One such text is today’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Since I’ve been here, this text has been read in public worship roughly 5 times. And 5 times, your various preachers have preferred to wrestle instead with the very challenging passage from John’s gospel, rather than tiptoe through this Ephesian minefield, which one on-line commentator has dubbed “that submission thing.” Still, the preacher who willfully ignores a troublesome text always has the nagging sense that the congregation has not ignored it, and, in fact, is too busy struggling with it to attend to the preacher’s preferred subject. Since you are probably all thinking about it anyway, let us gaze unflinchingly at this scriptural Medusa and hope we will not be turned to stone. For the Bible says; “Wives, be subject to your husbands…For the husband is the head of the wife…wives ought to be, in everything, [subject] to their husbands.”(Ephesians 5:22-24)

AMEN. 

What? We’re not through?……I guess you noticed that I didn’t read the entire passage, only about ¼ of it, and then only in a highly selective, heavily edited version. Unfortunately, it has been the tendency of some in the Church to read it exactly this way, conveniently ignoring the missing words, not to mention the remaining ¾ of the passage. At its best, this sort of reading causes us to miss Paul’s intended point and risk losing a precious opportunity. At its worst, it has given cover to those who would use scripture to justify the un-Christian domination or even abuse of women at the hands of their husbands.

For more than two hundred years, biblical scholars have been telling the Church that when we say the scriptures are the Word of God, we do not mean they are the literally dictated, directly transmitted words of God. Rather, they are attempts by faithful people to use human language to describe an experience of God and its meaning for our lives. The Letter to the Ephesians is a treatise on Christian ethics, Paul’s effort, based on his own understanding of the nature of God and Christ, to explore how faith leads to the formation of faithful, Christ-like patterns of living. Naturally, since many of his audience in the faith community were members of families, it was necessary to address how God might, (in the words of our Marriage ceremony), “give them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life.” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 429)

Like all biblical writers, Paul was a product of his time and the letter reflects both his own Judaic tradition and the cultural realities of Ephesus, with its strong Greco/Roman and Jewish influences. A typical household, structured around a marriage of a man and a woman, would reflect the norms of both traditions. Chief among these norms would be the unquestioned and unlimited authority of the man as the head of the household and the subservience of the woman in all matters of importance. This widespread understanding, encoded in civil law, served as the template for Paul’s meditation on the character of the Christian family.

It is ironic that the passage is often dismissed today as a chauvinist attempt to spiritualize and institutionalize the oppression of women. This is understandable, given the way the passage has been misread and misused by those inclined to oppress. However, a closer reading suggests that Paul’s intent was quite the opposite. His objective was not to reinforce injustice, but to see how the existing model, with all its imperfections, might be transformed and sanctified by the infusion of godly principles into a showpiece of spiritual freedom for all concerned. As we shall see, Paul’s vision of family life is grounded in his commitment to Christ’s establishment of the Realm of God on earth, in which human relationships mirror the relationship between creature and Creator, properly understood.

If the writing of scripture is culturally conditioned, so is our reading of it. Until fairly recently, male dominance in marriage, Church and society was still assumed, as was the traditional pairing of a man and woman at the center of families. Today, the Church has learned to accept the leadership of women and recognizes all sorts and conditions of families. I would argue that the spiritual wisdom of scripture is timeless, not limited by the presuppositions of those who wrote it down and the Church that received it back then. So, if there is anything in Ephesians 5 that is useful for building up Christian households in 21st century Brown County, we need to get over any perceived failing on Paul’s part, look past his 1st century cultural norms and the particularity of the male/ female partnership, and ask how Paul’s spiritual principles might apply more broadly to us.

First of all, let’s restore the missing words and read the remaining ¾ of the text so often left unexamined.

The most common error of those who would justify the status quo by means of scripture, is to conveniently ignore its context. This teaching on wifely submission, beginning in verse 22, cannot possibly be separated from the verse that immediately precedes it. This is Paul’s fundamental spiritual condition for family life, upon which all the rest depends; “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (v.21)

However we might wish Paul had not muddied the waters in verse 22, we simply can’t avoid the clear meaning of the text in light of verse 21. This is not about male dominance; not about dominance of any kind; it is about mutuality. The key to understanding is that this mutual submission is done out of reverence for and devotion to Christ. To revere Christ is to follow his example. Elsewhere, Paul implores us to have the same mind as Christ, who did not use his status with God to dominate, but humbled himself in obedient submission to God’s purpose, taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6-7). This is the hard work of discipleship, where every relationship, every encounter is an opportunity to imitate Christ’s sacrificial service. From a spiritual point of view, this mutual submission, uniquely powerful in an intimate relationship, accelerates the ongoing process of conversion of two individuals into the image of the Savior. True, there is a particular value in the harmonizing and blending of male and female energies, which Paul describes in verse 31, saying “the two will become one flesh.” But the key principle of Christ-like submission can be extended to every variety of relationship between all sorts and conditions of persons.

Why did Paul go on to emphasize the importance of submission for the wife? One commentator suggests that Paul’s own previous writing (Galatians 3:28) had stressed that in Christ, all distinctions of gender, race or class are obliterated. Could some women in the Church have mistaken this new sense of freedom for license to disrespect the men who had once dominated them? Perhaps Paul hoped to guide them toward more spiritually productive behavior, for their own sake and that of their families and the Church. Let’s chalk it up to Paul’s cultural indoctrination and move on to consider the remainder of the passage, those verses most often overlooked and of greatest importance. After directing 3 verses at wives, Paul devotes 8 to the submission of the husband…he just doesn’t call it by that name. He calls it love. Throughout all of scripture, there is no greater form of submission to God or persons than to give oneself in love.

In his contemporary bible translation, The Message, Eugene Peterson puts it beautifully: “Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ's love makes [her] whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her…radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives.”

And that’s how every member of every household of the faithful ought to love – husbands & wives, children & parents, in-laws, life-partners, companions – all committed to the hard work of mutual submission, in imitation of and obedience to Christ, who gave us the only measuring stick for judgment of any family; “Love one another as I have loved you.” And this time, I really mean it when I say; “AMEN”.