rich’s blog

Let’s Pray!

 

Prayer:

Father. Don’t waste our moments or our unique gifts, but awaken us to the potential we have to live well in the world, for your Kingdom, for your glory.  Well up your Spirit within us, draw creation back to yourself, and give us meek & powerful hearts.  Guard my tongue, take away my voice if I mislead us.  In Jesus’ name. Amen. 

First Things:   

Alright: First things. I really believe what I’m sharing this morning.  I think it’s good Bible study.  But anyone of us might disagree with me.  So I guess I want to point out, first of all, that by its nature, a sermon is one-way communication, which is just not as great as discussion.  

 

So whatever we think about what is shared this morning, let’s try to make some time to dialogue about these things; talk with me, get to a small group where we can dialogue and talk about all this stuff. Discuss it at home. 

 

We are traveling together toward the Lord, and occasionally we may disagree on directions; but if we commit to not breaking up, but working through things, we’ll arrive together more safely, with more people, than if we just subgroup, get bitter, and mirror the world around us.

 

So if I offend someone, I am sorry.  If you disagree with what I share, that’s alright. Let’s talk about it, and be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Cool?  

 

Second Things: 

The Second thing we should talk about is why this passage is difficult.  

 

This is the same question we asked last week, same question we’ll ask every week, in some form or another: Why Bother? Why discuss this passage?

 

I think it’s difficult for a number of reasons:

 

Contemporary Sensibilities: 

It’s difficult because in some ways it just doesn’t fit well with our contemporary American context.  Over the past 50 years our society in general has begun to acknowledge a number of things, all sorts of things. One of them is that where we are–our location–and who we are–our race or culture, our economic class or level of education, our gender, or how much or little we’ve been exposed to any religion–affects the things we see or don’t see, and what they might mean to us, when we open up our Bibles.  

 

We’ve acknowledged other things in America.  We’ve acknowledged that if you’re a middle class white married guy, your American experience is different than if you’re, say, a lower-class black single mother. 

 

In fact, most of the world has acknowledged that if you’re a guy, bully for you.  Because societies are often set up in such a way that men have advantages over others.  Men get a little bit of a head start in life simply because they are men: more opportunities from the get-go. And this is changing in good ways, it is: but it’s not gone, at least not in America.

 

Sometimes a man-oriented society, like ours, is called “patriarchal.”  And over recent decades, as the world has opened up, people have said “Hey, Americans, the way you look at the Bible is patriarchal, and the BIble itself can seem like it’s really patriarchal, too!” 

“It favors being a man, and if you’re born a girl, too bad so sad.”  And when these voices point this out, they’re right. 

 

But we don’t want them to be right; generally.  We don’t like that if you’re a guy you can do a whole bunch of things women can’t.” Generally, we don’t like that America is this way. And passages that are used to enforce this situation, keep guys a little bit more favored and blessed than women, frustrate us.  We find them difficult to deal with because of our contemporary sensibilities about these things. 

 

Abuse & Misuse 

And we all know that because of the way this passage and passages like it have been read and are read, have been interpreted and are interpreted, people have gotten hurt. This passage, and those like it, are abused and misused in such a way that people are hurt by them; women especially, but men too. 

 

Violence, oppression, spiritual and physical abuse are all justified by people through passages like today’s.  And as a result, they become even more distasteful to us; difficult and to be avoided.  

 

But we are “people of the Book,” right?  We are people who claim that Scripture has a unique voice in our lives, one that’s bigger than societal or our own personal sensibilities. And so we have to deal with the Bible, what it says. But honestly, this is tricky, too. 

 

Biblical Tensions:

Because in a lot of ways today’s passage, and those like it, just don’t seem to jive all that well with what we see elsewhere in the New Testament. They’re in tension with other things we see in other places.  

 

Jesus was ministered to by women who apparently paid his way, Luke tells us that they enabled him to do the ministry he did for those three years “out of their own means.” Paul talks about how gender doesn’t seem to matter all that much anymore in various places, like Galatians.  He praises women who have positions of authority & leadership in the church. 

