Affirmation of Holy Matrimony for
Mark and Shannon Ramey
In Praise of a Miracle
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus
Christ! Last Sunday’s Gospel about ten lepers might not seem to lend itself
well to a sermon on marriage. But what really happens here, when these ten cry
out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us”? In this Gospel, Jesus gives a great and
miraculous gift to a relatively large group of people. This was a gift these
people could get from nowhere other than Jesus, but only a small part of that
group returns to Him with thanks for His generosity and grace.
Dear Christian friends,
Marriage is a great miracle that God performs for you. Marriage doesn’t
always look like a miracle, to be sure. Marriage sometimes looks more like two
aging people with puffy eyes and messy hair consoling themselves with coffee at
the breakfast table. Marriage doesn’t feel like a miracle. Marriage sometimes
—or maybe most of the time—feel like hard work and repetitious labor and
unnoticed self-sacrifice. No, marriage doesn’t always sound like a miracle,
either. Sometimes marriage sounds like war; sometimes it sounds like silence.
Marriage is not a sacrament like Baptism and Holy Communion are
sacraments, but marriage is a miracle very much like Baptism and Holy Communion
nonetheless:
Baptism looks like water that we pour onto someone—but that water of Baptism is
God’s miracle and God’s doing, whereby He adopts you to be His child forever.
Holy Communion looks like bread that we eat and wine that we drink—but the
bread and wine of Holy Communion are God’s miracle and God’s act, in which
Christ Himself feeds you His Body and serves you His blood for your forgiveness
and life.
Holy marriage looks like a man and a woman vowing their wedded love and
faithfulness till death do they part—but marriage is really God’s miracle and
God’s deed, God’s joining together (Matthew 19:6) whereby a man becomes one
flesh (Genesis 2:24) with his one wife (1 Timothy 3:2). No matter whether it is
a civil ceremony or a churchly rite; whether it is a union of unbelievers or a
union of Christians: marriage is God’s miracle and God’s gift, given to all
people for our universal blessing and benefit just as surely as the sun shines
and the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike (Matthew 5:45).
Marriage is a miracle, just as Baptism and Holy Communion are miracles, but
marriage is NOT a sacrament like Baptism and Holy Communion are sacraments.
Baptism and Holy Communion deliver God’s grace and forgiveness to you. Marriage
might be one of God’s best ways of showing you how much you need grace and
forgiveness, not only from God but also from this treasure and gift—this
husband or wife—whom He has given to you. To forgive and to be forgiven: that
is a miracle, that necessity, that gift must remain enthroned at the very core
of every marriage.
Marriage is a great miracle and gift from God and it is an equally great
miracle and gift from God that marriage survives and endures among us:
Homosexual unions gain greater standing in our midst every day, yet such unions
are nothing more and nothing less than a rejection and a mockery of the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit, of Whom it is written, “In the image of God He created
him, male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27).
Many men and women—including many Christians—are now living together without
being married, delaying marriage or refusing marriage, and thus proclaiming
publicly by their very lives that they do not want God or His Word or His
miracle of marriage to lay claim upon them.
You probably have already heard the statistics that report how more than half
of all marriages—including Christian marriages—now end in divorce. Many people
will say that their divorce was inevitable and unpreventable and even necessary
and in some cases they are probably right. Divorce is a miserable fact of life
for sin-filled people like you and me who live in a sin-filled world, and I am
not sure I can name a single Christian who has not in some way suffered from
the sin of divorce.
Even among those many Christians who somehow manage to remain married for fifty
or sixty years or more, is it not by the grace and mercy of God that they have
done so? My fellow pastors jokingly tell me that I have a wife that I do not
deserve, and they could not be more right. Mark Ramey right here also has a
wife he certainly did not earn, and Shannon a husband graciously given to her
by the mercy of God. Such gifts must not be taken for granted! None of us who
are married truly deserves the good and faithful spouse we have been given,
just as none of us deserves the forgiveness God gives to you in Jesus or the
protection of the holy angels or the unshakable hope and promise of your bodily
resurrection on the Last Day. God gives “them all to us by grace” (Small
Catechism, Fifth Petition).
This is what makes this Gospel for last Sunday a good Gospel for a sermon on
marriage. Marriage is a great miracle that God performs for you and in this
Gospel ten people came to your God looking for a miracle. Jesus gave the
miracle to them, just as generously and lovingly as He has given the miracle of
marriage to us. “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back,
praising God with a loud voice.”
Perhaps this would be a good thing for us Christians also to do when we see God
miraculously preserve His gift and miracle of marriage among us:
The other lepers clearly thought too little of the good and gracious gift that
Jesus gave to them. If they had, Jesus never would have needed to ask, “Were
not then cleansed? Where are the nine?”
It is not terribly difficult likewise to think too little of God’s gift and
miracle of marriage. Marriage experiences are as many as the grains of sand on
the seashore. For every happily married woman we can count, we can also count
an embittered woman, a mistreated woman, or a widowed woman. For every
contented husband to be found, there likewise can be found a resentful husband,
a malicious husband, or a husband who no longer wishes to be a husband.
Whether you are single, married, divorced or widowed: set aside your personal
experience of marriage with whatever ups or downs, successes or failures, joys
or regrets that have come your way. Look at God’s gift of marriage through the
eyes of a Samaritan leper who saw that he was healed. Turn back from the
frustration and the pain and the loneliness that so often pepper so many
marriages. See the miracle and “praise God with a loud voice.”
___________________________________________________________________
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