Tonight's Midweek Bible Study of Ephesians, Chapter 5

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The Subversive Act of Marriage

[This message was shared tonight during the worshipful worship ceremony of Phil and Julie Hohulin. Phil is a cherished pastoral colleague.]

Julie and Phil, marriage is a subversive act, a defiant refusal to acquiesce to our inborn nature’s desire to go it alone, to have our own way, to be our own gods.

This human default position can be traced right back to the garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve fell into sin, they immediately revealed how sin had taken hold of them.

They hide from God. God asks, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Adam: “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Eve: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” So much for “at last, this is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” (Genesis 3:9-13) It’s been mostly every sinner for themselves ever since.

That’s why your marriage, Phil and Julie, which we joyfully celebrate with you today, is a subversive act. Far from hiding from God, you’re asking Him today in Jesus’ name to be the other partner in your marriage. You know that every marriage is meant to involve a man, a woman, and God.

But neither of you is naive. You know that marriage has its enemies. Scripture and the Catechism name them: the devil, the world, and our sinful selves. These enemies can wreak havoc in all of our relationships: marriages, friendships, families, churches, nations. When sin prevails in our lives, we forget God’s will for us: to love God and to love neighbor, even the neighbor with whom we share the marital bed.

Among the passages just read, Jesus speaks of one of the sins by which the devil, the world, and our sinful selves prevents many people from having the marriages God wants for them and prevents others from even considering marriage. That sin is worry or fear.

Jesus says: “...I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:29-34)

Fear and worry are the opposite of faith. When we know that we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ, we know that God has set us free from sin, death, darkness, and fear. 

That’s why, clapped in a prison cell for preaching Christ and His gospel, Saint Paul could say, “...we are more than conquerors through him who loved us...neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord…” (Romans 8:37-39)

With the psalmist, the Christian can say, “The LORD is my light and my salvation-- whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life-- of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1)

The devil, the world, and our sinful selves can only cause us to cave into the temptations of worry and fear if we fail to rely on Jesus. For those who are married, the reliable presence, grace, and provision of the God we know through Jesus Christ means that, not only do we have eternal life with God, it means that even when pressures and uncertainties assail us in our marriages--when we disagree, when ill-health threatens us, when money gets tight, when the quirks of our spouses get to us (although we know that neither of you have quirks)--God will never fail to forgive, love, and empower us to keep living together and loving one another in this covenant of grace called marriage. 

God’s Word is clear. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” we’re told (Romans 10:13). And Jesus promises, “...the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). 

When you follow Jesus Christ, you have nothing to fear and a Lord to be trusted with your whole lives...including your marriage!

So, Julie, Phil, along with everyone else who is here today, I am honored to be with you now and I say good for you for being subversives who dare to trust the God revealed in Jesus! 

Daily seek Him together, individually, and in the fellowship of Christ’s Church and He will reward your faithful subversion, come what may, with a life filled with Him now and forever. God bless you! Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

How God Makes Marriages Possible

[This message was prepared for a wedding that took place on Saturday.]

1 Corinthians 13:4-5
Emma and Kyle, I like the words from the Bible that you chose to have read here today. Well, mostly I like them. They are from the Word of God, after all. But I have to confess to finding them a little frightening too.

Just to remind you and everyone else what the words are, I’ll read them again. This is 1 Corinthians 13:4-5: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

That description of love was written by Saint Paul, the apostle, back in about 55 AD. It’s part of what’s often called the love chapter of the Bible, chapter 13 of Paul’s letter to the Christian church in the Greek city of Corinth. Words from this chapter are often read at weddings. That’s good because Paul’s picture of love is one to which anyone with a sound mind and a beating heart can agree. You can do so whether you have deep faith or no religion at all.

Paul originally wrote these words though, to a church that was torn with conflict. He wanted to remind its members of what love is: patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, nor proud, nor hurtful of others, unwilling to keep a record of the wrongs done to us by others. If your church relationships are going to be all that they need to be, Paul was saying, you need to live with this kind of love for each other.

But guess what? For any relationship to be everything we want it to be, there must be this kind of love. That includes marriage. I’m getting to the frightening part. The kind of love Paul is talking about has only ever been purely displayed on this earth by one person. That person is the One revealed to be truly God and truly human, Jesus. Jesus displayed this kind of love when He died on a cross as punishment for our sins and faults, not His; our failure to love, not His. Jesus was and is sinless and perfect. I’m not. He always loves. I don’t.

And that’s what I find so frightening. I know what love is. I know that I need to live with this kind of love toward others to make my relationships work, including my marriage relationship. But I was born in sin, a condition I inherited just by being a member of the human race, born out of sync with God. Because of this, my tendency is always to look out for number one. The love that all good relationships need is foreign to my nature. I feel like Paul who confesses in another place, the good “I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15).

