 |
|
|
|
Ordered Life
Friday of Pentecost 23
|
|
 |
The gift of human sexuality is protected by the estate of holy marriage. Sexuality is not a bad or wicked thing. It is a thing with which Adam and Eve were created and about which they received the primordial divine command, "Be fruitful and multiply." Unfortunately, we treat human sexuality as a matter of entertainment or titillation, leaving especially our young people with warped and demented views about this good gift from God. The vast majority of sexual acts implied or portrayed on the media are between two people who are not married to each other. This leaves our children with a view of sexual relations that is quite bent. We used to call it "perverted." Now it is considered preferred and even normal.
When I teach the sixth commandment to the adolescents in catechism class, I have to begin with a speech about the blessed gift of sexual relations within holy marriage. Though they don't dare express their surprise, their faces certainly register it. We need to speak well of God's gift of sexuality in holy marriage, if for no other reason than to encourage our children toward the good and honorable goal of holy marriage.
We Christians should speak well of this divine and blessed estate because it is the first institution of God in the world and the creation's most basic human community. Yet, now marriage is treated so lightly, as though it is a human institution which we can adjust however we see fit. This disorder in the family will have long-term disordering results for our communities, churches, and communities.
Rev. Dr. Scott R. Murray
Memorial Lutheran Church
|
|
|
Martin Luther
"The Sixth Commandment is aimed directly at the state of marriage and gives us an opportunity to speak about it. First, understand and mark well how gloriously God honors and praises this estate. For by His Commandment He both approves and guards it. He has approved it above in the Fourth Commandment, 'Honor your father and your mother.' But here He has (as we said) hedged it about and protected it. Therefore, He also wishes us to honor it (Heb 13:4) and to maintain and govern it as a divine and blessed estate because, in the first place, He has instituted it before all others. He created man and woman separately, as is clear (Gn 1:27). This was not for lewdness, but so that they might live together in marriage, be fruitful, bear children, and nourish and train them to honor God (Gn 1:28; Ps 128; Pro 22:6; Eph 6:4)."
Martin Luther, Large Catechism,
1.206-207
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Genesis 1:26-31
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
(ESV)
|
|
|
Prayer
Dear Christ, bless our use of sexuality within the order You gave it at the creation of the world. Amen.
For the persecuted, that God would give them strength as they suffer for the sake of the Suffering Servant
For those who are grieving the loss of loved ones, that they would grieve with the hope of the resurrection of the flesh and the life of the world to come
For the sick and dying, that a faithful preacher would hold before their eyes the cross of Christ
|
|
|
Art: Albrecht DURER, The Adoration of the Trinity (1511)
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
