Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this evening is from the Gospel of Matthew, the 19th chapter:
Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Thus far the text.
Meghan, Casey, and my dear friends in Christ,
Our Lord Jesus Christ delights in this day, for here, you two have come to the Church of Christ to have your marriage solemnized and blessed. Here, in this Church, we stand witness to you today and your pledges of love and faithfulness, charity and patience, endurance and support. Yet, as you both know, marriage is not an easy thing, blessed by the Church or not.
Marriage is filled with heartache and pain, just as it is filled with love. Marriage is difficult, just as it is easy. Marriage is filled with sin, just as it is filled with holiness. But this is unsurprising.
You both know and have confessed your sins. You both have been forgiven of all your sins. Yet, this does not mean that you will stop sinning. And if you do not stop sinning, it is no big surprise then that your sin will creep into you marriage. You will both do things that will cause you to stumble. You will both do things that cause you pain. You will both do things that will cause you heartache. And this will have an effect on your marriage.
Without Christ, without being put together by the Father, just as He has intended to do since the very beginning, this effect will not be positive. But with Christ, with the strengthening of faith, with hearing in Christ’s Church that you are forgiven, with receiving the Lord’s body and blood, with remembering your baptisms, the effect of your sin in your marriage is strength.
I know this sounds weird, but when you sin against one another you should be growing in strength. Not the strength to say, “Well, he did this,” or, “She did that, and I guess I can put up with more and more of what they do.” That’s not strength. That’s weakness. It’s a denial of reality. It’s a denial of what the other person has done. And that’s not healthy.
But strength coming out of sin is the strength of Christ. It is the strength to forgive. It is the strength to practice what our Lord says, “Whatever [sins] you loose, free, forgive on earth are forgiven in heaven.” It is the strength to look at someone and say, “I am sorry.” And it is the strength to look back and say, “I forgive you.”
Marriage is a holy estate, not because it’s better to be a husband than a boyfriend, or a wife better than a girlfriend. Marriage is a holy estate because it is one very holy way our Lord uses to make us more holy. We become more like Christ in marriage. We sin no longer against one another sexually or by reputation in marriage, and so this is good. But, marriage is holy also in that we continue to experience the best and the worst parts of the other person more often than any other person in the world. Marriage says you can’t run away from the other. Marriage says we’re together. And so you are.
Our Lord says here that in marriage, the man leaves his parents and holds onto, digs into, won’t let go of, his wife. And when this happens, they are one flesh. With your promises today, in the eyes of the Church, and of Christ Himself, you are married. You are of one flesh. When one sins, it’s now a sin against the marriage, not just without consequence. And this is why forgiveness is so important. You work as Christ, it is as if you are Christ Himself, when you forgive the other person their sin. When you say, “I forgive you,” Christ says, “I forgive you.”
And this forgiveness that comes from our spouse, it should be to you the most precious word in all the world. Because there you find forgiveness for what you’ve done and restoration into the marriage, restoration for your own flesh, and strength to grow in the holiness of confession and absolution.
Marriage gives you many opportunities for such a word. You are of one flesh. Would you sin against your own flesh? Would you hurt yourself in such a way that you lose an arm, a leg, or your head? Of course not. Neither should we desire to sin against our spouse.
But, sin we will. And this is not God-pleasing. Yet, Christ came for sinners. He bled and died for sinners. And He rose again from the dead so that sinners would know they also have everlasting life, as Christ is everlasting.
And so in this, you find strength. Because you hear the Word of Christ, because you receive the gifts of His body and blood from His altar, because you know that you have been washed free from your sins in the waters of baptism, you continue to grow in strength. You will grow in the strength to confess your sins to your spouse, the strength to forgive the sins of your spouse, and the strength of one flesh growing together into the fullness of Christ and His plan for you. You will find strength in the heartache and pain. You will find strength in the difficulties. You will find strength amid the sin.
For in Christ, you have Christ’s love and so you may love one another freely without fear of consequences. In Christ, you find the easiness of His yolk and His burden, for you follow Him and His yolk, He says, is easy and His burden, the burden of His love for each of you, is light. And, in Christ, you will find holiness, for you will be made more like Him.
And it is in this idea that you stand before the Church, then, as we witness you pledge your love and faithfulness, charity and patience, endurance and support.
These are not easy things to do on our own. But, in Christ, in His holiness, in His forgiveness, in His mercy, and peace, and patience, we find that He has done these things all for us so that we are free to love as best we can, without fear, without dread, depending solely on Him.
Christ is yours, Meghan and Casey, and He has done this all for you. He has made you His own, and your marriage is now also His. Trust Him to lead you to Himself and to your holiness that is in Christ, and you will find repentance and forgiveness ever more easy to do as you grow in strength, and as the one flesh of marriage in Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment