Pentecost 18

Dear People of St Paul,
You are a strange bunch of people.
You might think I am kidding. You might think that I am making a joke, or taking a crack at your affinity for the local sport team or just going for the shock value.
None of these are the case. You are strange! You're weird! An odd bunch of people who are completely outside of the mainstream! Your thoughts, your beliefs, your values are far and away different from the rest of the world.
And let me tell you why – as a people, as a group, as a classification you value the institution of marriage. You think it's important, worthy of protecting and preserving. You consider it to be precious, a gift even. And that makes you weird!
Yes, it is true – you're view of marriage makes you weird. But, let it be said, that is a good thing.
Consider the view of marriage in the world around us today.
Most (if not all) of your coworkers, the parents of the other kids on your ball team, the people you see in the grocery store, while they are likely to think marriage is good, they are likely to believe that it is a man made, a social institution made up by people. That it is something that has come to be a part of our society and the way we order ourselves as a people only because of a humanly devised value. A psychological construct – if you will. It's a contract, a piece of paper, a legal document that ultimately doesn't mean anything.
Some of your friends and coworkers might even believe marriage is unnecessary, outdated, old, and even useless. There is no point to it, no value to it, there is nothing positive that it has to offer. Truly modern people, evolved people (if you will) can just simply love each other sufficiently without it, some might even go so far as to say that they can love each other better without it.
But you? Not you. You see marriage – not as a piece of paper, not as a social contract, not as a means for stamping your mark of ownership on another person – you see marriage as a gift from God. You see marriage as God's blessing and you cherish this gift and desire to see it flourish for yourself and in your own family. Marriage is a part, a piece of God's own creation, established by him even before his first week of creating was done.
You after all, believe to be true our text from Genesis. In Genesis chapter 1 we get the cliff notes version of the six days of creation. But then in Chapter 2 we are taken back into the week of creation. Back to day 6. God wants us to know more. You see, the creation of the man and the woman was important, significant – the brief version offered in the first chapter is not enough so we are treated to a second look.
God made the man. He formed him from a lump of clay and breathed into him the breath of life – with every other living thing God simply spoke and it came to be, but with the man God took greater care and more deliberate intention. A lump of clay and His own Breath. Man was alive with body and soul. Of the same stuff as earth, sharing the same matter with the rest of it, but with a spiritual dimension added in that was not given to the dogs and cats and rocks and trees.
But the man was alone. There was nothing else in all creation that was like him. The creation was good but the man was alone and God said that this was “not good”. So the Lord God brought to the man all these other creatures so that he might name them, but among all the other created things in God's good world there was not one thing found that was like Adam in his uniqueness from the rest of creation. So God put him to sleep and performed a surgery on him – He took from the man a rib that was of his flesh and bone, built from the same raw materials and then God constructed a new creature: like the man but different. Of the same flesh, but unique in her construction. One who made God's creation (and therefore the man) complete. What was “not good” had all of a sudden become not just good – now, with the creation of the woman God's work was done and it was “very good”.
A man and a woman made to be “one flesh”. Two made to be one. A single unit. Two parts united together so that they make a new thing. A marriage – a one flesh union that God has joined together. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they shall be one flesh.”
This creation; this gift of marriage is such a blessing. In spite of the dishonor that this good creation and gift of God has received, those who have received this gift can attest to its goodness. Marriage completes you. When a man and woman are joined together the two parts together become better than the individuals were apart. The two help each other.
The man loves and cares for his wife so that she feels the safety and security of his love. Rather than being restrained by being “possessed” by another she knows she belongs the way she is created to be.
And the man is better with his wife than he would otherwise be alone. He is turned outside himself to the care of another and his wife turns his attention to where God would have him to serve not just her, but his neighbor.
And then God blesses this union, this joining not just with a personal union, not just with a relationship, not just with a shared space and shared emotion – God makes this union of the flesh of a man and the flesh of a woman into a new flesh when God creates from this union a life, a new person, a child that is literally the flesh of the man and the flesh of the woman joined together into a new flesh. This is a profound and beautiful mystery that we can only begin to understand. And God has given this as a good gift and a blessing for the benefit and the joy of the man and the woman, of the husband and the wife.
