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Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
No Greater Love with Pastor Ryan Braley
Can ancient texts provide the keys to solving modern relationship dilemmas? Imagine navigating the complexities of relationships by looking at age-old teachings through a fresh lens. Explore with us as we challenge the conventional interpretations of Paul's letters in Ephesians, bringing to light their revolutionary nature when viewed in the historical context of the Greco-Roman world. We journey into a time where these teachings dared to promote love and respect, ideas that were groundbreaking amidst the societal norms of that era. Our discussion reveals how these timeless insights can inspire more respectful and inclusive relationships today.
Delving deeper, the transformative teachings of Jesus and Paul come to life, offering a new perspective on valuing women, children, and slaves. Sharing both personal anecdotes and historical context, we emphasize the importance of inclusivity and dignity—a call that resonates even more in our current world plagued by misuses of scripture for oppressive ends. We also touch on contemporary phenomena, like the growing trend of women turning to AI for emotional connections, illuminating parallels between past and present challenges in human relationships.
Finally, we explore the concept of radical submission and mutual respect in our daily interactions. Drawing from Paul and Jesus' teachings, we reflect on how embracing humility and submission can transform societal norms about power and authority. Through relatable stories, we invite listeners to imagine a world where our interactions are guided by love, mutual respect, and a deep sense of interconnectedness. Join us as we envision communities that truly embody these values, moving towards a future where love and service override hierarchies and divisions.
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Thank you, sarah. Let's pray. That's a long one. Hey, God, we give you thanks this morning for your presence here and for the gift of life that you've given us. Thank you for this meal and, yeah, we give you praise and thanks for that. And let's pray God, by your spirit you would come and awaken us and enliven us and inspire us in all the ways that we need it. And would you help us unpack this passage this morning? I pray you bless us in Jesus' name, amen, amen. Now you can be seated. After that long intro, would you give my friend Isaiah some love this morning. Thanks, pal. Yes sir, yes, yes sir. How are we doing? How are we doing? After you heard that passage, read you doing all right.
Speaker 1:By the way, if you know what Ephesians is all about, we're in the middle of our Ephesians series. We're almost at the end. We've got this Sunday and then next Sunday. Then we're done. Then we go into our Advent series, which is crazy. They're already in the Advent season, by the way.
Speaker 1:I would encourage you if you have some friends or some family members that you want to invite, or neighbors to church, bring them during Advent. Advent's awesome. It's a great time of magic and sort of mystery and the incarnation is beautiful. So bring them during Advent and it's a lot of fun and you'll like our series too. But anyway, if you were paying any attention, you would know that coming down the pike was this passage about wives submitting to your husbands and children. Just sit down and shut up and do what your parents say, and Paul's maybe endorsement of slavery. You're like what is going on? I got an email earlier in the week and this woman was like I hate this passage, I can't wait to hear what you're going to say on it. And then just a moment ago my friend leaned over and goes I can't wait to hear what you're going to preach on this one.
Speaker 1:Right, it's a weird passage and at first glance the elephant in the room it does seem like Paul is maybe advocating for this subservient women role for women that women just need to when push comes to shove, women just need to do what the man says. And at first glance it seems like maybe Paul is advocating for children just to sit down and shut up, be seen and not heard, and kids, you don't have anything to offer here, just kind of quiet down and go play, or something like that. And then also maybe Paul is endorsing slavery, which seems atrocious to us in the modern world. And so what really is going on is Paul's looking at these sort of three elements of relationships, and there's a reason why they're kind of the closest ones to us. He examines the role between a husband and a wife, and I call this the who's going to do the laundry problem, right. And so Paul examines that relationship. And then Paul examines again this relationship between parents and their kids. This is a pillow I had made for Katie with our kids' names on it.
Speaker 1:When we were younger we had four kids, which is, I guess, by today's standards, a lot of kids, because people would ask us when we'd be out and about, they'd be like are those your kids? They were all close in age and we'd be like yeah, and they'd say all of them, yeah, it's like only four, we don't have 10 of them. But how should parents and their kids relate? And also this one it's about the slaved and enslaved. But ancient world slavery was a bit different than modern day slavery, so we want to just kind of paint that picture quickly. But how do you relate to your coworkers as a boss? Or how is your work relationship, and the best I could do is an orange cone. So there you go, are you ready? All right, fair enough.
