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Proper 16, Year B
August 24, 2003
Christ Church, Covington
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined
to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24 & Eph. 5:21).
Our second reading this morning is the proverbial “elephant in the living
room”: not to say anything about it would be rather false. It’s an
“elephant” because we hear the words, “Wives, be subject to your husbands”
(Eph. 5:22): a sentiment that is rather out of step with modern
sensibilities, to say the least. So we need to begin by paying attention
to our “elephant”, and to point out that the Apostle is not chiefly
concerned here with the subordination of women, but instead with something
else: the subjection of Christians one to another.
“Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ”, Paul says, and
this is his chief concern; it’s also the controlling teaching which
reminds us that husbands and wives, as baptized persons and inheritors of
the kingdom, must be subject to one another. It is this primary subjection
that trumps whatever else the Apostle has to say about the subjection of
wives to husbands. So much for the “elephant”, but if you want to find out
more about it there is quite a good sermon on the subject, from August 27,
2000, posted on the web site.
What’s more interesting today is the rest of our reading, and what it has
to say to us about the relationship of men and women. In the letter to the
Ephesians, Paul takes the relationship of wife and husband and makes it a
means of understanding the relationship of Christ and the Church. Paul
himself takes us back to the origin of the human race by quoting from
Genesis, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be
joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”. Human beings are
created with difference, as men and women, which is a curious thing. Karl
Barth once wrote that men and women are different (something everybody
knows, of course), but that almost as soon as we attempt to define the
difference we get into trouble, with overly broad characterizations that
admit of a thousand exceptions. But this fact of difference (at the very
least, in our chromosomes and in our physicality) is still true, without a
doubt, coloring our whole experience of the world; in fact, it’s tied up
with creation, as God makes humanity male and female in the beginning.
Difference is there from the very first.
Not only difference, of course, but also partnership, between men and
women; also recognized by Genesis in the story of the creation of Adam and
Eve. The two become “one flesh”. Everything that follows, the whole of
human civilization, is predicated on the partnership of men and women.
An obvious truth, of course, because without the partnership of the sexes
there is no human race at all. No generation, no children, no future for
the species as a whole. The partnership isn’t limited to this, as men and
women together are the creators of every artifact of human civilization.
Still, generation and the continuity of humanity is a significant marker
of the importance of both difference and relationship between the sexes.
It’s not simply a question of marriage, of course. Children may be
engendered casually (true throughout the centuries), or through violence
(sadly true, also, for a long time), or even at a remote distance that we
would scarcely call relationship (now possible through technology). Still,
every human being comes about through difference and relationship. Each of
us is linked by our origin, even in the most attenuated circumstances, to
the partnership of men and women.
We all have a stake in this, no matter what our individual circumstances,
because we are all members of the human race. As men and women we are
different, yet related, and it’s in this difference and relationship that
human community, human civilization, and our very being itself, comes
about.
No wonder Paul calls marriage “a great mystery” (Eph. 5:32): a sign and
symbol of a great truth. For a “mystery”, in the New Testament sense, is a
secret whose meaning is being revealed, or has been revealed. Paul in fact
is claiming that this great artifact of human culture, this biological
given of our humanity, has a meaning which has been revealed, in the
relationship of Jesus and the Church.
Marriage particularly is what concerns the Apostle in our reading, and
here the partnership between men and women is very clear. Because it is
clear, it becomes the illustration that Paul offers of difference and
relationship between God and humanity. Difference and relationship create
a context of love, of charity, where sacrifice and subjection for each
other are possible. The model here is Jesus, who gives himself for the
Church, for the redeemed humanity, in love.
By ending with this vision of Christ and the Church, Paul is reminding us
that it is not just human civilization that is made possible by human
love, in difference and relationship, but also (and of infinitely more
importance) the redeemed humanity that is made possible by God’s love for
us. The story which began with Adam and Eve comes to its fruition in
Christ and the Church, nature perfected by grace in a great mystery. “The
kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his
Messiah” (Rev. 11:15). Difference and relationship, artifacts of the
earthly city, are caught up and transformed in the kingdom of Christ, even
now present among us as sign and sacrament.
The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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