Mother’s Day 2008
Who Is the Biggest Loser?
Ephesians 5:21-33
May 11, 2008
Who is the biggest loser? There is a show where people are challenged to lose weight and the one who loses the most weight is the winner. A clever play on this phrase.
On Mother’s Day, I want to think about this question in terms of how we treat one another. How we treat our mothers? How we honor our parents? Men, how we treat the ladies in our lives? Women, how we treat other women?
I was praying and meditating further on the sermon on pride. If you remember, towards the end I asserted that pride makes us blind. Pride keeps us from seeing and realizing when we are hurting others. It blinds us from the pain and suffering around us. Pride keeps us from admitting when we were wrong.
And as I was praying for direction for this day, God seem to be saying, “Ahh, remember what you said about pride.” “Yeah, Lord.” And it seems to me that this is a huge issue in culture today. How do we treat women? Sometimes we are blind to the pain we cause others by the things that we do and the words that we say. Sometimes we even refuse to admit when were wrong and we even use scripture to justify ourselves and justify our ill treatment of others. Who is the biggest loser?
One such passage is in Ephesians 5 starting at verse 21. But before we look at this and as you find this passage, a story.
A woman was trying to raise her daughter as a Christian. However, she was getting very little support from her husband who thought Christianity was ridiculous. In fact, he often tried to undermine her efforts.
One Sunday, the mother and her daughter were coming home from worship and the daughter was excited about learning about creation. Her mother went over the story with her and added some details that weren’t covered in junior church. God created Adam. Then God created Eve. And it was pretty exciting to think that God had done all this and that both of them were created by God in God’s image.
The daughter got home and with grand excitement told her father all that she learned. When she was finished, he said, “Honey, I know you are very excited about this but I need to tell that what the church is teaching is just a story. There may be some lessons to be learned about being a good person. But it is a story that is just not supported by science.” So he told her about evolution and how humans were descendents from apes. The little girls took it all in with a somber face and said that she understood. “I know that you are disappointed but it is better for you to learn the facts then to grow up believing a story is true.”
The little girl went to her mother and told her everything that her dad had told and said, “How could they both be true? Daddy says these are the facts.”
The mother replied, “Oh those are the facts all right. He was telling you about his side of the family.”
Let’s look at this important passage from Ephesians 5:21-33.
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit to your husbands as 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.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
For many years, this passage has been used to show how women are inferior and men are superior. Women are to show deference to men in every way. But this is an inappropriate way to read this.
Yes, it does say that wives are to submit to your husbands as to the Lord. But it says this right after it says, “Submit to one anther out of reverence for Christ.” This has just followed the exposition of sinful ways of life that destroy life and the admonishment to instead walk in the light of God’s ways. God’s ways lead to life. God’s ways lead to the type of life that we are meant to have. This is the life we were created for. This is why God calls us to live this way. So in mutual submission, we live out the Shema of Jesus: Love God with all your being and in doing so love others as yourself. Don’t “lord” it over them. Don’t seek domination and control and manipulation and “your own way” but seek help each and every person follow the God’s holy ways to life.
This passage is about:
• Mutual submission
But there are the next three verses that seem to very clearly indicate a sort of hierarchy. And without the rest of the verses, it would be easy to declare that God’s plan is for the woman to do whatever the man says to do. However, this misrepresents what Paul is saying.
Translations are also interpretation as well. When one translates, one has to try to determine what the intended meaning of the words is. Most words have multiple meanings and the translator uses the surrounding words to determine what crucial words mean. In this passage a crucial word has been translated as “head.”
This word is not just about the head of the body as in being over the rest of the body. In fact the connotation is not really that. The “headness” here is more akin to being the “source” just as the head of the river is often the source from which the river flows.
• Head being the source.
Thus when Paul talks about Christ washing the church there is a definite connotation baptism through the pouring out of water and then another connection through the spirit of God that is poured out. Therefore men we are to be the source for the women in our lives. We are to be the source of life. The head of a river holds nothing back. It gushes forth its own life and provides a flow that provides life, sometimes for millions of people. Men, we are to be that source.
