Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 12
August 27, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
THE LANDSCAPE OF CHRISTIAN FORMATION: FAMILY
Ephesians 5:21-6:4
Holy scripture is God’s gift to us. It is a testimony of the relationship between God and God’s people - Israel and the Church. The Bible gives expression to God’s love for all the world and lights our path as to how we can live together in love.
Our text for today, the portion most near and dear to all of our hearts, includes the 2000 Southern Baptist Memory Verse of the Year: Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be subject to their husbands in everything.
My wife will come now and lead us in the benediction.
(Sit down)
You can see that my wife needs to hear this text today. She needs help with that submission stuff.
The truth is we all need help with that submission stuff, because it includes us all.
These words about submissive wives have often been singled out and removed from their biblical and social context.
We neglect the words before these that call all of us, men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children, to be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
We neglect the words following these about husbands loving their wives in the way that Christ loved the church - giving his life for her.
That is the biblical context of these often misused words about the gracious submission of wives.
However, we need to be honest about the Bible and its social context and the influence of that context on the words of the Bible.
Did you hear this week of the woman in New York who had been teaching Sunday School for 54 years and was fired from her class simply because she was a woman teaching men. The church said they had decided to begin to take the Bible literally.
They will, of course, like all of us, be selective about what they take literally and what they prescribe as only relevant to the ancient biblical culture.
Some portions of scripture are culturally bound. Though some people claim to place all of scripture on an equal plane, no one actually does it. The truth is some portions of scripture carry more weight than others.
Jesus taught us this. When Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” he could have said, “All commandments weigh the same.” But he didn’t. He put love of God and love of neighbor above them all. Augustine then said that any interpretation of scripture that did not increase love of God and neighbor was a wrong interpretation.
When we are faced with difficult passages, we turn to Jesus as our interpreter of scripture. For He is the Living Word of God, illuminating for us the heart of the written words of scripture, helping see through those texts that are culturally bound.
The text before us this morning does reflect the culture of its day. While it calls wives into submission and husbands into sacrifice, the husband is still given more authority. And while we may believe God desires equality in marriage, this text is still amazing for the first century world where women were considered property, their witness was not allowed in court, and they were not deemed worthy to be taught in the temple.
Jesus however raised the status of women, teaching them like disciples, speaking to them in public like they were equal human beings.
We need Jesus as our interpreter on days like today with texts like this one from Ephesians. As we take a deep look into this text, we will find that what begins as a word to spouses, parents, and children becomes a word about Christ and the Church.
Both the Old and New Testaments use marriage as a central analogy of the union between God and Israel and the union between Christ and the Church.
I wonder if this biblical analogy is trying to teach us something revolutionary about the purpose of marriage.
Through books and other forms of media, our culture teaches us about how to get the love we want and how to get our needs met. The best books will tell you that you get the love you want and your needs met by meeting the needs of others and giving the love others need. But still, the motivation is to get what you need to be happy.
Gary Thomas, in his book Sacred Marriage (Zondervan, 2000), asks a question that is more than a little counter-cultural, and is thus profoundly Christian.
Leading up to the question, he puts marriage in the context of Christian Spiritual Formation, and says that to spiritually benefit from marriage, we have to be honest. We have to look at our disappointments, own up to our ugly attitudes, and confront our selfishness. We also have to rid ourselves of the notion that the difficulties of marriage can be overcome if we simply pray harder or learn a few simple principles. Most of us have discovered that these “simple steps” work only on a superficial level. This is because there is a deeper question that needs to be addressed beyond how we can “improve” our marriages: What if God didn’t design marriage to be “easier”? What if God had an end in mind that went beyond our happiness and comfort? (Thomas, 13)
And here’s the big question: What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?
I once shared that idea with a group of people and one of them said, “If that’s the case I have obtained about as much holiness as I can stand.”
Though Thomas’ book takes a more conservative approach to marriage that most of us would be comfortable with, I think he asks a very good question, and I think there is a high probability of his being correct.
