The 11th Sunday After Pentecost, Aug. 24, 2003 (Proper 16B)
Josh. 24:1-2a, 14-25; Psalm 16 or Psalm 34:15-22; Eph. 5:21-33; John 6:60-69
In the past few decades when most, if not all, of the controversial matters in the church have had to do with issues of gender and sexuality, the lesson from Ephesians is likely to be highly unpopular when read in churches. Its unpopularity will likely be because it is widely misunderstood.
One may begin to unravel the complexity and depth of this marvelous lesson by focusing on the first line: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The rest of the lesson takes its lead from this sentence. To be subject to another or to submit to another in Christ cannot mean relinquishing power, selfhood, or freedom against one’s will as if one had been vanquished. It is, in fact, what all people who are in love eagerly want to do above all else: to give themselves completely to another person in full trust and honor.
Paul is applying this teaching, as he says, “to Christ and the church” (verse 32) and is using marriage as an analogy. Married love, imperfect at its best, is a living analogy of the perfect love Jesus has for his church and a vocation to follow it. All persons, married and unmarried, are called to model this perfect love in their lives.
The rest of the lesson exhorts both wives and husbands to immense heights of self-giving, that each may pour out completely for the other. Yet doing so does not empty the one who gives. As Juliet said when she spoke to Romeo in the balcony scene, “The more I give, the more I have. My love is boundless.”
For Christians, mutual submission in love only makes sense and has meaning when it is done “out of reverence for Christ,” not when it is powered by even the best of merely human intentions and motives. Therefore the other lessons for this day call the people of God to make a choice between serving God and not serving him. The Hebrew tribes have entered the Promised Land, and Joshua calls them to “choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15). When many of Jesus’ disciples turn back from following him, to the 12 he says, “Do you also wish to go away?” and they must answer.
In all these lessons then, the people of God are confronted with the same question in different ways: will they serve God with the fullness of devotion and obedience and so find the fullness of joy — or will they turn away?
Look It Up
How do the psalms (both of them) match the theme of the other lessons as described in the devotional commentary?
Think About It
Think of an occasion when you were firmly resistant to the will of God and had to make a choice. How did you choose, and what were the results? If you chose disobedience, how did you return to the Lord?
Next Sunday
The 12th Sunday After Pentecost, Aug. 31, 2003 (Proper 17B)
Deut. 4:1-9; Psalm 15; Eph. 6:10-20; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