Fortunately, for me..and for you, Emma and Kyle, our relationships do not have to fall prey to our imperfect capacity to love. It’s possible, through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, to be filled with the love that sustains marriages, helps our marriages and helps us as human beings to become all that we want to be, all that I know the two of you aspire to be as you begin your married life together. It’s a matter of daily turning to Christ and daily putting on Christ.

To turn to Christ is to turn to God, the only true source of love. It’s also to turn away from sin, darkness, and death. The Bible says that when we turn to Christ, we “are being transformed into his image (2 Corinthians 3:18).” As I turn to God in the name of Jesus, because of Jesus, God fills me with a renewed life. He corrects my wrongs and empowers me to live differently toward my spouse today than I did yesterday. Speaking for myself, I can say that when I repent daily, receiving forgiveness for my sins and new power for living, God renews my commitment to being a better husband today than I was yesterday. As we turn to Jesus, with honesty and trust, we become more like Jesus: more able to love as we have been loved, to forgive as we’ve been forgiven, to understand others as God understands us, to live in relationships of mutual sacrifice and commitment.

To put on Christ is to let Him live in and through us. The Bible speaks of clothing “yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14).” For me, this means when my energy is low, my frustration high, and my capacity for empathy is bottomed out, Christ blankets me with Himself and I live, love, and react to others, including my wife Ann, with love and grace. We still will disagree sometimes. After all, as someone has said, if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant. But when we put on Christ, He makes it possible for us to speak the truth to one another in love, to resolve our conflicts before the sun goes down, to do for others as we want them to do for us, including the “others” with whom we share the marital bed.

Kyle and Emma, today you embark on what would be an impossible task if you thought you could have a solid marriage built solely on your human capacity to love each other. That tank can run dry in the face of financial difficulties, disagreements, family responsibilities, and setbacks. Jesus means it when He says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” That matches my experience in life: I can do nothing without the inspiration, the permission, and the power of God that’s ours through Jesus. But if you will root your lives and your marriage in Christ, you will find that whatever the joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, advances or disappointments, your love will grow stronger. Your marriage will grow stronger. You will find that you can do all things through the crucified and risen Jesus who fills His people with strength, especially the strength to love. That’s what I pray for the two of you today and always. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Marriage and Divorce

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during worship earlier today.]

Mark 10:2-16

True story. The wife of a prominent Christian leader, a man to whom she’d been married for decades, was asked if she’d ever considered divorce. “Divorce, no,” she replied. “murder, yes.”

Murder, believe it or not, is a good entry point for our discussion of the topic that takes up most of today’s Gospel lesson, Mark 10:2-16, marriage and divorce.

Let me explain the connection: While we usually teach the Fifth Commandment as saying, “You shall not kill,” the original Hebrew actually tells us, “You shall not murder.” Knowing that alone helps us to better understand the command. In giving us the Fifth Commandment, God is not saying that there are no circumstances under which, in the defense of life, it may become necessary to take lives. 

For example, when a nation is attacked and its people’s lives are threatened--as happened with the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, followed by Nazi Germany’s declaration of war on this country--that nation’s government has the responsibility to prevent the murder of its citizens. That will likely entail taking the lives of those who threaten such murder. 

God still prohibits murder. God still cherishes and commands that we cherish the gift of every human life He has created and He still commands us to protect life. 

But the hardness of human hearts--the sin in human hearts--means that people who have no desire to murder, that children, the vulnerable, need earthly protectors, like governments, which, in extreme situations such as those that came to this country in 1941, are left with no choice but to kill other human beings. And so, the God Who, in Old Testament times, commanded His people Israel not to murder, would at times, tell them to make war on those intent on murdering people.

God never bases His commands to us on exceptional circumstances that result from human hard-heartedness. His commands reflect His eternal will for those who, grateful for His undeserved grace and favor, seek to live the kinds of lives God blesses. It is God’s will that human beings not take the lives of other human beings, even to the point, according to Jesus, of commanding us not to use killing words to harm, ridicule, or dehumanize others. It’s only after God makes His good and gracious will--”You shall not murder”-- emphatically clear that He talks about the exceptional circumstances under which the sinfulness of our fallen world--the hardness of human hearts--may necessitate the taking of human life. 

Keep that in mind: In His commands, God always states the positive principle before talking about the exceptions. That's important to remember as we address Jesus' words on marriage and divorce in today's Gospel lesson.

And to do that, we must begin by looking at the verse in Mark's gospel appearing right before our lesson, Mark 10:1. There we’re told, “Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.” 

This verse really presents us with a key to understanding everything that Jesus says about marriage and divorce in our lesson. Context, you know, is central to understanding passages of the Bible. Where do the verses fall within the particular book? And, in the cases of narrated events, like the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection told in the gospels, we need to pay heed to where He was geographically when He spoke the words.

And where is Jesus in today's gospel lesson? He’s in “the region of Judea and across the Jordan.” 

This is the place where John the Baptist ministered and preached. 