Speaker 1:So I was reading an article just a couple days ago in the Free Press by Barry Weiss Well, she didn't write it, but it's by Julia Steinberg and here's the title. By the way, my sermon title is called no Greater Love. Okay, now here's the title of the article I read. The title is Meet the Women with AI Boyfriends, and I was like I've got to read this article. And there's this trend Maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't, or maybe you live under a rock, I don't know but there's this trend where women are opting out of real flesh and blood and bones relationships and they're opting for relationships, romantic ones, with online chatbot partners. And I know that all of us are like what are you talking about? But here's why. Yeah, yeah, here's why. And actually the article talks about how many of these women in the story anyway, and that she interviews a lot of them have had such terrible experiences, ones of abuse and depression, and it was a very tumultuous, toxic kind of a time for these women, and so they just opted out, and the men in these relationships weren't showing up relationally, they weren't good listeners, they weren't showing up emotionally, and these women are like I'm just done, and it's too abusive and too violent.
Speaker 1:And I'm not a proponent of the toxic masculinity ideology that's out there. I think that masculinity can be toxic, as well as femininity. We can all be toxic in a variety of forms, and the world doesn't need less masculinity. The world needs more good masculinity, are you with me? And same with femininity as well. We need each other and before we judge these women, we can do a deep dive on things that men do online, which is not always the best either, and I'm not going to show any pictures of that for all the obvious reasons. But what I was struck by, and read the article, it's fascinating. But I was struck by the fact that our relationships seem, in many ways and on many levels, just broken. You know, and the article was written by, again, julia Steinberg, and she gives this chat bot a try and at the end she's like I just can't do it because it's not a real relationship. Somehow you and I were created for real, authentic flesh and bone and blood relationships with real people in real time and real places.
Speaker 1:And Paul is examining these three areas of relationships. Again, who's going to do the laundry problem? How many kids of those are yours? Problem, and how do you handle your workplace relationships problem. And at first glance it does seem like Paul is arguing for this hierarchy of value within all these relationships. But what I want to do is I want to talk to you about why I think that's not the case. So I want to unpack a bit if you can go with me for just a minute here why or what Paul's not saying, and I'll go through each one and say this is what Paul's not saying. Then I'm going to examine and explore what Paul is saying and I want to end with my own picture from Tanzania. Does that seem okay with you guys?
Speaker 1:Now, it's important in each of these problems of relationships to examine the context. The context is key, it's vital. This comes to us out of a letter that Paul wrote in the first century in the ancient Near East, an area called Asia Minor, and it was this vibrant Greco-Roman society with all kinds of culture and arts and relational problems, just like you and I have today A different culture, though wildly different culture in many, many ways. So it's important to ask, hey, how did that first century audience hear this long scripture that we heard Sarah read this morning? Now, in the ancient world, paul says, of course, says hey, wives, submit to your husbands. And all the wives groaned just a little bit under their breath maybe, but here's the deal.
Speaker 1:In these ancient world relationships in the first century, people got married for all kinds of reasons, and friendship and love was usually not one of them. People didn't really have affection, love and friendship in their marriages. These family structures in the Greco-Roman world were more based on social arrangements and social status, property rights and legal heirs. They had to figure out who was going to take on all of my possessions. They would get married for these kinds of reasons, not really about friendship or love. It's kind of a modern, more modern invention. And so these husbands, by the way, they had a wife and they would usually sort of pass on their property, their wealth, onto the kids they had with those wives, because they actually had more than just a wife. They would, of course, sleep with, have sex with their wives, but they would also do the same with many, many mistresses. There's this ancient common saying in Athens, in the Athenian world, that said this Go ahead for me Sarah. It said wives are for heirs and prostitutes are for pleasure. Very common, this saying, in this ancient world. And so prostitution was a very common, ubiquitous, thriving industry in the ancient world. In fact, the Roman tax system they would tax prostitutes because it was such a common thing. Their economy was built on this system of.
