Intro:
What does it actually mean to “honor”? Can anyone explain what that really looks like, in 2010? We know that is one of the ten commandments – “Honor your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” (Ex. 20:12). We know that our culture sets aside days like today, Mother’s Day, and later in June we have Father’s Day, ostensibly to “honor” our parents. We hear brides and grooms covenant that they will “honor” one another. So we have a basis, a desire, even a commitment, to “honor” – but what does that actually mean, what does it look like, how do we do that? Suggestions??
Context:
Our spring sermon series is called “Doing Life: Relationship Skills from the Bible for Today”. I introduced the series three weeks ago with a call to re-engage life and relationships, to desire for ourselves the kind of life that Jesus desires for us, the “life abundant” of John 10:10, and to recognize that experiencing that kind of life requires us to invest in maintaining and growing our relationships with God and each other. I want to explore together some of the essential skills that we need, that are not very prevalent in our society today, in order to have healthy relationships with God and with others. The first of those skills we explored two weeks ago, when we built a foundation from Genesis which affirms we were created for relationship, sin has broken relationship, and the only way to deal with sin is to repent – which means repenting in the places where we have broken relationship. I finished that message with a challenge and encouragement, based on Jesus’ command in Matt 5: “23 “So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, 24 leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.” Jesus’ call to repentance includes a call to go to another person, in this specific it is someone that “has something against you” – someone you have sinned against – and make it right. I hope, for the sake of your healthy relationships and the Kingdom of God, you had the courage to swallow your pride and repent and start to restore and reconcile some broken relationships. I made one first step in one relationship, and what I learned is it is going to take more than one first step… so I’m going to take another step… even though it feels difficult and discouraging. Because the end goal is worth it, and because it is a simple matter of obedience no matter how it ends up.
Today’s Relationship Skill: Submission
Moving forward from repentance as an essential relationship skill, today I want to look at the skill of submission. I think this skill is essential if we are to obey the command to “honor” which we began with. Submission is a clear Biblical command, I’ll show you that in a moment. But it is also a bad word in our culture. I challenge anyone here to think of a single positive cultural message around the word “submit”. I looked up some basic definitions of the word, and they were all profoundly negative: “surrender”, “give up”, “yield to another’s will or opinion”, “To be submissive or resigned; to yield without murmuring”. The connotations were entirely negative, as if “submit” was the last straw, the worst thing, the admission of defeat, the conclusion that someone stronger was going to get their way in your life and there is nothing you can do about it. And this makes sense if we agree with the starting place of our culture: the ultimate goal is to be in control, to own our lives, to do whatever we want/feel like/desire/think is best. “Submission” IS a bad thing IF you begin with the idea that each of us as an individual is and should be the boss of our own lives, and no one else should have the right to tell us anything.
But here is what makes us different as Christians: we start at a different place. In fact, our new lives begin when we submit to the Lordship of Jesus, when we recognize and admit and accept that we are not in control, that we are not the boss, that we are not the masters of our own destiny, and we invite Jesus to make us new, be our “Lord” and “Master”, and we yield control of our lives to God. If we really grasp this, and really practice this, it is radically counter-cultural. I’m afraid, though, that many of us (and I see this in myself also) remain rooted in our individualism and even spiritualize it – we only act and live out the things we agree with, feel, are impacted by, are “passionate” about, even in our spiritual lives; instead of the things that Scripture commands us. I offer as an example all of us who heard the message of repentance from two weeks ago, identified a relationship that was broken, and then did nothing about it.
A Fine Line…
I want to readily admit that this is dangerous territory. We have many examples, historically, Biblically, and (most painfully) personally, of where submission has wreaked havoc. Lives have been destroyed, manipulated, and used for great evil through mindless or forced or unwisely given submission. Betrayal and hurt have led to a hardened individualism, “no one is going to tell me what to do anymore”; “from now on I’m looking out for me”; “never again will I let myself be in a place of vulnerability to that kind of hurt.” I understand the hurt, and see the harm, but also believe we’ve gone to the wrong solution. Let me put it bluntly: Biblical, healthy, positive submission is ALWAYS “MUTUAL SUBMISSION”.
Let me describe the same thing using a different set of words. “Dependence” is unhealthy and not God’s desire. Even in situations where we recognize and celebrate dependence as a great thing, as in mother and infant, it is not purely one-way. The tangible benefits experienced by the mother, through the laugh and joy of her infant, correspond to the challenges of sleepless nights and constant vigilance in such a way that healthy mothers continue to gladly provide all the necessities of life. It is a two-way relationship, it is not strictly one human sucking life out of another human and giving nothing back – that is not how God created us. “Co-dependence” is also unhealthy and not God’s desire – this is when people in a relationship lose themselves in the needs of the other and get caught up in negative and harmful ways of interacting that suck each other into the neediness so that we have two people stuck instead of just one. Our culture’s response is “Independence”; taking care of yourself, arranging life so you don’t have to need anyone else to help. There is a lot attached to this – parents teaching kids to be independent, senior adults trying to hold on to their independence sometimes too long, all kinds of medical aids and products so that we can stay “independent”. And while some of that is good, the heart of it starts in the lie that we can live in such a way that we don’t need others, or we only need them on our terms and can control our interactions with them.
