what marriage tells us about the gospel

This Sunday, our high school pastor, Ryan asked me to teach on a passage that people love to hate: Ephesians 5:21-24. 

It's about submission to one another in the church, and specifically about wives submitting to their husbands.  What a difficult teaching!  But it's a beautiful one, at that. 

We talked with students about how submission has been twisted in our world--we see abuse, slavery, war, and oppression all around us, all in the name of submission.  But this is NOT what the apostle Paul had in mind when we wrote these verses to the Ephesians. 

He had JESUS in mind.

Jesus, who loves the Church as his Bride, modeling how a husband should love his wife.

Jesus, who submitted to the authorities who nailed him to a cross and crucified him. 

Jesus, who submitted most of all to his Father. 

Paul writes in Philippians 2 that Jesus "did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking on the likeness of a servant." 

Jesus knew he was equal to God...he didn't have to strive for that equality.  He laid down his rights and willingly gave up his life in order to become a "fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:1). 

Jesus doesn't ask us to do anything he hasn't already accomplished for us.  (Man, I love him for that!!)

When we hold all this in mind, submission starts to look different.  It starts to seem like something I actually WANT.  And it shows us that marriage is not for just two people.  It's for all of us in community together.

When I was telling someone that I’m teaching on this passage today, she said “Shouldn’t a married person be doing that?”  Here’s the thing: this passage isn’t about married people.  In fact, marriage isn’t about married people.  It’s about God.

California pastor Mike Erre has said that God is a god of props.

He knows we are forgetful, that our tiny pea brains can't handle all He has for us.  So in His infinite grace, He gives us ways to remember.

He gave Noah a rainbow.  He told Abraham to build a rock pile.  And to the Church, He gives the sacraments: baptism reminds us that the Spirit raises dead people to life. Communion reminds us that Jesus gives salvation.

In the same way, marriage is a prop that shows us the gospel.  When we see a husband laying down his life for his wife, we see Jesus laying down his life on the Cross.  And when we see a wife submitting to her husband's authority, we see Jesus willingly submitting to the Father.  In another dimension we see in the husband and wife a beautiful picture of Jesus and his Bride, the Church.

We are all called to submit. I confess that I am lousy at this most of the time. My upbringing, my education, my experience have all made me feel pretty entitled.  Can you relate?  Sometimes I feel like I should get to do whatever I want, like the world owes me something.  I think the place we live here in New England kind of cultivates that.

But the gospel says that we are to be like Jesus and lay aside our rights.  That means submitting to our teachers, our bosses, our parents, our youth leaders, and sometimes even our friends.  It is difficult work!  But Paul says that it will show the world Jesus and his amazing love.

And God gives us every resource we need!  He also gives us the awesome privilege of representing Him in our relationships with one another.

On swollen knees, community, and the God who heals

This week, I had a doctor's visit with a physiatrist from the Walnut Hill family.  I've had chronic pain and swelling in my knees for ten years, and to be honest, I had pretty much ignored the obvious signs that something was wrong.  In hindsight, I'm 26 and relatively healthy--so I should really be able to jump my horse, go for a run, or play some light tennis without my knees swelling up to the size of saucers.  As I was telling my doctor about my symptoms, he cracked a joke about how people who let these things persist for say, ten years without seeing a doctor, are pretty delinquent.  I then had to admit to him (rather sheepishly) that no, I hadn't been to see a doctor about my problem since it first showed up when I was 16.  Oops.

The good news is that with physical therapy, nutritional supplements to boost my joints' ability to repair themselves, and maybe some ugly old lady shoes from the podiatrist, the problem (stemming in an alignment issue with my hips and my flat feet) should be corrected in time.

The whole thing got me thinking, though.  I mean, I'm generally a lot more disciplined about my spiritual health than I am about my physical health.  But in both arenas, there is sickness I ignore at times.  I want to believe in my own self-sufficiency.  I want to believe there's nothing wrong.  I live on the surface of things instead of in reality sometimes. 

#prettydelinquent

At the heart of it--if I'm really honest with myself, and with you, dear reader--I don't believe the gospel.  Ouch.  That is tough to write.  But here's how I know it: If I really believed that Jesus is after Restoration, if I really trusted that he came to redeem me, body and soul, then I would jump at the chance to be healed.

This idea that our bodies are of secondary importance to our souls smacks of the Gnosticism the Early Church battled.  God has created us as people with bodies, after all.  Christ came to us in a body.  And therefore, God cares very much about our bodies and what we do with them.

