When Jesus Comes to Your Wedding
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 22^nd, Year of Our + Lord 2021
Ephesians 5:22-33
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD

What happens when Jesus comes to your wedding? 

   Pastor Anderson and Liz don’t want me to preach about them.  But, the assigned Epistle reading for this Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, which also happens to be the second day of their 51^st year of wedded bliss, is Paul’s famous instructions for husbands and wives in Ephesians 5, instructions which quickly veer off into a profound teaching about Christ and His love for us, His Church.  Nobody but the Holy Spirit chose that marriage would be prominent in the readings on this weekend of the Anderson’s Golden Anniversary.  And we, the Church, the Bride of Christ, must celebrate marriage, marriage as God instituted it.  Because nobody else is going to do it.  But everyone needs marriage. 

 
 We must celebrate marriage, because it is vital, absolutely critical for our society, and even more, absolutely essential as one of Lord’s favorite ways of teaching us about His great love for us sinners.  So, while I thank God for the double reason to preach Christ through the lens of Biblical marriage this morning, and although I am glad we can be a part of Bob and Liz’s celebration, this sermon isn’t about them, nor especially for them.  It is no more for Bob and Liz that it is for all of you, man or woman, adult or child, single, married, divorced or widowed.  Because marriage is important for all of us, both now, and forever and ever. 

   So what does happen when Jesus comes to your wedding?  Our Hymn of the Day is a lyric telling and interpretation of the Wedding at Cana from John’s Gospel, chapter two.  As we discussed last Sunday, Mary and Jesus and His disciples attend a wedding in Cana, and when the wine runs out, threatening to ruin the reception party, Jesus’ mother asks Him to help.  Which He does, by turning the water in six large stone jars into excellent wine. 

   In this miraculous sign, Jesus does three things: 

          He provides an immediate earthly blessing to the newlyweds, and their guests;

          He hints at the mysteries of Baptism and the Eucharist that He would later                        establish;         

         and He causes His disciples to believe in Him. 

    Earthly Blessing, Sacramental Connection, and Faith.  These are, not coincidentally, what make marriage the blessing that it is.  

Earthly Blessing: 

   God created marriage, and cares about every marriage.  In John 2 we see how Jesus helps the unnamed couple in a relatively unimportant matter.  Jesus does it because He is pro-marriage.  God desires to bless people in and through marriage.  And being husband and wife provides many blessings, today, to believer and unbeliever.  Earthly blessings, like the economic advantage of being married.  On average, people who get and stay married end up far wealthier.  There’s also the blessing of greater daily satisfaction, companionship and partnership that married couples enjoy.  And as God grants, the blessing of children, vital to the future of every nation.  This shouldn’t be a news flash, but it kind of is and so we need to say it and repeat it: traditional marriage and family are the foundation of good society.  Not political philosophy, not social welfare programs, not capitalism.  No, regardless of our form of government or the nature of our culture, good societies are built on the backs of strong, traditional families, which are the only proven place to consistently raise good citizens. 

   The fraying and tension we see in America today, the racial and political violence, the increased addiction and deaths of despair, the generational poverty that plagues both the inner city and many parts of rural America, all of these ills are in significant measure fruit of the disastrous attacks on traditional marriage and family of the last 50 years.  Lord have mercy on us.

   And let us not forget that for all the earthly blessings it provides, God loves Holy Matrimony because God loves babies.  God instituted marriage to be the source of new souls, the place where children are raised in the fear and knowledge of the Lord, a new generation of people to be loved and blessed by God.  Before sin came into the world, growing the People of God, the Church, simply would have required husbands and wives to have babies.  Now in our fallen world, Church growth is trickier; but it is still significantly linked to babies. 

     We don’t live in paradise, but rather in this broken world.  Everything, including marriage, is hard.  We all have our problems and failures.  I want to be careful to say that being loved by God, being saved, does not depend on being married, or on making your marriage work.  Your value before God depends entirely on Jesus and His forgiving love, period.  Marriage is a blessing.  But not everyone will or should get married.  Still, all of us benefit from Godly marriages. 

Sacramental Connection:  As Paul teaches us today, a marriage is an icon, an image, a picture of God’s love for the Church.  As any long-married couple will tell you, a Christian marriage seems like a miracle.  Paul plainly states that it is a mystery, which reveals God and His attitude toward us.  And what a wonderful mystery Holy Matrimony is.  It does not directly deliver the Gospel to sinners like Baptism or the Lord’s Supper.  But almost.  A Sacrament, according to St. Augustine, is when God has attached His salvation promises to physical things, like water, bread and wine.  At Cana, Jesus hints at His coming sacramental gifts to the Church.  He turns water to wine, which might remind us of wine in the Lord’s Supper, which God makes also to be the forgiving blood of Jesus.  Or Cana might remind you of the washing with water for salvation in Baptism.  What happened at Cana is not either Sacrament, but it does prepare us to understand and cherish them when Jesus later gives them to His Church.

    At the wedding in Cana, the Lord revealed His attitude toward marriage.  And, as Paul teaches us, in Christian marriage, Jesus gives a picture of His commitment to His Bride the Church.  While your Lord Jesus has ascended into heaven to prepare a place for you, He has not left you.  He has not abandoned His Bride, the Church.  He is with us always, through His Word and in His Sacraments, truly present to give new birth to sinners in Holy Baptism, comforting and teaching us with Word of His Father’s love, and feeding the family with salvation when we gather to eat and drink at Christ’s table, a foretaste of the heavenly wedding banquet to come.  Do you notice all the family life imagery that comes with the Gospel in all its forms?

Faith.  All the blessings of being part of God the Father’s family come to us by faith.  He who believes in Jesus the Savior has crossed from death to life, and entered the Kingdom of God.  At Cana, and from Paul we see how Holy Matrimony is used by the Spirit as a catalyst for faith. 

