Pentecost 20
– Series B – Proper 22 (October 7, 2018)
“Not Good for Man to Be Alone” (Genesis
2:18-25; Mark 10:2-16)
INI
It is not
good for man to be alone. That’s what
God said right before he made a wife for Adam.
God’s intention is that we not be lone rangers, self-sufficient. Ideally, we are placed into homes and families
to care for one another and serve each other.
Psalm 68 says, “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God
in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary
in a home” (Psalm 68:5-6).
God also
blesses husbands and wives with children.
Our Introit today from Psalm 127 says, “children are a heritage from the
Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Ps. 127:3). And at the center of family life there should
be an altar, either literally or figuratively, at which the Lord is worshiped
and relied upon to give strength and vitality to our homes: “Unless the Lord
builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1).
It didn’t
take long for the marriage of Adam and Eve to falter. And once Paradise was lost, the next sin recorded
is the murder of a brother by his brother.
It’s not like they even gradually worked up to it, maybe starting with a
bit of talking back to mom and dad (although I’m sure that went on, too). Nope.
They skipped right over to full blown murder. Family values quickly became family failures. And ever since then, our families have been
full of failures. And
I’m not talking about the problems that are easily solved in half an hour like on Leave It to Beaver, The Brady Bunch, or Full House. I’m talking about deeply spiritual problems. The Lord is not at the
center of a family’s life together.
There is strife in the home. We
act as if we are self-sufficient. We ignore
the needs of those around us. Offspring
are viewed not as a blessing but as an inconvenience. Marriages fall apart. Single parents struggle to get by. Elderly widows have children and
grandchildren who neglect them. Wombs
are barren … through no fault of our own, but as more evidence of the
brokenness of creation and the sadness that it brings. And yes, if you read or listen to the daily news,
you will soon find that the sin of Cain also has infected families in this day and
age.
God sets
the solitary in a home. It is not good for
man to be alone. Yet there are times
when we feel awfully lonely. You may be
surrounded by many family members – a spouse, children, grandchildren, siblings,
other family members who may live with you – and yet you feel all alone. No one seems to understand you. No one seems to care about your needs.
You may have
a home, but you are single. Now, some
have the gift of being single and celibate, and they are fine with that. God has blessed them with contentment in
their station in life as a single person.
Others, not so much. They
struggle for years having never found a spouse, no one to share their life
with, no one to share their daily joys and burdens. And they are lonely. Or some are single because they are
divorced. They once tasted the joys of
marriage, but then those joys were stripped away.
Before
the Fall into sin, Scripture says that “the man and his wife were both naked
and were not ashamed.” Guilt and shame
were unheard of. The lived together in perfect
honesty and integrity and innocence. But
after the Fall, all that was lost. They
hid from each other. They hid from God. They tried to cover over their guilt and shame
with fig leaves. That may have done the
job for their bodies, but not for their hearts and minds. You can’t hide your guilt and shame from God.
You and I
try to cover over the guilt and shame we bear in our failed family life. We have our own fig leaves we use … our
excuses and rationale for our behavior: “I
can’t help it. This is the way I was
raised. My father was this way. My mother was this way.” And so on.
First
century Jewish men were making excuses and rationale for easy divorce, not
unlike our culture today. A Jewish man
could divorce his wife simply because he had grown dissatisfied with her. She burned the toast. She didn’t iron my collar the way I like it. You get the idea. The Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading asked
Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Jesus said that Moses permitted it because of
the hardness of the hearts of the Israelites, not because it’s what God
intended. God’s plan was ’til death us do part. “What God has joined together, let not man
separate.” Ideally, divorce is never
acceptable, and we should never seek to make easy excuses for it. Having said that, in our broken, less than
ideal, messy world, there are times when it is a last resort … in cases of abuse
and abandonment or in cases of infidelity when it is clear that the guilty
spouse has no intention of returning to their marriage vows.
Why is
God so concerned about marriage? Because
his love for his people is pictured as a marriage. He loves us unconditionally. He is totally committed to us. He has promised to be utterly faithful to
us. Yet we are the ones who have been
adulterous. We have placed our
affections on anything and everything other than him. And to rescue us from our unfaithfulness, Jesus
was faithful to us ‘til death on the
cross. There, he suffered abuse from his
accusers and abandonment from his Father so that you and I will never be abused
or abandoned by God.
God took
a rib from Adam’s side, and from there was born Adam’s bride. A soldier took a spear and pierced Jesus’ side,
and from his ribs flowed the means which give birth to and nourish Christ’s
bride. The Church – all believers in
Jesus – is the Bride of Christ. The
Church is born in the waters of the font where we are baptized … where the solitary
are brought into God’s family and promised a place in an eternal, heavenly
home. And the Church is fed with the
blood of Christ poured into the chalice, the blood of our great high priest which
was shed as a propitiation – an atoning sacrifice – for the sins of all people. Jesus lovingly comes alongside us in our
guilt and shame, takes us in his arms and blesses us, takes our fig leaves away
from us, and covers us with his precious blood.
Through the shed blood of Jesus, you are forgiven for all your failures
in your family, in your home, in your marriages, in your parenting, in whatever
ways in which you have lived outside of God’s plan. You are forgiven. Your guilt has been taken away. Your sin is atoned for.
Now,
we can find fulfillment once again within our families. We can forgive and seek to reconcile with one
another … as much as that lies within us.
You may find that some of your family members will stubbornly refuse to
reconcile. But that doesn’t get us off
the hook of trying and praying for others who have refused to make things right
with us.
We can
find fulfillment in friendships. This is
especially essential for singles and others for whom marriage is not given. Friendships don’t always come naturally. We need to cultivate friendships, like
tending a garden. It takes time and
effort. But the fruit is well worth it.
We can
find fulfillment with our children. As
we spend time with them and care for them, we can let them be a reminder that
we are children of God. He loves us and
forgives us with no strings attached in the same way that we love and forgive our
children, even though being a parent is often a thankless task. Jesus told the disciples, “Let the little
children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of
God. Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter
it.” Jesus welcomes us, and he calls us
to trust him and rely on him as helpless, dependent children.
And ultimately,
we can find fulfillment in the fellowship of the Church. We are part of a new family, a new community,
a holy communion, if you will, bound together in THE Holy Communion around the
altar … the communion of saints partaking in the communion of Christ’s body and
blood.
Will we
still get lonely? Yes, we will. This world is still broken and will remain so
until Jesus visibly returns on the Last Day.
But Jesus brings healing and peace and his presence here at the
altar. Here Jesus is with us and we are surrounded
with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven. Because he knows it’s not good for us to be
alone.
INI
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