Dear Christians, you see and understand this mysterious and this beautiful gift. You appreciate this gift. You cherish this gift.
And how sad it is to say that this makes you weird.
You live in a world where this beautiful gift has been tarnished and stained. You live in a world where this gift is cast aside as “outdated”, as a “relic of a bygone and primitive era”. You live in a world that wants to throw this gift away and trample it underfoot by allowing and even encouraging the gift to be despised. The bride who completes you has become your “ball and chain”. The husband who you cherish and is cherished by you has become “the idiot father of your children”.
You live in a world where the mysterious joining together of a man and a woman by God has become a “contract” that we can extend to any two people who feel like having sex with each other. Marriage is more than emotion. It is more than sex. It is more than a social or a civil arrangement. It is much more.
Out of two God makes one. That is what our text says. That was the way of the original creation. No one was separate. No one was alone. God made the man and the woman to be one with each other. And this, as God said, was “very good”.
But then look what happen. Adam sinned. His wife Eve sinned. And instead of being one, instead of being joined to each other we see them pitted against each other. Notice Adam's words. “That woman you gave me”. Notice how his view had changed – the one who he had rejoiced over because she was of his flesh and bone had all of a sudden become “that woman”. Husbands, how many of you have ever thought this way of your wife?
And then notice God's word to Eve – “your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you”. Wives, how many of you have ever resented your husband? Who he is, what he has done or has not done? Why couldn't he be more romantic? Responsible? In tune with your needs?
Instead of enjoying the one flesh union, the sameness, the togetherness, the unity that God has designed and intended we so often become little more than two people occupying the same space. Our joining of one flesh as a gift from God turns into that “contract”, that “social institution”, that we hear so much about. May the Lord God forgive us for our sin.
But then consider Paul's word in Ephesians. “This is a profound mystery.” he writes. But he is talking about Christ and the Church. Christ gave himself up for us and offered himself so that he might sanctify us, cleansing us by the washing of water with the Word so that He might present us to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle so that we might be holy and without blemish.
Those of you who are married, consider your wedding day. Husbands, the day that you took your wife to yourself and pledged yourself to her. She was beautifully dressed. When you saw her she took your breath away. You pledged yourself to her to be faithful to her and to cherish her above all else. Wives, you walked down the aisle of the church to be given to your husband so that he might be the one that you love and that you cherish and who is also loved and cherished by you.
Christ has done that for you. But let us understand. Just as a bride is dressed from head to toe elegantly and beautifully and fittingly, you too were dressed. But not in clothes that you made, that you even purchased. Christ your bridegroom clothed you. Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed because they had not sinned. But you? You were exposed. You were naked and your nakedness was the result of your unfaithfulness. When Christ came to you and found you, you were like a prostitute lying in the gutter offering yourself to all manner of uncleanness and vileness. But Christ your bridegroom came to you and found you and he loved you and he cherished you in spite of the fact that you were wholly unlovable. He chose you, against all odds that anyone would even have you. He made you to be his very own. And he washed you with water and the Word, that is to say, He baptized you and in so doing he clothed you with a garment that he himself purchased for you.
When he found you, you were filthy and dirty and diseased – covered in the muck and mire of your sin. But he washed you. He cleansed you. He healed your diseases. He purified you from your sin. You have received a spiritual makeover. It's hard to recognize that you are even the same person. You have been dressed with all the wealth of heaven, dressed in the garments of righteousness made for you by God himself. Jesus Christ is your eternal bridegroom and he has chosen you for the eternal wedding feast of heaven.
So God restored you to himself. He re-joined you to him. The rift, the rupture in the relationship has been repaired and you and God are once again in communion with each other. But the same can be said for you and your husband, or your wife. Your sin tears you apart. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, you run off and hide from God and from each other to cover your shame and to cover your nakedness. But God has covered you. He has clothed you. He has washed you clean and He has restored you. In so doing he has restored you, husbands and wives, to each other.
So be weird. Cherish your wife. Honor your husband. Rejoice in your marriage.

Amen.