Sermon for April 28th, 2024
Ephesians 5:1-33
1Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 3 But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among saints. 4Entirely out of place is obscene, silly, and vulgar talk; but instead, let there be thanksgiving. 5Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient. 7Therefore do not be associated with them. 8For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— 9for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. 10Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. 11Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; 13but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, ‘Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’
15 Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, 19as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, 20giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. 24Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, 27so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. 28In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, 30because we are members of his body. 31‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ 32This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. 33Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.
United We Stand, Part V
A new Superstore just opened up recently in some parts of the country. It’s called “The Husband Store” and you can go there to buy…a husband. But here are the rules of the store: It has five floors, and once you go up to the next floor, you can never go back down to the previous one. One day, a single woman went into the store looking for a husband. She read all the rules, and then went into the first floor showroom, where there was a large sign that said: “Welcome to the First Floor: All the men on this floor have jobs.” The woman thought to herself that this was a pretty good start, but she had a pretty decent job herself, so she decided to go up and see what was on the second floor. There she found a sign saying, “Welcome to the Second Floor: All the men on this floor have high-paying jobs, and are great with children.” Impressed, she looked around for a while, but soon decided she wanted to see what was on the third floor. She went up, and found a sign saying: “Welcome to the Third Floor: All the men on this floor have high-paying jobs, are great with children, and are extremely good-looking.” The woman was beside herself with excitement…but a thought crept into her mind: “There are still two more floors, and things just keep getting better, so…” She went up to the fourth floor, where she found a sign that said, “Welcome the Fourth Floor: All the men on this floor have high-paying jobs, are great with children, are extremely good-looking, have a strong romantic streak…and they will do all the housework!” This, of course, was everything the woman had been hoping for in a husband. What could the fifth and final floor possibly have that these men didn’t? But now she just had to find out… so she went up the elevator to the fifth floor, where she found another sign. This one said, “Welcome to the Fifth Floor: You are visitor number 6,234,369. There are no men on this floor. It exists solely to prove the point that some people can never be pleased.
Now, before some of you get too offended, please know that you can find both versions of this joke on the internet: A Husband Superstore, and A Wife Superstore. The jokes are almost identical, just with the stereotypical attributes changed. I chose to tell you this version because in the Wife Superstore joke some of the attributes on each floor are not quite appropriate for a church setting.
But I also wanted you to see how easy it is to get hung up on those gender labels and roles—If you were offended at the Husband Superstore, would you have laughed at the Wife Superstore? Or if you laughed at this joke, would you have been offended at the other version? Or did some of you just feel left out of the joke altogether?
And of course, that’s something I want you to keep in mind as we approach today’s scripture passage, which includes some pretty controversial verses. As Presbyterians, we never just accept blindly whatever the Pastor says without critical and intellectual examination. But today, I am going to ask you to at least withhold judgment until the end of the sermon. I am going to ask you to give me (and the Apostle Paul in his words to the Ephesian church) the benefit of the doubt, and not walk out halfway through the sermon before I have a chance to bring it all together. Deal?
Another important thing we do, as Presbyterians, is to consider the scriptures in their wider context—that’s why you’ll never hear me preach an entire sermon on just two or three random, scattered Bible verses chosen to back up a point I’m trying to make. We look at large chunks of scripture, sometimes entire chapters and books, so that we can understand what point God is trying to make. We put those difficult verses in their proper context, and we don’t skip over them just because we don’t agree with them (or rather, because they don’t agree with us).
So today, we’re going to look at the Apostle Paul’s words—especially those words about wives submitting to their husbands—in the context of the entire book of Ephesians, and also in the context of a very 1st century Roman city. And then (only then) you can make whatever judgment you like, about Paul’s words, or mine.
To recap the past few weeks: Paul the Apostle, from prison, writes this letter to a church he planted in the Roman city of Ephesus. The church has a mixture of Jewish Christians and Greek Christians, and sometimes the Jewish Christians want the Greek Christians to be… well, more Jewish. Paul has told them, no, this isn’t necessary. In Christ we are a NEW creation. But (and this is where he goes in the first half of today’s chapter) you do still have to be a NEW creation. You don’t have to adopt all the Jewish laws and customs, but you DO have to leave behind your old ways, your sexual immorality and greed (in verse 3), your obscene, silly, and vulgar talk (in verse 4), and your drunken debauchery (in verse 18).
To understand all this, you have to remember that Greek and Roman culture, for all its gifts to the world in art, literature, philosophy and architecture, was also the culture that invented the drunken orgy, exploitative child pornography, and legalized, systematized pedophilia. And all of those practices were closely intertwined with Greek and Roman religious rituals. So Paul is saying to the Ephesians, in the first half of chapter 5, you don’t have to be Jewish in order to follow Christ, but you also cannot continue to be what you WERE. You need a new way to be.
What is that new way? It’s the family way, the smallest unit of influence in a massive culture of exploitation: It’s the Christian household, and the governing principle for all the examples that will follow is in verse 21: Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is the umbrella statement. EVERYONE be subject to one another, or in some translations, “submit” to one another.
In verses 22 through 32, and then in the next chapter verses 1 through 9, Paul singles out three pairs of examples, each pair with a leader and a follower. As I list them, I want you to pay more attention to the verbs and the direction of flow, and don’t get too stuck on the roles or labels:
- Wives, be subject to your husbands
- Husbands, love your wives.
- Children, obey your parents.
