Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 3^rd, Year of Our + Lord 2021
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Together Forever 

      Jesus teaches about marriage today, and His words cut to the quick.  The Pharisees, the religious teachers of the Jewish nation, who have set themselves up as Jesus’ enemies, come after Jesus, trying to trip Him up.  They ask the Lord a Law question: is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?  So they get a Law answer.  In short, God hates divorce.  It is a sign of the evil which infects the hearts of men and women that Moses had to give God’s people Israel an escape clause, a certificate of divorce, with which to separate what God had joined together.  In marriage God makes the man and the woman one flesh, and what God has joined together, no one should separate.  Divorce is an accommodation to human sin, to our hard hearts.  But even when it is the necessary choice in a given broken relationship, God still doesn’t like it. 

God’s opposition to divorce, and every other type of sexual and familial sin, make us uncomfortable. 
All of us.  Not just those who have gone through a divorce.  All of us.  Teenagers today, who have only ever lived in this brave new world where change and flickering screens are constant companions, and everything is hyper-sexualized, today’s teenagers can barely comprehend the idea of “till death us do part.” How is it even possible to join yourself to another person emotionally, physically, economically, until one of you dies?  It’s hard enough to understand what’s happening as your body changes and you slowly become a man or a woman.  And then I’m supposed to get married? 

   It’s no surprise that young people today put marriage off, into their 30s, or forever.  It’s a problem, a tragedy, really.  But it shouldn’t surprise us.  Because God’s Law about marriage is fierce, and the evidence our young people see as they grow up in today’s society teaches them that the likelihood of lifelong wedded bliss is low.  And of course the world also teaches that lifelong commitments are in general a bad idea.  Because you should always take care of you, first and always.  Our hyper-individualized culture says anything unpleasant in the moment is to be avoided.  And lifelong marriage clearly requires working through unpleasant moments.  So it is suspect. 

   The truth is that Biblical marriage offers the best chance for earthly happiness.  There is so much good:  companionship, intimacy without fear or guilt.  Forging a partnership that makes both of you better.  The blessing of children, when God grants.  Marriage is not easy, but it is good, very good.  We owe it to the younger generations to try to help them see the risk is worth it, even though it doesn’t always work out like we want. 

   And people who have never married, for whatever reason, these people might warn the young that Satan uses marriage against them, too.  It’s sometimes nice, but often lonely to be single.  And the Bible spends so much time extolling marriage, it is easy to think that God doesn’t love you if you never managed to find a husband or wife.  This is a lie.  But it’s a powerful one.   

   Of course, those who have been divorced may have felt Satan tapping them on the shoulder this morning and wagging his accusing finger at them as we heard Jesus’ words.  But you’re not alone in your guilt.  Those married couples who are still with their first spouse, those husbands and wives who seem to have it all together, like Robert and Gail Ohlendorf, who celebrate 50 years of marriage today, these people also know how sin and problems have plagued their one-flesh union.  They remember the times when the thought of divorce seemed more than possible.  Or the bad habits of your husband or your wife that don’t change, over decades.  In marriage, God places two selfish sinners into the closest proximity, where there is no hiding your flaws, and then He says, “Make it work.”  Marriage is hard.  Some people, including unbelievers, make it work.  They keep it together until death.  And thanks be to God for these marriages.  But nobody comes through unscathed.  Nobody.  Ask a Law question about marriage, and you will get a Law answer.  God’s design for marriage will, sooner or later, accuse you, and justly so.   

   So where’s the good news, the Gospel, in marriage?  How is it still around at all?  Despite the fact that each one of us is a poor candidate to fulfill the all-in commitment that marriage requires of the man and the woman, marriage still attracts us.  Despite the fact that culture has for centuries schemed against Biblical marriage, an ancient attack against God’s design, which has had depressing success over the last 60 years or so, people today still want to get married.  Even people who deny that God has created us as either men or women, different from each other, and designed for union with our opposite sex, even folks who deny Scripture and biology still demand the right to marry.  They demand with the force of human law that you declare their partnerships to be the same, or even better, than the one-flesh union the Lord created between the first man and the first woman.  Why?  Why do people who deny God as Creator and His design for marriage, why do they still want to marry?  Is that the good news, the fact that despite all the obstacles, human beings still crave marriage? 

   No.  Our enduring interest in marriage is a good thing, but it is still Law.  It is how we are created, a feature of humanity which God built into us.  Our desire for marriage is damaged, at times beyond recognition, by our sinfulness.  But it is still part of our reality, the way we were made to be, a thing we were designed to do.  And what God has given us to be and do is Law.  This Law is good and right and valuable.  But it is not Gospel. 

   God’s Law describes reality and tells us how we are to live and act within that reality.  We can and do recognize, albeit in an incomplete and confused way, the fundamental goodness of God’s plan.  We’ve already discussed how we struggle to do the good work of marriage that God has given us.  God’s Law of marriage is good, but it is not Good News of God’s gracious rescue.  Marriage is not the Gospel, because it depends on us to be fulfilled, and we cannot do it, not perfectly, as God demands. 

