Homily - LifeChain 2026 - Genesis 9:1-7

The Virgin of the Lilies, 1899, William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Human life is valuable because it is made in God’s image, therefore:

1. Fertility is a blessing, not a curse

2. There is a reckoning for those who hate life

A business of death. Planned Parenthood, along with the other abortion mills in Minnesota and throughout our nation are in the business of death. At this abortuary they do chemical abortions using the abortion pill every Wednesday. Based upon my research they charge between five and seven hundred dollars for that. At other abortion mills where they do later term surgical abortions the price goes up to a couple thousand dollars. In years past we learned that Planned Parenthood, and other abortionists, sell baby body parts and perform experimentation on them, and have even received funding from our government, using our taxes, to do all of these nightmarish things with the bodies of babies. This business of death places a price tag on these lives, and gives them a value of a few hundred dollars.

But the lives of the unborn, and their mothers and fathers, and in fact every human, is not determined by this deathly business, but by the Lord. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.” The Lord our God declares that human life is valuable because it is made in the image of God. None of us get to determine the value of life. Not the federal government. Not the state of Minnesota. Not we the people who vote. Not Planned Parenthood. Only the Lord assigns the value to human life, and He has made us valuable by making us in His own image!

The Lord is the author of life. He knitted us together in our mothers’ wombs. And when He blesses us, He blesses us with life. God blessed them, saying: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Fertility is a blessing from God, not a curse. Planned Parenthood, along with the majority of our culture, treats fertility like a disease that must be treated. It treats children like a burden that must be limited. If children aren’t outrightly killed through abortion, then we seek to prevent their existence through birth control. But the way hormonal birth control works is that oftentimes it doesn’t prevent conception, but it works by preventing the baby from implanting in the uterus, and it acts as an abortifacient. Lord, have mercy! Children have become a product that we create and use for our own personal pleasure, and we discard them when we don’t want them. Our country can’t even definitively state that mothers who strangle their children are guilty anymore! But our culture is wrong! Children are a gift from God given as blessings, because life is a blessing, and every human life is created in God’s own image.

God cares about every life! He takes the shedding of human blood very seriously. “For your lifeblood I will require a reckoning… From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” God requires a reckoning for this evil of abortion in our nation! Not one life is taken that the Lord does not see. We are standing out here today to give witness to the value of human life. We are standing here to remember every baby killed, because even though we do not know them, the Lord does.

There shall come a reckoning! If not in this life then in the next. For according to the Lord’s just judgment the blood of the millions of babies slaughtered on the altar of abortion shall be paid for in blood. Let us not consider ourselves guiltless! We self-righteously condemn the Nazis and the Communists as horrible people, meanwhile right here in Mankato, every week, the most vulnerable babies are being killed for profit and convenience while we look the other way! Lord, have mercy on us!

The Lord shall require a reckoning, blood for blood! And in mercy, the Lord Jesus Christ paid the debt of blood that you owe and shed it on calvary. The Lord Jesus, the almighty God, took on human flesh in the womb of the blessed virgin Mary and was made man. Jesus experienced all of life, and thus He who is God and made us in His image, attributed value to our lives through His. He who lived through every stage of human development in the womb and was born and grew and matured into a man gave value to every human in every stage of life.

In love and mercy for us poor miserable sinners, His life is the reckoning! He shed His blood on the cross! His life blood was shed to atone for all of the blood that we have shed. Therefore, there is forgiveness in the blood of Jesus Christ and there is hope beyond abortion. The abortionists who work in this lair of death can be forgiven their sins through Jesus and turn away from this place; remember them in your prayers. The fathers and mothers, the grandparents and friends, the mother having an abortion, all can receive forgiveness in Christ who shed His blood for their sins. We who have despised life and treated it like a curse, who have considered fertility an illness to be treated, who have been silent when we should have spoken, who turn the other way while babies are dying and mothers need help, the Lord Jesus Christ forgives you in the blood which poured from His pierced side.

So away with your shame and your fears, let them depart from your heart and mind, and be filled with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of boldness and peace! Be silent no more! Open your lips and declare the praises of the Lord! Fertility is a blessing! Life is a gift! Christ has set us free from this horrible business of death and opened the gates to life everlasting! “And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”