Texts (click here for full text of the readings):
   Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-25; Psalm 16; Ephesians 5:21-33; John 6:60-69

Around our house, if I know what’s good for me, there are certain Biblical passages I stay away from.  Today’s reading from Ephesians is one of them. Trust me, I’ve tried it. Early on in our marriage when we were faced with a decision of critical importance, like whether to watch SportsCenter or some other less important program, I would invoke the words of Ephesians: “Wife,” I would say, “be subject to me, your husband, as you are to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.  And so we must watch SportsCenter.”

I didn’t get very far. In fact, I might have actually taken a few steps backwards every time I tried that line of argument. Pretty soon I gave up, and tranquility returned to our house.

Other husbands have had better luck than me. A while back I saw an interview with a former professional football player turned evangelist and his wife. The evangelist was talking about these verses from Ephesians, and he was getting away with it!  His wife was just sitting there nodding in agreement.  But he was also giving her a lot of credit, for he said that if the husband was the head, then the wife was the neck.  The very top of the neck, even. Almost to the jawline! She was that close to being equal to the husband.

I learned a lot from that interview, because it showed that even people who take these verses at face value realize that we live in a different world than the author of Ephesians did. You can’t get away with treating women like property, like they did in the ancient world.  We’ve discovered new things about ourselves; we’ve called into question the assumptions of the past; and to our modern minds, men and women are equal.  It just seems like common sense.

So how do we deal with the fact that Ephesians tells us straight out that wives are to be subject to their husbands, but husbands are only supposed to love their wives?  We could go back to the first verse of today’s reading, which talks about all of us being subject to one another.  But the letter is very specific: wives need to be subject to husbands, not the other way around, and for very theological reasons.  The husband is like Christ and the wife is like the church. And we’re certainly not going to say that Christ and the church are equals.  So we’re stuck with this command that doesn’t fit with our modern sensibilities.  So what do we do?

First, we have to recognize that there are various biblical commands which we violate each and every day. Jesus ordered his followers, “Call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven” (Matthew 23:9), yet we call our priests “father” all the time. Paul states rather clearly that “women should be silent in churches.  For they are not permitted to speak” (1 Corinthians 14:34), yet we allow women to make announcements, and read the lessons, and preach, and baptize, and even ordain. How can we flaunt the Bible this way?

The answer lies in the context.  As we all know, the Bible wasn’t written by one person at one sitting for one overriding purpose.  The books of the Bible were written over centuries for various purposes.  Each of the four gospel writers recounted the life of Jesus Christ, but each was writing to a specific audience, so he emphasized what that audience needed to hear.  And the Epistles were letters addressed to specific churches, so the authors were responding to the needs and concerns of that particular community.

Here’s an example of context.  If someone e-mails me and goes on and on about how sinful they are, how they’re not worthy of salvation, how God could never love them, I’m going to reply with an e-mail that goes on and on about how God loves them, and that salvation is by faith alone, and that God will welcome the broken-hearted into His kingdom.  And I probably won’t say much about sin. 

But if someone writes that they’re a fine and dandy person and that’s enough to get into the kingdom of heaven, isn’t it?, I’m going to say a lot about sin and the need for redemption and the huge sacrifice Jesus made for them.  Sure, I’ll talk about how God loves them, but it’ll be more of a shape-up-or-ship-out kind of e-mail.

So if someone who doesn’t know me gets a hold of both of my e-mails, they might think I’m a little unstable. First I say sin isn’t all that important, and then I say it’s the most important thing of all.  At one point I say that what we are is enough for God, and later I say we have to grow up and mature. Aren’t those contradictions?

It’s clear, I think, that they’re not contradictions, because in real life we tell people what we think they need to hear. If they’ve got half the truth down pat, we have to show them the other half.  It’s not a question of which one is right; it’s a question of which side of the story we emphasize, knowing that both are right, to some extent.

Let’s get back to the Bible, and start at the beginning. The Old Testament, as we all know, is the story of the Jewish people – a rather small group who were persecuted by one foreign power after another. So it’s not surprising that the Old Testament focuses on procreation: “Be fruitful and multiply,” Genesis (1:28) says. Activities that maximized the number of children were encouraged. Polygamy was one.  Another was divorcing a barren wife.  Indeed, Jewish law required a man whose wife hadn’t produced children after 10 years of marriage to either divorce her, or take a second wife who could have children. 

