Sick Pilgrim
Last week my husband and I celebrated our 20th anniversary.
“But Theresa!,” you ask “How could you possibly have been married 20 years! Did you get married in middle school?” Oh, it’s sweet of you to ask. Yes, I was married in middle school. Our wedding colors were “Lisa Frank” and I walked down the aisle to “More than Words” by Extreme.
I kid. I got respectably married when I was a few months out of college. Our wedding colors were “Do you have the correct sizes off-the-rack?,” and we walked down the aisle to…you know what, I don’t know. Ron probably remembers, being the superior musician in our relationship as well as a professional organist, but I’m not going to ask him, because he’s putting our youngest daughters to bed right now and I don’t want to make that process last any longer than it needs to be.
I was a young bride, though, in the best way. I was enthusiastic and (mostly) fearless and gung ho to start a life that belonged unquestionably to me.
Oh, and Ron! Of course. Me and Ron.
I was absolutely convinced that I was making the best possible choice with my life. I might have even been right.
We got married in the Catholic Church, of course.
So here I am, a wife for nearly half my life now, and I just happened to have signed up to write a Dark Devotional the weekend when Ephesians 5, possibly the most (in)famous passage about marriage in the entire New Testament, is the second reading.*
What on earth am I going to say about Ephesians 5 that hasn’t already been elevated in mommy blogs and excoriated in feminist ones?
I have no idea. But I’ll start writing anyway.
“Brothers and sisters:
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
Okay, that’s fine. Mutual service, respect, and humility. We like that.
Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.
For the husband is head of his wife.
The husband is what now?
just as Christ is head of the church,
he himself the savior of the body.
As the church is subordinate to Christ,
so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.
In everything?
I pick up my phone to text Ron.
“Hey, quick question for this thing I’m writing. Do you want me to be subordinate to you?”
Bloop!
“Hell no.”
“Cool thx babe’’’
Still, the idea of the subordinate wife has become downright trendy lately. Google “Ephesians 5 wife” and you find…just, a lot of blogs. Most of them with stock photography of a woman in a white dress and a sunrise, for some reason?
Some of them have lists of things a wife can do to respect her husband’s headship, including “treat him with respect and kindness” (obviously?) and “do not argue with him, but pray that God guide his decision-making,” to which I say, “WHY NOT BOTH?”
You may also find an illustration wherein a “wife” umbrella is under a “husband” umbrella, which is under another umbrella (“God” or “Church”), umbrellas under umbrellas under umbrellas, to the extent that even Rihanna would be like, “Too many umbrella-ella-ellas!”
Okay, Rihanna aside, I’ve wrestled with this passage before, and eminent (male) Catholic apologists have urged me to read onward, because look! The call to the husbands is even more demanding!
Husbands, love your wives,
How is that demanding? Have you met me? I’m cute as a button. Super lovable.
even as Christ loved the church
and handed himself over for her to sanctify her,
Fair, I see how that would be hard, laying down his life and all to make me more holy.
Why is the wife the one that needs to be sanctified, though? I mean, I met this dude when he was 24 and I was 18. If we were to have had a purity contest at that point, I would have won handily. All I’m saying.
Plus, I have laid down my life for him, too. Whatever life I would have had as not-his-wife, I laid it down. Whatever body I would have had as not-the-mother-of-his-four-huge-babies? I have sacrificed. Pour one out for the abs that might have been.
So, color me unimpressed. What else is the husband called to do for his wife?
Let’s see… “Cleansing her by bath of water”— Oh, that sounds nice!—“with the word”—(Yikes, not as romantic)—
that he might present to himself the church in splendor,
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
that she might be holy and without blemish.
I’m supposed to be WITHOUT BLEMISH?
Okay, do you see how the simile is getting a little cloudy here? Paul has either shifted subjects or overextended his metaphor, because there is no way that even the most Christ-like husband can word-bath his wife until she is without spot or wrinkle.
If only. In my experience, the longer we are married, the spottier and wrinklier we both become.