The head is not to dominate. It is not to speak for the women. It is not the head that makes all the decisions. It means we are to be the source of life and growth and love and mercy and justice and grace in the lives of all the women in our lives.
Let me ask the men this question first. If we understand this to mean the source, how could we be the source of life for the women of our lives?
Ok, let’s ask the women. Now I don’t want to embarrass anyone. Ladies, take the pieces of paper and write down ways that the men in your life could be the source for you. I will collect them in a moment and read them that way the guys won’t feel like you are pointing fingers at them. Take your time ladies. As you think about it, I want to move on to the next point for us men.
• Sacrifice
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy.
There is nothing that Jesus held back for us collectively as his body and individually. So in order to live out God’s life-giving ways and to live out mutual submission, we are called to hold nothing back in order to help the women in our lives be all that God has created them to be. I don’t care about that fight and what she said. I don’t care about what she did that she shouldn’t have done. Jesus did not care what you did against him.
Sacrifice. While the wrong and dominant interpretation here has been to marginalize women and make men out to be some sort of kings and rulers, this is exactly the opposite. In fact, I think the ladies made out here. At least for the immense responsibility that is placed on the shoulders of guys probably because men have enjoyed the privileges of inequality, this passage weighs in heavy against us.
There is nothing that we should not be willing to sacrifice to help the ladies in our lives become all that God has created them to be. And frankly, this scares me. Jesus says were much has been given, much will be required. This is a huge responsibility that I have undertaken and it is not just limited to our wives or girlfriends but is extended to the mothers, daughters, and sisters in our lives as well.
No embarrassment is too great for you guys too suffer for the daughters and granddaughters in our lives. Tea parties, playing Cinderella, dress-up and should I even say it, painting of nails. This is so huge here. I can’t underemphasize how important it is for dads to be the source for our daughters. We set the standard. We show them what to look for. We model for them the way men, young men, and maybe eventually the one young prince ought to treat them.
In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church.
But guys when we don’t take care of ourselves spiritually, physically, mentally. When we fall pray to addictions of alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, and others, then we cannot be the source. In fact, everyone, we do not do this on our own. As strange as it seems, it comes first through submission or surrendering to Jesus. “Jesus, I can’t do this on my own.”
The hardest thing that I have ever done and am convinced that I will ever do, is follow the ways of Jesus. Loving God and loving others sounds so pathetic and pansy. Nothing is ever wimpy about doing what is right.
There is guy named Paul who is said to have written this letter called Ephesians that suffered ship wrecks, beatings, stonings, and the such because he followed Jesus desiring to what is right. He wasn’t pathetic either. Sometimes he got in the faces of the Roman authorities and said that he wouldn’t back down that the real ruler of the world and the person that brings peace and prosperity is Jesus. He pledged his allegiance to Jesus and told them that there was nothing they could do stop him although they tried. They did things to him that would have made the WWE wrestlers cry like babies.
Okay, let’s collect those slips from the ladies and let’s read some of them. Things that the ladies say that the men in their lives need to do or be doing in order to be the source of life for them.
Let’s come back to the initial question. Who is the biggest loser? When we fail to be the source of life? When we fail to mutually submit to one another? When we fail to honor our mothers? When we fail to sacrifice for our wives? When we refuse to be the source of life for our daughters and sisters? We all lose. As long as we hold onto this non-biblical idea that women are inferior and servants of men, we all lose.
I’m going to close. Not with a story. But with the help from my wife, Kendra. I cannot finish this message without her. She is going to do a sign song. This song doesn’t mention God. But I think you will hear Jesus in it. I think you will see that the words are about living out the Word of God to be the source, the head, of life for the women in our lives. Sometimes things don’t have scream the word, “God,” to be all about Jesus. Just look at a beautiful sunset. We don’t need God to sign his name, “God,” in the clouds to see that it was painted by his hand.