 

Acts shows us an early church where women & men both get the same Spirit of God, and there are books and books that show that the earliest church, once it spread to non-jew areas, gentile areas, depended largely on women. 

 

So there are these biblical themes, and the practice of the early church that we know about, which all seem to imply that women aren’t second-class. But then we read passages like today’s passage from the NIV–well, let’s read it again. 

 

Today’s Passage: 

So let’s look at today’s passage again in the NIV; this is the translation that’s under the chair in front of you, it’s the translation of church for any evangelical Christian, right?  Here we go: I’ve copied it just like it looks on the page; with “helpful” headings and all. 

 

21Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

 

Wives and Husbands

 

 22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31″For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

 

Ephesians 6

 

Children and Parents

 

 1Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2″Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3″that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” 4Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Slaves and Masters

 

 5Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

 9And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. (Eph 5:21-6:9)

 

So the NIV.  I like the NIV; I cut my teeth on the NIV, you know.  But I also like the TNIV; anybody ever read that?  “Today’s New International Version.”  It’s basically an updated NIV, holding more closely to the spirit of the greek manuscripts we have. Good translation: Let’s look at it. 

 

Instructions for Christian Households

 

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

    22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 

Wait a second!  Let’s stop there! Because something’s not right! Look at the way this TNIV starts the passage, and then look at the way the NIV starts this passage!? The NIV

 

21Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

 

Wives and Husbands

 

 22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 

The TNIV: 

 

Instructions for Christian Households

 

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

    22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 

Do we notice how the NIV divides v21 from v22 by placing a little heading there?  What’s the implication?  The implication is that v21 is separate from v22: it’s not, of course.  Not at all; it’s part and parcel of v22, and also, it’s part and parcel of v20.  

 

If we translated v21 well, it would be something like “being subject to one another out of reference to Christ,” it would be a concluding thought to what had gone before it.  So we’d read something like this: 

 

   Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.  Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, [being subject/submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ].” (eph 5:15-21) 

 

And then it would go on to talk about wives, and husbands and kids and slaves. But what we see is that “being subject, or submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” is part of living wisely, understanding the Lord’s will, being joyful and living thankfully in the name of the Lord, the Messiah, Jesus. 

 

So we’d be reading through this passage in Ephesians 5, a chapter that starts by telling us to “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”  And as we move through Ephesians 5 Paul goes on to tell us about all the things we should avoid, before ending up right here telling us about all the things we should do. 

 

Paul’s argument builds and builds and builds, trying to persuade us to be “imitators of God,” to “walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us,” and it consummates in v21 with the little participle phrase, “being subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  One scholarly work notes that in this little participle phrase is the “characteristic of a way of life that sets believers apart from the nonbelieving world” (A Woman’s Place, Osiek & MacDonald, p122).  

 

And then Paul goes right into the list we’re all familiar with. 

 

Going Deeper: 

But this isn’t the only time we’ve seen lists like this, is it?  In First Peter 2 there is a list like this; we see something like it in Colossians. These lists are a particular genre of writing. Did you know that? Something that all of us would be familiar with if we were 2,000 years old. It’s a what is called a “Household Code.”

 

“Household Codes”

Household codes were concerned with how to order a house; how to keep a household running.  They emphasized three pairs of relationships:

Husband-Wife, Parent-Child, and Master-Slave relationships (WP, 119). And it was felt that the Roman Empire itself–the “household” of the empire–that for order & well-being to be maintained in the empire individual households had to be well-ordered, too. (AWP, 121ff.) So all sorts of people would exhort households to order themselves well, because who wants a lousy Empire? 

