“Submit…?

A sermon based upon Ephesians 5: 21-33

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Fourth Sunday in Lent-C,  March 31,  2019 

(12-14) Sermon Series: Growing Up In Christ (Eph. 4:15)

Last year I watch a movie (12 Strong) about the incredible story of the first team of brave soldiers who landed in Afghanistan, immediately after 9/11, to confront and take out a Taliban and Al-Qaida stronghold.  While given no assurances of ever coming out alive, all of those 12 did accomplish their mission and come home, alive.

While telling that amazing story of heroism, the film writers paused a moment to remind us of the kind of evil America was going up against.  It showed a Taliban tribal leader, taking a woman out into the street, and shooting her dead right in front of her husband and three children.  Why?  Because she had deliberately disobeyed her husband and broken the rules of her society, which had commanded that a woman should submit only to what men dictate, and she cannot even teach her own children to read.    Only men should teach children to read, and the only reading material to be considered, is by teaching the Quran.

For us, in our free world, where the ‘oppressed’ are ‘set free’, to treat a woman as a second-class citizen, or to force a woman to submit to the wishes of men or to society is an idea that seems just as evil as this image of a Taliban killing that mother.   How could anyone not treat another person with fairness and equality?  How could anyone have even ever thought it just and fair to treat another human being this way?

For some people, when Paul says here in our text, that ‘wives’ must ‘submit to their husbands’, it sounds just as strange, or even evil as a Taliban leader taking a woman’s life away.  How could the same Paul who said that ‘in Jesus Christ, there is no male or female’, now say that a wife should submit to her husband?  This is how our modern eyes often focus our attention on this ancient text.  But is this the right focus?  Is this really what Paul meant?  Is the Christian faith just as negative toward women as Taliban leaders?

As we move toward the conclusion of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Paul briefly compares the relationship between Christ and His Church to a Christian marriage in the ancient world.  We must understand that it was only secondarily in this discussion that Paul was addressing marriage.  Paul’s primary focus here, was to help his readers understand that the mystery of what happens in a loving marriage can help us better understand the love Christ has for the church, and the kind of love the church should have for Christ.    

SUBMIT TO ONE ANOTHER

To rightly understand that everything written here is about love, and not about control or abuse, we must take everything Paul says in it’s proper context.  Before he commands ‘wives’ to ‘submit’ to their own husbands, he has already instructed everyone, husbands, wives, and all of us in the church as a church family, should ‘submit to one another out of reverence for Jesus Christ’ (v.21).

When you read words like this, you immediately notice a disconnect from the way of the world today.  But you don’t just see this disconnect with the word ‘submit’ but also see it with a word hardly anyone knows what to do with: reverence.  The actual word, phobas, which means ‘fear’ or ‘terror’, is even more disconcerting.  Who in the world today, even Christians, would imagine God or Jesus as someone to be feared.  We reserve the word ‘terror’ for bad people, not for the goodness and glory of God.

But the same Scripture that tells us of the loving grace of God, also reminds us of the ‘terror’ or ‘fear of the Lord’.  “It’s a fearful (dreadful) thing,” Scripture says, “to fall into the hands of a living God” (Heb. 10:31).  Even Christians, who are used to singing, “What a Friend We Have In Jesus”, don’t often contemplate God like this.

What the writer of Hebrews and Paul are describing, is not so much what God is like, but what reality means.  In the book of Hebrews, the writer is describing what happens to people who don’t take their faith seriously any longer, who don’t come together in worship, and who deliberate keep on sinning, even after they have come to know the truth.  When you keep living like this, Hebrews says, even the (atoning) sacrifice of Jesus can run out, as there is ‘no more sacrifice for sins,’ and you are headed for disaster.  In other words, if God’s unconditional love and grace can’t change and save you, nothing can.  And if respecting Jesus’ sacrifice isn’t sacred to you, holding a special place in your heart, probably nothing else us, unless you’ve made something else your god.  When you forgot who God is, and what Jesus means, this is the idea behind encountering the ‘terror of the Lord’.  It is not so much about who God is, or isn’t, it’s about who we are, or who we aren’t. 