What do we do, Thomas asks, when the romantic roller coaster of courtship eventually evens out to the terrain of a Midwest interstate - long, flat stretches with an occasional overpass? Some couples break-up and try to recreate the romance with someone else. Others descend into a sort of marital guerilla warfare, blaming the other for the failures. Some couples decide to simply get along. But what if we were to pursue the long haul of marriage as a journey of Christian spiritual formation? (Thomas, 16-17)
What if God’s primary purpose in marriage was not our happiness but our holiness?
Monks and nuns take vows of celibacy consciously as a path toward holiness. Is it possible that we would take vows of marriage consciously as a path toward holiness? (Thomas, 90)
Doesn’t that have a profound change on how we see marriage, and how we view our struggles within marriage? That rather than trying to always rid ourselves of the struggles in order to be happy, we seek to discover ways in which the struggles can make us more Christ-like.
To be sure, we get married to someone because we believe we can be happier with them than without them. And marriage can bring great joy and love and happiness. But I wonder: Have we given much thought at all to whether or not our marriage will make us a better, more Christlike person?
Eugene Peterson has said that marriage is the most difficult and most demanding relationship we can enter. Some are lucky and everything comes naturally and flows easily. Others avoid intimacy, don’t talk too much or do too much together, just assign and carry out their roles. But that’s not much of a marriage.
To spend 50 or 60 years with the same person, working through conflict, seeing each other at our worst, is hard, hard work. It is the most intense place for spiritual formation. It’s the best opportunity we have of growing out of our self-centered and growing up in Christ, maturing in our spiritual formation.
Haven’t most of us often found it easier to be more Christlike outside our family relationships than within them? Sometimes we treat those closest to us the worst.
Garrison Keillor says to be married is to live with your worst critic. And that’s true, I think, even in the best of marriages. Because we know each other best.
God’s goal in our lives is Christlike formation. Marriage and parenting are simply the contexts.
I think Thomas’s question strikes many of us as odd, is because we have made family life an end in itself, and in essence turned the family into an idol. As Christians, many of us are guilty of calling the family the most important thing. That is idolatry.
Paul Duke has said that our primary concern should not be a focus on the family, but the family’s focus. Family is not an end in itself. Family is not the most important thing. Jesus said very little about the family, most of it we would not like. Jesus defined family as those who do the will of God. And he talked most about the kingdom of God.
Family is not to be seen as an end in itself. It is but one, albeit important, of the many avenues God uses to shape us into the people we were created to be.
There are times when a marriage is so broken it begins to destroy the people within it. From the outside, no one can ever fully say when divorce should or should not happen. That must be the choice of the two people involved. Sometimes, divorce is needed in order to save one or both of the persons involved. Abuse and repeated infidelities can make a relationship irreconcilable. Those who have been through divorce need our grace, love and support.
But divorce is not the answer to marriages that simply make the two persons unhappy. Unhappiness is not a cause for divorce.
You will often hear parents say, perhaps we’ve even said it ourselves, “I just want my child to be happy.” There’s nothing wrong with desiring happiness for our children. But as a Christian parent we should have higher hopes for our children than just their happiness. Because any parent, married or unmarried, knows there will be seasons in one’s life when you are not particularly happy. If we tell our children, “I just want you to be happy,” will it seem to them that when they are not happy in a relationship, we are suggesting they should just change partners?”
We should want more than happiness for our children. We should desire their holiness, their formation as children of God into the image and likeness of Christ. And we should want the same for ourselves.
Marriage has the capacity to change us and shape us spiritually in necessary ways.
Marriage can teach us how to love. “The beauty of Christianity is in learning to love, and few life situations test that so radically as does a marriage.” (Thomas, 51)
Marriage exposes our sin and our selfishness. Helen Rowland writes, “Marriage is the operation by which a woman’s vanity and a man’s egotism are extracted without anesthetic.”
Marriage shows us that we are not all there is. Marriage is designed to call us out of ourselves, to give way to another, but to also find joy, happiness, and pleasure in another.
