Whooee! I still remember a few years ago when this song (Little Drummer Boy) made one of the drumsticks break and sent it flying over toward Jeff Van Duzer sitting right here! You’ll notice, Jeff, that they put me down below this year!

What a great night. Candles. Little Drummer Boy. Choir. Last night of 2006. Gary and Maxine getting married. We’re all in worship together. Wow!

A few weeks ago, in a weak moment, I told Gary and Maxine I would preach on any scripture text they wanted tonight. Hmm. So they came back with…Ephesians 5:21-33. Certainly one of the more difficult texts in the New Testament. Pretty much impossible to do justice to in one short sermon. Especially controversial in our day and age, almost guaranteed to rub some people the wrong way. Most senior pastors, when faced with such a text…give this one to the Associate Pastor. Steve, you left too early!

Actually, I’m glad they choose this one. And one of the things I hope happens is that as we read this and talk a little about it…is that Gary and Maxine will be a little scared. And all of us will be encouraged. And I want to invite Gary and Maxine to come and read with me:

Ephesians 5:21-33 (NIV)

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church - for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound myster - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

“This is a profound mystery.” The scholars fight tooth and nail over whether the Apostle Paul is referring to the quote from Genesis (“…and the two become one flesh”)…or whether he’s referring to the whole idea of marriage. I actually think he might be referring to both. “This is a profound mystery.”

It certainly is. Anne and I will celebrate 25 years of marriage this summer. And whatever else marriage is…it is a profound mystery. Every time I do premarital counseling with a young couple, I find myself thinking:

• Where do we get the audacity to say such things as we do in wedding vows?
• Where do we get off thinking that you could ever bring two independent, autonomous people who have different backgrounds, strange family systems, separate issues, different needs, individual careers…and think that it even had a small chance of working?

But if it is a profound mystery, (“unfathomable, of a miraculous or mystical essence”)…then why do we try so hard to make a formula out of it?

- In our culture today, people spend a lot of time negotiating prenuptial agreements to line up possessions and responsibilities.

- They do test runs, try living together without any commitment in an attempt to simulate what it would be like if they were committed…which even the studies agree does not work.

- There’s a school of thought that looks at a marriage as a giant scoreboard.

“You went out with the girls last week, that’s plus two points for me, leaving me with a net of plus 18 which means that I don’t have to do the dishes for the next two weeks while staying out late a few nights.”

- And then people spend an awful lot of time figuring out the logistics of how to get out of marriage once they are in.

All of these are attempts, in different ways, to make a formula out of something that is a profound mystery. Let’s not do that.

A marriage is a relationship, not a computer program. It is an art, not a science.

We can’t just hook electrodes up to Gary and Maxine and run a few tests to see if their brain chemistry is compatible. We’re talking about something profound. Something wonderful. And something far bigger than we are. Something Holy.

This passage comes at the end of the book of Ephesians, in the section where Paul wants some practical application of what he talked about in the first 4-5 chapters. When Paul really wants to get right down to it, when he wants to bring the full transforming power of the cross and resurrection of Christ to apply to real lives, what is it he will talk about? A new political order? The transforming of an economic system?

No. When Paul really wants us to examine our lives for the presence or absence of God’s Spirit…he challenges us to look…to home. To the living room. To our close relationships. To our marriages.

The guiding verse, the umbrella for this whole passage is the first one, verse 21: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” All the rest that Paul talks about will link back to this one: “Submit to one another …out of reverence for Christ.” It’s on the front of tonight’s bulletin in case I don’t say it enough times.

Now, what we need to understand is a bit of two different cultural contexts behind this passage. Clearly, the Greco-Roman household of the first century consisted of relationships between unequals. This particularly applied to a husband and wife. The household was a totalitarian patriarchy. The husband’s dominance was physical, social, absolute and legal. The wife’s major function was to bear a child, a male child. The husband had legal and absolute right to do virtually anything…the wife had no say. At meals, the husband reclined at table with his friends while the wife sat at the far end, and left as soon as the conversation began. She was an inferior. I don’t know about you…but this wouldn’t fly so well at my house!

That’s one cultural context, the first century, the one this letter was written into. The other cultural context is ours. We live in a day of liberation, the distrust of anything that sounds like authority and the dominance of men who abuse. It’s in the papers everyday, it’s in many of our experiences.

When you put the two things side by side, and we read words like Paul uses here like “submit,” and “headship” we are afraid. But I’ve read this passage (and others) over and over, and the thing is…every time I try to find domination, power, abuse or coercion in these verses, I keep running into Jesus.