In Paul’s words to the Ephesians, Paul is also addressing our need to respect, reverence, appreciate, and appropriate, all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ.  In short, when we pay attention to Jesus, when we have space for what is sacred and special in our lives, and when we follow Jesus by responding to him with our both our heads and our hearts, we also reverence Jesus.  Because we ‘fear’ hurting Jesus, and we ‘fear’ the hurt of being without Jesus, we have ‘reverence’ for Jesus; for who Jesus was, for who Jesus is, and for what it took for Jesus to accomplished God’s salvation ‘for us’.  This is the ‘sacred’ Christian truth, the gospel, that not only grabs our attention, but also demands our proper respond in our hearts, along with a responsibility for our lives.

Part of the ‘responsibility’ of being a Christian, Paul says, is when we ‘submit to one another’ out of ‘reverence’ to Christ.  The word ‘submit’ came from an old military term, meaning ‘to line up under’.  We can understand the meaning of this word by putting the words ‘sub’ and ‘mission’ together as one word.  The idea here is that when we make Jesus our Lord, and we reverence Jesus, we come to respect and reverence one another, so that we ‘submit’ to each other as our common ‘mission’ for life.  Isn’t that what soldier’s do?  They ‘submit’ to their commander, because they believe in the same mission and share the same mission.

So, the first point Paul makes, is that before we can rightly understand our ‘submission’ in a marriage, in a family, or in a household, we must first understand that everything we do is shaped by our ‘submission’ and our ‘reverence’ to Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord.  Only when we make Jesus our King, are we then asked to submit to each other, so that we can best come together to serve the Lord.   

WIVES,  SUBMIT TO YOUR HUSBANDS

Now we come to the more disconcerting word where Paul writes that ‘wives should submit to their husbands, as to the Lord (v.22).’  Those can certainly become dangerous, if not deadly commands, when they are removed from their Christian context, and transferred into the context of a fallen world that does not know Jesus or his love.

What we must understand, first of all, is that when Paul instructed ‘wives to submit to their husbands, as to the Lord’, Paul was not saying that ‘women should submit to all men.’  Paul only says ‘to their own husbands’ not to other men.  But having all women submit to all men was descriptive of how the Jewish world was, and it was also descriptive of how the Greek and Roman world were, but this is not how the church was supposed to be.  

In another text, Paul tells us how the church was supposed to be, implying how the redeemed world could come to be ‘in Christ’, when he gave us the grand goal of the coming redemption of all human relationships, when he wrote that ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  (Gal. 3:28, NIV).  This is certainly not descriptive of how the world was at that time, but it was prescriptive of how the world should be, can be, and will be, when God finally brings us to the fullness of our redemption. 

So understanding this difference between words in the Bible that describe how faith transforms who we are, but also other words that prescribe the goal of life and relationships, as they should be, we can understand already, that when Paul said that ‘women are to submit to their own husbands’ that this is rightly describes how Christ begins to transform us, but it doesn’t fully prescribe all we should be in Christ.   How do we know the difference?  Well, in short, the Bible says we don’t always know.  “In does not yet appear what we shall be,” John wrote, but ‘when Christ shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1 Jn. 3:2).’  John’s point is that there is no limit in how or who can be transformed by God’s love.

Now, I don’t want to get too technical about how we should rightly understand, and not misunderstand Paul’s words about submission.  To put it most simply, we know that Paul’s world and ours too, must have structure and order to keep from becoming chaos.  The way the world was ordered then was patriarchal and male.  There is no mistake about that.  This was the normal way of doing things; men ran things, men had more freedom than women, men own their daughters and gave them away in marriage, and it was, good or bad, in most every way, a man’s world.  In some ways, it still is.  But the difference is that the ‘gospel’ has entered into this fallen, male-dominated world, like leaven rising up in bread dough.  As the gospel truth, whether religious, social or political, continues to secretly rise up through human life, life continues to be transformed from domination to liberation, from selfishness to service, and from submission to sharing and partnership.  Paul saw this kind of equality already becoming a given in Jesus’ love for each of us, but he also did not yet see this kind of equality already realized in the traditions and social structures of the church and the world.  He sees the ‘tradition’ of marriage as being touched by Christ’s love, in everyone submits and humbles themselves to each other, but he still did not see full transformation in the actual practice of how a marriage could work differently.  In his day, men still had hold the world together, and women were expected to help and submit to their husband’s.