I confess that it is difficult for me to believe that healing in my body is oh-so-connected to the gospel.  That is why I've ignored my swollen knees for ten years.

Last night, I was at a worship gathering at my friends the Mancinis' house.  As I tried to get settled on the floor of the living room, I was suddenly hyper-aware of the pain in my knees.  It's nothing new for me to have to switch positions every two minutes because of the discomfort caused when I sit cross-legged--but for some reason, I was suddenly aware of how abnormal that is at my age.  (There is something powerful about finally, finally voicing our need.) 

After we sang six or eight songs and lots of people prayed about a variety of things, I confessed my brokenness before my community--the group of college students and 20-and-30-somethings present.  After I shared my story and prayed thanking God for his grace to me even when I ignore my own need, my friends laid hands on my knees and began to pray.  They prayed for God's Kingdom to break out in my body.  For God to do a miraculous work.  For faith that we would believe in Him as the Able Healer.
 
And an amazing thing happened: although my knees are still cracking and my hips are still misaligned, the pain is gone!  I can kneel.  I can sit cross-legged.  I was even able to ride today, short stirrups and all, with no discomfort.  He is able.

Someone prayed last night regarding Luke's account of the paralytic whose friends lowered him through the roof to get him in front of Jesus.  I feel a lot like that man, who was healed through the faith of his friends.  Community is a beautiful thing.

I gather that I will still need physical therapy, and the vitamins, and maybe even the ugly shoes to restore my body to its proper order.  {{thank you, Father, for the way your healing can come in practical, everyday ways!}}  But I'm praising God today for the reminder that when we call out to Him, He is faithful to answer us.  The physical healing I received this weekend is a signpost to me of a spiritual reality.  In the face of our delinquency, God is merciful.  He meets our brokenness with boundless grace.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Matthew 7:7

Hot Off the Press

Another one of the students from the Nassau team, a senior named Josie, just completed her college essay--and I am dying to share it with you!  I am soooo proud of my girls and they way they use their experiences serving our Haitian and Bahamian friends to show others the face of poverty.  Their passion for the global Church is a beautiful thing to behold!

I walk along the long dirt road with the hot sun beating on my back. With each step my team members and I take, a puff of dust elevates from the ground. Little shacks line the road and a rocky path leads deeper into the area. Our group divides as we approach the first shack. A group of women sits under a cluster of trees with car parts and debris scattered about. As we greet the women, small figures begin to appear through the doorway of the house. “Would they like to come out and play?” my teammate asks one of the women. Upon their mother’s call, the children come out of the house and run toward us. What happens next is unexpected. I feel arms surround my body in a tight embrace, and a sweaty forehead against my shoulder. The children grab our hands as we lead them back to the church. They introduce themselves with Haitian names as we approach the building. Others on our team have gathered children from the neighborhood as well. Each little face I lay eyes on is illuminated with a smile. A girl has beads all throughout her hair. Another boy has two different sized shoes. Joy radiates throughout our group for the next week.

I sit with a boy named Joshua on my lap under a wooden gazebo. We listen to our Vacation Bible School lesson. As I see each child’s hand excitedly go into the air, and listen to each triumphantly say his answer, I am reminded that this is what I live for. Working with children is my passion, and serving others is what I feel I am meant to do.  I hope to study elementary education, and later to teach and serve in the mission field. I dream of providing help and rehabilitation for young women and children who have suffered from sexual abuse. I want to be able to show others the power of healing and to renew joy.

Later in the week, I find myself walking into a room the size of a closet to see a women as frail as a small child in bed. Miss Moxey, who is living in an AIDs camp called All Saints, greets us warmly. As I sit on the bed beside her, she shares her incredible story of how she contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion after being hit by a drunk driver in Miami. Miss Moxey has refused medical treatment since the 70s, her children have abandoned her, and she is paralyzed from the waist down. Still, she is strong. I can’t help but cry when she speaks of her undying faith in God. Visiting with Miss Moxey and other patients like her reminded me that to be able to serve is one of the greatest things I can do. 

Now I am preparing to walk down another long road, a journey into my future. I have always had extreme empathy for others around me, and my mission trip to Nassau, Bahamas showed me how I can use that gift to engage in community wherever I am. I know that I would be a fantastic addition to your university. I am looking forward to becoming a part of the community on campus and continuing to explore opportunities to serve locally and globally.

Read this today.

The highlight of my day was reading students' college essays.  True story.  It is one of my favorite parts of my job...especially when they write their essays about our trip to Nassau!  Here is one of the essays from an awesome senior named Abby, who has already sent it to colleges up and down the East Coast :)  I always learn so much about the Father's heart through my students' experiences...and I think you will, too!