Speaker 1:Or rather, which makes Paul's saying when Paul says, after wives, submit to your husbands, he says, hey, husbands, love your wives. When he says that it's actually this contrarian, upside down like kind of table shaking kind of a statement to make Because husbands didn't love their wives and husbands weren't supposed to just love their wives. They had all kinds of mistresses, prostitutes for pleasure, all these kinds of things. And Paul says in this quite upside down table turning kind of a way against cultural kind of saying, hey, husbands, love your wives, he's offering a bit of dignity, a lot of dignity to the woman in the relationship. So Paul's not saying, hey, wives, just sit there and do whatever the husband wants, or when push comes to shove, the man gets to choose whatever he wants. He's not saying that at all. He's actually offering, in a variety of ways, this dignity to these women in these relationships and he tells the husbands love their wives. I know it sounds tame, you're like that sounds kind of tame compared to the wives submit to your husbands, but loving their wives is a radical thing to say to husbands in the ancient world. In the ancient world, in this ancient culture.
Speaker 1:Now, the early church took their cues from Paul and began to push back against prostitution Like this is not a good practice. We need to stop doing this. In fact, they began to outlaw it altogether within the church and the empire begins to sort of take heed and this sort of filters out into the empire and prostitution becomes less and less prevalent in the imperial world as well. So in a culture where men could divorce their wives for any reason at whim and women couldn't by the way, women in the ancient world had no power to divorce their wives, but the men could for any reason they wanted to at all, in that culture, jesus and other scriptures advocate against divorce. So, hey, we're not gonna do divorce. So in Matthew 5, jesus teaches against divorce. Also, in a culture excuse me, in a culture, excuse me in which physical, emotional abuse was the norm. Paul teaches against all forms of abuse in colossians 3. And in a culture, in a world where promiscuity and prostitution was very, very typical in all kinds of relationships.
Speaker 1:Paul argues for marital fidelity in 1 Corinthians 7. So Paul, jesus, many of the other New Testament writers were writing, giving teachings and instructions that were upside down. Counter-culture pushed back against the ancient Near East vision of a relationship between a man and a woman. It was very radical. So Paul's not saying women just sit there and do nothing, let the men take over, we're the bosses. He's not saying radical. So Paul's not saying women just sit there and do nothing, let the men take over, we're the bosses. He's not saying that. So it's important to ask them too. How might have women heard these messages from Paul? How did women relate to the church? Were they involved in the church? They were.
Speaker 1:Jerry Setzer, the great theologian and historian, says he says hey, the church and Christian theology as it began to grow was very, very attractive to women. Because the church, unlike anywhere else in the ancient world, offered dignity to women. It offered them roles and empowerment. In the church, women were allowed to do things and their marriages within the church were based more on mutuality rather than this hierarchy of value within their marriage. And if you were a single woman or you had been widowed. In the ancient world you had no power, no wealth, no real sway in any way, but in the church you were supported, cared for, loved, taken in. So the church was a very attractive place for a lot of women and they loved to be a part of it.
Speaker 1:Tertullian talked about how both genders men and women, the rich, the poor, those on the top of the social status, they all begin to flood into the church in the early parts of the first and second century, and because there was so much equality and dignity given to both sexes at the time. Now some men didn't like this because some of those men in the ancient world, as you can maybe imagine, they liked having power. They didn't want to take it from them. So some men cried out against it. There's this quote. Tertullian says this that men are crying out against the church because they were doing all this welcoming stuff of women.
Speaker 1:At the same time, women were funding into the church. Pliny talks about how, in the church, women were given leadership roles. Think of Priscilla and Aquila. There were all kinds of very prominent women in charge of ministries in the church. Most of Jesus' ministry was funded by women and they were helping collect sort of funds for his ministry. It's incredible if you read the Gospels. They were equal contributors. This church, this movement of Jesus, was very attractive to women.
Speaker 1:So this is not a passage suppressing, objectifying or oppressing or abusing women. Now neither, I would argue, is this passage about children. Just sit down and shut up and do what we say kids. Because as bad as the women had in the first century, children had it way worse. Infanticide was a very common practice in the ancient world. If you didn't want your child, you could leave your child outside in the elements where they would just die for whatever reason you wanted to. You didn't have to give a reason.
Speaker 1:An infanticide, where you would just murder your child, was very, very prominent and prevalent in the ancient world. In fact, there were often more men in the world in the ancient Near East than there were women, because men were viewed as more useful or more valuable in these family structures. So these parents would leave their baby girls outside and let them just die. And so in the families then there was oftentimes this hierarchy, not just of the role they played, but a hierarchy of value, and the men were at the top, and then women and then children at the very, very bottom. And it's in that culture where women or children were sort of demeaned and pushed aside and ignored, where Jesus shows up and welcomes children.