   Jesus in our Gospel reading today warns us not to pit man-made traditions against the commandments of God.  We should also remember that old fashioned traditions can be Godly.  Christian marriage is a Godly tradition, passed down to us by the Creator.  And as we try to live out God’s way of marriage, we see other human traditions that reflect Godliness.  Like holding out for the conversion of one’s desired spouse, so that both husband and wife will be bound together not only by their mutual love, but also by the love of Christ.  My own father was not baptized until the week before he married my mom, and he was then faithful in the Church until his death.  It is not a sin to be married to an unbeliever, but the couple that prays together in the true faith enjoys great advantages.

   Marriage also is God’s tool for outreach through observation.  Neighbors, family and friends can see in a Christian marriage the forgiveness, commitment and love that empower a couple to stay together, through thick and thin, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, good times and bad.  A Christian marriage leads others to want what they see, which is God’s invitation not only to a good earthly marriage, but to discover the Savior who is the third strand holding every Christian couple together.  Christian marriage helps draw unbelievers to the Faith.  

    Finally, there’s submission.  We can’t talk about marriage and Ephesians 5 without tackling submission.  Satan has managed to get us pretty twisted up over this word, so that what is truly a blessing from God is seen as oppressive.  May the Holy Spirit help us this morning to gain a better understanding of His truth about Christian submission. 

   First of all, if we go back one verse before the start of our Epistle, to Ephesians 5:21, we learn that submission is for all Christians.  We all submit to God, and to each other according to our vocations.  Submission is Godly and good.  Indeed, Jesus submits in all things to His Father, and there is nothing demeaning or negative or less-than in our Lord’s submission.  Jesus is one with the Father.  He is equally God, equal in glory, eternity and power.  And yet, as the perfect Son, Jesus eternally submits to His Father, with joy.  And that is good. 

   Indeed, the Gospel of our salvation is the story of Jesus’ willing and loving submission to His Father’s will.  Anything that is negative about submission comes from human sin.  Jesus’ willing submission to the Father’s plan had a negative side.  Saving us was terribly painful for Jesus, but only because of our sin. 

    Submission between human beings, including between Christians, including the submission of the wife to the role of her husband, can become negative when people abuse their position and authority.  But this is not Godly submission, for God does not abuse.  Abusing another person is sin.  Notice that Paul says the wife is to submit to her husband as [she submits] to the Lord.  There is nothing negative, but only blessing, in our submission to Christ.  Paul is not endorsing wives putting up with abusive husbands, not at all. 

   I mean, consider Paul’s instruction to husbands.  While the wife is called to submit as to the Lord, who is perfect and good, the husband is called to sacrifice his life for his wife, as Jesus did for the Church, for all of us, despite the fact that we are all by nature unfaithful sinners.  So who is Paul asking more from, the wife or the husband? 

   Paul then moves to proclaiming the Gospel, Christ’s love for His Church.  Because, as valuable as marriage is, it does not save.  Only the Gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected for the forgiveness of sins can save.  Paul knows, just like we all do, that no mere human husband is perfect, nor any wife.  He upholds the ideal marriage for the sake of proclaiming Christ and His forgiving love, through the same icon of marriage.  Indeed, the perfection, the holiness, that we can claim as Church is entirely received.  It is Christ’s perfection, His righteousness and holiness, which is declared to be ours by our faith and union with the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.  

   And so Paul at the end of the passage returns to his specific day to day advice for husbands and wives with adjusted language, adjusted for the realities of this life.  “Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”  This accommodation to the realities of life in this world does not downplay the profound blessing and mystery of marriage, that the two, by God’s plan and will, become one-flesh, a picture of Jesus’ love for and union with His Bride, the Church. 

   And what a wonderful world it would be if the Christian husband did a better job in his most important role, which is, in partnership with his wife, to lead his family to God, to be the spiritual leader who encourages and teaches and helps all his family stay connected to Christ and His Gospel. 

   This is a high and difficult calling.  No husband or wife fulfills their role perfectly.  Thanks be to God, there is in Jesus relief from our failures and imperfections.  Marriage is one of God’s favorite images to communicate the Gospel.  But salvation does not depend on you and me having perfect marriages.  In a mysterious way, the value of marriage for the Gospel depends on us not being perfect.  For it is when the world sees forgiveness in action that marriage really does its great work.  The powerful evangelistic potential of a Christian marriage is forgiveness and dependence on God’s Word and Sacrament, displayed for the world to see.  It is in Gospel motivated selfless mutual service between husband and wife, over decades, done simply because this man or this woman is the one that my Savior has brought to me.  It is husband and wife submitting to God’s good plan, because we believe it is best. 

   So whatever your experience with marriage has been,

          whether you have had to overcome the problems of your parent’s marriage,

          or if you have suffered, or caused, real pain in your own marriage,

          whether you are young and confused about marriage,

          or whether you are living as though you are married without making the public         commitment that is the marriage ceremony,

whatever your issues with marriage might be, and we all have them, know this: 

     Your Bridegroom, your Savior, Jesus Christ the Son of God, has taken all your imperfections, all your weaknesses, all your sins, upon Himself. 

   On the Cross He paid in blood and death the dowry price required to have you as His very own, to live with Him in righteousness and blessedness, today, and forever and ever.     

   You are forgiven, in and by Jesus, and so you are freed to pursue Godliness, whether you are married or single. 

   You are precious to God the Father, for Jesus’ sake. 

   You are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, who will guard and keep you in the one true faith, until the Bridegroom comes again, to take you and all the members of His Bride the Church, to live with Him in the glory of His heavenly home, in purity and joy, where death cannot part you from God or any good thing, forever and ever, Amen.