
flesh. It’s an indication of the relationship, literally his side by her side.
Do you know why God created the
world? It wasn’t because He was bored, or He was curious to see if He could do
it. God is love, and He wanted an object, something, where His love could be
directed toward. Thus He created the universe and all that was in it. Do you
know why He created man? He didn’t just want something, He wanted someone, in
His own image, someone who could receive His love and, in relationship, reflect
it back to Him and also to show and distribute that love to His creation. Do
you know why God created a woman? So that His love could also be shared among
each other, and so that Adam would have someone to receive his love and love
him in return, demonstrating God’s love to each other as God loved them.
When God gives her to Adam, his
joy at seeing her practically leaps from the page: “At last! Here is one like
me!” You will notice there was no wedding – well, at least, not as we think of
weddings. There was no cake and punch, no band or brisket, no limo or honeymoon,
no wondering what side of the chancel to sit in. But it was a wedding,
nevertheless. It was conducted in the most beautiful scene the world had ever
seen, the Garden of Eden, where it was, truly, a perfect moment, making it a
perfect wedding. Their wedding took place in true innocence, before sin had happened,
establishing wedlock to be a holy, God-pleasing estate that should be kept in a
holy manner. The congregation of creation on earth and the hosts of heaven
watched and listened as God gave His blessing as both Father of Bride and Groom.
The pre-incarnate Jesus was the preacher blessing them with His words that a
man and woman shall become one flesh and the Holy Spirit stood as witness to
the sacred event, having brought the two together and uniting them with love
for each other. [2]
What there was, was marriage: God
instituting the gift of a husband to a wife and a wife to a husband,
establishing marriage as His divinely willed and approved blessing to mankind
and creation. And, like very other piece of creation, it was good.
Every time family and friends gather
at a wedding to celebrate the marriage-union of man and wife in holy marriage,
they do so in the footsteps of Adam and Eve and all of God’s faithful who have
gone before, invoking His name and imploring His blessing not only in the
wedding, but on the entire marriage that follows the pronouncement of mister
and misses, husband and wife. Any other relationship other than the one man and
one woman union, is not marriage, regardless what the government or
conventional wisdom says and it is not, and cannot, be blessed by God.
I don’t need to tell you that
marriage, while a blessing, is also hard work.
The warm fuzzies and flutters slowly morph into normalcy and, if not
careful, complacency, taking each other for granted instead of as the gift they
are. Statistics tell us that marriage is about a fifty-fifty proposition for
success. Every time I pronounce “husband and wife,” I do so with an iota of
fear for them, knowing what they face. What do you expect when two sinners are
joined together, side by side, stride for stride, under the same roof, sharing the
same blankets? At the end of the marriage rite, I say, “What God has joined
together, let no man tear apart.” In that moment, satan giggles with glee,
already hard at work to destroy what God joined together. He does it sneakily: God’s
gifts get turned inward and backward. Love, which is always directed toward the
spouse, becomes selfishness; compassion for the spouse’s needs becomes insensitivity;
forgiveness is replaced by getting even. And Satan laughs and claps his hands
in evil joy while husband and wife, man and wife, weep as what God put together
is torn asunder.
The Old Testament lesson speaks
of God instituting marriage. The Gospel lesson speaks of marriages broken. I
want to take a moment and speak to four specific people here today.
The first person is you who have
lived through a broken marriage. Divorce is hard. It is hard on everyone who
loves the couple. I have heard it described as death. That makes sense. If two
become one in marriage, in divorce, the one is torn apart. In this morning’s
Gospel lesson, Jesus speaks to it, but I want you to understand something about
this conversation and its context. It comes because the Jewish leaders are
trying to trap Jesus. They were looking for loopholes. They don’t care a lick
about the souls of the husband and wife in question; they weren’t worried about
the broken-hearted people whose lives are collapsing. They want to get Jesus in
hot water, thus the question. Jesus answer, here, isn’t about labeling divorce
a sin and branding divorcees with a Scarlet D, to be scorned and mocked. (As an
aside, sadly, that happens sometimes in the Church, and for those of us who
have whispered, stared, or wondered “what did he or she do?”, we must repent of
those foolish thoughts.) What Jesus would do, instead, is identify the sins
that led to the dissolution of what God established, and then lead the broken
man and wife to repentance and, ideally, reconciliation. Jesus died for those
whose marriages died, with the promised grace that even broken marriages are
forgiven, the old adam and old eve drowned in the blood of Christ, living a new
life as a forgiven, baptized man or woman redeemed in the eyes of God.
The second person is you who are
struggling in your marriage. If Adam and Eve are the picture-perfect image of
what marriage was intended, I can only imagine what their marriage was like
after the fall as they blamed each other and had to wrestle with each other as
sinners. To you who are struggling, you are not alone. Too often, struggling
husbands and wives pretend everything is fine when, in reality, their marriage
is – to use the metaphor – sick. To carry that metaphor, if your body is sick,
you go to a doctor for care. If your marriage is sick, do not hide it, do not
lie and pretend with yourself, each other, and to others that all is well. Seek
help. Your Lord Jesus Christ is the Great Physician of body and soul and of
broken lives and broken marriages; He gives gifts of peace – restoration - to
you. I invite, encourage, welcome you to come speak with me. Don’t be
embarrassed; I will not judge you as “less than” or a failure. I work with
sinners, remember, and I face one every day in the mirror; I work with children
of God, remember, and I see one every day in the mirror. And, if you don’t want
to talk with me, then talk with a faithful Christian friend whose marriage is
strong and will offer Godly, prayerful counsel for you and your spouse.
The third person is the one whose
marriage is healthy and strong. God be praised for the love and respect you and
your spouse share as you live your married life. Lift up those who are
struggling and walk alongside them with compassion and humility, that your
strength might be theirs. May God bless you, husband and wife, as Godly
witnesses of the Lord’s love and compassion for His people.
The fourth person is the one who
is single, either by choice or because death has separated you from your
beloved. You are also a Godly example of what it is to be a faithful witness
and child of God. May He bless you with the strength to resist temptations of
this world while also giving you the grace to look forward to the blessed,
eternal wedding feast of the Lamb in His kingdom. And, if you are seeking a spouse, then begin
praying now for whomever the Lord will send to you in His time and in His way.
Whichever person you are,
divorced, struggling, healthy, single or widowed, remember this: God saw that
it was not good for man – or woman – to be alone. He sent His Son, Jesus, to be
the perfect bridegroom for the Church, claiming her to be His own. He has
washed His bride of all her sins in holy Baptism, making her radiant,
resplendent in His holiness and blamelessness. He cares and feeds His bride
with His own Body and Blood. When she is hurt, He wraps her in His grace and
mercy. When she sins, He calls her back in repentance to His loving, forgiving
arms.
This, then, becomes the picture
for husbands and wives. As Christ is for the Church, giving Himself for her, He
is also for the husbands and wives whom He unites, binding them to each other
through Him and in Him.
The Impressive Clergyman’s brief
sermon was right, but also wrong. Marriage is not what brings us together. What
brings us together is God’s command and love which fills man and woman with
love for each other and love for He who united them. His love does not follow;
His love leads, enwraps, and holds husband and wife in a union that pictures
Christ and His bride, the church. But the Clergyman is right: treasure this
love which is ours in Christ our Lord. Amen.
