21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
I never really knew him. He had descended into Alzheimer’s before I arrived to be his pastor. He would say the Lord’s Prayer with me and receive the sacrament. But there was not a lot of conversation happening. I was just one of a parade of strangers who crossed his path every day in the care facility. But I did know him in a sense. His wife told me about his wicked sense of humor, his prowess on the golf course, and how he was respected at work. All that was in the past. He knew he loved her, but he could not remember her name all the time. She visited him almost every day, her own health did not always allow it.
We hear Paul admonish us to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. He urges wives submit to husbands and husbands love their wives as Christ loved us. For too many people, his words are hard to hear. When very good things are corrupted, they often become very destructive and that is true about marriage. Paul is not telling us to submit to cruel and abusive spouses. Do not use his words to encourage someone to do that. He is envisioning something else, a mutual submission to one another, in which we allow our life to revolve around a center of gravity which is outside us both. It removes me from the middle of every picture and replaces it with us.
There is a beauty to the faithful devotion of my friend as she cared for her failing husband. It was hard sometimes. I know it was. She wept to tell me about it. But it was also good, and she would not have traded these days with him. This is the image of Christ and His Church, and it is the vision which God has always had for every marriage. Pray for marriages today, pray for your own if you are married. Pray for the marriages of the people you love. Pray that God bless and fill them with this mutually submissive love which bears beautiful witness to the love which Christ has for us all. Pray for the Church, which is the bride of Christ, that it too would find its delight in Him alone.