Ephesians 5: 21-33                                     First Presbyterian

         When I was reading over the scriptures for this morning and I got to the one in Ephesians, I didn’t quite know what to do.  I knew I had some things I wanted to say about passage, but at the same time I wasn’t sure exactly how  I wanted to say them. 

         My mind went racing over all the terrible things I’ve heard from the pulpit based on these verses and all the times it has been used by male pastors to send women back to husbands who beat and abused them under the guise that God “commanded wives to be obedient and submissive.” 

         And it’s not just male pastors.  There are plenty of women out there who teach that we are to play second fiddle to our husbands and to follow where they lead no matter how bone headed their decisions might be.  After all they say, the man is the head of the household.  It’s what scripture says.

         In the light of all this, I thought about what I believed the text said and wondered if I was just perverting it to meet my own needs and social conscious.  The one thing I did know was that it would be easier not to preach on this text and pretend it isn’t there than to study it, pray over it, and proclaim it as the Word of God. 

         And when I am that challenged, that disturbed, by scripture, I know I must deal with it if I am to grow in my faith.  So here I am, standing before you, still wrestling with the text and what it means for us today and what it meant to the men and women Paul wrote to so long ago. 

         Let’s begin by just looking at what the text says --- apart from cultural influence. The very first verse sets out the guideline for everything else that is to follow: all of the rules for wives, husbands, children and slaves.  And that verse says “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

         We are to serve one another, at times submit to one another not because we are forced into it, not because society dictates it, but because we have learned to do that even as we have learned to listen and obey our Lord Jesus Christ, for if we are to love as He commanded us to love there will be times when we will have to submit to someone else’s desires or needs, not because we want to, but because it is what love demands we do. 

         The other thing that is important to notice about this verse is that it is a MUTUAL submission.  It is NOT just one person submitting to someone else all of the time.  We find that same idea expressed in a different way in Galatians and I Peter when the scripture says “Through love be servants of one another.”

         There is no getting around it though, this is a passage that deals with submission, with giving in.  And that is difficult for us to hear and even more difficult for us to accept in an age that has taught us to concentrate solely on self-fulfillment, an age that is nicknamed the “me” generation. 

         But I would maintain that the controlling idea in the passage is not submission.  It is love, love that calls us at times to submit to someone else’s will than our own, but it is also a passage that speaks about the certainty of the love of the one we submit ourselves to.

         The passage makes this abundantly clear.  There are three verses dedicated to reminding wives that they are to be subject to their husbands and eight verses (almost three times as many) instructing husbands as to how they are to love their wives and care for them.  They are to love them as Christ loved the church, giving themselves up for her.  They are to love them as if they were their own bodies.  They are to love them as if their wives were indeed their very selves.

         Now, there is no escaping the hierarchy of this passage and the verses that come right after it. The line of authority is clearly established: God, men, women, children, slaves --- each obeying those above them.  But at the same time that the hierarchy is established, it is established with what was a radical difference.

         In the society Paul was writing to, it was the custom for wives to be obedient to their husbands come what may.  That may be why we got so few verses on the subject.  It wasn’t an issue.  Wives had no choice.  They were not regarded as individual people with individual rights, but as things, objects to be given away by their fathers into the possession of their husbands to be used and enjoyed or discarded at will. 

         In fact, the Jewish law of divorce allowed a man to dismiss his wife if she found no favor in his eyes.  All he had to do was get a bill of divorce written out by a rabbi and put it in her hand.  She must then leave the home immediately.  No hearing, no appeal, and definitely no alimony.

         Conservative rabbis interpreted this law to mean that a woman could be divorced if she put too much salt in the food, walked in public with her head uncovered, or if the husband found someone he considered to be more attractive.

         There was no mention in the law of love or care, no obligation for a husband to submit himself to what was best for his wife, no concept that a man should love his wife as he loved himself, as Christ loved the church.

         Paul’s letter revolutionized the way a husband had to look at his relationship to his wife.  No longer could he expect her to be obedient simply because that was his right, because her job was to obey him no matter what --- to please him no matter what.

         Now he was in the position of submitting himself to what was best for her, not him, to thinking only of her best interest, to doing only what was the most loving thing to do.

         And, as we are reminded in I Corinthians, this love is patient and kind.  It is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way.  It is not irritable or resentful.  It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the right.  Such love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

         Under these conditions, it is understandable how a wife could submit to her husband, even in these days of women’s liberation.  For this is not a forced submission of a woman to unreasonable demands or selfish motives.

         It is instead a mutual submission of one to another --- each looking for what is best not only in the situation, but looking for what is best for the one to whom we have pledged our lives in the bond of marriage.

         Any delusion that this passage is talking about a wife being blindly submissive to whatever comes her way is destroyed as soon as you read verse 21: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  And if that were not enough, it must be banished forever once you read verses 25 through 32 where husbands are admonished to love their wives as Christ loves the church, giving himself up for her.

         The passage sets out what a Christian marriage should look like, with both partners mutually submissive to the love and grace of Christ, seeking to do His will, while mutually submitting in love to what is best for the other – with no jockeying for position or power.  Instead Christian marriage is a covenant, a sacred promise, that love will reign.  It is toward this image of marriage that we strive, how ever imperfectly.  It is an image that we can only grow into as we grow into the very likeness of Christ. 

         May all those of you who have entered into that covenant be blessed and encouraged on your journey together, for mutual submission will never come easily to us and the journey will at times be difficult – or even impossible -- if one or both partners lose sight of the covenant of love and the grace of God who makes such a love possible for us to achieve.