 

But Paul isn’t talking, in Ephesians, about the Roman Empire at all; he’s talking about the household of God, right?  In fact, he’s telling his audience, who would have likely thought so proudly of their place within the Roman Empire, that the Roman Empire isn’t the household they should be thinking about, that in fact, it’s outright evil.  They should be thinking about a different household. He writes to his Gentile audience to remember that because of what God has done, 

 

you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household,  built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Eph 2:?-22, tniv)

 

So Paul is writing a household code to people who are in the household of God–Jews & Gentiles alike–and as Carolyn Osiek & Margaret MacDonald point out, are gathering in tiny household churches.  

 

And these authors point out, again noting context, this household code is one immediately followed by the famous call for resistance to evil in Ephesians 6:10-20–the armor of the Lord passage that many of us are familiar with. So the context for Paul’s household code is not at all order yourselves well so that our good Roman Empire can be cared for, it’s order yourselves well, but resist the evil world around you in which the devil is at work.  

 

And the guiding principle for any sort of ordering that you do has to be a principle of mutual submission; if you do that, you imitate God, you walk in love as Christ walked in love.  

 

And Christ, of course, as Paul points out throughout Ephesians, is the head of the body that we have been gathered into, one characterized by love.  He notes that 

 

…speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (eph 4:15-16, tniv)

 

Summary:

So we are in little house churches, part of God’s household, part of the body of Christ who is our head, and Paul tells us in a very common form–a household code–how to order ourselves.  But even though the form is familiar, the content isn’t at all. 

 

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.  Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, [being subject to/submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ].” 

    Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, people have never hated their own bodies, but they feed and care for them, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Eph 5:15-33, tniv, mostly) 

 

So Paul starts with the call for mutual submission ringing in our ears.  And he moves on to talk about how the husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the church; and as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands.  And he calls husbands to love their wives in the same way Jesus loved the church, self-sacrifically.  

 

And he shows his hand when he says he’s talking about Christ and the Church.  Because it reveals that when he shares this household code, he’s not saying we should order our households well so that order spreads and wafts all the way through the household of God. But in fact, Paul says that God has already ordered the universe, God has already ordered the church, and we need to reflect that truth out into the culture around us, even though they might mistake our reasons for doing this as their own. 

 But our motivations are way different: they’re based on how God has brought both Jews & gentiles into one household, one body, and joined us together in a way no one expected through Jesus’ own self-sacrifice, and because of this self-sacrifice, he’s become head over the household, head of the body of his bride, which is us. 

 

Upside Down: 

Do you see this?  Normal Household Codes are bottom up things: if we can order our households well, husband-wife, parent-child, master-slave, then our society will click into place.  Paul says, Look: things have clicked into place–get in line with it. 

 

Order your households based on what Christ has done, not based on what you hope will happen; and have mutual submission be the thing that characterizes all of it. 

 

Challenging Culture: 

And we could talk about other things relating to Roman beliefs about the Household. 

 

We could talk about how duties were gender-specific, male & female duties, were divided between public and private spheres.  Females had control of the private sphere, control of all things going on in the house, and males were supposed to be a part of the public sphere: ensure that society was running well, and government and counsels were great, ensure that they were seen in public at religious festivals and were on boards and chambers and all this stuff. (cf. AWP-132-137).

 

But Christianity threw a wrench in this. Messed it up; because churches didn’t meet in buildings, didn’t meet in churches.  They met in houses, right? House churches. 

 

And houses were places where women were responsible for ordering the environment, and women ensured that people were fed and taken care of.  They were critical to the functioning of the house-church. Oseik & MacDonald point out all the ways we see even in Acts the homes of women being critical centers of the growing church (AWP, 156ff.), and share that “to step into a Christian house church was to step into [the] women’s world” (163).  

 

And Men, who should be out in the Empire, taking part in the public sphere–which was inherently a religious sphere, too, because the ancient roman world didn’t separate church & state at all: they weren’t out and about, they were at home, in the women’s world.  

 

This causes problems. In fact, Oseik & Macdonald go so far as to say that the early church members could be thought of as “gender deviants” (AWP, 135).  The Men were at home all the time, and the women were responsible for too much public stuff. 

