Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (B—Proper 22)

October 7, 2018

Text: Mark 10:2-16

            “The LORD GOD said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone’” (Gen. 2:18; ESV).  “God settles the solitary in a home” (Psalm 68:6).  “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1).  “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).  “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mark 10:9).  “And God blessed them.  And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28).  “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.  Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.  Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them” (Ps. 127:3-4).  This morning our Lord teaches us about marriage and family.  All the Bible verses I just read to you are only the beginning of the theology of marriage and family our Lord gives to us in Holy Scripture.  Family is foundational for life.  It is the most basic unit of society where individuals live together in relationship.  Everyone has a place.  Everyone has a role.  Husband and wife, mother and father, parent and child, brother and sister, grandparent and grandchild, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, the household and its relationship to the extended family.  Society as a whole is made up of these little units of society.  And God did this on purpose.  Because man is created to live in fellowship.  Life is lived in relationship to others.  Not everyone gets married.  Not everyone has kids.  But we all have a place by God’s design, or at least that is how He would have it.  And in the family, when it works how it is supposed to, we get a little picture of the inner-relationship of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, three Persons, living in continuous and harmonious relation to one another.  And we get a little picture of how that inner-relationship turns outward to create a new object of love: man, who is to live in relationship to God and to his fellow man.  God loves within Himself, which love creates man to be a receiver of that love.  Husband and wife love within their one flesh union, which love begets children to be receivers of their love.  That’s the ideal.  That is how God originally created it to be. 

            So marriage is to be the lifelong union of one man and one woman in love and fidelity.  Sexuality is to be kept holy, reserving this expression of love for marriage alone.  The marriage bed it to be kept pure (Heb. 13:4).  No adultery, which is to say, no mixing in of another by sexual activity outside the marriage.  And from this expression of love, husband and wife beget children, who are loved and provided for and protected by a father and a mother, and raised by them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).  Again, not everyone has to get married.  Not everyone has kids.  But this is the family blueprint God gives us as a gift in the Holy Scriptures.  This is how we order our relationships among one another.  God gives us this blueprint for our good.  This is how we can all thrive in our life together.  These are holy vocations to which God calls us, to give and receive, and together, to flourish.

            But we also know we’ve messed this all up.  Christians are not excluded from this indictment.  Husbands and wives are unfaithful to one another.  Spouses are abandoned.  There are messy divorces.  Evil words are spoken.  Spouses and children are threatened and hurt by violence.  Our culture would have us believe that sex outside of the loving and safe commitment of marriage is normal, to be expected at a younger and younger age, and can be consequence free.  That’s how our children and all of us are catechized by the television set and the internet and every other form of mass media.  And we who regard sexuality as holy are looked upon as prudes, stuck in the past, as judgmental, as hateful.  Meanwhile, porn use is at an all-time high.  Easy access, right there on all your electronic devices.  It is destroying homes.  It is destroying lives.  It has reduced especially our young women, but also our young men, to a commodity, a thing to be used and abused for our own enjoyment. It is demonic.  Lord, have mercy.  Then there is homosexuality and so-called same-sex marriage, which is entirely opposed to the natural law (two people of the same gender cannot beget a third), and to God’s Law, His gracious plan for us as revealed in Holy Scripture.  So we mess up our marriages.  We make marriage meaningless.  And then we butcher our children in abortions and sell their body parts for research.  We guilt the elderly and the terminally ill into hastening their own death, lest they become a burden to us.  We call it “death with dignity.”  A theologian of the cross should call a thing what it actually is: Suicide.  Murder.  Christ, help us. 

