Epiphany 2, 2023
Rev. Thomas Van Hemert
Ephesians 5:22-33
Epiphany 2
Jannuary 15, 2023
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
John records Jesus’ changing the water to wine at the Wedding at Cana as the first of His signs. It wasn’t His first miracle. His miraculous conception in Mary’s womb, His joining our flesh, even His creation of the world in the beginning, and every Old Testament miracle all took place before the miracle at Cana. But it is the first of His signs, by which, He reveals Himself—literally epiphanies Himself—to us. And of course, it happened at a wedding.
Our Lord loves weddings. He loves Holy Marriage—where a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife. And so our Lord blesses marriage with the first of His signs. God meant for men to woo women, to win them, and then to become one flesh. Before the first woman, it was not good. Adam was incomplete.
Even after the fall into sin, St. Paul still believes in the ideal. He presents it to us in Ephesians chapter 5 as we heard this morning: “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.”
But what was once easy and natural has been corrupted by sin.
A lot of people cannot get past that first bit. They can’t tolerate that one little word. They cannot tolerate this command: “Wives, submit to your own husbands.” They refuse to hear it. “It’s misogynistic,” they say. It reeks to them as oppression, even slavery. They view the world through Marxist Communist lenses and so everything seems to be a struggle for power, for control. Even marriage becomes a struggle for who is on top. This is how fallen men let Marx or someone else define the terms. They thereby let the world set the agenda rather than letting God speak.
Ask Eve how this works out. She will tell you that it never goes well.
Nonetheless, we must engage this idea about submission, what it truly means, and how it is a Godly ideal. For neither submission nor obedience is slavery. Is an enlisted soldier, who has signed up to serve his fellow man and country, a slave of the United States Military? Of course not. Is a professional baseball player who plays in the MLB—who willingly and voluntarily played little league as a kid, wanted to play in Perfect Game tournaments as a teenager, then signed to play college ball, worked his way through the minor leagues so that one day he would be called up to the Majors—is he therefore a slave of the franchise for which he plays? No he isn’t. To be sure, he must abide by the terms of his contract. But even then, no one coerced him to sign a contract to play baseball. He can walk away if he wants. He just won’t be paid millions of dollars.
So it is also that marriage, as far as I know amongst all of you, was entered into reverently, deliberately, voluntarily, and in accord for what God has instituted. Of course, we hear of some cases and have read about them where some men and women were forced into marriages. But Godly marriage, Holy Marriage and submission is not “misogynistic” nor is it slavery. So we need to stop this knee jerk reaction against hierarchy and authority and assuming that submission is always the result of oppression or is always evil. What workers do, in submission to their bosses; what soldiers do in submission for their commanding officers; what professional sports players do in submission for their coaches and team front offices is not slavery or oppression or is evil. So it is with marriage.
We should note next that St. Paul calls upon wives to submit to their own husbands, not to any man who claims them or makes a demand, but to their own husbands. In the book of Judges, Jael didn’t submit to Sisera. Susanna did not submit to the two old judges. And so it is, that wives are called to submit to the particular man, to their own husbands, that is to the man that that they love the most on this earth, to the one whom they chose.
Now a young woman, or any woman who desires to be married and to cling to her own husband, isn’t called upon to submit to a dictator, a tyrant who will lord it over her and chain her to the stove. Hopefully, she will be marrying a devout man who is a Christian. And if this is the case, she is not marrying a misogynist who hates women, whose insecurity and weaknesses have made it his one goal in life to prove that he is strong by beating her.
She is marrying the one whom she chose. And he may not be perfect, but she loves him. He wooed her and she chose him. So, she is called to submit to him, as to her own husband.
Now, you might be thinking that would be fine if husbands could handle it, if any man can handle having a wife. Well, men can’t handle it, but men are called to this vocation anyway. For too long we’ve misunderstood the Lord Acton saying and used it to undermine authority. First of all, Lord Acton was not infallible. His words didn’t come from the Holy Spirit. But in any case, he did not say “authority corrupts.” He didn’t even say as we often hear it, “power corrupts.” He said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
That is because power and authority are two different things. Husbands are not being given power over wives. Men are called to be husbands. Men are called then to authority. When Our Lord Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross for the sins of the world, He gave up all power. He was the weakest of men. Pilate and his soldiers and the Sanhedrin had power and power over Him. Jesus did not. He was powerless. But He had authority. He had moral and spiritual authority. And He exercised that authority by sacrifice, by laying down His life for His Bride, the Church. That’s what all husbands are called to do.
By the grace of God, with the help of his bride and with the support of his family, a man will grow into the office of husband. Because no one comes to it prepared or ready. The office makes the man not the man the office. And while none of us, men or women will never fully master marriage or perfect it in this lifetime, a man will nonetheless in Holy Marriage, as God intended it, learn to be a man. And in Holy Marriage, a woman learns to be a woman. Because being a man and being a woman are not the same thing. They are not interchangeable. And they are not called to the same duties in Holy Marriage or in a just society.
This is hard to tell in our confused and effeminate society, but it is, nonetheless, the truth. Sadly, for the most part, we as a people, have lost the ideals and the virtues of both masculinity and femininity. We have replaced them with selfish assertions and with open rebellion. That is why we have man-boys still playing video games and living in their mother’s basements. We have made them this way by refusing to teach them to be men or by not demanding that they be men. This is also why we have such a high divorce rate, so many fatherless children, and a host of other ills. So God be praised that He has instituted marriage. And that He further blesses the institution of Holy Marriage by His first sign at the Wedding at Cana. He allows us to take responsibilities, to serve one another, and to make the transition that children should be raised precisely to make.
As a people, we are so confused by this in a way that our ancestors weren’t. Sadly, we have tried so hard to soften men and make them act like women and that makes it hard for us to recognize what true masculinity actually is. As in almost all things in this fallen world, we often end up with the polar opposite error. In this case, we end up thinking that masculinity is rugged independence or bodily strength and courage and then we get the strutting hyper-masculinity that tries to fake those things by buying big trucks and making crude jokes and even, God forbid, by mistreating women. Nothing, in fact, could be less masculine than mistreating others, and especially mistreating women.
As seen in Our Lord Jesus Christ true masculinity is not strength for strength’s sake. Rather it is sacrificial giving. The willingness to die for others. The willingness of a husband, as St. Paul says, to lay down his life for his wife as Christ laid down His life for His Bride the Church. Virtue by itself isn’t any good. A man needs someone to serve, to be strong for, to be courageous for, to be committed to, to protect and to provide for. And when he fails, he needs to get back up again and start over. He doesn’t get to quit just because it is hard. Nor can one can do it for him. He has to keep on.
If a man is to be a man, he needs a wife and he needs children and he needs a community to serve. He needs not just people to help and support him, but he also needs people to love and to serve. Unless his courage, wisdom, discipline, patience, chastity, and the like serve the good of others, they aren’t manly virtues and he is not masculine, he is just proud, and despite the rhetoric of our age, pride is not merely overrated, it is wrongly rated.
What St. Paul is advocating for in husbands is true masculinity, self-giving and self-sacrifice for the good of wives and children. To be fully masculine is to be Christ-like, that is to be devoted to your wife, covering for her, defending her, and taking her side – even if that is against your own mother, and at some point it almost certainly will be.
Christ does not rule over His Church by the Law. And He does not rule over His Church by demanding rights or honor. Christ rules His Church by grace, by the forgiveness of sins. He forgives His Bride for whom He has died in order to wash her clean in Holy Baptism that He might present her to His Father as His own holy Bride without blemish. To be a true husband, to be masculine, is to forgive, to praise, and to adore, even as you are forgiven, praised, and adored by Christ.
Now, who couldn’t submit to that? In fact, all Christians, male and female, do submit to that. Even as every soldier or professional baseball player or whatever other worker in any job is never a law unto himself, so also every husband, every man in the church lives under Jesus Christ and happily submits to Him. This is no struggle at all, of course, because Christ’s love is perfect. He never abuses His authority. He freely forgives. He does not act selfishly.
This mystery is profound: God loves us in Christ and has reconciled Himself to us even though we weren’t worth it and didn’t deserve it. And He knows we won’t live up to it. This mystery, the essence of the Christian religion, is what enables imperfect people to live together as husband and wife, in peace, in forgiveness, and to be servants of one another. Holy Marriage, like all things Holy, is made Holy by grace. In this way, in the grace of God which passes all understanding, in Him who has loved us to the end, who did not shrink from His duty but went to the cross and came out of the grave to be our Servant, in this, in Christ, and His self-sacrifice, a man can love his wife and can keep on loving his wife. And a wife can respect and keep on respecting her husband and nourishing her children.
And if all the world goes to Hell around us, and almost no one knows what a boy or a girl is anymore, and if Holy Marriage has no honor, sobeit. We have Christ. In Him we have grace. We have hope. And in Him, we receive, and we rejoice in Holy Marriage as a singular gift and joy. It is a good thing, a wonderful thing, the best thing. So wives, submit to your own husbands and trust the Lord. And, husbands, give up your lives for your wives for they belong to Christ.
In +Jesus’ Name.