Perhaps the great difference for Paul, was not what a marriage was, but rather how this ‘submission’ could happen, in a way that was not detrimental or dangerous for a woman.  Paul plainly expects that when a women submits to her husband, it is only because ‘the man has already left father and mother’ to ‘cleave to his wife’ (Matt. 19:5).  Only when the husband has left everything to lovingly ‘cleave to his wife’ is the woman commanded to lovingly, submit to the love of her husband.  Paul’s point is that the wife is only called to ‘submit’ to love, and is never called to submit to abuse, force, or unreasonable demands.

HUSBANDS, LOVE YOUR WIVES

Speaking of how Paul could require wives to ‘submit’ to their own husbands, brings us to Paul’s second part of the traditional marriage requirement.  “Husbands. Love your wives as Christ loved the church.” 

If you think the wives had the most challenging command, you haven’t fully understood the full meaning. Christian wives are only called to ‘submit’ to their Christian husbands when their husbands live like Jesus and love like Jesus.  When a husband uses his strength, his will, and his leadership like this, I can’t imagine any sensible woman not submitting to him, as he has already sacrificed and submitted himself to her.  That’s the full and correct reading of this text in all its Christian meaning and message.  It’s also the only descriptive interpretation that prescribes what can and should be, when, as Paul said, ‘all become one in Jesus Christ’. 

But before we talk more about ‘oneness’, I want to talk some more about the right use of male-power and strength; the strength and power of loving ‘your wives as Christ loved the church.”   What kind of ‘love’ and what kind of ‘power’ is was this then, and still is now?  You will never understand the goodness of Paul’s understanding of marriage, until you also understand his knowledge of God’s saving, sacrificial, and serving love.

Not long ago, my pastor’s group was required to read a book on helping people deal with depression.  It was very interesting to learn more about this most common illness, which can even affect Christians and ministers too.  There were several well-researched findings in the book, but one of the chapters dealt with how ‘depression’ in one person can affect a family or a marriage.  Statistics about depression reveal that while both men and women can become depressed, women, probably because of their chemical makeup to bear children, are more susceptible to becoming depressed.  Their depression can have an impact on the marriage relationship, but one of the greatest impacts is that it often reverses the male roll, because more men have to care for their depressed wives, than women having to care for depressed men.

What I thought was powerful, was to think how much the idea of a man ‘caring’ for his wife, is exactly one of the things it means for a man ‘to love his wife’ as Christ loved the church.   In the ancient Jewish world, one of the most depressing realities for women, was that their natural biological clock would render them impure for society around them, but what exactly what Paul sees here, is a transformation of this social and religious problem, by a loving husband who not only ‘loves’ his wife sacrificially, but whose love also ‘cleanses’ his wife from any ritualistic or religious impurities, whether real or imagined.  What is this means, to put it simply, is that it in a marriage, it was the husband’s sacrifice of love that restored ritual ‘purity’ to the wife, just like Christ’s love restores the moral purity of the church for the hope of the world.

In short, it’s the husband’s serving and sacrificial love that is supposed to lead in holding the marriage together, just like Christ’s servant, sacrificial brings hope and salvation into the world.  When husband ‘love their wives more than their own bodies’, then a husband loves, like Jesus loves, and the wife can rightly, even necessarily, submit to this kind of love. 

It’s always a two-way process in a marriage; just like it is in faith too.  Jesus loves us, we love Jesus.  Jesus gave himself fully for us, but salvation is not realized in us until we give our life fully to him.  In the same way, as we often say, ‘it takes two to make a marriage’.  But perhaps, what Paul is also saying is that it takes ‘three’. The couple working together as they both submit to the loving Lordship of Jesus Christ.

