Nineteenth
Sunday after Pentecost, October 7, Year of Our + Lord 2012
St.
John and Trinity Lutheran Churches, Fairview and Sidney, Montana
On
Marriage, Family, and Jesus, Genesis 2:18-25 and Mark 10:2-16
I’m sorry.
I want to begin this morning by saying, “I’m sorry.” Now, I’m not apologizing for the words I’m
about to say, nor for the Word of God you’ve already heard. Rather, I feel sorrow for any pain that these
words may cause you. The words the Lord
has already spoken to us are good and right and necessary. But I am sorry for the pain that many, if not
all of you, are feeling. Before us today
we have words about the potential of a man and a woman together, perfect mutual
helpers, one flesh, naked and without shame.
These words remind us of our nakedness and great shame, as do the words
about marriage, divorce, adultery and little children. Hearing these words can cause pain for many
people. Because God has made me your
pastor, I feel sorrow whenever you feel pain; part of my calling is to hurt
when you hurt. I also feel the sorrow of
my own pain, the sad reality that I fall far short of fulfilling God’s plan for
marriage and family, all too often choosing against the good that God wants for
me and my family. We all feel pain and
rightly sorrowful when we meditate on these things, because of the sins we
suffer, and inflict on our loved ones, especially the pain our failures cause
for the little ones.
Not that it’s all bad. Thank God, it’s not all bad, or we wouldn’t
be able to go on. There is still
tremendous joy in marriage, joy in the love between a man and a woman, joy in
conceiving and bearing and raising children.
Just as I am certain today’s words about marriage and divorce and the
potential of human love at times cause you pain, I am also sure your family,
your children, your beloved are also your greatest joys. This only makes sense, because desires for a
good marriage, a joyful family, true love, these desires are God-given,
remnants in us sinners of the image of God, the image and likeness of God
originally created in Adam and Eve. The
image of God in us is broken by our sinfulness, cracked and unclear like a
shattered mirror, but a remnant of His image still remains. And the remnant of God’s image makes a very
great difference in our lives. God
mercifully sustains in us a desire to love and be loved, to have it all in our
relationships, in our families. And so
most people, regardless of their faith, maintain some hope for the future. Even in our very broken world, even in the
mess we call human existence, we still treasure the promise of lovers, the
beauty of babies, the joy of family.
Thanks be to God for these mercies.
Whenever we speak of the love between a
man and a woman, of marriage, of babies, we will have reason for great joy, and
we will also face our greatest sorrows, our worst failures. God is behind the true joys. Satan is behind the sorrows, and the false
thrills. Satan’s attacks have always been
against the family, telling lies to put a wedge between man and wife, working
on insecurity to turn brother against brother, eventually succeeding in turning
parents against children, even in turning society against life. Satan uses our great desire for fulfillment
in marriage and family against us, turning love into lust, beauty into
pornography, the joy of bearing and raising children into a burden to be
avoided. Now, instead of seeing every child as a gift and blessing from the
Lord, we rejoice in those children who are wanted, but dispose of those who
upset our plans. Instead of treasuring
the elderly, we fret over how much they cost, and wonder when they will hurry
up and pass on. Instead of caring for
the young and old, we spend millions to continue looking sexy, or build fantasy
worlds where we can at least pretend we’ve still got it.
At the vicarage supervisors conference I
recently attended in Fort Wayne, along with talking about how to help our
vicars grow in their ability to preach and teach, we received a presentation
entitled: Responding to Sexual Temptation in a High Tech Society. I’m not sure that I would have chosen to
attend such a class, but I am glad, after the fact, that it was included in our
conference. I was reminded, and my
understanding deepened of just how bad it is in our world. And I’m sorry.
Anyone who owns a smart phone carries
around in their pocket easy access to a vast world of pornography. Anyone who has a computer with internet
access is constantly facing temptations to lose themselves in smut and
perversion. And of course, anyone who
turns on their television or even just walks down the street on a summer day is
exposed to people, male and female, dressed in very revealing clothing,
clothing that certainly 20 or 30 years ago would have only been worn in a
bedroom or by a prostitute. Surveys show
that 70% of men age 18-34 visit pornographic websites on at least a monthly
basis. And even more surprising, at
least for me, 30 -35% of all the visits to explicit websites are by women. Perhaps most frightening of all, 90% of
children aged 11 – 16 have viewed pornography on the internet. Pornography carries the risk of imprinting
our brains with images that can plague us for years, creating unrealistic expectations
and crippling our ability to find joy in a spouse. And sadly, pornography is only one sexual
problem among many. From pornography to
sex as recreation, sex before marriage to adultery by married people, from
homosexual acts to prostitution, from divorce for convenience to abortion,
Satan has managed to poison God’s gifts of sexuality, marriage, and family to a
shocking degree. The human heart is hard
indeed.
Our first reaction is probably to try and
turn back the clock, to somehow control the internet and re-establish decency
in the way we dress, to just try to stop this behavior. Such desires are fine and good. But the reality is internet pornography takes
in 97 billion dollars annually around the world, 13 billion in the U.S. With such profit potential, producers will
find a way to sell their poison. The
reality is no one can control the internet.