Speaker 1:I love this. I found this picture of Jesus with children. I love this picture and he gives him his undivided attention. I love it. This is extremely countercultural and, you know, because the disciples who are in the thing with Jesus, when these kids start showing up, the disciples start shooing the kids away. They're like we've got to be about the business of the kingdom of God. We've got more important things to do, jesus. And Jesus reminds them no, no, no, no. These ones are the business of the kingdom of God. That's what we're doing here.
Speaker 1:Years ago, I was asked to teach at a church which will remain nameless, but I went there. You might have heard this story before. It's a crazy story, but I went with my family. My son was about seven years old and he had been with me to church many times and I preached, you know, and he'd always come in to hear me. He was a well-behaved kid for the most part and we went in there and they said as we walked in, like oh no, kids are allowed in the sanctuary and I was like, what do you mean? Like, oh, you can't have a kid in the sanctuary. I said, why not? Now I'm curious. Oh well, we've got cameras and we've got all these productive production kinds of things we can't have. They is my son. No, he's the. He's my son and they wouldn't let him come in. And you guys are missing the point and you're missing a huge gift to receive from the kids. It's why, among other things, at Central, kids will always be welcome here. Now we have kids stuff going on, because that's fine if you want to let kids be kids, but if they want to hang out in here, we understand that Because they are the business of the kingdom of God. I will never tell a kid you can't come in here or refuse a kid communion if they want communion, because we're in the business with kids. Jesus welcomes the children.
Speaker 1:Paul what he's saying here and how he's addressing children in this way. And he tells the fathers, by the way, after he says hey, children, submit to your parents. He then says fathers, don't exasperate your children, because in the ancient world the common practice was exasperation at best. There was a ton of this and, by the way, exasperate means like to irritate or to annoy. So, fathers, don't annoy or irritate your children.
Speaker 1:And in the ancient world this was what they did at best. And Paul's arguing against this. This is a revolutionary thing for Paul to do and it probably got him into some trouble. And in the church they offered a new society which viewed children not as just not as valueless sort of little, you know crumb snatchers, but rather like people of value, people of importance Because they embraced or because they also had this imago Dei, the image of God. So they weren't just viewed for their usefulness, they were viewed for their personhood. And Paul is working to eradicate the abuse of children from top to bottom. And in the church they were working to do that. So it's not just a Bible passage telling kids hey, just sit down and shut up and do whatever your parents tell you to do. It's not saying that at all. And in the meantime too, this is not Paul simply endorsing slavery.
Speaker 1:Now, in the ancient world they didn't have slavery like we have it today, or not today, but well, some places. But we think of the transatlantic slave trade that sort of occupies a lot of our modern history here in America anyway. It wasn't quite the same in the ancient world. They had something more similar or more akin to bond service, which is still not the greatest, but there was this contractual obligation and there were rules and laws how to treat the enslaved or the one that worked for you. And so Paul says hey, slaves, obey your masters. Now, modern-day slavery very much is still a problem in our day today. You can Google quickly and find all kinds of examples of modern day slavery and it's an aberration and we as Christians and as the church should push back against this in every way.
Speaker 1:In fact, in 1999, I was in South Africa for about two months and we were there right after apartheid fell. Apartheid fell in, I think, 94. Apartheid was a system of racial segregation and oppression in which you had separated folks by their ethnicity and their race. And when I got there in 99, five years later, it was in play from 1948 to about 1994. I mean, it was there for a long time and it was very much still in the air when I got there and you could hear the violence and the vitriol in the people's voices when they talked about the other races and other ethnicities and it was still very much a part of the fabric of the country. And people who established apartheid used the Bible to do so. People who advocated for modern day, the trans Atlantic slave movement, christians used the Bible to endorse that. And I want to tell you it's a gross mishandling of scripture and theology to do so and it's unjustifiable, because the Bible is a I'm going to use a word here, so time out for one second.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna use a word here. I'm going to use the word progressive. When I say progressive, I do not mean the modern progressive ideology. Okay, what I mean is progressive. It's like this. It's a movement forward, a great step of progress forward. The Bible is an extremely progressive whoo, the spirit got a hold of me there. What was I saying? The Bible is an extremely progressively dignifying book.
