18th Sunday after Pentecost / Year B

Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8; Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16

Pastor Gayle M. Pope

Created in God’s Image

Have you noticed the beautiful harvest moon hanging up in the sky the last two nights? I’m sure all the farmers out harvesting their crops noticed it. Those of us who Don Rosenboom was pulling through the holler on the hay rack ride last night noticed it. And so did the writer of today’s Psalm

He noticed it thousands of years ago and wrote the words on the front of the bulletin today. These are words we can relate to:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them, human beings that you should care for them?

The psalmist considers not only the grandeur and beauty and immensity of nature, but also its amazing orderliness – the way everything works together. He knows this is the work of an awesome and powerful creator, and he is amazed that such a creator has such great regard for us little old human beings.

What are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them, human beings that you should care for them? Yet you have made them little less than divine; with glory and honor you crown them.

As we consider the four readings we heard from God’s Word this morning, let us start by opening our hearts and letting this sink in: the amazing and wonderful God who designed and created everything that exists – including US – LOVES US.

Notice that GOD is the creator and we are the creatures. God is God and we are not. And yet God created us in His image. God created us to be in relationship with Him and with one another, and God gave us dominion over creation, with the responsibility to care for it.

But then came sin. God created everything, including US. But sin entered the world, causing the corruption of God’s original intent. Everything became broken, particularly our relationship with God. But God did not abandon us.

This is where the reading from Hebrews comes in. God sent his own Son, Jesus, to save us. The book of Hebrews emphasizes Jesus’ divinity and Jesus’ humanity. Jesus – God’s perfect Word through whom all things were created, who existed WITH God in glory – came to earth in human form, “so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

God loves us so much, God so desires to be in relationship with us, that he sent Jesus on a mission to restore what was broken by sin. Jesus shared in our humanity so that, by faith, we can share in his glory – so that he can call us brothers and sisters.

So, again – God created us to be in relationship with him and with one another. We are precious to God. God loves us. But out relationship with God is broken by sin. Jesus came to restore creation, including our relationship with God, to its original intent.

Now, with that underlying perspective, let us turn our attention to today’s gospel and its teaching on marriage and divorce.

When the Pharisees came to Jesus with this question on divorce, they came with small minds. They were asking a legalistic question. In Jesus’ time, there were two schools of thought on this issue among the Jewish rabbis, and they wanted Jesus to come down on one side or the other.

But Jesus reframed the whole question, putting it back into the context of God’s original plan and intent for creation. Moses had made an accommodation because of the reality of human sin and brokenness. But Jesus wanted to emphasize the beauty and the gift of God’s design in marriage.

Jesus quoted from what we know as Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

And then from Genesis 2:22-24, which is part of our first reading for today: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” To this Jesus, added, So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

That same reading from Genesis reveals God’s reason for creating woman: “Then the Lord GOD said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner’.”

God’s creation of male and female and the marital relationship between them is a beautiful and sacred bond that reflects the image of God. It’s a bond of deep love and companionship that is, in some way, spiritually permanent and is intended to be physically and legally permanent on earth, too.

So much so, that Jesus said further to his disciples, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” That’s just the way it is.

Jesus emphasized the beautiful, creative intent of marriage, which we so often forget in our culture. We have so trashed the beauty of human sexuality as God created it to be, and we have so trivialized the commitment of marriage in our culture, it must make God sad to see what we do to his beautiful gift.

Jesus also emphasized the brokenness and sin of divorce, which is the other side of the coin. For something so beautiful to be broken and defiled, is as far on the side of darkness as its original intent is on the side of light.

I know about both of these sides. The last time this reading came up three years ago, I talked about my own divorce. Now, three years later, I give thanks to God for the gift of love He has given me in a new marriage.

God does not diminish the reality of sin and neither should we. Our sin cost Jesus his life. But that is the good news.

God is about forgiveness and restoration and resurrection for those who believe in and cling to the salvation Jesus won for us on the cross.

God gives us life. Sin leads to death. But, in Christ, death is not the last word. In Christ, new life is possible – not only at the last, but in all the deaths we experience day by day in many ways.

Thanks be to God for life and salvation.