Paul says to a Christian wife “choose to submit” to your husband. The language carries this sense, not of “obey,” but “freely choose to submit.” Before God, be the best wife you can. Honor, respect, serve, all of those things are rolled into “submit.” Honor Christ by how you honor your husband. Choose that. It takes Paul 43 words to tell this to Christian wives, and to draw the parallel of how the church serves Christ.

Then he addresses 147 words (3x as many) to the Christian husband. [Paul knew guys were a little slower!] Now we might think the word to the husband would be “Here’s how you rule, or display power or use your authority.” No chance. Because we keep running into Jesus.

The word to the husband?

Love your own wife.

Three times, the word goes to the husband:

Love her. Love her. Love her.

How?

The way that Christ loved the church.

We keep running into Jesus. At least ten times in this passage, depending on how you want to count them, we run into Jesus.

If our marriages are going to be some faint echo of the relationship of Christ and the church, and if in some analogous way a husband represents Christ while a wife stands for the church, then we cannot get away from the fact that love from the husband for the wife is self-sacrificing, self-limiting, earnest, tender and given even at the cost of his own life.

The only power that Jesus Christ chose to exhibit was the power of humility and self-sacrifice. This is the way that the husband is told to treat his wife. How could we possibly think that authoritarian, abusive, selfish patterns of language or behavior could have anything to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ?! It’s almost ludicrous.

It’s like Paul is saying:

“Okay, guys, go ahead and use your power and authority. Oh, and here’s a model of what it looks like:

- Jesus coming as a servant.

- Jesus unconcerned with his own ego or reputation.

- Jesus living with compassion.

- Jesus pouring himself into his disciples.

- Jesus weeping at the tomb of a friend.

- Jesus willingness to lay his life down for others."

Where is the coercion, the domination, the authority, the struggle for power that we have feared? They have been nailed to the cross of Christ.

Paul essentially renders discussion of rights and power as meaningless or insignificant. A marriage is not a formula. Marriage is radically transformed into a relationship built on mutual submission. Submissiveness will inevitably bring up another “S” word, like “surrender,” which may be a more useful word for us, actually.

Mike Mason wrote a wonderful little book years ago called “The Mystery of Marriage,” and in it he says “marriage is both a giving and a taking away. What is given is rather obvious: the love of another human being. What is taken away is perhaps not quite so apparent: the entire freedom to think and to act as an independent person.” Surrender. Give it up.

Ouch. There has never been a civilization that has valued independence and autonomy as much as ours. Every second of every year of your life until the time of a wedding you are free to think for yourself and of yourself, to make decisions for yourself, to act according to what you will do and think of the ramifications for your own life. And suddenly after you are married, every single decision and act will be thought of in light of another person. It does not go away. Ever. You are freely choosing to limit yourself in that way.

I’m doing a lot of premarital counseling right now. And you know about the statistics on marriages not lasting, within the church and without. Over the years, I’ve tried to ask harder and harder questions of engaged couples. As I’ve thought more, though, I don’t think I’ve asked tough enough ones. I need to ask questions that include things like this surrender word. What are you unwilling to surrender to the other person?

• Career?
• Standard of living?
• Escape clause?

What do you hold back? Go there, find out why. Decide if you can say “I will hold nothing back.” If both people can say it and mean it and grow into it, the relationship could hold.

Marriage is not about two who become more than two, but two who become one.

I have two friends who are in their eighties. They’ve been married for sixty-some years. The husband is in a nursing home with severe Alzheimer’s, no longer able to respond to much of anything. It is not the situation they ever wanted or imagined being in. But this wife holds nothing back…her life is built around her husband’s schedule.

I see them periodically. I’ve had lunch with them. And I have watched, eyes wide open, as she feeds him, spoonful by spoonful. I have watched as she talks with him as though he were able to understand. As she rubs his back, and holds his hand, and loves him like the old friends they are. It is such a beautiful thing, I cry. I pray I can be that kind of loving and faithful spouse…who will surrender everything.

Marriage is about surrender.

It’s not a formula. Since it doesn’t happen all at once, it’s going to take some practice. Gary and Maxine will have to figure out how it works for them, will have to keep learning where and how they can trust God to work out the kinks, and trust God for his timing. But here’s the great thing. As we practice, submitting, loving, laying down our lives…we will keep running into Jesus.

Listen to how The Message articulates verse 32:

“This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife…and how each wife is to honor her husband.”

If you want one word on marriage, it’s this: it’s not a formula. It’s a mystery.

If you want one word on Ephesians 5, it’s this: notice how you keep running into Jesus.

It is a profound mystery. And we get to stand this evening in this great mystery with our friends Gary and Maxine.

(A wedding followed.)