January 22, 2023 – Sanctity of Human Life Sunday Text:  Genesis 1:26-31a

Dear Friends in Christ,

Marriage is a blessing, a gift from God who created us.  Marriage promises companionship and pleasure.  But the meaning of marriage does deeper.  We are each fearfully and wonderfully made.  We each have a cardiovascular system, a digestive system, a circulatory system, all whole and fully integrated.  Only one system is not complete in each of us – the reproductive system.  When it comes to sex, we are complementary creatures.  Two become one.  Husband and wife together accomplish what they cannot do alone.  No amount of social engineering or perverted sexuality changes the fact – you need the sexual organs of a male and a female for life to be created.

God intended marriage leads to children.  Let’s recognize this – not every couple can physically bear children.  They may be past childbearing age or have infertility which can be a heartbreaking issue.  Children tie marriage together in permanence and life-long fidelity.  The Sanctity of Life and the Sanctity of Marriage go hand in hand.  This our theme for This Sanctity of Human Life Sunday . . .

“FIRST COMES LOVE, THEN COMES MARRIAGE, THEN COME . . .”

Marriage changes things.  Our family lived it and is living it.  Friday, January 13, at approximately 5:20 p.m. we were no longer just dad and mom.  We are now also father-in-law and mother-in-law.  Our verbiage changes.  It has gone from girlfriend to fiancé to wife.  If the Lord has it in His plans we look forward to grandpa and grandma, though personally I know we are much too young for that.

Husband and wife are an extension of God’s work of creation.  They become an image of Christ and the Church.  We are not just factory parts that reproduce.  Each of us comes from the creative hand of God who loves and uses procreation to continue His good creation.  The family that arises from this gives us a higher glimpse of love and a better perspective on God’s love.  Being a dad has enlightened for me what God gave up with His Son.  The sacrificial understanding becomes all too real when the Lord blesses with children.

The problem is we mess with God’s perfect plan.  We distort the one-woman, one-man marriage with all sorts of silly ideas that we want to play house with.  When we redefine the most important relationship from the beginning of creation then problems will ensue.  All of us can lose marriage’s intrinsic link to children.  When the “be fruitful and multiply” just becomes a suggestion then we see what is occurring.  People are having less children and marriage is becoming less important.  This has societal and economic impacts.  The good news – many Christian homes are having multiple children which bodes well for our future. 

Long before the push for abortion was the agenda of sexual liberation.  Margaret Sanger wrote that “through sex mankind may attain the great spiritual illumination which will transform the world, which will light up the path to paradise.”  The ultimate taboo for Sanger was large families.  She wrote, “The most serious evil of our times is that of encouraging the bringing into the world of large families.”  My sociological observation on this is limited, but the ones in large families I know have been blessed and happy.  

This has been a challenge for the church.  I know of very few LCMS churches who have larger Sunday Schools today than in years past.  We need to reaffirm self-evident truths.  Children are a gift from God.  Marriage was designed so these children have a father and a mother.  This gives us hope for the church.

Perhaps as Lutherans we would do well to recover the Hebrew wedding toast, “L’Chaim,” which means “To life!” – that is – “To new life!”  Marriage is more than securing financial stability and present happiness.  Children are a gift worth more than all the money and experiences in the world.  Like I have told our boys, “Someday you will know why mom and I have been so blessed by you.”  They have to experience it and I pray they will.  Children bring joy to a congregation.  A child can light up a room.  I viewed two youngsters at the wedding dance having the time of their life.  It gave me the warm fuzzies.  No wonder our Lord loved to hold children in His arms.

This is all said with sensitivity to the barren, the widow, the orphan.  This is life in a fallen world.  Let’s open ourselves up to the love of marriage as God intended.  We rejoice when a child is born.  We celebrate when that child is baptized.  In the waters, we see hope, we embrace the future, we taste eternity.  As we care for our children, our Heavenly Father cares for us.  We thank God for male and female.  We praise God for the good gift of children.  

In this dark world, there is this message of hope.  We have a life-affirming faith that stands in wonder at the birth of the Christ Child.  We give thanks that in Jesus, through His death and resurrection, our lives – and those of our children – will have no end.

Amen.    

January 15, 2023                                Text:  John 1:29-42a

Dear Friends in Christ,

    Have you played the blame game?  The one where Adam blamed Eve for his troubles.  The same game where Eve blamed the serpent.  We even print t-shirts to put on youngsters with sayings like, “It’s my sister’s fault”, or “my brother did it, not me.”

    What if I told there are Christian churches where there is no blame game because there is nothing to be blamed for.  What if I told you this is being taught in a Lutheran Church.  Pastor Dawn describes herself as a “21st Century Progressive Christian Pastor.”  She preached on the text that we have before us today at Holy Cross Lutheran in Ontario, Canada.  She handled it differently as we see from her theme, “Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?  It ain’t necessarily so!”  Oh . . . she used “ain’t.”  Sit back and listen – it gets worse.  Here is a small portion:

    “To this day many Christians believe that though you and I deserved to be punished for our sins, that God sent Jesus to absorb that punishment as a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter…The projection of a literal sacrifice for sin depends upon a pre-Darwinian understanding of creation…So, becoming one with God is not about blotting out the stain of original sin, but rather evolving into our fullness as creatures grounded in the creator and source of our being…Jesus did not die for our sins.  Jesus revealed a God who calls and empowers us to step beyond the survival mentality that warps our potential and to become so fully human that God’s love can flow through us to others.”

    I told you it was going to get worse.  If this is the Christian Church, we might as well go home.  We are wasting our time.  I pray you know; you are making good use of your time in the Father’s house this day.  We have a message that answers the question . . .

“WHO DO WE BLAME?”

    Jesus.  He is the one the Old Testament was waiting for – what all that bloody sacrifice in temple was all about.  “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”  Jesus.

  He was the one the whole creation was waiting for – waiting for the full payment to be made so that his new Adam might restore all things.  “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”  Jesus.

This is what the whole New Testament Church is still about – what goes on here today and each Sunday in fact.  Jesus.

Each of us has sinned and will sin.  We need to fess up.  Repent.  All that we do, and leave undone, is our fault.  Yet, even doing this – admitting our fault and then being allowed to blame someone else – God Himself, of all people – this would still do nothing for the guilt or consequence, would it?  Someone still has to pay.  

We know all this.  We understand justice.  God is just.  He is justice itself.  Justice must be fulfilled.  So, God tells us to blame Him as if He did all these terrible things.  “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

He did, and it was finished.  He did die in our place.  He did accept all sin as His own.  He paid the penalty on the cross for the whole world.  Justice has been done.

So, yes, we are to take our sin – all of it – and place it on his head and send it with him into that bleak and desperate place to die.  Outside the city wall.  To the cross of Calvary.  Leave it there.  In him.  On him.  This is why Jesus came.  He is the Lamb of God who takes the blame.  He accepts the blame, so we won’t be blamed.  He gladly accepts the eternal consequences, so we don’t have to.

So, fess up.  And when the devil comes with his list of your misdeeds you go right ahead and tell him it’s all true.  Yes, all of it.  And remind him there is probably more he doesn’t know about because he is not God.  You can tell him you are in fact a whole lot worse than he knows.

But Jesus knows.  He came for that very reason.  He came to take the blame.  He has taken care of it.  “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

                                            Amen.