 

As the early church practiced this Household Code, a code that on its surface looked just like any other Household Code, they found themselves separating from the culture around them, positioning themselves to be found “as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” 

 

They found themselves not only resisting the evil culture around them, but really being countercultural; their men acting feminine, their women acting masculine.  And it was okay.  It was revolutionary, because they were taking their cues from Jesus, the visible image of the invisible God who made and redeemed them all. 

 

But we have lost some of this. 

 

Lost some of this: 

Things settled down; once the church got bigger, and became more institutionalized and centralized, and a little less radical, we lost this countercultural push, these revolutionary practices that bring men to the level of women and women to the level of men, and both to the level of Christ.  

 

We’ve forgotten that we’re supposed to base our marriages–and all our relationships–on mutual submission, getting out of our own way so that others can get what we’d like to have. We print Bibles that cut up Paul’s thoughts so that we can more easily misunderstand them.

 

And in the end we’ve given in to the pressures of society around us, we do things like leap from the notion of “headship,” right to “leadership,” and decide that because of Eph 5, women cannot be leaders–

 

Wait a second!  I haven’t talked about that yet, have I?  Oh me.  Let’s!

 

But remember: we’re talking about the way we’ve lost the original equalizing effects of house-church life, effects that brought men & women together; and what could have been a revolutionary seed, a thing that expanded out from the church into the world, lifting women up everywhere, gave into the fallen world around it. 

 

Headship:

 

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 

He says that a husband is the head of the wife, in a way that is similar to the way Jesus is the head of the church.  And we the church submit to Christ, right; because why? Because he gave himself up for us, because he died for us, because he only wants our good, because he acts always for our best, because he gives us the power to live out and accomplish God’s will, and because he calls us his equals: “I do not call you servants any longer…but I call you friends.”  A friend in the ancient world was someone who was your social peer, your relationship was one of giving and taking equals. 

 

And this is the way Jesus treats his body, his church, as its head.  Husbands are called to do the same things, act Jesus-like to their wives, while both partners mutually submit to one another. 

 

 

And husbands can’t play the “in everything” card, even if they want to, because as Perkins notes, the church submits to Christ not so that we can get abused and become less true to who we are; we submit to Christ so that we can experience the fulness of God’s love for us, become more truly ourselves, and Christ in turn does all the things we talked about him doing a second ago. (cf. NIB 450, which brought this idea to my attention). 

 

“Leadership”:   

But for some reason, we have decided that what headship means is leadership, haven’t we.  And we also, often, ignore the context of this section, which is explicitly and only the marital relationship, and decide that men should always have leadership over women.  We trade away the fairly subversive, counter-cultural thing Paul puts into place with this Ephesians passage, which raises up women, and lowers down men, for the traditional, accepted stereotypes of a fallen society around us. 

 

1 Cor 14: 

We bring in handy things like 1 Cor 14, where Paul, talking about orderly worship, says that no woman is allowed to speak at all.  And some Christians say, “There it is. Women can’t talk.” They forget, of course, that in 1 Cor 11, just a few chapters before this, Paul talks about the best way women should prophecy & pray during worship: implying, of course, that they can, and also revealing that there is probably something about what was going on in Corinth specifically, locally, that causes Paul to say this. 

 

1 Cor 11: 

Sometimes we’ll jump to this 1 Cor 11 passage and use it to argue that headship means “authority over,” means leadership, and women must submit to the leadership and direction and final word of men.

 

  I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you. But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.

    A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.

    Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God. (1 cor 11:2-16 tniv)

 

We start to read this passage, and say, “There you go! Men are in charge! It’s built into creation: the head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”  This is just the way it is.  We read this section in our New International Versions, and v10 states that “the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.” 

 

And we say “Yes!  A woman should have a sign of a man’s authority over her on her head! Stick a bonnet on that lady!  Men have authority over women!”  We don’t realize that “sign of” isn’t in the greek text at all, Stanley Grenz, a well-respected evangelical scholar notes that a better translation is the one we say before this: “A woman ought to have authority–”that is,” he mentions, “liberty, right, or control”–over her own head” (Woman in the Church; A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry, Grenz, p112).

