“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father— to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” (Galatians 1:3–5)
It’s the way of our sinful world and of our sinful nature to turn God’s blessings into curses. We take what God has called good and we call it bad. He gives gifts for our benefit and we abuse them and use them to destroy.
God gives us jobs to provide for our family. But we work too long and it takes time away from the family we are providing for.
God gives us the gift of sex. But we abuse it. Make a mockery of it. Our young people are confused by it.
God gives us marriage. But the definition of marriage of one woman and one man for a lifetime has been destroyed. No new definition of marriage has been given as a replacement.
This is seen especially clearly in the American family. Our culture calls family – spouse and children – a curse. But God calls them good. He calls them blessings.
Before they can do anything, men tell their friends they have to “check with the boss.”
When they’re talking to their friends, women describe their husbands as immature boys.
These ideas get played out in our culture. Look at how men are portrayed on TV and in the movies. The husband and dad are portrayed as bumbling idiots. Wives and moms are portrayed as having everything under control.
Popular TV shows and movies have strong women kicking men’s butts – Black Widow, Wonder Woman, Game of Thrones … you get the idea. We watch them. We laugh at them. We’re impressed by them. Eventually, we accept them.
But we don’t realize what all this does to our view of marriage.
Or there is the opposite way of looking at marriage as it gets turned into a storybook ending. It’s all about finding your prince charming and beautiful princess. Once that soulmate is found, then you can live happily ever after. This might sound like a positive view of marriage – encouraging young men and women to seek out husbands and wives. However, this idea of marriage becomes a curse because what happens when its not happily ever after? What happens when we find out prince charming isn’t so charming? What happens when the beautiful princess isn’t as beautiful as the one at work?
Maybe there’s someone more romantic. Maybe there’s someone more supportive. Maybe there is a different soulmate still out there.
Whether the definitions of husbands and wives are destroyed or marriage is turned into a fairytale, the result is the same. God’s good gift of marriage is turned into a curse.
St. Mark tells us that some Pharisees came to trap Jesus by asking him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” The Pharisees go to Moses for justification for divorce: “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” (Although, Moses was regulating divorce and remarriage, not permitting it.) But Jesus goes to the beginning: “But at the beginning of creation God made them male and female.” Jesus trumps Moses with Moses. Deuteronomy with Genesis. The accommodating loophole with the gift. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
From the very beginning, God planned for marriage to be between one man and one woman until death parts them. The only reason why Moses gave Israel this law at all was so that divorce wouldn’t run rampant. It was meant to protect marriage, not destroy it.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we want to have Adam’s wonderful “Aha!” moment when God first presented his bride, Eve, to him. It’s a wonderful picture we heard in Genesis. Adam goes through all creation but is disappointed when there is no one for him … until God forms for him a special mate, specially made. Men are not “from Mars” and women are not “from Venus,” though at times it may seem that way. He is from the mud and she is from his side. So that when Adam wakes from his sleep, he sees a reflection of himself in her, “She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). He cries out in complete joy, “Ah! At last!” Someone for him. It is the same joy we see from newlyweds on their wedding day. And we see a glimpse of the gift of God that marriage was intended to be.
“One flesh” alludes, of course, to the magic and mystery of sex, the closest possible way to share human intimacy. Bodies briefly are interconnected and physically one flesh. But the term is perhaps even more significant in an emotional way. After years of happy marriage, couples begin to think alike, grow in mutual dependence, and bask in a sense of completeness that single people can never know. Me becomes we. Mine becomes ours.
Perhaps you know older married people who can finish each other’s sentences, who complement each other, who dance divinely, and who find joy in serving each other. Perhaps you know widows or widowers who so miss their late spouses that they feel like half a person. They knew the joy of “one flesh.” This is God’s gift of marriage.
One of the great blessings of marriage is children. They’re the result of the “one flesh” of their parents – a visible picture of mom and dad. Through parents, God gives life. This is a wonderful and miraculous thing, and yet, just as we think of marriage as a burden, we view children in the same way.
It’s easy to understand how children can be a burden. They can’t survive on their own. The most helpless creature on earth is a newborn infant. Kids need constant care – care that continues for almost a two decades – if not longer.
Today, children are viewed not as a blessing, but an extreme curse. Our culture considers them a nuisance, much like how the disciples viewed them. But instead of just shooing them away, we get rid of our kids. That’s why many are fighting the Texas abortion ban. They want more opportunities to kill infants in the womb. Another example of our culture perverting what is good and calling evil a right.
