The Sacrament of Marriage
Proper 22B Old Testament Reading
Genesis 2:18-24
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Psalm 8:1-9 BCP 350
Mark 10:2-9 Gospel Appointed for the Day
Some Pharisees came and in order to test Jesus asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and 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.”
THE SACRAMENT OF MARRIAGE
The question came to Jesus “May a man divorce a woman for any cause; anything at all?"
Jesus responded, "What did Moses say?"
The questioner replied, "Moses allowed for a certificate of dismissal", a sort of discharge paper from the alliance.
Jesus said, “It was because of your stubborness, your hardness that this was allowed.
In this scene and in the words of Jesus, if properly understood, will be seen the underlying sickness of our Western Civilization, of this countries ills and the illness that leads one of every two marriages to end in divorce and half our children growing up in single parent households for at least part of their lives. Like it or not, that grim statistic spells the end of a civilization. Children of broken homes are not as likely to gain the education and enter provitable professions. In such brokenness, with the attendant poverty and hopelessness, the seeds of class war and bitterness that led to WWII are sown.
Jesus response to the questioner: "It was not so from the beginning. God created male and female - in the image of God."
Just as there is a triune God, there was to be unity in the family. Father Son and Holy Spirit were to be mirrored in Man, Wife and Child. The mutual love and united efforts of the trinity were the pattern for family life.
Mark 10:8 reports, "They are no longer 2 individuals but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together man must not separate." Immediately after that saying, when the disciples tried to turn back the children Jesus said, “Let the children come to me for to such as these belong the Kingdom of God."
Every family is to be a holy family created in the image of God.
ON the walls of simple, first century, homes in Palestine, archaelogists have uncovered altars for flowers. Carved on the wall of these places of prayer were the names: Mary, Joseph, Jesus. First century Christians understood what made strong families and a good society.
We don’t know when God created Adam and Eve; the good Anglican Archbishop Ussher pronounced that creation began at 9:00 am in the year 4004 BC (6010 years ago).
Regardless of what you think of his research and his time line, we take the words written in the Book of Moses seriously because our Lord took them seriously and repeated them.
From the Beginning it was a man and a woman and they were one until the Devil did his dirty work in Eden.
In today’s text, Jesus defines marriage as a man and a woman in union and pleads with his closest disciples to Let the children come to me for to such as these belong the kingdom of God.
As to the question of marriage, Jesus told them to consult Moses.
The questioner had been hardened by his times, his culture. He lived in brutish Roman times where marriage was not taken seriously, nor children respected. A father could kill his infant children. Women could be discharged from service.
The questioner, in response to Jesus question, what did Moses say, gave only a little bit of Moses response when he said, Moses allowed a certificate of divorce.
Jesus said, "Moses allowed that because of your hardness, your stubborness."
Moses did allow divorce to protect, give rights to women in a society where they and the children were vulnerable. It was allowed not to give license to disordered sexuality but to protect and give minimal rights to the most vulnerable; to protect their lives.
The questioner of course had not considered that part of Moses’ teaching and also failed to repeat the commandment against adultery. Why is adultery part of the 10 commandments? It is not only because it causes disruptions in society, it is because, like murder, it is a death of an entity created in the image of God. You’ve probably never heard it presented that way before, and that is because of the hardness of hearts in this country for over 100 years. It is because seminaries and theologians have stopped teaching that there are 7 sacraments, each one pointing to something in the nature of man made in the image of God and are signs of God’s working among us.
The questioner quoted Moses very selectively, just as some of the seminaries and denominational leaders quote very selectively from Scripture about the law of love and neglect entirely what I present to you today.
In his response Jesus quoted more completely from the book of Moses and said in effect that divorce break’s God’s law, his intention for couples, families and society and is in effect a defacing of the image of God in his creation.
Because of our hardness, Jesus said, Moses allowed for divorce under certain conditions.
The allowable condtion was when the covenant union had already been broken by infidelity. Then divorce could be considered because the brokeness of the image of God had already happened in that family and there was no real marriage. The bill of divorcement becomes the legal sign that the union does not exist. The divorcement bill is a post-mortem of the marriage, a dissolution ritual complete with death certificate.
Those involved then, from the viewpoint of the community, must make amendment of life and repent to be able to begin again.
We don’t have divorce statistics from the days of Jesus, but I find it hard to believe that the USA today is any less hardened than were the people in the Roman empire and the Mediterranean Sea area in Jesus’ day.
Though women and children have more rights today, according to the law than they had 100 years ago or two thousand years ago, I suspect that because of the hardness of our culture that divorce is more prevelant; there are more broken families, more children growing up in unstable environments.
America’s hardness makes child rearing extremely difficult.