“There are starving kids out there who would love to eat that,” was a familiar phrase as I stared at half eaten plates of food growing up. 

It’s different now. I know their names. 

Nakiesha, Wedeline, Kyria – and the list of impoverished children I now know goes on. 

Behind the paradise of Nassau, Bahamas lies a swarm of Haitian refugees. They fled the hell of Haiti for a better life in Nassau, yet found themselves still surrounded by poverty and the shame of being unwanted immigrants. With time, somehow their plans for a better life disappeared as they struggled to provide food and clean clothes for their families. Garbage piled up outside, cars settled like ghosts in their front yards with motors and spare parts lying everywhere. Old furniture and toys were left outside overnight and unstuffed by looters and animals. Over time, they became blind to the grime around them and allowed their toddlers to play in squalor among broken glass buried inches deep into their dirt roads.

In July of 2011, I am a volunteer at a Bible Camp near those very roads. As the Bahamian heat beats down, I thank God ten year old Kyria didn’t pierce her foot on a nearby shattered bottle. Yet as I look back down, I realize glass is everywhere and there is no way I can gather it all up. Kyria then begins to climb a pile of trash to pick fruit from a tall tree growing atop it. As I watch her, toddlers swarm around me with the question “I can go on ya back?” in their Creole accents. I pick up one each hip and begin to cry at the realization that their poverty is far from over. They are three year olds who are being taught ambivalence to their own squalor by parents who were raised the same way. I soon realize that the tropical trip I spent a year working to pay for would break my heart, as well as inspire me to spread the word about this injustice. On the trip I smelled poverty, held its hand, kissed its little faces, and cried as its youth told me stories of rape and abuse much too old for its age.

           

I was in no way naive to hard times upon entering the trip. As a child, my parent’s financial collapse and subsequent divorce led us to rentals and awkward social times in the wealthy Connecticut suburbs. I began working and saving money since my sophomore year in high school. This has left me with a strong work ethic and determination to take charge of my life and do what means most to me, which is helping other people. On my trip to Nassau, I realized true poverty incomparable to the Fairfield County poverty line my family occasionally fell below, real social class rejection, and the work it takes to change a community. While my sister receives a college scholarship because of her work, and I have opportunities despite my economic background, the children I came to love have little view of this future.  

I realized that the cycle of poverty takes generations to break and millions of volunteers willing to sacrifice their comfortable lives for 110 degree heat, tarantulas, piggy back rides, and the vision of a better life for children they don’t even know. As I returned home, I became conscious of the ambivalence of so many people to the things I had seen, and it caused me to want to become a voice for those who have none. I am now willing to seek out those in need, and help them in any way possible because I want to do good in the world.

Increase

It's been a particularly tough day, one when I've felt sort of forgotten. 

{Thank goodness for friends and wine and Christmas movies and cheer!}

After all the jolliness of an impromptu Christmas celebration at my house, I am sitting here with the Advent readings and a cup of tea.  The Psalmist is reminding me that "the LORD loves righteousness and justice," and that His plans "stand firm forever" (Psalm 33:5, 11).  Such sweet truth as I sometimes question what, really, is going on in the world, in my life.

Perhaps even more fitting after the day I've just had is Alistair Begg's sermon excerpt in Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.  I've already read it once today, but it is hitting me in fuller measure tonight.  Reflecting on some of my favorite verses from Philippians 2--according to scholars and theologians the world over, some of the richest theology ever written--he writes about the incarnation and what it tells us about the nature of God the Giver:

In other words, instead of holding onto his own uninterrupted glory, he chose to set it aside... 

Jesus did not approach the incarnation asking, "what's in it for me, what do I get out of it?"

In coming to earth, he said, "I don't matter."

Jesus, you're going to be laid in a manger.

"It doesn't matter."

Jesus, you will have nowhere to lay your head.

  "It doesn't matter."

Jesus, you will be an outcast and a stranger.

"It doesn't matter."

Jesus, they will nail you to a cross, and your followers will all desert you.

And Jesus said, "That's okay."

This is what it means, he "made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men."

 

I'm reminded for the hundredth time that those of us who want to be identified with him will experience these same feelings of being deserted, made an outcast, misunderstood. 

Not that my tiny little troubles hold a candle to the disgrace he bore. 

Still, it's beautiful in some small way to find that my story is his story, that on these days of feeling small, I can look to his example.  That in Christmas, he provides a resource for me to lay aside entitlement and say with him "I don't matter."  

May we become nothing this Christmas!

