+ 20thSunday after Pentecost – October 7th, 2018 +
Series B: Genesis 2:18-15; Hebrews 2:1-13; Mark 10:2-16
Beautiful Savior Lutheran, Milton
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
One of the many ways a pitcher tries to get a batter to strike out is by throwing a few consistent, seemingly hittable pitches in a row. Fastball inside. Fastball outside. Fastball down the middle. And then…the change up, a slider, or a curve ball.
Today’s Gospel reading leaves us feeling a bit like a batter in the box. The last several weeks have been like a fastball down the center of the plate: Jesus healing the deaf-mute man. Jesus casting out demons. Jesus sending his holy angels to protect us. And then Jesus throws us a curve ball.
Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.
Let’s be honest, this is one of those times when Jesus’ words make us uncomfortable. We pray and wrestle with these words. We squirm and sweat like a batter down in the count.
It’s true, today’s Gospel reading is challenging. And not because Jesus’ words are difficult to understand. No. That’s the problem. Jesus speaks all too clearly. It’s like he’s intentionally hurling a fastball right at us. His words on marriage and divorce hit close to home. Every one of us know someone whose life has been affected by divorce.
So, what do we do with Jesus’ words? Do we explain them away or throw them out because they’re hard? But if we do that, where do we stop?
Maybe we ignore it; make like King Arthur in Monty Python’s Holy Grail and run away!; preach on a different Scripture reading. Believe me, that thought crossed my mind several times this week. But ignoring God’s Word is just as bad as throwing it out.
Truth is, this text brings us all to our knees. If Jesus is specific about sin in marriage, he’ll be just as specific about all our sins. Jesus’ words expose the pain, guilt, shame, and sin that affects everything and everyone in our life, even God’s gift of marriage.
In Genesis 2, we see God’s gift of marriage before the fall of sin. A perfect, holy union. Adam and Eve are naked and not ashamed. Here in Mark 10, we how sin affects God’s gift of marriage.
The Pharisees came to Jesus with a question to test him. So we know right away it wasn’t an honest question. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”It’s a trap. The Pharisees try and draw Jesus into a popular debate among the rabbis of the day. One school was extremely strict on divorce law, the other was quite lenient. The Pharisees hoped that whichever side Jesus chose, the opposition would reject him.
And yet every time the Pharisees lay a trap for Jesus, he turns it around. What did Moses command you?Jesus replies. “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away” they say.
Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed it. Not a command, but a concession for life in a messy, fallen world where everything, every relationship, and every one of us is broken by sin. After Genesis 3, divorcemay 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.
The Pharisees asked Jesus a Law question: “Is it lawful?” And Jesus gave them a Law answer: No. It’s not Lawful. And then he took them back to Genesis. From the beginning of creation, Jesus declares, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
This is God’s will, his plan. One man. One woman. Makes one flesh, a marriage. And whenever this breaks down it’s a terrible, heart-wrenching thing.
So what does that mean for Christians, for our family members, and our good friends who have gone through a divorce? How do we share Christ’s love in our families and marriages, flawed and sinful though we all are?
We won’t find answers in the Law. The Law kills us. Accuses us. Reveals that whether we’re married or single, we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The Law won’t save struggling relationships, heal broken homes, or take away our pain and sin.
Our marriages and relationships may not save us, but there is a marriage that does save. There is a one flesh union that cannot be destroyed. The perfect marriage of Christ and the Church. In this holy union, Jesus is our heavenly Bridegroom; we are his beloved, baptized, holy Bride. He unites Himself to us by water, Word, and the Spirit. He joins us in our humanity as our Bridegroom and Brother. He gathers us together in a holy communion, as we receive His Body and Blood.
Jesus our Bridegroom is bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. And if Eve was taken out of Adam’s side and given new life, how much more are we, Jesus’ beloved Bride, taken from the side of Jesus who was pierced for us on the cross. Strangely as it may sound, one of the most common words for forgiveness in the NT is the word divorce. On the cross, Jesus divorced us from our sin. He took it away. Forever. For you.
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
That’s where Jesus took every single one of our adulteries, iniquities, and idolatries and covered them with his holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. Jesus who shares our humanity shared in our sin, every messy, broken, ugly bit of it. Jesus was nailed to the cross as the adulterer. Thief. Murderer. Liar. Sinner. He made our sin his own. He made a solemn vow to take you as His beloved bride, to make us holy, pure and spotless; to have and to hold us for all eternity.
This is how we approach Jesus’ difficult words. Through Jesus’ cross. If there’s any hope for us in our relationships, it’s found in living each day in Jesus’ forgiveness, given freely to us. It’s by God’s grace alone that any of our relationships work the way God intends and wills. Our care for one another in our marriages, families, and friendships flows from the forgiveness won for us in Jesus. We love because he first loved us.
Our hope and certainty isn’t found in Moses, in legal loopholes, or in the Law. But in Christ crucified and His marriage to His Church and here, in the marriage supper of the Lamb.
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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