            He does.  The sadness you feel as you hear these things, and the guilt you suffer as you come face to face with your own role in them… this is the Holy Spirit working repentance in your heart.  This is God calling His people, His dear children, to Himself for forgiveness and healing, to be made whole in the wholeness of Christ and His redemption.  Are you divorced?  Have you been abandoned?  Have you been unfaithful?  Repent.  And rejoice.  Christ Jesus will never leave you or forsake you.  He is faithful.  He keeps His Promises.  And He holds you in the pierced palm of His hand.  Nothing can snatch you away from Him.  Have you been abused, or are you an abuser?  Have you abused your own body by uniting it with others, becoming one flesh with those to whom you have no intention of committing?  Have you lived together outside of marriage?  Are your eyes and your heart full of lust and dissatisfaction with what and who God has given you?  Have your eyes looked upon things they should not, things that are evil, things that are demonic?  Have you used the flesh of others like meat to be consumed, rather than as precious bodies and souls for whom Christ died?  Repent.  And rejoice.  The blood of Jesus washes away your sins.  Let him who is without sin cast the first stone at the one caught in the sins of the flesh (John 8:7).  If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:8-9).  Have you failed to speak up for the defenseless: the unborn, the elderly, the weak, the vulnerable?  Have you supported an abortion, advised an abortion, had an abortion?  Have you failed to care for your elderly or ill parents and loved ones?  Have you sought to hasten their death with a lethal dose of drugs?  Repent.  And rejoice.  Our Lord survived the womb of His mother for the sake of those who did not, to die for them and for all of us who have blood on our hands, to wash our hands and our hearts and our whole being clean in His Blood.  The Lord Jesus was obedient to Mary and Joseph, He honored them, served and obeyed them, loved and cherished them, for us and in our place.  He cared for His dear mother, placing her in the care of the Apostle John even as He was dying on the cross.  In Jesus, every life is sacred, from conception to grave, because He gave that life in the first place, and He has redeemed it by His death on the cross. 

            Jesus forgives.  Jesus restores.  And Jesus blesses.  Oh, how He loves the children.  He is indignant with His disciples when they turn the children away.  “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belong the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14).  And He takes the little ones up in His arms and He blesses them.  This is what He does for our precious children and for each one of us in Baptism.  That is where He takes us into Himself and blesses us with the very Name of God.  That is where He makes us children of the Heavenly Father.  Beloved, do not hinder your children.  Bring them to Jesus.  Bring them to Baptism.  Bring them to hear His Word in Church.  Every Sunday.  This is part of being a parent, guys.  Bring them to Sunday School where they can learn more about His Word.  Bring them to Catechism instruction so they can join us at the Table of Jesus’ Body and Blood.  That is what this text is about.  And do not hinder yourself.  Because all of this is for you, too.  You are a child of God.  You belong to Him.  Jesus has made it so.  Rejoice.  Because here you have a home.  And here there is always a place for you at the Family Table.  And that frees you up to live joyfully in the relationships in which God has placed you.  Love your spouse.  Delight in your spouse, and be faithful.  If you’re living in sin, repent and make it right.  Believe in Christ’s forgiveness.  Love your children.  Delight in them, and bring them to Jesus.  Love your parents.  Honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.  Love your extended family and your circle of friends, your neighborhood, your community, your nation, and the people of the earth.  Love your Church and, as you do so well, love your pastor. 

            Things are messed up in this fallen world.  There is no such thing as the ideal family.  None of us perfectly follows the blueprint our Lord has given us.  And for this, we repent.  But though we be unfaithful, the Lord doesn’t stop being faithful to us.  He sets us in a family.  He gives us a home.  He brings us to His Church.  This is great comfort for all of us, but especially for those who are single, who long to share their life with someone, but it just hasn’t happened yet… Or those who long to have children, but for whatever reason, can’t… or those who suffer loneliness and isolation, those who mourn a spouse or a parent or a sibling or a child they have lost…  This is comfort for you.  Look around you, brothers and sisters.  This is your family.  This is your home.  These are your parents and your siblings and your children.  Now, we’re not perfect.  To be sure, we fail and we fight and we have to forgive.  Love takes work.  It is not an emotion, this love.  It is a decision and an action.  But here you are, and you are loved.  Warts and all.  And you are called to love the person next to you, warts and all.  Because in this family, we live by grace.  In this family, we live in the forgiveness of sins.  In this family, we live by the cross and empty tomb, by the death and resurrection of Jesus, by the cleansing water of Baptism and the life-giving food of His Body and Blood.  And we live by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Here in this family, beloved, you are never alone.  You are always in the bosom of your mother, the Church, with your brothers and sisters in Christ, attended by the holy Angels.  And always, always, wherever two or three are gathered in His Name (in His Baptism!), there is Jesus.  And wherever Jesus is, there is your Father, and there is the Spirit.  In Jesus, God brings you into the inner-relationship of the Trinity.  In Jesus, God begets you as His beloved child.  In Jesus, you are home.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.