Sanctity of Human Life 2022

Immanuel annually hosts a Divine Service and breakfast before the March for Life in Washington, D.C. This year we focused on the Epistle for Epiphany 3, Romans 12:16-21.

January 21, 2022 +++ Immanuel Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Alexandria, VA

The abortion challenge is a challenge to the meaning of human life itself. God made man to live, and not die. Moreover, God made man as steward of the earth. This stewardship could not be carried out alone. “It is not good for the man to be alone.”

Adam needed community. And not just any community. He needed for his stewardship one who could be similar yet other. The one God made for Adam was one God made from Adam. She was bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. But she was not man, but woman.

Only together, in a synergy, could they do what God gave them to do: continue His work of creation through procreation. “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” Long before St. Paul said it in Romans, God blessed our first parents with the same calling: “Live in harmony with one another.” “Cultivate the earth such that the garden expands to fill it with life and beauty.”

Thus the sanctity of human life is not a contemporary issue. It is the original issue. Marriage, sexuality, ecology, family, abortion are all connected. At its heart is the vibrant breath God breathed into our first father and the living waters that pulsed through the four rivers of Eden.

In the beginning was the Logos, the Divine Word that spoke the world into being. “In Him was life.” Not was as in past tense—He had it once—but was as in always: In Him always was life – and always will be. This is what we know and confess – but it is not what we experience.

Not much has really changed since the fourth chapter of Genesis. It opens with sex – but not just the sexual act. Even there, in the impossible sorrow following the eviction from Eden, the marriage act is filled with meaning. “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived.” No euphemism, the relationship between our first parents was consummated in knowing, the sharing of mind, soul, body, forgiveness, and hope. It reaches out towards Genesis 2, when they were naked and without shame. It reaches out toward the time when God spoke to them and they listened without doubt or rejection.

There is no separation from conception and birth save time and development. Eve’s child exists in her womb from the moment of conception, as does every child. Hidden within the womb’s matrix, the child is not hidden from God’s eyes, but seen, known, loved.

So the story of this fallen world yet begins with marriage, love, and children. It is followed by worship, and false worship, and the murder of a child.

That’s the entire history of the world. All the wars, the empires rising and falling, the marriages and liturgies and babies and murders, it’s all foreshadowed and captured in that one story of marriage, sex, family, worship, idolatry, and murder.

In today’s Epistle, the harmony intended by God is contrasted with the enmity in the world. “Live in harmony with one another,” God’s Word must tell us, because we have enemies.

The religious impulse for truth is quickly mixed with the sinful impulse for conquest over enemies, and even over friends and family. “Do not be haughty,” the Apostle’s words to the Romans ring out to us, because we are of the same fallen passions. Do not the words trouble you? They condemn me, as through Paul was constructing in advance the list for me to take to private confession: I have been haughty, I have been wise in my own sight, I have wanted to repay evil for evil, and as far as it depended on me, I have not lived peaceably with all.

On this side of Genesis 4, none of us can approach the Sacred Liturgy, or march on the Supreme Court, without first confessing. Too often in this fight we have loved the fight. Too often in our own lives we have played the hypocrite. Too often we have treated our friends worse than our enemies. We can barely live in harmony with our own households. We can barely live peaceably within our congregations, much less the world.

The abortion challenge is a fight, as is the challenge of marriage and the family, all under direct assault by the federal government. But this fight is not new, and not against the politicians and bureaucrats.

The fight is with the old evil foe, and the concluding statement of today’s Epistle, “overcome evil with good,” is founded on the work of Jesus. The summit of the world’s evil was in putting the Son of God to death; and at that moment of greatest evil, He spoke the word of greatest good: “Father, forgive them.”

Thus the March for Life, however others view it, is a march behind the cross. The liturgical statement of the crucifix leading us both towards the altar and later out of the church is the statement that this alone is the good that overcomes the world’s evil.

The end of abortion will be concomitant with the end of adultery, the end of idolatry, the end of murder, under the reign of the Lamb who has been slain.

We cannot overcome evil with our own good. Yet we are easily overcome by the evil that is in the world. For this we look to the cross. And from this we learn to speak, learn how evil is overcome by the Word of God put on our lips. Back in Romans 12:14 (two verses prior to the start of today’s Epistle) St. Paul gives us three imperatives: Bless, bless, do not curse. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”

If cursing is calling down God’s wrath, then blessing is calling upon God’s love. That’s the one message the Church has, for Washington and the world: Father, forgive them. It’s preceded by our own prayer: Father, forgive us. I suppose you could sum up those two messages with a single prayer: “Lord, have mercy.” That’s the message of our march, for ourselves and for the world: “Lord, have mercy; overcome this evil with Your good.” ✠inj✠