Memorial Moment: The Perfect Marriage

Luke 10:1-9

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace be to this house!' And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' (ESV)

The Perfect Marriage

St. Luke, Evangelist

18 October 2012

Occasionally, we hear of people speaking of their "perfect" marriage. This needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Such people might just as easily find themselves divorced within a year. This side of heaven there is no perfect marriage. Oh yes, marriage is perfect because it is a good creation of God, but the people who live in marriage are far from perfect. So marriage is perfect; just not their marriage. We have a hard time reconciling the fact that marriage is a perfect gift from God and that those who live in it are sinners, liable to do, say, and think any number of things that are hurtful to spouse, family, and God's good institution. Human abuse of God's gifts doesn't make them any less good or any less gifts from God. In the same way, a car remains a good thing, despite the fact that some maniac could drive it onto a crowded sidewalk and mow down a dozen people. Marriage despite our abuse is still a good thing. This is also true for those who will never live in holy marriage, choosing a life of celibacy. They too need to encourage and appreciate marriage, because they have come from it and marriage bestows great blessings on society and community.

We also ought to praise and thank God that He has continued to vouchsafe to the world the gift of holy marriage despite all of our abuse of it. How easily He might have refused to give us the chastity and true blessedness of marriage because of our fallen perversions of it. Perhaps, though, in these evil days he has given us over to our perversions, as the Apostle Paul says, "God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves" (Rm 1:24). It is bad enough that we have tolerated such impurity, but now we are trying to give such impurity the name "marriage." The very gift that our God has given to us and so generously maintains in our midst, we are in the midst of twisting into something God never intended it to be. Now the very thing which God calls wicked, we are calling good and holy by placing it under the word "marriage." You can dress a pig in a wig, but it is still a pig. Woe unto us that we have so abused this divinely given estate of marriage by trying to place under its title and blessedness deliberate perversions of God's gift.

The true blessings of marriage are those remaining signs of God's original gifts given to Adam and Eve. When we recognize the blessing that God has given us in our spouse, their faithfulness to us, the gift of children, and many other things, then we are getting just a glimpse of what it must have been like for Adam and Eve in the garden when their heavenly Father married them on that day. Even though, I cannot say that my wife is "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man" (Gn 2:23), yet we two are one flesh through God's design and making (Mt 19:5). The unity that we receive from His word, which grants us holy marriage, cannot be unsaid by us in all our wicked saying. He is faithful to marriage that we might find faithfulness in our own marriages. Our marriage will be perfect, but not until we are joined forever with the bridegroom, Christ (Eph 5:22-33).

Martin Luther

"Whatever the husband has the wife has and possesses entirely. Their partnership involves not only their means but children, food, bed, and home; their wills, too, are the united. The result is that the husband differs from the wife in no other respect than in sex; otherwise the woman is plainly a man. Whatever the man has in the home and is, this the woman has and is; she differs in sex alone. She also differs in something that Paul mentions, namely, that she is a woman by origin, because the woman came from the man and not the man from the woman (1Ti 2:13).

"Of this fellowship in marriage we see some remnants today, although pitiable ones, if we look back to the first beginning. For if the wife is honorable, chaste, and pious, she shares in all the cares, endeavors, offices, and every action of her husband. With this established from the beginning she was created; and for this reason she is called woman, or, if we were able to say so in Latin, a 'she-man.' Thus she differs only in sex from the head of the household, inasmuch as she was taken from the flesh of the man. Although this can be said of Eve alone, who was created in this manner, nevertheless Christ applies this to all wives when He says that husband and wife are one flesh (Mt 19:5). So although your wife has not been made from your bones, nevertheless, because she is your wife, she is the mistress of the house just as you are its master, except that the wife was made subject to the man by the law which was given after sin. This penalty is similar to the others which dulled those glorious conditions of Paradise of which this text informs us. Moses is not speaking of the wretched life which married people now live but of the innocence in Paradise. There the management would have been equal, just as Adam prophesies here that Eve must be called 'she-man,' or 'virago' because she performs similar activities in the home. Now the sweat of the face is imposed upon man, and woman is given the command that she should be under her husband. Yet there remain remnants, like sediment, of the dominion, so that even now the wife can be called 'virago' because she has a share in the household goods."

Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis, 2.23

Prayer

Almighty God, our Father, Your blessed Son called Luke the physician to be an evangelist and physician of the soul. Grant that the healing medicine of the Gospel and the Sacraments may put to flight the diseases of our souls that with willing hearts we may ever love and serve You; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

For Gerald and Hellen Mujuni, in thanksgiving for the birth of Julia Koku Mujuni, that the Lord would keep Julia in His arms until her baptism into the death of life of Jesus

For the gift of rain, that the Lord sent to Houston yesterday, that we might receive the fruits of the earth in due time

For construction workers, who are laboring on our church renewal project, that they would be kept safe in the midst of their labors

Art: DÜRER, Albrecht The Adoration of the Trinity (1511)