Speaker 1:In the book of Exodus, for example, god, the creator of the cosmos, shows up and announces himself as the redeemer of the slaves. He sets free the captives. In the book of Exodus, in the law, the Israelites were given commands and laws to treat slaves with dignity and to welcome them into their family and these kinds of things, and to welcome in runaway slaves. In Deuteronomy, to welcome in runaway slaves as though they were part of their own family. And the prophets, the writers of the prophets, talk about the Messiah. When Messiah comes, he will set the captives free. Jesus shows up in Luke's gospel and he reads from the scroll of Isaiah. He quotes Isaiah. He says I've come to set the captives free.
Speaker 1:Many of the letters in the New Testament, paul and others. They advocate for an end of slavery. They put into practice all of Jesus' teachings, the book of Philemon, for example. We know this, probably because you heard me preach on it a couple months ago. But Philemon owned a slave and the slave, onesimus, runs away. Paul implores Philemon to welcome him back, not as a slave but as a brother, as a brother in Christ, and Onesimus goes back home with Paul's imploration.
Speaker 1:Christians in the ancient world were the first, some of the first ones in the ancient world to advocate for a moral stance against slavery. Now we know that abolition doesn't come as a rule of law across the world for a long time yet. But as early as the fourth century, christians were arguing against the practice of unjust slavery and slaves were welcomed as family members in that world. And, by the way, this also impacted in dramatic ways the empire. So Paul's not, I don't believe, advocating for some kind of an unjust system of slavery. Okay, so what is Paul doing then? If he's not arguing for wives to just sit there and do the laundry, or kids to just sit there and be, then If he's not arguing for wives to just sit there and do the laundry, or kids to just sit there and be quiet, or he's not arguing for slavery, what is Paul saying? Well, here's the answer, and I'm burning daylight.
Speaker 1:But this whole verse, if you caught it, it opens with a frame for the entire thing. Here's how it opens verse 521. Verse 521. Go ahead for me, sarah, I think I've got it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, paul writes as he introduces these three relationships between a husband and wife, kids and their parents, and worker and their employee. Hey, you guys, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. That's it, that's the ethic. Submit to each other, everyone, submit one to the other. This is the ethic, this is the frame, this is like kind of the linchpin that holds all of this together. And do it in the most common and ordinary relationships in your life. So, in these relationships, submit to each other. In these ones, submit one to each other. And in these ones, submit to each other. And Paul goes on to say it's not just my ethic, I'm not making this up as Paul's ethic or idea. He says to do this out of love for Christ. It's the ethic of Jesus.
Speaker 1:11 times in this passage Paul says hey as to Christ. So submit to each other out of reverence for Christ. In Christ, submit to each other. This is the chorus that Paul repeats over and over and over.
Speaker 1:11 times in this passage Paul says submit to each other. Let that be what shapes these relationships inside and outside, in everyday moments of our lives. Give your attention to Christ, because sometimes we forget that we're Christians. You know what I'm saying, because sometimes we forget that we're Christians. You know what I'm saying. Like maybe you're in traffic and you just sort of forget for a brief moment that you're a Christian. Maybe you're at the gym and somebody stole your machine and you're waiting. You forgot you're a Christian. Maybe you're a dad who's a coach for his baseball team and his kids play on the team and your wife has to come over and say to you Ryan, stop yelling at the ump, you're a Christian. I mean hypothetically. Hypothetically speaking. Dave knows what I'm talking about. Don't tell anybody, dave.
Speaker 1:I have a good friend who we were hanging out with on Friday night. This is hilarious. This is a true story. They went him and his friends and family went to the football game on Friday night and they were leaving the—by the way, congrats to the Elks Good job, let's go, elks at State. Yeah, good job. Yeah, I'm not surprised anyway, but yeah, good luck at State. They were leaving the parking garage at the end of this game and they're in line waiting to get down from the parking garage and a car backs up and almost hits my friend and his friend and these two cars. My friend who, yeah, they start jawing back and forth and the guy who was backing out his car gets out of his car. These are grown men and, by the way, I found out later that both of them were Christians Sometimes we forget Gets out of his car and comes around and starts threatening my friend I'm going to throw you off this balcony if you don't stop.
