Yesterday I wrote about The Pulse, magazine of the New South Wales Presbyterian Church. Chris Balzer was installed as the Moderator (Chairman) of the NSW Assembly (Annual Meeting). The installation takes place during the commencement service of the Assembly. Customarily the Moderator preaches.
Balzer is a fine mind with a very direct and incisive manner of speaking.
His sermon, as recorded in The Pulse, opened with these words:
Does God speak today?
Do you introduce the person to whom you are married as your “partner”? If you’ve been married for some time, did you introduce that person in that way say 20 years ago?
In 2009 not all Christians refer to a husband or wife as a ‘partner’, but some do. Why? The short answer is that our culture has changed, and many, many people around us use that terminology. Such things rub off.
Now, we know why many non-Christians do it – often because they want to avoid the whole idea of marriage. Christians don’t want to avoid that idea – I hope.
I have no intention of ever referring to my late wife as my ‘partner’. Why? Because she was my wife. Where did I get the idea that a ‘wife’ is different from a ‘partner’? The Bible, of course.
I have to admit that it has been easy for this terminology to creep into the language we (I) use. Marriage has been downgraded to a partnership and not a life long covenant between a man and a woman to care for one another and their offspring, above all others. Partnerships are conditional. At the same time that marriage has been downgraded, it has also been redefined so that any two humans can enter into it. In the future we can be sure that the number two and even the species of those who participate will be up for grabs.
But marriage is really only a point of illustration because Balzer’s sermon is really a cogent exposition of the Bible’s unity, authority and primacy as the Christian’s only rule of faith and practice. This is our denomination’s historic standard and it is the only one by which we can be certain that we hear God speaking to us today. For many churches the public reading of God’s Word is abbreviated, absent or confined to the passage which will be preached. The only time Scripture is heard in some places is as disasociated verses sprinkled through the exposition (and often removed far from context or even their plain meaning).
So, again I point you to the whole of Chris’ sermon as recorded in August’s Pulse.
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