And even if we could, the reality is the problem of sexual sin, while
certainly heightened by the internet and television, has always been with us,
ever since Adam and Eve first felt shame at their suddenly sinful
nakedness. I’m not against parents
trying to limit access. I’m not against
the government putting some curbs and limits on what is allowed when and
where.
But we will not overcome Satan’s assaults
against God’s good gifts of sexuality, marriage and family with regulations and
restrictions against all that stuff “out there.” Because the sad truth is that for each one of
us, the heart of the problem isn’t “out there.”
It’s in here. You and I may have
avoided the grosser temptations of the internet, or maybe not, but either way
we haven’t loved, honored and cherished our spouses like we promised. We haven’t lived chaste and decent lives in
thought, word and deed. You and I may be
pro-life, but the temptation to think that ‘this difficult pregnancy’
or ‘that
disabled child’ is just ‘too big a burden,’ has crossed all our minds. High tech age or not, Satan’s attacks have
injured and ensnared us all, exposing our sin and our shame. We cannot cure our broken families, our
lusts, our shame. So Jesus has come to
be the perfect husband to us all.
Sometimes a marriage makes it through a
rough patch because one spouse decides to bear the burden and do what it takes
to hold things together, despite the neglect and habitual sin of the
other. One spouse works extra jobs to
make up for the spendthrift ways of the other.
One spouse shoulders all the burden of the others’ failures, raising the
children, doing it all. One spouse bears
the shame, patiently waiting for the day when the beloved but unfaithful
husband or wife comes to his or her senses, and back to the relationship. It is an amazing thing to observe, a work of
selfless devotion.
Sometimes this works, sometimes it
doesn’t. There is no guarantee that
complete self-giving to the other will generate the desired response in a lousy
husband or wife. But the selfless
service of a husband or wife doing everything possible to hold a marriage and a
family together does give us a picture, an icon, of what Christ does for His
Church. And He is the one selfless
spouse who does offer a guarantee.
In the most one-sided marriage ever, God’s
Son came down to earth, to win back His faithless Bride, which is collectively
every man, woman and child in the Church.
Even though His Bride was chronically unfaithful, Jesus was perfectly
faithful, not only upholding His half of the marriage, but also taking care of
everything that His Bride should have been contributing to the
relationship. Where the people of God,
indeed, where every other person who ever lived, sought after every type of sin
imaginable, Jesus Christ lived the perfect life of chastity and purity, faith
and service. And since His Bride could
never pay her debt, Jesus took that on as well, paying in full the debt of
every sinner, allowing Satan to exact his full demands, even suffering from the
Father for all that our sins deserve.
The hope for you, living in a high tech
world full of sexual temptation, the hope for your marriage, whether today you
are married, or single and looking forward to a marriage, indeed the only
guaranteed hope that exists, is found in the love of Christ for His Bride the
Church, which is also the love of Christ for you, individually, the forgiveness
and complete acceptance that God has for every sinner who, through the Word of
Christ, comes to understand the tragedy and horror of sin, and then through
that same Word sees and trusts the love of God, poured out for sinners in the
blood of Jesus Christ, crucified, and resurrected.
We should all be guarding our eyes, ears,
minds and hearts against the constant barrage of sexual temptation that
surrounds us all. There are practical
steps we all should take for ourselves and others. But the answer for your struggle is not in
your works of self-defense. Rather the
answer is found in Christ’s work of self-sacrifice. Christ is your victory, because the blood of
Jesus, God’s eternal Son, covers all sin, even sins of pornography, adultery,
abortion, abandonment. Whether you are
guilty of inflicting these sins on yourself and others, or whether you are a
victim, (and you are probably both), Jesus has died and risen again in order to
wash you clean, in order to present you spotless and white before His heavenly
throne, forgiven and made righteous.
In Christ, your perfect husband, you are
free to dream big, free to seek a good mate, free to pray for the blessings of
a joy-filled family. You can hope and
work for these things, because in Christ, all of these things and more are
already yours. You are free to rejoice
at the sound of babies crying, even babies crying in the house of the Lord,
free to rejoice as people, young and old, are brought to Christ, embraced in
His arms of blessing through the living waters of Baptism. In Christ, you are free to rejoice with all
the faithful as they come forward for a foretaste of the heavenly wedding feast
to come, free to sing the praises of our Savior, our Bridegroom, Jesus Christ,
for He is present with us, and He is eager to take us home to meet His
Father.
Christians, leaning daily on the grace of
the Bridegroom have the freedom and privilege to live out their lives by the
power of daily forgiveness, forgiveness from the Father to you, which then
overflows in forgiveness from you to your spouse, your children, your parents,
indeed to anyone and everyone you meet whose struggles with the brokenness of
human love make them doubt the love of God.
Nothing can change Christ’s love for His Bride, the Church, and so we
live in hope, celebrating marriages and babies and families and life together,
not because we live these things perfectly, but because Jesus has lived
perfectly, and gives us His life and His love and His joy, for today, and
forever and ever, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment