Sermon: Reconciliation

Text: Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Ephesians 5.21

The Report of the Doctrine Commission, published in July of last year and' received' by the General Synod last month spoke, among other things, about Power: ... to follow Christ in the pathway of his passion is to accept and to practise the pattern of his vulnerability.

We come today to the last of our readings of the letter to the Ephesians - and hasn't the time flown?

We have noted the concept of anakephalaiôsis which was set out in Ephesians 1.10, and idea derived from rhetoric, and we have seen how it embraces the nuances of: summing up, recapitulating, ruling, uniting, crowning, and starting again. We have seen how this idea is expressed supremely, for Ephesians, in the reconciliation which God brings about in Christ between himself and humanity and between Jew and Gentile:that is, between all the races on earth.

And we have suggested that this letter is from the hand, not of Paul himself, but of a disciple of the apostle, after his death, in order to demonstrate God's vindication of Paul's preaching after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70.

Today we address the implications of reconciliation, concerning which I spoke two seeks ago: a mutual submission in all our relationships, and a vision for a social maturity.

The point about a mutual submission is made by a close reading of the text of Ephesians 5.21, 22 and the verses that follow: Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

We noted last week that Ephesians demonstrated an element of literary dependence upon Colossians. That letter says, in Colossians 3.18-19, Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly. It then goes on to address parents and children, then masters and slaves; and it is clear that here is one such case of dependence. However, the text of Ephesians makes a small but significant difference.

Most English versions of the Bible say, in Ephesians 5.21, Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. But the words be subject are not in the Greek text at that point. Rather, what Ephesians has done is to take those words, be subject, and use them as a kind of banner exhortation over the whole section: Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

In other words, the way to live in the light of God's anakephalaiôsis of all things, of the reconciliation between heaven and earth and between Jew and Gentile, and of the gospel preaching tradition which can be traced back to Paul is to live in mutual submission to one another. It is the only way to ensure that reconciliation remains as an abiding element in the practice of Christian discipleship.

So it is that wives are advised, Wives, to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Saviour. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.

But all that is all conventional stuff; but the interesting bit comes immediately after it: husbands are to love their wives with a submissive love! Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ... Husbands are called to remember that the love of Christ for the church was a sacrificial love: Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her; so their love for their wives must be submissive, too. And he continues:

in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind - yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of his body. 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.

Goes on a bit doesn't it? Perhaps it needs to! There is a mutuality implicit in Christ, that is, in the way in which relationships have to be conducted, that is, in the way that world goes round - which is unavoidable as a principle of human relationships. It is the only way to carry on.

So, for Ephesians, the same applies to relationships between parents and children and between masters and slaves. I don't expect many of us have slaves; but the principle applies, because what Ephesians has done is cover just about every conceivable relationship in a household of his day. We are called to do the translating of the particulars into our contemporary context and commit ourselves to living the life.

And that is what leads to what I have called a 'social maturity'. Ephesians 4.13 talks of the gift of the Spirit to the church until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. And where the English has maturity, the Greek has a perfect man - and the man is masculine, virile, warlike, even.

And this image is continued in the picture of the soldier in Ephesians 6.10ff. He is not an individual soldier, but an image of a community, ready for battle against the forces of evil, and equipped with truth, righteousness, readiness to proclaim the gospel; and faith, and salvation, and the word of God, the gospel, which is the Spirit's sword; and prayer.

The image may be masculine, but the message is inclusive. We belong together because we have been reconciled; we are invited to fight together, against all that is set against human reconciliation, against mutual human love, and against whatever makes for an open, human-centred understanding and development of the good news of Jesus Christ that we have inherited.

Why did I refer to the Report of the Doctrine Commission and its suggestion, ... to follow Christ in the pathway of his passion is to accept and to practise the pattern of his vulnerability? Because, surprisingly - or maybe not so surprisingly - such a way of life is costly. People fail to understand it; some are actively opposed to it, because it affects their own power or wealth; some are too scared for it; some prefer bombs to bonding; some rate retaliating above reconciling; and others ... I just don't know....

But I can urge you take seriously the invitation from this unknown genius in the first century, who saw that the work of God in Christ was, in one sense, complete; and in another sense, open to us to make real:

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.