When Jesus entered this world, He shook its foundations. Speaking of divorce, He said that “what … God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). No mention of procreation there. No description of women being valuable only for bearing children.  Marriage is a relationship, and a permanent one at that.

Jesus also shocked the authorities when He proclaimed that “those who are considered worthy … in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God” (Luke 20:35-36). In one fell swoop Jesus did away with the view that women were defined by their relationship to men.  Singleness became an option.  Each human being, regardless of gender, was inherently valuable.

Paul picked up on this theme in his first letter to the Corinthians, where he says this: “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am” (7:8).  Paul was speaking to the outcasts of society: women who had no men to protect them, no men to define them. Paul told them that they didn’t need husbands, because God loved them just the way they were.

And then Paul dropped the bombshell in Galatians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). In one verse Paul obliterates hierarchy and division.  “All … are one in Christ Jesus.”

You can imagine what happened. The people on the bottom of the totem pole – the Greeks, the slaves, the women – got a whiff of equality and ran with it. They said, “If we’re all one in Christ Jesus, then I can reach my own conclusions, I can speak my mind, I can live my own life.” And the people who used to be at the top of the totem pole – the Jews, the slave-owners, the men – weren’t happy at all.  They’d lost their authority and their power.  And the church was threatening to break apart.

And then we come to Ephesians. It’s generally accepted that this letter was written in Paul’s name by one of Paul’s followers. That was a common practice in the ancient world, and there are hefty differences in language and theme between Ephesians and the letters Paul wrote himself. This letter was written relatively late in the 1^st century, after people had had a chance to react to the revolutionary proclamations of Corinthians and Galatians. 

At first glance, Ephesians seems to contradict those earlier letters.  Today’s portion of Ephesians tells wives to be subject to their husbands, and just a few verses later it says: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ” (6:5).

But different situations call for different emphases, as we saw earlier. The author of Ephesians was probably trying to be a peacemaker, and a moderator. Perhaps he realized that the people weren’t ready yet to hear the transformative message of Jesus, and the revolutionary words of Paul.  The people in power – the Jews who lorded their heritage over the Greeks, the slave owners who profited from human ownership, the men who loved being able to tell their wives what to do and what to think – those people didn’t want anything to do with equality, with a world where we are all one in Christ Jesus. 

So the writer of Ephesians took the middle ground. He took a big step back from the radical proclamations of Jesus and Paul, but he wasn’t willing to just go back to the status quo.  Even if equality was too much to hope for, the writer of

 Ephesians demanded some improvement in the system.  At least that would afford the outcasts of society some measure of protection.

OK, he said, own slaves for the time being, but bear in mind that “both [slave and owner] have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality” (6:9). And you slaves, “render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not men and women” (6:7). 

As for husbands, you should love your wives, “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25).  Just as Christ stood by the church even when the church experienced troubles and challenges, so also should husbands stay with their wives, not leaving them because they can’t bear children.  And wives, “be subject to your husbands, as you are to the Lord” (5:22).  And here the author puts it all into theological perspective: you’re not less than your husband; you are beloved of God, and you should love your husband as the church loves Christ.

The writer of Ephesians fought to improve the lives of slaves and women and the other outcasts of society.  In that time and in that place, full equality wasn’t possible, so instead he put everything into theological terms, comparing human relationships with relationships with God, so that, at least, women and slaves wouldn’t be abused or discarded.  At least their lot in life would be better than it had been for so many centuries; and someday, hopefully, the church would live out the words of Jesus and Paul in all their fullness.

That day wouldn’t come anytime soon. It was hundreds, thousands, of years off.  Even in our lifetimes, we’ve witnessed the battle of faithful Christians to be included in the church. Forty years ago this week Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and proclaimed that he had a dream “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’”  The battle to fight racism and the vestiges of slavery in our church wages on, and we can still only dream of the day when this church will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “All of us are one in Christ Jesus.”

So also for women, who speak the Word of God in ways that men cannot, and who were silenced for so long by selective readings of Scripture, blind to context, intent only on maintaining the status quo, and the privileges of power. We’ve come far, with female priests and bishops and evangelists and prophets, but we cannot rest on our laurels.

Because the Gospel calls us to repentance and transformation, it will always be beyond our grasp. Our task today is to take up the gauntlet laid down by Jesus and Saint Paul; to look past the compromises made by the early church in a desperate quest for unity; and to search the Scriptures for the people God intended us to be: united, equal, free, and redeemed.

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