   But do not despair, there is Gospel, truly Good News of God’s rescue, in marriage.  And Jesus gives us a clue to help us see it when His disciples mess up, again.  As we have been working our way through Mark’s Gospel these last Sundays, a constant feature has been the inability of Jesus’ twelve chosen disciples to get anything right.  They ignore Jesus’ teaching about the coming Cross, then they bicker and argue over status and earthly prestige.   Today, as parents in the crowd of hangers-on try to bring their little children to Jesus, so that He can bless them, the Twelve try to chase them off.  Which makes Jesus angry.   Indignant.  "Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. ^[15] Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." ^[16] And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.  Is that Good News?  The Law is anything that God requires or forbids us to do.  The Gospel, Biblical Good News, is what God does for us, to overcome our sinful brokenness.  The Twelve do wrong, preventing little children from coming to Jesus.  But Jesus intervenes to correct their sin and give a special blessing to these little ones.  Yes, that is definitely in the category of Gospel, of God doing for us.  And focusing on the child will get us to the Gospel, God’s ultimate doing-for-us, which is the reason we have been gathered here today. 

   So, are children the Gospel in marriage?  That’s getting there, but not quite.  Children are a gift from God, and sometimes they save marriages.  “Let’s stay together, for the children,” is a sentiment that has preserved many marriages until things got better.  But just as often, sparing the children from living in Mom and Dad’s war zone is used as a justification for divorce.  Children are a blessing, and Jesus uses them to point us to the Good News of marriage.  But the Gospel of marriage is not about children, plural.  It is about the Child, singular. 

   You may have wondered why we have an icon of the Holy Family on our bulletins today, Mary, Joseph and the Child Jesus.  It’s because this Child is the Good News of marriage.  We rightly exalt Joseph and Mary, who worked very hard and overcame incredible obstacles to keep their marriage together.  And in a sense, they were doing it for the Child. 

   But the deeper truth is that the Child was doing it for them.  Jesus is the reason, the cause, that they were able to overcome the suspicious origins of His conception.  Jesus was the cause of their incredible efforts, ignoring the insults and gossip of their neighbors, and the murderous hatred of King Herod.  Jesus held their marriage together, in order to save them.  God saved the marriage of Joseph and Mary by giving them faith in the promise of this Child, a promise that also saved their eternal souls.  For they believed what the angelic preachers proclaimed: this Child will be called Holy, the Son of God, and you will name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.  Believing this Promise, Mary and Joseph were moved to remarkable efforts to keep it together and raise the Child they had been given to parent. 

   The Church fights for and upholds the Biblical definition of marriage for several reasons.  It is God’s Law, to which we are committed.  And it is good, indeed vital, for our culture that traditional marriage survive.  But that’s not the greatest importance of human marriage.  No, even more important is marriage’s iconic role, the picture it paints, the pointing it does, from the lesser to the greater.  Jesus did save His earthly parents’ marriage, through the faith He gave Joseph and Mary in God’s promises.  And in His mission, God does use the example of selfless Christian men laying down their lives for their wives and children, and faithful Christian women accepting God’s plan for marriage as the Church submits to Christ. Still, all of this is preliminary to or derivative of the One Marriage that is the Gospel. 

    Have you ever wondered why God took Adam’s rib to make Eve?  Why not some other part of his body?  We don’t have a Biblical Word that absolutely answers this question.  Many would point to the picture of Mary, leaning into Joseph in just the place where the rib was taken and recognize that side-by-side, protecting, mutually supporting posture as an excellent picture of the perfectly matched partnership that God created marriage to be.  And that’s great.  But there’s more, and it’s the Gospel, the Good News of God doing what it takes to save you and me.   For even more than Jesus’ saved Mary and Joseph’s marriage, His great work of self-sacrifice saved His marriage, to you. 

   On the Cross Jesus Christ completed the mysterious, highest, and most holy marriage, the marriage of God and His Bride, the Church.  Hanging on the Cross, after laying down His life to save His Bride, once again the Man, a New Adam, was cut in His side, between the ribs, by the Roman soldier’s lance.  And from His side poured forth water and blood, water and blood from Jesus that creates His Beloved, the Body of Believers, sinners forgiven and recreated to live in eternal wedded bliss, in the Kingdom of God, joyfully submitting to His rule and protective reign, forever and ever. 

   All the way back in the Garden, knowing all the sin, suffering and tragedy that was to come, God made the woman from the first Adam’s rib, to point us forward to the New Adam, Jesus Christ, who gave His life as the forgiving sacrifice that heals all wounds, with His own holy wounds.  Now, by faith in Jesus, washed in pure baptismal waters and even given to drink of His forgiving blood, the Bride of Christ, the whole body of believers of every time and place, rejoices in this promise:  What God has joined together, no one will ever separate.  Neither height nor depth, no demon or power, not death, nor even the failure of human divorce, nothing in all Creation can separate you from the love of your Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.      

   Your salvation does depend on marriage, but not on your marriage.   Earthly marriage is good and right and a tremendous fountain of blessing, and we would be fools not to work hard to promote and protect it.  But God’s good law of marriage will not save you.  Your failures and my failures in marriage, as much as we regret them and should struggle against them, they do not separate you from God.  Jesus has laid down His life for you, and taken it up again.  He has gone before you into His Father’s Kingdom, to get the house ready, for you, His beloved.  We by faith in His forgiving love look forward to the marriage feast in heaven that will never end. 

   In the meantime, repenting of and confessing our sins, in marriage, and in every part of our lives, we are called to receive a foretaste of that feast to come, in the Holy Supper of Christ’s Body and Blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of all your sins. 

   Jesus is saving us all, through His mysterious marriage to the Church.  Your sins are forgiven, and His promise of faithfulness to you lasts not only till death, but forever and ever.  Glory be to the Lamb, our together forever Bridegroom, your Savior and mine, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.