Every so often, the Scriptures make it impossible for us to tune them out. By "tune them out" I mean that process by which we domesticate words like "sacrifice", "eternal life", "love", "peace", and "joy", turning them into something unthreatening and comfortable. It’s a shock when we hear, "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as you are to the Lord" (Eph. 5:22), because we can’t really "tune out" a teaching which is so different from the reality we inhabit. Someone told me this week that some churches just take this part of the reading out, or read something else entirely. That’s really too bad, and even a little bit absurd (the Church "shielding" people from the Scriptures) because the very discomfort that the reading may entail may be exactly what we need; the little shock required to keep the Scriptures from becoming bland and predictable for us.

There’s even more to it than simple "shock value". In the Letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul places this teaching about the relationship between husbands and wives under a firm heading, a heading which we might even consider to be the controlling teaching in this case. Did you notice it when it was read? Did you catch it or were you able to tune it out? Actually, it’s far more shocking and challenging than what the Apostle has to say about husbands and wives. Everything he has to say about husbands and wives ought to be read through this lens: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ".

Husbands and wives are (like all other Christians) called to be subject to one another, because they are first and foremost sharers in the redemption that Christ has won for us. We are before all else baptized people, and so this teaching applies also to husbands and wives in their relationship. Here the Apostle is saying to us, "Husbands and wives, remember that you are baptized people, sharing the identity of Christ".

There will be times of command and obedience in the Christian life, depending on relationship and circumstance, (and that is part of the value of the Apostle’s teaching) but the controlling relationship we have in Christ is service to each other and regard for each other. Imagine a relationship of obedience in which the master is the slave and you will come a bit closer to what the Apostle is talking about here. Nothing could be more different from our worldly notions about relationships of power, and we ought not to import those notions into our understanding of what is being said here about husbands and wives.

I hope that puts this shocking bit of Scripture into the proper frame. Perhaps we can now move on and focus on what is really shocking here: the fact that Christians (all Christians) are called to be subject, one to another.

To be subject to one another means to serve one another; to be available to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. Think of the Footwashing on Maundy Thursday that many of us have experienced during Holy Week: a enacted sign of the love and service that are at the heart of our relationship as Christians. To be subject to one another entails regarding one another as we regard the Lord himself (the "out of reverence for Christ" of our reading). Paul is pointing us toward the reality of our life in Christ, toward the baptism which has made us all take on Christ’s identity by our sharing in his death and resurrection. It doesn’t mean that Christians are not going to disagree, or even bicker and fight; but it does mean that those parts of our reality are simply not of ultimate importance when placed alongside the truth of Jesus Christ and what he has done for all of us.

Mutual subjection will lead to moral transformation. Great quantities of forbearance are called for in the Christian life of service; great helpings of patience and wisdom and love. Sacrifice is called for; a willingness to forego and forgive. As Paul writes just a few verses earlier, "Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God" (Eph. 4:31-5:1).

This is challenging talk; radical talk; we might even consider it shocking. This teaching has the power, through grace, to transform our life together in the Church. It has the power to transform the relationships of husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees; it even has the power to transform the world. For that to happen, we must "tune in" to God’s word to us; we must open ourselves to grace; we must become servants of each other.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

Return to Recent Sermons