So dependence is unhealthy because it is one-way, co-dependence is bad because we are just sucked into harmful ways of living, independence is based on a lie: what is left? Let’s go to Scripture to see a way of living we could describe with the word “Interdependence”.
Ephesians 5:21-6:9 (NLT):
God deeply cares about our relationships, our day to day, normal, regular relationships. So much so that a lot of Scripture is devoted to instruction on how to live in these in healthy ways – we saw that in Exodus 20 in the 10 commandments, where 6 of the 10 related directly to the standards we need to live by in order to have healthy relationships. The same is true in the New Testament, in the teachings of Jesus and in the letters of the Apostles. Biblical scholars refer to some of these as “household codes” – simple rules and teachings for how to live together. In the time we have left I want to look at the household code in Ephesians.
Now, it is vitally important that we begin in the correct place. If you use the NIV translation, this is difficult because they got the section break really really wrong. Those “section headings” in our Bibles are not part of the original writings you know, and we should never trust them – in fact one of the healthiest habits of reading Scripture is to ALWAYS read the verses leading up to the particular passage you are concentrating on, and the verses that follow the particular passage you are concentrating on. The NIV publishers insert a little “section heading” just before verse 22, which has caused no end of problems in male-female relationships. It actually makes me angry… because when verse 22 is quoted outside the context of verse 21 it creates all those bad kinds of submission I was talking about earlier. The New Living Translation corrects that, and puts the section heading before verse 21 which is much more helpful. In fact, verse 21 sets the stage for the entire rest of the passage, and all the relationships described here. Let’s go to the text:
Spirit-Guided Relationships: Wives and Husbands
21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.[a] 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body.
31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”[b] 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Children and Parents
1 Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord,[c] for this is the right thing to do. 2 “Honor your father and mother.” This is the first commandment with a promise: 3 If you honor your father and mother, “things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.”[d]
4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.
Slaves and Masters
5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. 6 Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. As slaves of Christ, do the will of God with all your heart. 7 Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. 8 Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free.
9 Masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Don’t threaten them; remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites.
The Point:
Obviously we are not going to walk through that whole passage this morning in detail; I just want to come straight to the point: God’s way is a way of mutual submission, a path of interdependence. And, in the context of committed, long-term relationships (such as marriage, parenting, and even employment in the slaves-masters application to today), this is safe, healthy, and the only way to live lives that are obedient to God and thus life-producing in us. The point is made in verse 21: “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ”. I don’t have time to connect the verb “submit” in verse 21 with the command to “be filled with the Holy Spirit” in verse 18, though they are interconnected; and I don’t have time to explore that deep interconnectedness in the verse between our relationships with one another and how those are lived “out of reverence for Christ”. You’ll need to explore those on your own.
How?
Instead, I want to wrap up back where we began, with the question “ok, but how?” How do we honor; how do we actually submit to one another? What skills are involved, and how do we actually live this in healthy ways?
1. The first skill is commitment: steadfast, die-hard, covenantal commitment. Interdependence does not work if one party is going to opt out when their selfishness quotient reaches whatever level prompts them to change.
2. Second is assertiveness: no one else can “guess” at our needs, and the mark of a great/healthy relationship is NOT that the other person can read our mind and anticipate our desires, but rather that we are honest and forthright with one another about what we need, not with an attitude of selfishness but rather with an attitude of helping each other demonstrate love. This takes courage and commitment, but it is worth it.
3. Selfless trust: interdependence requires us to alter our effort and priority from seeking our own good to seeking the good of the other. And when people do that for each other, everyone’s needs get met with the joy of giving and serving mixed in. The skill is two-fold: first to be selfless, and second to trust the others in committed relationship to be selfless towards you also.
Assignment:
There are more skills we could talk about, but instead let me give you an assignment that will create space for you to practice those skills. Share a meal with the people in closest relationship to you once a day if you live under the same roof, or 2-3 times a week if you live alone. This is a natural space to relate and interact, and to practice interdependence and mutual submission. For those of you who already do this, add this: rather than just rattle off a prayer of thanksgiving for the food, share one way you can pray for each person at the table, and then do so. And, since it is Mother’s Day, make sure you also phone or visit your mom…