Speaker 1:He's like you're going to throw me off the balcony. So this guy wasn't the biggest guy. My friend's pretty big and has a bit of the street still left in him. You know what I'm saying. He gets out of his car and he stands up. He goes. I'm going to throw you off the balcony, both Christians and everyone's watching, like what is going on? Like should we laugh or cry or stop? And they start yelling, somehow, by a miracle, one of them says what's your problem? And the less than big guy he goes. I just had a really hard day, I know, yeah, I know. And then my buddy like remembers you know what? Man, let me pray for you, I kid you not. Suddenly this fight turns into like a prayer circle. They're all coming around gathering, praying. I'm like what is going on? This is crazy. So he's telling me, and Katie this, and Sarah, I was laughing so hard. You guys are goofballs, man.
Speaker 1:But what would it look like if we gave our attention to Jesus in all of the ordinary moments of our lives and, in reverence to Christ, or according to Christ, we looked at everything, all of our relationships, in that way and gave our attention to Jesus. What would it look like? Because our relationships, at every level, have moments of being broken. They need to be healed. So what does it look like? Well, I think Paul's saying it looks like submission Submit one to the other, submit to each other. Now here's the deal. We don't like this word, do we? Don't tell me to submit, man, don't tell me what to do. But good thing Paul doesn't just give us a word, paul gives us a person Jesus.
Speaker 1:Jesus who shows up and radically redefines greatness and power and how these things are used. Jesus often withdraws from the crowds because there's too much power going through the narrative in these many moments. So we have to understand this call in Ephesians to submit in light of Jesus and how he redefines power and submission and greatness. In John 2, for example, it says that Jesus withdraws from the crowds because he knew what was in each person Haunting. If you think about it. In John 6, they want to make him king. He could have been king like that, no problems. But again he withdraws from the crowds because he's not here to be king. He slips away. The text says because he's not interested in power and greatness as culture defined in that world. There was a certain way that culture defined power and greatness. He's not into that. It's not his deal. He wants to redefine greatness and power and he does it in wildly upside down ways. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:Jesus was this ancient prophet who said wildly dangerous things that got him killed. And in these moments he's redefining power and he's redefining what it means to be great altogether. So he tells his followers I'm gonna go be crucified, I'm gonna submit myself to the authorities and they're gonna kill me and Peter's like the heck you are. He didn't get it. It's not how you handle power and greatness in the ancient world. And Jesus says yeah, we are.
Speaker 1:James and John are arguing for who will be at the left hand and the right hand of Jesus when his moment comes. They don't get it either, because he came not to sit on a throne and rule from a throne. He came to bring a kingdom that comes from a cross and those brothers didn't want to be on the throne and rule from a throne. He came to bring a kingdom that comes from a cross and those brothers didn't want to be on the right hand or the left hand of him at that moment. You know what I'm saying. Jesus redefines power and greatness in all kinds of ways. At the Last Supper, they're still arguing about who's the greatest in this culturally identifiable way, and Jesus simply kneels down and takes a basin and washes their feet. I cannot overemphasize how radical this was that he did this. I can't.
Speaker 1:In a top-down culture, jesus willingly takes on the position of the weaker person, again and again, and again. And he tells us if you're a follower of mine, do the same thing. Wash people's feet, take up your cross and follow me. Give up your life for the sake of other people, submit yourself to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is a radically upside downdown way of doing things. By the way, nowhere else in the ancient world would you even mention more of the subservient partner in these relationships.
Speaker 1:But Paul not only mentions them, he mentions them first. He says wives, he mentions wives first. In ancient literature you would never even mention the wife, they don't talk about it. But Paul not only mentions the wife, he mentions them first. Children mentions them first. Children Mentions them first. Those who are enslaved he mentions them first. It's a radical turning upside down this social structure in Paul's day.
Speaker 1:And he asks both sides to submit. So he tells husbands hey, husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church. Fellas, let me talk to you for just a minute Because you are not off the hook. In fact, you're more on the hook, probably, than you ever thought. He tells you give up your life for your wife. This is what you're supposed to do. Greater love, jesus says, has no one than this, that he gives up his life for his friends. And Paul says love your wives like Christ loved the church. Put yourself second to your wife, sacrifice yourself, your wants, your desires for your wife. So, as wives submit to the husbands, husbands are also to die for their wives. This incredible picture of mutual submission and love in a culture where none of this existed. So, fellas, your job if you have one in the marriage laundry or no laundry, I don't know who's doing the laundry still. But love your wives like Christ loves the church and gave himself up for the church.
