Just One Thing To Seek

Saturday of 11th Week in Course 2024

Christian men sometimes ask questions like “why is it that it is wrong to have sex with someone other than my wife? Men have ‘needs’ that sometimes can’t be satisfied for various physical and emotional reasons by the wife. I need that release all the time.”

A couple of observations come to mind, the first of which has nothing to do with religion or faith. Follow-up question would be “did you have sex with your present wife or anyone else before you were married?” I imagine in over 90% of cases, the answer would be “yes, I did.” So if they saw nothing wrong with entering marriage habituated to sexual expression outside the marriage covenant, no wonder they are puzzled by “thou shalt not commit adultery.”

The second observation is that the marital promise–really a solemn vow–that the man gives the wife at marriage is something like "I, ______, take you, ______, to be my wife/husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life." The “true to you,” in base parlance, is “have sex with only you,” but it really means faithfulness in a broader context. Any kind of intimate behavior associated with marriage is only between that one man and one woman as long as both are living. That vow is the beginning of a sacred covenant.

So what does this have to do with today’s Scriptures? The Christian marriage covenant is based on the covenant relationship between Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, His people. That covenant of love was sealed with His passion, death and Resurrection. The Church was, in the words of the Fathers, born from the pierced side and heart of Christ at His crucifixion. As that covenant was exclusive and lifelong and fruitful, so is every Christian marriage.

Now King David and his successors, his offspring, were bound to the Lord in the same kind of covenant. Read the prophets Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel to help you understand. Those kings of Judah were not always faithful to the covenant. In fact, the usurper queen Athalia, grandmother of the King Joash we read about today, tried to rupture the covenant forever by killing Joash and all his brothers. But he was hidden from the cruel queen and his partisans executed a coup and Athalia when he was seven years of age. Under the tutelage of the good priest Jehoiada he restored worship of the true God and put away all of Athalia’s idols (she was descended from Jezebel.) But when the good Jehoida died, Joash fell under the influence of the local elite and their foreign idols, and even had Zechariah, the prophet, stoned to death. Therefore the covenant was again broken and disaster followed. His memory to the loyal Jew was so polluted that when Matthew wrote the genealogy of Jesus via Joseph, Joash was omitted from the list.

God punished Joash and his descendants with the rod, as the psalmist sings, but not His steadfast love. He has restored forever the covenant through the life, death and Resurrection of the Son of David, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

All this must have been in mind when Matthew wrote down today’s Gospel story. The faithless kings of Judah sought riches, pleasure, power and fame before anything, even before their duty to the One, True God. They routinely forgot or neglected their covenant relationship. They acted just like Gentile rulers, trusting in their own lordship and shunning God’s. But Jesus has kept and taught us to keep that most important of tasks: “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”