Marriage can build within us a heart of servanthood. We are called in the book of Philippians to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Because Jesus Christ who was in very nature God, made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. We are never like God than when we take on the nature of a servant.
Marriage teaches us the importance of mutual submission.
As we seek to understand relationships, married and otherwise, it is crucial that we read verse 21: Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Submission has been given a bad name. Our culture teaches us to put ourselves forward and not let anyone tell us what to do.
And yet, Jesus embodied submission til his last breath. He taught that the greatest among us were those who served.
What is it about submission that repels us and at the time is at the heart of Christian behavior?
Submission is at the heart of Christian attitude and behavior. It is the only way we can be community - not only as family but as church, and even in the workplace. If anyone in any relationship looks for ways to usurp superiority, that relationship is doomed. Relationships of submission only work if there is mutual submission involved. And that mutual submission is rooted in our both being in relationship to Christ who rules us all.
Marriage teaches us forgiveness. You can’t live in a marriage long without learning to give and receive forgiveness. When we are hurt, we have the opportunity to extend forgiveness. When we hurt others, we can be given the blessing of forgiveness.
Marriage has the capacity to make us reconcilers. Scripture calls us to the ministry of reconciliation. Perhaps the most difficult part of that ministry may be within our own marriages. Marriage is designed to force us to become reconcilers. It’s the only way to keep our vows of life-long commitment.
Marriage teaches us that no human being can meet our every need. So the next time your spouse falls short of your expectations (which will probably before lunch is finished today), may it serve as a reminder of your need for God.
Perhaps the greatest lesson marriage teaches is that by receiving the constant, forgiving love of a spouse, we come to know the constant, forgiving love of God.
T. S. Eliot said, “Marriage is the greatest test in the world . . . a test of the whole character.”
Using the challenges and joys, struggles and celebrations of marriage to draw us closer to God and to grow in Christian character. (Thomas, 12).
The same can be said of the parent-child relationship. Our text today says, “Children, obey your parents.”
We can learn obedience to Christ by learning obedience to our parents, doing things we would rather not have to do.
This text tells parents not to provoke their children to anger, but to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Wow! What a task!
Last Saturday I became the parent of a teenager. I’ve been wondering: does that make me an adolescent parent? Sometimes as a parent you feel about as lost and confused as an adolescent. Parenting ain’t for sissies! It is the most joyful, demanding, frightening task.
To look at your child and feel overwhelmed that you could love somebody so much. You want to give them everything. You want them to be happy. But most of all, you want them to grow and mature into Christlike persons who are willing to put the needs of others above their own and make the world a better place. Deep down you realize how harmful it is to give them everything they want. Because while that brings momentary joy it shapes them into the materialistic consumers our culture wants them to be. It does not shape Christlike character. It only nurtures selfishness and self-centeredness.
If children are to obey us let us make sure we are guiding them in the teachings and instructions of the Lord - teaching them to walk in the way of Jesus - the way of repentance and discipleship, love and compassion, grace and forgiveness, peace and justice, simplicity and generosity, servanthood and the cross, resurrection and hope.
Ever mindful that we are shaping members of God’s family called to live as God’s people in the world.
Again I remind you that in our text today, while we are given words about husbands and wives, parents and children, this text is still about the Church - the larger more important family of God’s children.
So, what if we were to begin to live as if the primary purpose of marriage was to model God’s love for the Church?
And what if we were to begin now teaching our children that the primary goal of marriage, and life itself, is not to be happy, but to be holy, to become more Christlike?
What if we were to begin seeing our families, not as ends in themselves, but as the context of spiritual formation, with the goal of serving the larger family of God? What if we were to begin to see our families as primary instruments of the kingdom of God in the world? What if our family mission was to embody and share with the world the love and joy, peace and righteousness that God wants so desperately for the world?
Are you willing to make your marriage, your parenting, your family relationships a way to holiness, even if it means forfeiting your happiness?
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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