I’ve been particularly excited about this wedding because I think it’s the first Fight Laugh Feast wedding. I’m not sure if you actually first met while working at CrossPolitic, but I’m fairly sure the fumes of the CrossPolitic t-shirt machine had something to do with you falling in love.
When I asked Thomas if there was anything he’d like me to talk about in my homily in particular, he said, he would like it be “atomic gospel.” I’m not sure exactly what he meant by that, but I took it to mean that he wanted something explosive. And since this is sort of a CrossPolitic wedding, I decided to talk about politics.
When the Supreme Court Obergefell decision came down, claiming to legalize homosexual marriage, most Americans shrugged and carried on with their business. If some conservative Christians objected, it was almost entirely because they believe homosexuality is immoral. And of course the reply that came back was simply, you don’t have to agree with what other people do – you’re free to disagree.
Of course the Bible does teach that there is a morality issue at play — homosexuality is immoral, but most Christians didn’t connect all the dots. The bottom line is that Obergefell technically made all children born in the United States wards of the state – or at least it claims to. Here’s how it works: in the name of equality, the Supreme Court claimed that same-sex couples required the right to marry. But according to six thousand years of tradition, history, and biology, marriage has always been the way a family is created, where, in the ordinary course of things, children are conceived and born and raised with a mother and a father. This is because a man and woman can make promises before God and witnesses and then go and do what married people do and odds are pretty good that a new person will be conceived shortly after. And the key thing to notice is that a man and a woman can form a family and bring new people into the world without saying “boo” to any government official. This is how God made the world.
But when Obergefell claimed to give the right to marriage to homosexuals, it was in effect saying that as far as the state is concerned, marriage is just a sexless contract and children are not inherently connected to that institution. Some people buy Fords, some people prefer Toyotas. Some couples have RVs, some have pets, some have children. But since children are no longer viewed as organically related to marriage, the new people being born into the world have to be accounted for by some means, some mechanism. In the old view, your children belonged to you because you swore marriage vows in front of witnesses, and then you moved in together, and then you watched your wife’s womb fill with life. Birth certificates registered the fact of the birth, but your children belong to you because, well, you made them all by yourself.
But if the state claims that it is officially agnostic on where children come from, since a so-called marriage between two men for example might later entail trying to procure a child by some other means (since they cannot on their own), and let’s say they do, how can it be proven that the child belongs to them? Well, this requires the state to treat every child as an orphan in principle, and therefore, while we are not there in practice, the state in effect has claimed jurisdiction over deciding which children belong to which parents. By defying six thousand years of human history and God’s clear Word, the Supreme Court claimed the power to redefine marriage and in effect claimed lordship over children and the family.
This is what has been called an inescapable concept. It is not whether but which. It’s not whether we will have a Lord and Master, it is only a question of which Lord, which Master. And this is why the most basic Christian confession remains revolutionary: Jesus is Lord. Christ is Lord. And the implications become clearer and clearer the more pagan a land becomes. If there is no god above, if there is no lord over this land, then someone or something in this world will be lord and master. What is your highest appeal? Is it the Supreme Court? The United Nations? The World Economic Forum? To say that Jesus is Lord is to tell every authority in this world that they have a boss – they have a Lord and a Master, namely Jesus Christ.
Of course the reply comes, why should I care? And the answer is this: Jesus Christ came to this earth and lived a sinless life, He was betrayed, suffered, bled, and was crucified for sinners, and on the third day, He rose from the dead. He was seen by hundreds before He ascended into Heaven, and He is currently at the right hand of God the Father, where He reigns over Heaven and Earth, and He will reign until all of His enemies have been put beneath His feet, the last enemy being death itself, and He will come again to judge this world, the living and the dead. Why should you care? Because Jesus is risen from the dead, and He is the Lord of this world. The State is not Lord, the Supreme Court is not Lord, the UN is not Lord – none of them have died for our sins and risen from the dead. Christ is Lord. Marriage is between one man and one woman because Jesus is Lord and He made the world such that they can make babies. Jesus is Lord and therefore our children belong to us.
So Thomas, my charge to you is submit to Christ. Christ is Lord; so Christ is your Lord. You are being made a lord of a new house today, but the only way you will carry out your lordship well is by being in complete submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. This means that you must obey Him in how you treat His beloved daughter, Anna. You must love her and lay your life down for her and for her good. You must honor her as the weaker vessel and as an heir together with you of the grace of life.
Anna, my charge to you is to submit to Christ also. Christ is Lord; so Christ is your Lord. You are being made the lady of a new house today, and that means that Thomas is being made your lord under the Lord Jesus. Just as he must submit to Christ in his leadership and love of you, so you too must submit to Christ by submitting to Thomas’s leadership and love. This means you must respect your husband highly, look up to him, and receive his counsel, adorning yourself and your home for Him with all wisdom and grace.
And together may you defy the false lordship of the state. May you be fruitful and multiply as lord and lady of a sovereign jurisdiction, called the Carpenter Household, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Photo by Alvin Mahmudov on Unsplash
Leave a Reply