Foretaste of the Sermon to Come
A little nibble of this Sunday’s lectionary readings
Sunday’s readings are Genesis 2:18-24, Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12, and Mark 10:2-16
Our readings this week start and end with creation. In Genesis, we hear that God created Eve and the institution of marriage at the same time. Adam and Eve, made in God’s image, were made one flesh in marriage. The writer of Hebrews confirms that it was through Jesus, God’s spoken and creative Word, that all things were made.
Early on, these people who were made in God’s image fell into sinfulness. All human attributes that are not Godly can thereafter be found in this category of sinfulness. It became our new nature. We confess our nature each week, and individual sins if we can name them. But it’s our sinful nature, not even just individual sins or acts, that moved humanity away from bearing God’s holy image.
Our Gospel reading names 2 sins, divorce and hindering a child from coming to Jesus. It’s not hard at all to see that keeping a child from Jesus can be classified as a sin, but in our 21st century institutions of marriage and divorce, these can be tough verses to swallow. We will hear more on Sunday about 1st century marriage and divorce and how Jesus in typical fashion was watching out for the one who always got the short end of the stick. We heard last week that metaphorically amputating an offending body part, while not good, can be healthy. In the same way, it’s hard to call the division of the one flesh of marriage good, but sometimes it’s the only way to be healthy, the only way to “love our neighbor as ourselves” and return to shalom. Divorce breaks what was whole, but over time the break can heal.
Fortunately, we are created anew in our baptism, and we return to that baptismal renewal with each confession, each repentance, each trip to the altar for Holy Communion. In his Small Catechism, Luther said that baptism “signifies that the old creature in us is to be drowned and die through daily sorrow for sin and repentance, and…that daily a new person is to come forth and arise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
He is recalling Romans 6:4, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Divorced? Remarried? In the words of Elsa from the Disney film Frozen, “LET IT GO”! Jesus certainly let it go for us on the cross.
Hebrews 2:11 — “And this One who makes people holy and these now holy people are of the same family.” No matter our past circumstances, Jesus took and continues to take away our sin and we rise up out of the waters of baptism and repentance a new creation, God’s precious New Adam and New Eve, bearing His image once again and once and for all without stigma or shame. Thanks be to God.