What that authority is, we can argue about for a while: scholars do. But it’s more than likely, given the context, and given the fact that Paul highlights how man & women are not separate from each other, because “for as woman came from man, so also man is born of women. But everything comes from God.” that what Paul is saying is that women should be allowed to figure out how they want to dress; have authority over their own dress. Grenz talks about this at length, if you’re interested (cf. WITC, ~p111).

 

What we’d then do is look over the rest of this 1 Corinthians passage and I think we’d see Paul saying, “Look, women can dress how they want. But remember that as far as our cultural expectations go, it’s dishonorable for a woman to let her hair down.  So women, as you read this, think about the things that go on in the churches all around us, and think about your own honor, about what is “seemly & unseemly,” and decide what’s best.” He’s not saying, women, submit to the leadership of men. He’s saying, “women–you have the right to decide this stuff; just be thoughtful and sensitive about it.”  And the same thing would hold true for men.

 

When we decide to turn “headship” into “leadership,” we  trade in the subversive, counter-cultural thing Paul started, for the accepted practices of a fallen society around us. 

 

We forget…

We forget, or choose to ignore, that the narrative movement in the Bible is toward inclusivity–dangerous word in evangelicalism–but toward inclusivity: from one family, to one people, to all people, to all creation. 

 

We forget to include in our framework of what God’s been up to the other passages Paul talks about that equalize all of us–male, female, slave, free, gentile, jew, all of us–and that what is most basic about us is not our gender or our genitals, but in fact, the Spirit inside us.  

 

Men-maybe none of us, but some–would often rather emphasize 1 Cor 11′s “the head of every woman is man” than 1 Cor 7′s “For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” 

 

We forget that we look forward to a world to come in which men & women stand together as equals, marriage isn’t part of heaven’s equation, and we should be right now practicing within our marriages mutual submission, and practicing it within our churches, too; because it’s our guaranteed future. 

 

Back to Ephesians 5: 

Phleme Perkins states, after his review of the Household Code of Ephesians 5, that “Insofar as Ephesians employes the conventional wisdom of its time in adapting the household code to Christian use, Christians certainly must consider the social structures and wisdom of their own time in formulating an ethic for marriage…If authority and responsibility are shared, then consensus and communication are critical values. Listening to others is an essential habit.” (NIB 455). 

 

This is good. And I would add that we need to be careful how we apply this code. 

 

We should not pressure our unmarried dating or engaged children to function as married people, take up roles we think they should play. 

 

We should not decide that “headship” means “leadership,” and reject the very Biblical idea that many women among us are gifted by the Holy Spirit with leadership gifts, while their husbands are simply not.  And we fail them by asking them to submit their every perspective to their husband’s “spiritual leadership.” 

 

And we fail husbands when we force them into roles borrowed from culture around us, which pockets of the church promote, instead of enabling them to act within their marriages with their own Spirit-endowed gifts, and celebrating them for who God has made them to be instead of shaming them for not living up to an ideal that is foreign to them. 

 

Maybe we shouldn’t praise women for giving up on God’s call upon their lives because their husbands, who claim authority over them, decide they should act in some certain way. We should remember that the only authority any of us have been given is the authority to submit to one another, hoping for the others best interests, in imitation of God. 

 

I would also suggest that we pay attention to the thrust of Paul’s suggestion in this Ephesians passage, which I think if it had been held to, and not co-opted by society around it, would have resulted in some very incredible changes in the way husbands and wives related in the ancient, or recent, world.  

 

And the trajectory of this passage is in recent years gaining momentum. People are realizing the ways Paul took accepted forms of things like this Household Code, and challenged the very things that on their surface they seemed to reinforce. 

 

I’m not inconsistent!