Marriage and children are far from the curses our culture makes them out to be. They’re gifts from God. Blessings to be cherished. Yes, they are work. Yes, unfortunately, sometimes our family life is the greatest cause of strife and conflict in our lives. And yet, family is still a blessing, because it’s a gift from God, a place where we get to give and receive love, grace and forgiveness.
If your family has felt more like a curse than a blessing, then bring your brokenness, your sin and your heartache to Jesus. Don’t look for loopholes in Jesus’ words. Don’t seek justification for your actions. Don’t point fingers at the offending partner. Gather up the broken pieces of your marriage and set them at the feet of your heavenly Father and humbly say, “I’m sorry. I broke it.” Confess it before the Lord. Bury it in the death of Jesus. Drown it in your Baptismal waters. Be fed and forgiven with Christ’s body and blood in his Holy Supper. Receive Christ’s forgiveness in the absolution at the beginning of worship. Receive the Triune God’s blessing at the end of worship. God is gracious to his children. He rests his hand on your head and says, “I forgive you for my Son’s sake.”
Jesus gave his life for us all – the married, the single, the divorced, the little children. He reached out in mercy to a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, five times married and living with number six. He defended a woman caught in adultery from her stone-throwing accusers. He absolved her, but he also told her, “Go and leave your life of sin” (John 8:11). Jesus’ body was broken and bleeding from the broken mess we make of our marriages. He was divorced from his heavenly Father for our divorces. He became the adulterer in our place so that we might become his righteousness.
If you are married, let Jesus be in the middle of your marriage. He is the third cord that binds you and your spouse together so that “a cord of three strands is not easily broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12). He is the Source of forgiveness between husband and wife. He must get between husband and wife to soften your hearts, to sweep away your sins and to bind you together as one flesh. As sinners, when we deal with each other, we will always deal harshly and with bitterness and anger. Jesus must mediate, get between us. Just as Jesus mediates between God and us, so he must mediate between husband and wife, parents and children, teenagers and parents. He works reconciliation and peace. Only through Jesus can we forgive each other. Only through Jesus can we hope to stand one another. Only through Jesus can our family survive until death parts us.
Marriage cannot save us. Marriage is not a Means of Grace. In fact, marriage is in dire need of grace. And marriage is not eternal. In the resurrection, we neither marry nor are we given in marriage. But there is a marriage that does save. There is a one flesh union that cannot be destroyed. That marriage is between Christ, the perfect Bridegroom and you, his imperfect Bride. You share in this communion with Christ when you share in his Body and Blood. Not one body with him sexually, as in your marriages. But one Body with him and your fellow believers sacramentally, in the one marriage that will last for eternity.
Death will part you as husband and wife. But death will never part you from your Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. As ugly, cheating and bitter spouses we may be to Christ, still he gave himself up for you, making you holy, cleansing you by the washing with water through the word, to present you to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless (Ephesians 5:25-27).
A diving accident left Joni Eareckson paralyzed. Her handicap didn’t keep her from marrying Ken Tada, but it almost kept her from the joy of the wedding. While waiting to go down the aisle, she discovered across her beautiful wedding dress a big, black grease mark courtesy of her chair. The bouquet of daisies on her lap slid off center; her paralyzed hands unable to re-arrange them. She felt far from a picture-perfect bride! But as she looked down the aisle—she saw her groom. She says, “Grease stains? Flowers out of place? Who cares? The love in Ken’s eyes washed it all away!” Everything changes when you look at your groom!
When you struggle with your marriage. When you’re arguing with your teenagers. When your house is a mess, dinner isn’t started, and homework isn’t done. Who cares? Look at your Groom. Look at Jesus Christ. See him looking back at you with love in his eyes. With the proof of his love in his hands. The world may consider marriage, children and family a curse. But your heavenly Bridegroom turns it all into a blessing.
So today and every day, thank God for his forgiveness. Thank God for his love. Thank God for you being part of his family. Thank God for him being a part of your family. Your family is not a curse. They are a blessing - a blessing for giving and receiving Christ’s divine love. Amen.
“May the LORD our God be with us, just as he was with our fathers. May he never leave us or abandon us. May he turn our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways” (1 Kings 8:57-58a) Amen.