And it’s the place where John got into trouble with government and religious leaders. 

You'll remember that John had condemned and called to repentance King Herod for having divorced his own wife and caused the wife of his brother Philip to divorce the brother so that the two divorced folks could now marry and live happily ever after. 

John called Herod out on this violation of the sanctity of marriage. 

He claimed that Herod’s entire rule was delegitimized by this unrepented violation of God’s marriage command, given in the garden, that, in marriage, the two shall become one flesh. 

Religious leaders, who saw John as a threat to their power, aligned themselves with Herod and were glad when Herod beheaded John for what John had said about Herod's marriages and divorce. 

In our gospel lesson, the Pharisees, in the same place where John had preached, try to set the same trap that brought Herod’s execution of John for Jesus.

Mark 10: 2-5: “Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ ‘What did Moses command you?’ he replied. They said, ‘Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,’ Jesus replied.” 

“Marriages that last for lifetimes, this is  God’s will,“ Jesus is saying. “But it’s lawful for people to divorce because God recognizes that human sin hardens hearts.” 

In other words, people do and say things that destroy marriage covenants and the foundations on which the best ones are built: faith in the God we know in Christ, mutual trust, mutual servanthood, repentance, prayer. 

When a partner says or does those things repeatedly, unrepentantly, that destroy the marriage a partner may be warranted in seeking a divorce.

A divorce decree then becomes the mere public acknowledgment of the fact that human sin has already killed a marriage. 

In the eyes of God, the legitimate grounds for divorce might include adultery, as Jesus mentions in Matthew 19:9 and spiritual abandonment as Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 7:15. I’m sure that abuse, physical or mental, is also an understandable grounds for ending a marriage. 

As I often tell couples in premarital counseling or married folks who deal with one or more spouse’s addictions to drugs, alcohol, pornography, gambling, eating, materialism, whatever: There is more than one way to be unfaithful to a marriage, more than one way for human hardness of heart to destroy a marriage. 

Fortunately, blessedly, people can repent. People can turn to Christ for forgiveness and the power to restore their marriages and other relationships. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, died and rose to overcome the power of sin and death over those who repent and believe in Him. They can do this even after their hardness of heart has destroyed their marriage.

But Jesus refuses to base His reiteration of God’s command for marriage and against divorce on the exceptional circumstances that might form grounds for divorce. He doesn’t want people entering into marriage or being married spending their time looking for loopholes. 

And so He says, starting at verse 6: “'But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 

Without uttering the name of the fake king Herod, Jesus, the King of all kings, tells the Pharisees whose trap He perceives, “John the Baptist was right. Marriage is a gift to be cherished for life.”

Jesus isn’t one to “throw pearls before swine,” though. He doesn’t waste His breath trying to teach people who don’t really want to be taught. So, He waits to unpack His teaching with the disciples when they’re alone. Verse 10: “When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.’”

God loves marriage and everything that He intended for it: companionship, mutual affection and accountability, mutual protection, intimacy, and sometimes, children, to name just a few things. God desires our marriages to last a lifetime. He also desires unmarried friends to support their married friends in their marriage covenants. And so, in today’s lesson, Jesus invites us to focus not on the circumstances that might make it OK to divorce and to instead, in light of God’s love for and blessing of marriage, focus on what’s needed to make marriages work.

Here are just a few of them. 

• One: A shared faith in Jesus Christ. When husband and wife acknowledge that they are in bondage to sin and cannot free themselves and that they need the crucified and risen Savior Who, alone, makes it possible for them to be saved by grace from sin and death through faith in Him, couples are given the humility and understanding they need to forgive one another and support one another till death parts them. 
• Two: A shared commitment to prayer in Jesus’ name. 
• Three: A shared commitment to being disciples. When we’re committed to being disciples, God helps us to be patient with one another and honest about our own needs and faults. 
• Four: A shared commitment to mutual submission. Ephesians 5 makes clear that in Christian marriages, nobody is boss. Husband and wife submit to one another and to Christ to form a partnership which makes them not two separate people pursuing their own interests and desires, but as Genesis tells us, “one flesh.”

In thirty-four years of pastoring, there are certain predictable issues that have caused married couples to talk with me about their marriages. You can probably guess what they are: money, sex, in-laws, communication breakdowns, children. But all these common points of conflict that may arise in any marriage are rarely the true sources of conflict in marriages. They’re only the secondary battlefields. 

The real source of trouble in marriages is human hardness of heart, sin. 

The battle for our marriages and against divorce happens in the spiritual realm. 

When both partners believe, pray, repent and forgive--all in the name of the crucified and risen Jesus, our marriages can be strengthened. God can give married couples the strength to do the hard work needed to overcome those things that threaten our marriages. God can give our married friends and family members His strength when we go to battle for them in the spiritual realm with our prayers. 

Whenever possible, it’s best that our marriages not be ended by either divorce...or murder. 

May God strengthen all the marriages of our parish.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]