TWO WILL BECOME ONE

There’s a lot more to learn about the humble, shared, and servant-oriented Christian call and command to the willing and mutual submission of love and life; but it all comes to its final goal when Paul concludes his discussion about Christian marriage with the idea of ‘oneness’.   When he comes to speaking about marriage as the way two people, husband and wife, become ‘one flesh’, he then immediately jumps to the ‘great mystery’ of the hope for ‘oneness’ between Christ and His Church.

Here Paul corresponds the relational dimension of life directly to the religious dimension of life.  How we work to become one in our marriages, or don’t work to become one, will have a direct impact on how well we work to become one in our relationship with God and with others in the church.  The reverse is also true: how we become one with God and with others in the church, will have a direct impact on how well we can work to become one in our marriage relationships.

When you think about ‘oneness’ and ‘unity’ as one of the most important goals in all human life, you can’t help but think how Paul’s words bear true in every level of human learning today; in psychology and behavior science.  One of the greatest realities in our world is ‘brokenness’ and alienation.  This is what Paul spoke about in the opening lines of this letter, speaking of how ‘we were all dead in trespasses and sins’ until this God, ‘who is rich in mercy’ with ‘his great love, loved us.’  It is out of this ‘great love’ of God that God has given us ‘his peace’ and ‘broken down the walls of separation’ that can exist between us. 

Now, this is of course religious language, but it is still true language, because it points us straight to the most fundamental need of every human being, to receive and to give love.  Because God has given us love, we can ‘break down walls’ of separation and division between us, whether these wall goes up in politics, religion, or in our most personal relationships, like a family and a marriage.  It’s God’s peace, Paul says, that gives us the ability to find a way to be at peace with each other, and to find ways of reconciliation and restoration of the ‘oneness’ and the ‘relationships’ that can be and should be, simply because they are the ways we are created to be, and to love each other in this life.

One of the greatest examples of God’s restoring, redemptive love at work in the world was during the “Truth and Reconciliation” Commission that worked to resolve the distrust between blacks and whites during South Africa’s Apartheid.  Murders, lies, hate, injustices, and unfairness was present on both sides, and the only way out of this relational mess, was that people had to come together, admit their flaws and failures in a public forum, and they were asked to forgive each other, and release each other, when at all possible.

One of the most moving scenes of a movie made about Desmond Tutu, who oversaw the ‘Commission’, was how it was finally admitted that an irresponsible policeman intentionally looked the other way, while a woman’s innocent daughter was ruthlessly and racially murdered. When the policeman finally was confronted with his crime, he struggled to admit that he failed in his responsibility, as a policeman, to protect that little girl.  After the mother stood up and explained to this policeman how he had ‘robbed’ her of the greatest person in her life,  and held him responsible for the crime, remarkable she then proceeded to ‘forgive’; saying that he would have no power over her heart to turn her toward hate, in the way that his own heart had turned to hate.  It’s was that mother’s forgiveness, and the forgiveness of many others, that provided the only way forward for healing in that racially divided land.

Folks, isn’t this what the gospel is supposed to be about, ‘making a way, when there is no other way?’  In this world, with all the destructive, divisive, and dysfunctional behaviors we constantly witness, and how harder and harder it is to get people to turn away from all life’s distractions, and to work on the most important things in life, it’s hard to imagine how two people can still come together and become ‘one flesh’.  But as Jesus reminded us, ‘with God, all things are possible’. 

And the greatest possibilities come into this world, when people love each other, care for each other, and help take care of each other.  There is no greatest place to practice this kind of love than in a marriage.  There is no greater love to practice in our marriages and in all human relationships, than the love Christ displayed when, as Paul says, he ‘gave himself’ to establish the church.  It is this kind of undying love, that not only keeps life going, it keeps us going so that life is worth living, and makes us people who find worth living our lives reflecting God’s love.  Amen.