Speaker 1:And he tells fathers fathers, don't exasperate, don't irritate, don't annoy your children in unnecessary ways. Father, you want to have a fun conversation at dinner tonight. Don't exasperate, don't irritate, don't annoy your children in unnecessary ways. By the way, you want to have a fun conversation at dinner tonight. Ask your children hey, how do I exasperate you? I've done this, boy. It is eye-opening. One of my kids said I don't know Dad. Actually, I had to really beg them to tell me because they were kind of nervous. No, it's fine, I won't judge you, I won't be mad. One of them's like I don't know.
Speaker 1:Every time you come home and you're stressed out and the house is not exactly like perfectly clean. There's stuff all over. You find my backpack. I'm like why is your backpack out? And nothing else gets mentioned, just my backpack. Every time I do not do that. And Katie's in the background going my bad, my bad. Ask your kids what do I do? That exasperates you. Don't exasperate your kids. Let your kids be kids. I've learned this. Katie's wonderful at this. I'm not the greatest kids. Let your kids be kids. I've learned this. Katie's wonderful. I'm not the greatest, but let your kids be kids.
Speaker 1:When Peter, jesus tells Peter, I know you're going to betray me. And Peter doesn't get it right, he thinks he's hot stuff. And Jesus just says Peter, I've been praying for you, I prayed for you, Simon. He could have said you think you're hot stuff, peter? Just you wait, buddy, you don't know what you're talking about. Peter dummy, he doesn't. Jesus meets him where he is kind of like he's a teenage boy. Let him be teenagers. Don't exasperate them. Let them be what they are.
Speaker 1:Richard Foster says this about submission.
Speaker 1:I love this quote. He says this. He says submission is the spiritual discipline that frees us from the everlasting burden of always needing to get our own way In submission. We're learning to hold things lightly. We're learning to diligently watch over the spirit in which we hold others, honoring them, preferring them, loving them. And here, paul, quickly, he just reminds them both of you, the boss and the worker. You both have one master and it's Jesus. You serve the same master, so honor each other and love each other. Now, quickly, there are limitations to this. So there are times when submission, when one partner doesn't submit in these relationships, what do you do then? When one person is loving and submitting and honoring and dignifying the other, one's not? Yeah, yeah, sometimes submission can be beautiful.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it can be abused and when submission becomes destruction, you've got to resist it. And there are many examples. I don't have time, but there are many examples in the scripture where they do that in the scripture, they will. They will resist the authorities because it's unlovable and it's not christ-like and it's destructive. If at any moment, you have one-sided that becomes one-sided potential for abuse, be careful and resistant. In many Christian marriages I've heard where the wife is told stay there, even though the husband's being abusive. Stay there and submit, because you're supposed to submit. No, if you're being abused, either one of you get help and get out. That's my mother-in-law. She's not leaving because I said that she told me early. I got to leave early. Don't be offended around me.
Speaker 1:You have to use discernment. And how do you live this out in any specific way? Paul doesn't give specifics, neither did Jesus. You have to use discernment in how to apply this. But here's the bottom line In all of our relationships, love each other, submit to each other, die for each other. When we all do that, imagine what life would be like.
Speaker 1:One final quote, and I'll get out of your way the Eugene Peterson one for me, sarah. Yeah, god is God relationally Father, son and Holy Spirit. God creates only relationally. God is God relationally Father, son and Holy Spirit. God creates only relationally. God exists only relationally. God gives only relationally. Church is a gathering of Christians under the conditions of God's relationality. We're learning how to relate. It's vital for us to do this. Ephesians is an immersion in relationality.
Speaker 1:And then this picture that I have from Tanzania. I was over in Tanzania. This is my favorite picture. Here there were these kids like doing a performance for us. They were drumming. I'm telling you, africans know how to drum Now we lighter skinned Europeans, we don't always know how to drum Africans they so they, everyone. They had these drums. It was beautiful, these drum circles, and I was like I got to go drum with these kids. So I went down there and I said, hey, will you show me how to drum? And then Keith snapped this picture. Isn't that incredible. We are relational beings. We have to love and serve each other. Greater love has nobody than we laid in our lives for each other, and Paul's arguing for that a mutual submission, a mutual love and concern for the others. So, central Lutheran Church today may you love each other, amen.
