Sermon from September 26, 2004

A robust Christian doctrine of creation confesses that the heavens and the earth are the setting in which God seeks to united in covenant love with mankind. Given what we know about the size of the universe, someone might think our faith to be small-minded and selfish. Within our galaxy our solar system is a speck. Within deep space our galaxy is a speck. To treat all that magnificence as nothing more than the setting for the human drama seems like a retreat into pre-scientific arrogance and ignorance. What could possibly make man that special?

Genesis 1:26 gives the answer. God said, “Let us make man in our image. Humans hold their unique and exalted place in creation, because God made them in His image. He implanted in man some measure of His mind, will and power by which He made the universe. Because of this we can know and love God, we can govern part of His creation, and we can respond to Him in communal solidarity.

We can also do something else, because we bear the image of God.. We call it freedom, or freedom of the will. Let’s unpack what it means to have this freedom.

Necessity and Freedom in Creation
To do that we have to talk about the freedom of God and the freedom of man. I want to start with two pictures of freedom that God has given to created things. To help with the first picture, I have a short quote from John Polkinghorne, President of Queens College, Cambridge University. He is a theoretical physicist and an ordained Anglican priest and theologically orthodox. Listen to what he says about freedom in the non-human part of God’s creation.

With regard to the laws that govern the physical universe he says, “God allows the world to be itself and does not stop tectonic plates from slipping and producing an earthquake, because they are allowed to be themselves just as we are allowed to be ourselves.” (Christian Belief in a Scientific Age, 13)

In other words, God created the physical universe to “run on its own.” That doesn’t mean that God has nothing more to do with it. But it does mean that creation behaves predictably. We can count on it. God doesn’t decide every so often to change the periodic table or the freezing point of water. That’s why we can express mathematically how physical reality behaves. This predictability in creation makes science possible.

Humanity participates in this predictability – up to a point. But God introduced a second kind of freedom in man, when He made us in His image. He created us to participate not only in the regularities of nature; He also allowed us to participate in His own divine nature by giving us a limited freedom to choose. Germane to our ability to know and love God, to govern the earth, and to respond to God in communal solidarity is our ability to choose and reject. You can’t understand Western Civilization apart from this fundamental belief.

Now, we need a picture of God’s freedom. I am particularly interested in what happens when God’s freedom interacts with human freedom. We have a pointed and poignant example of that interaction in the words of Jesus in Mark 10:6-9.

The Freedom of God
People were asking Him to justify divorce. His response must have caught everyone off guard then; it can still stop people in their tracks. Listen! “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” Note the following.

First, Jesus rooted His teaching in the doctrine of creation. “But at the beginning of creation God ....” It is easy to say together, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Jesus was asking in effect, “Do you really believe that? If you do, have you considered its implications? You, my American followers, like to say, ‘If there is a design, there has to be a Designer.’ But I say, ‘If there is a Designer, what did he have in mind by what He designed?’” That brings me to a second observation.

Jesus saw the physical differences of creation as permanent indicators of what God had in mind by what He designed. “God ‘made them male and female.’” With those words Jesus focused on a powerful reality, namely, the intentions of God as seen in what He created. I’ll come back to this crucial idea many times in the weeks to come.

An atheistic, evolutionary view of human life sees the existence of male and female as a result of natural selection to ensure the survival of the species. A creation view of human life sees the existence of male and female as the result of a divine decision. Sex was His idea. Wasn’t He good to do that? Well, yes, He was, but Jesus’ point is that God the Creator had more than a good idea. He had intentions about how it was to be enjoyed. And in this text Jesus makes two of those intentions very clear.

Number one, in verses 7-8: “‘a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’” The Massachusetts Supreme Court to the contrary notwithstanding, God intended marriage to be the union of one man and one woman.

Number two, in verses 8-9: “they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” No-fault divorce to the contrary notwithstanding, God intended human marriage to be the union of one man and one woman for life. To live out the divine intention for marriage confronts us with rigorous challenges.

The Freedom of God and the Greedom of Man in Conflict
For example, the call for same sex marriage challenges the God-ordained intention for marriage to be the union of one man and one woman. A few Christian leaders have challenged the scriptural basis for this intention. Gene Robinson, the recently ordained homosexual bishop of New Hampshire, said this about same sex marriage: “Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the church and scripture does not necessarily make it wrong.” (Bob Wenz, “‘Truth’ on Two Hills,” Christianity Today, July 2004, 47-48)

That reminds me of the devil’s question to Eve in the Garden of Eden: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Yes, Satan, God really did appear so unloving as to forbid the perfectly good fruit on that one tree; and yes, God really does intend marriage to be the union of one man and one woman.

Bishop Robinson and his supporters set themselves up “against tradition and the teaching of the church and scripture.” In other words they set themselves up against what scripture and Christian tradition teach is the intention of the Creator. Where did they get their authority to do that? Not from their fellow bishops in Africa, Asia, South America, Europe and this country, who disagreed with them.