He must become greater, I must become less.

-John the Baptist (John 3:30)

we will cast our stones at him

The gospel Scripture for tonight's Advent reading is John 8:1-11,  Church tradition disputes whether the story was part of the original manuscript, but it made its way into the Cannon--and it sure sounds like something my Jesus would do.

The people are gathered around Jesus as he is teaching in the temple courts, when in march the pious religious leaders with a woman caught in adultery.  Looking for a way to accuse Jesus, they demand an answer: "Do we stone her as Moses said?  Do we give this woman the justice she deserves?"

Quietly, Jesus begins to write in the sand.  Scripture doesn't tell us what he is writing, but we can imagine what he is thinking: that he will be accused--for us.  That his body will be broken instead of hers, instead of mine.  That he will die even for the self-righteous ones, those religious folk who care more about looking good than loving God.  We will cast our stones at him.

Jesus dares them to stone her--but only if they are without sin themselves.  With this challenge, he shuts up the hypocrites.

He knows he is the only one worthy to cast a stone; he is the only one without sin.  And he will not do it.  He will not condemn her.

Tonight, at our area high school WHY Groups, students discussed the temptation of Jesus in Luke 4.  For one student in particular, the discussion raised some heady questions about the nature of sin.  "How much is too much to sin?  And why does it matter anyway if they're just little sins?  If Jesus was tempted too, does he really blame us for giving into temptation sometimes?"  (Man, I just love the ones who ask questions!)

This passage from John can raise some similar concerns for us.  "Why does Jesus let her off so easy?  And how does he really know she will leave her life of sin as he directs her?" the legalist in each of us might venture to ask.

The point, my friends, is grace.  Because of the Incarnation and the Cross, you and I have been "let off" too.

He has silenced our accusers. 

He has taken the beating we deserved.

He has wiped the slate clean.

And grace never leaves us where we are, but calls us instead to leave our old lives behind.

But he was wounded for our transgressions;
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that brought us peace,
    and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;
   we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him
   the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
   yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
   and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
   so he opened not his mouth.

Isaiah 53:4-7

let there be light

Today I discovered my new favorite Christmas song of. all. time.  Buy the song on iTunes and/or check out these lyrics by Ross Byrd of High Street Hymns (in Charlottesville!):

One Winter's Night

If only that which is assumed could ever be redeemed

Then come to us within a womb; be born and wash out feet

And not our feet alone we pray but everything we know

That thou O Love would come and stay and all our sorrows go

Yet thou will not be welcomed here, still Love please come and be

Our refuge, wipe away our tears though we will murder thee

But darkness only turns to day if You become the night

And we on You our darkness lay that it be swallowed in light

The gods we trusted and became will find no solace here

Beside his creatures low and lame the Son of God appears

A thousand years of "progress" past, a million hearts beguiled

Now Love alone will reign and last within one little child

O Love, make a way, come find us

Search the darkness, light the way, come and guide us Home

Oh the sunrise burns the night away

Find us, find us

Blessed One, born today, come and find us

Search the darkness, light the way, come and guide us Home

One winter's night begins eternal summer morn

If only You are born

Those words have ruined me for cheesy Christmas music.  Beautiful.  I listened to this song on repeat yesterday--no less than 25 times--and then found myself in tears throughout the day

when the single woman on a TV drama underwent in vitro while a sick little boy lay in a hospital bed without parents

when a friend told me about a marriage that is failing

when I read about women who are still enslaved in brothels

And it just struck me again and again how much we need this LIGHT that has come!

to dispel our darkness...

 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

John 8:12

to come and find us..

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

   and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
   the night will shine like the day,
   for darkness is as light to you. 

Psalm 139:11-12

to put His light in us...

“I will keep you and will make you
   to be a covenant for the people
   and a light for the Gentiles,
⁷ to open eyes that are blind,
   to free captives from prison
   and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness."

Isaiah 42:6-7

You are the light of the world.

Matthew 5:18

The power of the Incarnation is that in Jesus, the Kingdom of Light breaks in and dispels the darkness of broken humanity. 

As Simon Tugwell has put it, "He has followed us into our own darkness."

In Jesus, we have hope that things will not always be as they are, that as C.S. Lewis so masterfully wrote, it will not be "always winter and never Christmas."  That all things will be set right when this Heavenly King returns, once and for all.  That all of our longing is stirring up anticipation for Him.  That the light of the Son continues to shine in us, His Church, even as we wait.

"One winter's night begins eternal summer morn, if only You are born"--what a thought!

 
You, LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.

Psalm 18:28