April 15, 2024

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Find out what pleases the Lord. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the Church; His body of which He is the Savior. Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5.10; 22-24)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Let there be no confusion. I understand the angst many women may have, much less wives (which in today’s world becomes a mixed gender question) about submitting to men, in general, and husbands, in specific. Further, let there be no confusion that the call to submission is first a spiritual call of obedience to God’s Word literally (the revelation in scripture) and figuratively (in Jesus Christ who is, was and will always be God’s Word made flesh by the Spirit.) Paul does not hedge on this. The call to submission is a holding in accountability for both husbands and wives, men and women. That accountability is our relationship to Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, fellow servant and friend. You have seen in my reflections that accountability when I speak of “Adam’s Sin” which is the orginal sin exposed in the Garden of Eden. The original sin is not that Eve took the “apple,” the forbidden fruit image, and joined with the Serpent to submit to temptation. The story is clear on the point that Adam was watching, not intervening. Adam was God’s sentinel in the Garden and co-servant with Eve in accomplishing that which God had given to them since before they were conceived in the womb of God’s imagination. We might also have to admit that there was, as in the famous words from the movie Cool Hand Luke, “…a failure to communicate. Strange, is it not, that communication is a critical element even in the creation of the Heavens and the earth. Here is the formula:

God spoke a creative command. Holy Spirit listened and fulfilled that command. Elements in chaos responded in order and became what was commanded. God spoke a blessing of sanctification (set aside for a specific purpose; usually in the spiritual realm).

Not only do we have communications in the heavenly realm but God spoke to His people on earth. They were in regular communion/communication. There didn’t seem to be any breakdown of communication. God did not have set hours of operation that His people had to abide by apart from the Sabbath day. They did not have to make an appointment to see God and inquire of Him mostly because they had all they needed. What is obvious in the story, though we may debate the authentic intention of it, temptation did not rise up as a real opportunity until God said “Don’t.” I shudder to think of this very truth in today’s political leadership situation with President Biden. “Don’t” seems to be his favorite word. It is wielded as a parent to disobedient children because the parent has no more authority to encourage and support obedience than to say “Don’t.” There is no reasoning. There is no rationale. There is only the command. And, in great part, “Don’t” ought to be reason enough but it isn’t. It isn’t because in this world between human beings the lack of authenticity, integrity and sincere relationship bound to the welfare of all concerned is weak. In truth, in many cases it simply is absent. Again using that Cool Hand Luke phraseology “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” A good working definition of communication might look like this: When a message is given and received in such a way that the response given is mutually beneficial then we have effectively communicated.

Bearing this in mind, we see that God didn’t just say “Don’t.” And neither should we. God said, “The garden is full of fruit that you may harvest and eat at any time. However, there is one tree from which you must not eat. It is found in the center of the Garden. Eat of its fruit and you will surely DIE.” Now whether Adam and Eve understood the word “die” or not the reasoning was clear. Eat the fruit from any other tree and life goes on as usual: happy, content and blessed. Eat from the fruit of that tree and something different will be experienced. Adam and Eve didn’t debate the subject. They may have no even fully considered the weight of God’s word of warning. It was accepted, as most children do, as truth until it wasn’t. Even then, it wasn’t truth until they experienced “the other.” The same can be said for the Decalogue, The Ten Commandments. They are not invitations to temptation. They are the guidelines of sanctified and righteous living. Those ten “don ‘ts” are actually ten “things you wouldn’t do because you enjoy a right relationship with me.” It was more of a checklist of accountability to say “this is what it means to be a child of God.” Of course, we all have sinned and fallen short of that checklist. Even the rich young ruler who boasted that he had fulfilled the commands as Jesus laid out to be the prerequisites for “inheriting/gaining eternal life,” found himself still a little short when Jesus said “There is one more thing you must do.” Jesus didn’t say “Fulfill all ten starting with having no other god before Yahweh Elohim.” Jesus didn’t even say, “Fulfill the Shema” which contains the greatest commandments of all and which fulfills all the Law and the Prophets. Jesus did say, “Sell all that you have and give it to the poor and submit yourself to trusting me for the rest of your journey.” What?

So, here we hear in Paul’s exhortation to the Community of Faith in Jesus as the Christ there in Ephesus, “Wives submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord.” The level of accountability was and is based on the simply trust that each woman had placed themselves in relating to Jesus as their Christ, their Messiah, their Lord and Savior and friend. In the same measure you love Christ, I did not say in the say way-mind you, love your husbands. We see the breakdown, right? Eve did not in her moment of weakness consider either God or man. She considered only herself and the challenge to consider a life independent from everything she had known to this point. By equal measure, Adam did not take into consideration the area of danger Eve was wandering into either. He did not think of what would have to her or to him. He did not consider how God would respond to their saying “Don’t tell me I can’t.” It was okay for them until it wasn’t. They submitted first to themselves as individuals separately and not together whether they were as one image of God or one created from the other. The danger came in their failure to communicate an effective intervention and stand strong against something that was not of God. And they knew who God was because they walked with Him and talked with Him and called Him their own just as God did with them. It seems that we have forgotten how to walk. We jumped from crawling to running to groveling to getting in over our heads because we continue to have a “failure to communicate.” That is what a lack of submission does.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit brought us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit so that others may be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind that we would know that we are Your people and that You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.