In 1998, Anglican bishops worldwide formally and publicly decided not to ordain practicing homosexuals to ministry, much less to the office of bishop, much less to same sex marriage. Obviously, the bishop and his supporters didn’t get their authority from the Bible or the Anglican communion worldwide. Though they reference the Bible and make a profession of Christian unity, they pick and choose what suits their purpose at present. Their authority came only from themselves and was expressed in the act of securing a majority vote among U. S. bishops.

Now, here is a hard question. Is the evangelical, Protestant church any different from Bishop Robinson and his supporters? It would seem that we are in that we have taken a public, intelligent and effective stand for what we understand to be the intention of God, and our convictions contradict the bishop.

However, an acid test of our obedience to the divine intentions for creation comes out of Jesus’ second application of what He said was God’s intention for His gift of marriage. “What God has joined together, let man not separate.”

Staying married till “death do us part” is not a childish task. If we are to believe Jesus, it is still God’s intention for two sinful people to do everything in their power to stay married to each other. “You don’t know the kind of person I’m married to.” But what about the intentions of God? “We’ve tried and tried to make this work, but it just doesn’t work. I just can’t go on like this.” But what about the intentions of God? “I’m willing to work at it, but he doesn’t think anything’s wrong.” But what about the intentions of God? Do you understand? These are the same kinds of reasons people give to defend homosexual behavior and same sex marriage.

I am not a naïve idealist. I know that we live in a fallen world, and some marriages break apart and maybe should break apart. But so often, divorce can be prevented, but we put our efforts into other interests. If we took care of our bodies the way we take care of our marriages, our life expectancy would drop by at least a decade. I hate it, and I know you hate it. Maybe no one hates it more than you do, if you have lived through a divorce. It is so painful, its consequences so threatening.

The point of this exposition of Mark 10 is that God created us with this dramatic participation in His divine nature that we call freedom. He did it so that we could live in union and in love with Him. But in order to live that way we have to use our freedom in a way that is consistent with the way God intended us to work. That means we have to face difficult choices and choose wisely. Some of those choices will set us at odds with our fellow man. The consequences of bad choices are almost always not only bad for us, but also bad and even catastrophic for the people around us, even for other nations.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
It is important for me to mention the consequences of bad choices. Telling the truth requires me to do that. Telling people what not to do and the consequences of doing it anyway belongs to spiritual formation, but it does not constitute a motive strong enough to govern unruly human desire. Let me show you what is strong enough.

A phenomenon of highway driving will help us here. The posted speed limit on interstate highways seems at times to be the merest suggestion. It almost seems dangerous to drive the speed limit. Be that as it may, there is a magic moment when the speeding denizens of I-95 do homage to the posted speed limit. It happens frequently in Maryland where State Police park, radar guns hard at work. The difference is a person.

A motive strong enough to govern unruly human desire must have a strong personal dimension; by themselves rules for living lack sufficient power. But, now, let me ask you a question. When you slow down for the Maryland State Policeman, do you do it out of love for Maryland law or for that trooper; or do you do it for fear you’ll be stopped and ticketed for speeding? You see where I’m going.

Fear of someone is a strong personal dimension, and it can be a motive strong enough to govern unruly human desire – as long as the person you fear is present. But there is a better way. Love for someone is a stronger personal dimension, and it can be a motive strong enough to govern unruly human desire, even when the person you love is not present.

“The only important question in life is whether one is united to God or in rebellion against God” (Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 470). “To be united in love with the Godhead means to love what God loves” (ibid, 467).

There is more. Fundamental to loving God is knowing first that God loves us. We love, says the Apostle John, because he first loved us, 1 John 4:19. Knowing that God loves us grows out of two roots. First, God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, Romans 5:8. That is the gospel. Two thousand years of theology have not explained it; two thousand years of experience have not quenched its power to fire in the human heart a passionate love for God.

A second root of knowing that God loves us can be found in that intrepid book of theology, Anne of Green Gables. Its author, L. M. Montgomery, describes Anne as “a freckled witch of a girl who knew and cared nothing about God’s love, since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of human love” (p. 62). We know God loves us, because human love has translated God’s love for us.

I find myself in four circles of human love that translate God’s love for me: my family, my staff, my small group, and what the creed calls the communion of saints, my sense of solidarity with the whole body of Christians in heaven and on earth. Their example and affection to me and my accountability to them nurture in me a powerful motive to check my unruly desires and to use my freedom to choose the intentions of God for my life.

The truest use of our participation in the life of God that we call freedom is to seek the intentions of God and learn to conform to them. If we ignore this transcendent dimension to the awesome power of freedom, then we make ourselves vulnerable to social fragmentation and the tyranny of personal indulgence. Then, as Paul says in Galatians 5:15, we will bite and devour and destroy each other.

Perhaps never has this been so true as it is today in the momentous issues of controlling and degrading the environment, in abortion, stem cell technology, genetic manipulation, and what some are calling “the immortality project.” In a new and profound sense the future of humanity is now at stake. I believe that the Christian point of view has just as much right as any other point of view in the public discourse that is underway about the future of humanity. You and I need to be sure it gets a hearing.

To help us do this God has given us the scriptures and the communities of churches that have read and understood then with remarkable unanimity. In October and November we will use these resources to engage the challenges of our time.