- Fathers, don’t provoke your children to anger
- Slaves, obey your masters
- Masters, treat your slaves well.
Your perspective on these pairs, and who’s in charge, is probably conditioned by when you exist in history. If you were reading Ephesians just one hundred years ago in the United States of America, you might have said, “Slaves, obey your masters? That’s wrong. Slavery is wrong. We abolished that.” But you probably would have agreed with the part about wives submitting to their husbands. Even as a woman. If you don’t believe me, read the writings of the earliest suffragettes, in their own words. They wanted the right to vote, but most still thought that the husband was the “natural leader” of the family. And they thought that because they were products of their time, even as they also advanced the rights of women in their time.
If you’re reading Ephesians today, you’d probably say, “wives submit to your husbands? That’s wrong. That’s sexist. And so is slavery, for that matter.” But what if I said, okay, then—I’m going to tell all your children that they don’t have to obey you any more.
No wait a minute, Pastor. We agree with that one. That one makes sense. Of course children have to obey their parents; it’s for their safety and protection. We know what’s best for them. They couldn’t possibly take care of themselves. I don’t disagree! But… isn’t that exactly what men said about women, and what masters said about slaves, in centuries past? But Pastor Neal, this one is clearly different! You may be right; I hope you’re right, but history may judge us to be just as wrong as we judge those who went before us. I think it’s better to try to understand than to try to judge.
Paul is a product of his time, but he’s doing his best to improve the lives—all of the lives—of his congregants, whether men, women, children, or slaves. He is aware of the inflexible power structures of his time, and he is not in a position to change much of anything in Rome, from his prison cell.
The greatest NFL quarterback alive today is utterly incapable of standing in his own end zone, and throwing the football all the way into the opposing end zone. Instead, he has to pass the ball, run the ball, collaborate with others to advance the ball down the field one yard at a time. And that’s how human progress works. That’s how God’s plan works—through God’s people, one yard at a time. So Paul says to those in his congregation:
“Yes, wives submit to your husbands, children obey your parents, slaves obey your masters. That’s our reality, that’s the law of the land BUT… here’s a new law: Husbands, you’d better love your wives and be kind to your children, and treat your slaves well. If you are the leader of your family—by law, by consent, by culture, or whatever else—if you are the leader, you had better be prepared to lay everything down, including your own life, to protect those in your care. And to do that, you gotta love them. Paul couldn’t have known that his little letter to the Ephesians would be copied, printed, and transmitted across centuries and continents. And so I like to think that he threw the ball long.
But here we are in the 21st century, and now Paul’s words seem dated and backward to us—and indeed some people in some churches try to use his words (incorrectly, I believe) to take us backwards instead of forwards. Here in our own congregation, we have all kinds of beloved families: We have husbands and wives, but we also have husbands and husbands; wives and wives; single dads and single moms; we have people like Paul, who never married or had children, and we have people whose children are grown up and gone. I don’t think any of us have any slaves at the moment, but if you do, raise your hand so we can include you, too? No? My children have accused me of being a merciless slave driver once or twice.
In my family growing up, there is a legendary family photograph—a morning-time, kitchen snapshot, where my mother is dressed in her Army uniform, about to go to work. My sister and I are standing on either side of her, dressed for school, and my dad is in his bathrobe, holding the babies, my brothers, one in each arm. We love that picture because of the role-reversal, but it’s true that often my mother was the breadwinner in our family, and as an Army officer she was a natural at giving orders. My dad wasn’t always great at submitting, but he did when he needed to, for the good of the family. My mom was even worse at submitting, but she did when she needed to, for the good of the family. And they both clearly loved and supported each other, led and followed each other, for the good of the family (and their marriage). And my siblings and I were always perfectly obedient all the time.
All of us have people in our lives we are responsible for, and people we are accountable to. A lot of us today also have “you’re not the boss of me” syndrome—we actually live in a “you’re not the boss of me” country and culture. And so maybe Paul’s words, “Be subject to one another, out of reverence for Christ” are especially hard for us to hear. But usually when that’s the case, it means they’re also important to hear. And if we don’t get too hung up on the labels or specific examples that were highly relevant to Paul’s time; we are intelligent enough see how they are highly relevant to our own time, to our own unique and diverse families, marriages, and relationships.
And that’s the point I want to end with—it’s a point about the Bible and how we read it; a point that is exemplified by our text today. Some people read the Bible in a very personal way—this is God’s message to me! That’s not a bad thing, but there is a danger in forgetting that it was originally a message to someone else. If you don’t make the attempt to understand the Bible through the context and logic of the people who wrote it, on their own terms, you will misunderstand it every time—and possibly even abuse it when you are representing it to others.
But some people go to the other extreme—they read the Bible as a cultural artifact, like they might read a history book about the oddities and strange things that backwards and primitive people used to do before WE became perfectly enlightened for all time. There ARE oddities and strange things from other cultures and times in the Bible—but if you do the first thing—if you genuinely try to understand the context, if you hold back judgment and resist the temptation to dismiss the difficult parts, the parts you disagree with, I think you’ll find that it’s BOTH a very human book (written by people with hopes and dreams and fears and challenges a lot like ours) AND a very divine book—a book inspired and guided at every turn by a God who works through his people, with his people, and for his people… right down to the present day, advancing the ball further and further down the field in every generation. It IS God’s message to you, and to your family… but like the best things in life… you have to work at it; you have to understand it; you have to share it!