He did the same thing in his letter to Philemon.  We won’t look at it, but on the surface the letter is about him sending a slave back to its master; putting a guy–probably with the same skin color as his master–who escaped from slavery right back in it. But in every sentence of the letter Paul is subverting slavery, challenging it, calling Philemon to treat his returning slave with the same dignity and care he show Paul. 

 

But this is silly for Paul to do, because we all know it’s okay to keep slaves, right? To buy and sell humans.

 

No it’s not okay, we know that!  We read that section of today’s passage and realize that this no longer applies.  That it is wrong, and in fact the trajectory of the gospel message, a gospel that results in there being “no longer jew or greek…no longer slave or free…no longer male and female; for we are all one in Christ” demands that we keep the last paragraph of today’s passage back in ancient Rome. 

 

And I personally think that if we had time we could see the way Paul also challenges slavery in today’s Household Code in ways he similarly challenged ancient Rome’s view of females: But isn’t it funny that we decide the slavery standard no longer applies, and yet we hold tightly to the first part of the Household Code Paul lays out? 

 

This was pointed out to me by a friend; and Craig Keener, another evangelical golden-child scholar reiterates what we’ve said already, which is that “Paul advises his readers in the setting in which they lived; he does not make their setting valid for all time.”  (Paul, Women & Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul, 185)

 

Conclusion:

So let’s end w/ a summary. Stay with me here.

 

What I’ve promoted is that Mutual Submission lies at the core message of Paul’s discussion of husbands & wives in Ephesians 5.  We should not extrapolate this husband & wive standard to any other male-female relationship, except for the little fact that the church is a place of mutual submission by everyone.  Headship, however it’s understood, should not be confused with leadership, and men should not automatically be considered leaders over women in any context, whether the man is a brother or fiance or husband.

 

We’ve looked at the contextually-localized announcements Paul makes, and how what he states in Ephesians 5 resulted in the early church messing with established gender boundaries, messing with the established patterns of the fallen society around them, in such a way, that men & women were more equalized.  And I’ve suggested that the trajectory of this passage, along with the sentiments we see in Galatians and even 1 Corinthians should really make us question any sort of hierarchy we think exists between the sexes this side of Jesus.  

 

This is often called an egalitarian view; the idea that in Jesus, both male & female have been brought to one another’s level, glass ceilings & glass floors shattered, in mutual submission under Christ, with the Spirit poured out on us both. 

 

So, fellas, we should wonder about jokes we make when it’s just us guys; because words have power.  We should wonder, fellas, about the authority we sometimes claim that I think we have no right to claim. We should wonder about the pressure we feel to “lead our wives,” and question even the phrase, and share what we discover with our wives.  We should feel freedom to defer to the leadership gifts of our wives, without feeling ashamed, trusting in the mutual submission and love that characterizes–hopefully–our marriages.  

 

Ladies. Do not let a man–especially one you aren’t married too–tell you what to do simply because he is a man. He has no right. Do not suppress your calling, your gifts, your own true voice simply because you feel your husband should get the final say in all decisions; your authority is your own; use it when you can to position your marital relationship for the mutual submission our lives of faith call us too.

 

Maybe we should all get some counseling.

 

Those of us who are married must learn mutual submission. We must; and those who are single–you’ve got to learn it, too. We must seek equality; a way to discern how to live together, maximizing our strengths and gifts, minimizing our weaknesses and sins, and acknowledging the need we have for one another. And we ought to question the standards and norms of the society we find ourselves in–and sometimes the standards & norms the church has had a hand in promoting. 

 

If we could do these things, I think we would become imitators of God, as the beloved children we are, living in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, shining as stars in the world around us, guiding them and one another to the Lord that unites us all. 

 

Prayer:

Oh Father, help us.  Help us to become like your son, help us to learn from all of Scripture.  Thank you that even when we disagree, we know that we are united in your Spirit.  More than any of this; help us to be people who mutually submit to one another in all ways, reflecting your character to the world.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.