“The Creator Made Them Male and Female”
Matthew 19:3-6

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost—October 4, 2015

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Every year the “Wacky Warning Label” contest selects the strangest product warning labels and instructions.  Some of the winners have included:

A carton of eggs that advises: “This Product May Contain Eggs.”

A collapsible umbrella baby stroller with a big warning label: “Remove Child Before Folding.”

Sleeping pills that warn: “May Cause Drowsiness.”

A bicycle with a label on the handlebars: “Warning!  This Product Moves When Being Used.” 

A jar of peanut butter with the warning: “May Contain Peanuts.”

An ordinary letter opener, with the instructions: “Always Wear Safety Goggles When Using This Device.”

And a chainsaw with a big label: “Warning!  Do Not Hold Wrong End of Chainsaw While Operating.”

Those warning labels and instructions all seem pretty silly.  But, the problem is, we humans are notorious for not heeding warnings or following instructions, and instead misusing and abusing things. 

It all started with the first humans in the Garden of Eden.  The Lord had clearly commanded, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”  But, Adam and Eve rejected God’s warning and instructions, and instead misused and abused God’s gracious gifts, and ate the forbidden fruit.

In today’s Epistle Reading from Romans, Paul explains the consequences for us all of their epic failure to follow God’s warning and instructions: “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. . .  the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men. . . through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners.”

We call that original sin, which we have all inherited, passed down the generations from our first parents to us.  The Augsburg Confession of the Lutheran Church puts it this way: “Since the fall of Adam all men . . . are conceived and born in sin. . . full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers’ wombs . . . unable by nature to have true fear of God and true faith in God. . . this inborn sickness and hereditary sin is truly sin and condemns to the eternal wrath of God.”

Genesis says that because of original sin, “Every inclination of [man’s] heart is evil from childhood.”  In our lives, the original sin we are born with shows itself in the form of actual sins that we all commit.  As Jesus says, “A bad tree bears bad fruit. . .  the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up within him. . . out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.”

In Galatians, Paul gives lists examples of the actual sins we commit: “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impure acts, lust, idolatry, drug abuse, hatred, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, conflicts, division, envy, drunkenness, wild living, and the like.  I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

But, Paul also tells us in today’s Epistle Reading the Good News of the Christian Gospel: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. . .   we have now been justified by his blood. . .  we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.”

That is the essence of our faith; that is what Christianity is all about.  Your own epic failures are all forgiven, because of Jesus’ life of perfect obedience, lived in your place; you will live forever with God in heaven, because of Jesus’ sacrificial death, died in your place. As Jesus himself declared: “The Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned.”

Paul concludes today’s Epistle  Reading contrasting the tragic results of Adam’s epic failure with the blessed results of Christ’s perfect obedience: “Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

God’s gracious love and forgiveness in Christ is open to you, and open to all: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned. . . whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

But, sadly, what started in the Garden of Eden continues today, our rejection of God’s warning and instructions, and misuse and abuse of God’s gracious gifts.  And not just by those who outright scorn the Lord, and disdain his will and his ways.  Because, like the classic cartoon character of a devil on your shoulder whispering temptations in your ear, as long as we remain in this world, our old sinful self still clings to us, tempting us to go astray from the Lord, and his will, and his ways.

Two contemporary examples of humans rejecting God’s warning and instructions, and misusing and abusing God’s gracious gifts, are the current debate over marriage, and those who claim they can alter their gender.

“Haven’t you read,” Jesus asks in today’s Gospel Reading, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”

In this little sermon Jesus gives about marriage, he quotes from today’s Old Testament Reading in Genesis.  The interesting thing about the original Hebrew of that passage is that it does not distinguish, like we do, separate categories of man, husband, male, or woman, wife, female.  For each gender, there is one word encompassing all those meanings.  And there are no gender neutral terms in Hebrew, like spouse or partner.  So, the very definition of the Hebrew words in this verse shows the only valid human coupling: a husband, a man, a male; with a wife, a woman, a female.

This teaching of Jesus, and the Scripture he is quoting from Genesis, are perfectly clear: “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”  That, and only that union—man and woman, husband and wife, male and female—is what Jesus describes as, “what God has joined together.”  That, and only that union, is marriage.

At the beginning of Romans, Paul warns: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

What Paul says in those verses about God revealing his OWN “eternal power and divine nature” to us through what he has created can also be applied to human marriage and gender.  Because, God clearly reveals to us, through his created order, the true nature of human marriage and gender.

God has made plain to humanity, in our very bodies, and all the rest of creation, the true nature of marriage as a union of man and woman, husband and wife.  Because, throughout the created order, God’s design, God’s plan, is everywhere, and unmistakable: the wonderful, complementary dichotomy of male and female.  That’s what the Lord is referring to when he says in today’s Old Testament Reading, “It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a companion corresponding to him.”  God’s marvelous design, this wonderful, complementary, male-female dichotomy, is “clearly seen,” as Paul says, “being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Jesus’ little sermon about marriage in today’s Gospel Reading also applies to those who claim they can alter their gender.

Even before the advent of DNA testing, God designed humans distinctively, to make it evident whether a person is male or female.  “God has made it plain to them,” Paul says.  It is “clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”

On top of that obvious evidence, the deciphering of DNA has now revealed that every cell in the human body is permanently stamped with either male or female chromosomes—an indelible identity, given by God, that never can be changed, either from a scientific standpoint, or in the eyes of God.  As Jesus says, “the Creator ‘made them male and female.’”

One of the nation’s leading psychiatrists likens it to a person with anorexia, dangerously thin, who nevertheless looks in the mirror and sees themselves as fat.  If such a person demanded gastric bypass surgery—because they THINK they’re fat—it would be medically irresponsible and malpractice to do it.  What they need is counseling, to see themselves as they really are.

In the same way, it is medically irresponsible and malpractice to mutilate those who THINK they are the “wrong” gender.  What they need is compassionate counseling, to accept themselves as they really are—as God created them, with the gender God has given them, the gender that, according to God’s plan, WILL always be indelibly stamped on every cell of their body, no matter what measures they may take to the contrary.

We humans are notorious for not heeding warnings or following instructions, and instead misusing and abusing things.  It started with the first humans in the Garden of Eden, and continues today, with humanity’s ongoing rejection of God’s warning and instructions, and misuse and abuse of God’s gracious gifts.  The current debate over marriage, and those who claim they can alter their gender, is clearly settled by God, two ways.

First, in God’s written book, the Holy Scriptures: “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”

And, God also settles this debate in his other “book,” which is open all around us every day, the book of nature, throughout which we see God’s marvelous design of the complementary dichotomy of male and female: “For since the creation of the world . . . God has made it plain . . . being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Abraham Lincoln once asked, “If I call a tail a leg, how many legs does a calf have?”  “Five” came the reply.  “No,” said Lincoln. “A calf still has only four legs.  Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”

Calling something marriage, or calling a man a woman, or a woman a man, or mutilating their bodies, doesn’t make it so.  Because, “the Creator ‘made them male and female.’”

Amen.