What do we make of the attitude of leading churches in regard to gay marriage and to divorce? A book on systematic theology published in 1994 by a leading Conservative Protestant publishing house and used as a text book in a very conservative Protestant
Seminary that serves evangelicals in all denominations lists these as the
ordinary means of grace instead of sacraments:
These are the ways the holy spirit is increased in Christians:
1. Teaching of the Word
2. Baptism
3. The Lord’s Supper
4. Prayer for one another
5. Worship
6. Church discipline
7. Giving
8. Spiritual Gifts
9. Fellowship
10. Evangelism
11. Personal ministry to individuals.
Now all of these things are laudable endeavors. But isn’t there some very important items missing in the list of means of grace?
The theologian, after listing these means of grace, then attacks the Roman Church for setting forth 7 sacraments, including holy orders, penance, extreme unction, confirmation and Marriage.
He belittles baptism by calling it a work of man. He and others look upon baptism and other sacraments as “work’s righteousness”. Though he talks of about Communion, he doesn’t dwell on Christ’s real presence, nor does he teach that Matrimony is a sign of God’s working in society.
What a loss of Christian teaching has occured, even among the devout in recent centuries.
Ephraim Radner, in his 2004 book, “Hope Among the Fragments wrote on pp 152ff:
"Indeed, the theological conceiption of marriage’s sacramentality was forged by the Church during the first four centures of its existence precisely in the midst of diverse sexual practice. And farm from mimicking any socially normative behavior of surrounding culture, the sacrament of marriage was the deliberate theological construction of an independent norm, extrapolated from Scripture and ongoing Christian practice, that, as we know, was only loosely adopted by the larger populace for centuries. The cultural independence of this sacramental construction of marriage, in fact, is what allowed it to function as a formative element of the Church’s evangelical ministry, rather than simply an instrument for they hypocrises of successive sexual eras."
Radner continues: "Augustine extended the aspect of sacramentality to marriage, drawing on the Greek “mystery” language that St. Paul uses for marriage in Ephesians 5. In doing so, as in his On the Good of Marriage, Augustine elaborated on what a sacrament is and opened up an understanding of marriage that proved remarkably strengthening of the Christian community: marriage was not an institution contributing to individual hypocrisy (a public cover for deviance from the norm), but rather one that saves the Church from the corrupting effects of corporate hypocrisy. How does this happen? First of all, Augustine emphasized that the human fellowship of male and female precedes and founds the shape of sexuality and that marriage presupposes this primary good of human companionship.”
Ending of Radner quote: "What is the point of insisting that marriage is indissoluble within the Church, that it is a holy mystery, when it is constantly violated and repudiated in practice? The answer that Augustine gives is a short summary of what he means by sacrament in general. With respect to marriage in particular, he says that, in a basic sense, marriage is not defined by its practice, but rather a gracious sign, one that God grants and works through in the Church exactly because of the variety, caprice, and perversion of actual sexual pratice in the community. That God is actually doing something in marriage is something that contemporary critics of the institution’s normative status fail to grasp."
END QUOTE
Ephraim Radner wrote these words as he surveyed the ruins of his church; a denomination that has lost 30% of its membership and closed many church doors in the last 20 years. His denomination is little different from many others. What has caused this ruin of the church? A deviance from primary teaching, the Word of the Lord. What hope is there? Hope can be restored when Christians revisit Cana and the Pauline teaching that there is a mystery in marriage reflecting the union of Christ and his church.
When churches stopped teaching that marriage is sacred, they invited ruin.
Marriage is precisely that sacrament by which God has worked in society, elevating the status of women, protecting and nurturing children and reflecting the image of a loving Father in society.
Our English Church prayer books give thanks to God for the Means of Grace and for the Hope of Glory and one such sign of God’s work among us is the sacrament of Holy Matrimony.
This Church was set in this community to inform the community of this fact.
The nation, the culture, and even the churches have been ruined by neglect of the means of grace God has given us through his Church. Yet, there is hope among the fragments if we continue to let the light of the Gospel enlighten families.
Remember that Jesus began his ministry at the wedding feast of Cana.
He turned water into wine.
He made the first sign - according to the Gospel of John, he made the first sign of his ministry, God’s presence on earth at a wedding.
In the Beginning there was light. In the beginning was man and woman. In the beginning God was with us. Let us return to that beginning.
Let us then approach our Lord, humbly confessing our hardness, our sinfulness and pleading for his presence to illuminate us and bless our homes.
Charles R. Scott, Pastor
Church of the Good Shepherd, Anglican
2060 E 54th Street
Indianapolis, In, 46220
crscottblu@yahoo.com
http://www.goodshepherdindy.org