Christ can do that for the Church, though, because He’s the Son of God, the Paschal sacrifice. Spouses can lay down their lives as well, but their sacrifices can’t directly sanctify anyone. Only Jesus can do that, being the “one mediator” and all. So here, Paul has to be teaching about the relationship between Christ and the Church, not specifically the duty of a husband to his wife.
So we have three parallel teachings going here: “Christians should be subordinate to each other,” “Husbands and wives should do these things for each other” and “Christ does this for his church” So let’s see how he ties up the threads;
So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one hates his own flesh
but rather nourishes and cherishes it,
even as Christ does the church,
because we are members of his body.
This passage, out of context, could be seen as describing the relationship between possessor and possessed. “Husbands, your body belongs to you, your wife belongs to you, so take care of your wife like you do your body.” But one of the truly unique things about the ancient Christians is that they utterly rejected the idea of the body as separate from the person.
Have you ever seen the meme “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body?**” Yeah, they would not have slapped that bumper sticker on any of their chariots, because it’s not what they believed.
The first Christians saw Christ crucified, and then they saw that same Christ, wounded body and all, resurrected. Body, soul, spirit: to the early Christians, all were one.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
One flesh isn’t just about flesh. It’s about everything. So here, the husband isn’t being called to care for his wife because she belongs to him. He’s being called to care for her because she is him…and he is her. In their union, they are one.
They are both Christ. They are both the Church. They are both husband. They are both wife.
Can you imagine saying that to a man who was raised in a culture where women are considered chattel? “That woman, your wife? She’s not yours. She’s you. And furthermore you? Are her.”
I mean, shit, can you imagine saying that to a Proud Boy in 2021?
So let’s go back to the beginning: “Brothers and Sisters, be subordinate to each other.”
How does that work? I imagine it’s like that traffic conundrum, where four cars arrive at a four-way stop at the exact same time, and each car is responsible for yielding to each of the other cars.
The reason why every four-way stop is not constantly blocked by four very polite drivers and/or their skeletons, however, is that by some miracle the four drivers mutually agree to allow one car among equals to take the lead. Just this time. Just until the next crossroads.
So it can be for husbands and wives, only more profoundly, because they are more than equals, they are one. One body, one in Christ, one in headship, one in submission.
Truth? Ron didn’t just respond “hell no” to my question earlier; he actually had something more thoughtful to say:
“If that term [subordinate] means ‘to have your will be perpetually subject to mine,’ then hell no. I want you to be “subordinate” to me in the same way I am subordinate to you: there are times what you need has to come before what I need and the greater good comes from serving you before myself.”
To which I did, literally, reply, “Cool thx babe.”***
Do I think this all is exactly what Paul understood himself to mean when he wrote the letter to the Ephesians? Probably not. My sister is also a writer, and when discussing this chapter with her she described it roughly this way: “You know how when you are writing an essay, and you want to start with a strong call to action, but then you start laying out your reasoning and it gets all confusing and you aren’t quite sure you wind up making the point you started out to make?”
Maybe Paul is like that, too.
So Paul, what exactly were you trying to say here?
This is a great mystery
Humility! I like that in an apostle. Are we even talking about husbands and wives anymore?
…I speak in reference to Christ and the church.
The means by which the risen Christ and the messy Church can somehow be One is, indeed, a mystery, and one I will continue to struggle with.
The means by which human partners can be, for each other, protector and protected, lover and beloved, rabbi and disciple, this I understand. I understand because I have lived it, for twenty years, with Ron.
A couple of Sundays ago, he and I stood in front of the congregation during Sunday Mass to renew our marriage covenant.
It was 100% Ron’s idea. I agreed to it because I was submitting to his headship.
Ha! Just kidding. Sort of. I agreed to it because it was important to him. Because he loves and serves our church and our pastor and—you know, God. He wanted to be up in front of all of them with me, to renew the promises that he and I have kept faithfully for 20 years.
His feelings about the Church are less complicated than mine, probably because he is a wiser person than I am.
I was uneasy kneeling there, in the sanctuary, but I was not and have never been anything less than proud and grateful to be next to Ron.
I am all to him, and he is all to me, two bodies in one flesh, joined in a dance of love for twenty years, and thus we go, on and on, for as long as we are allowed.
So, this time, I let him lead, knowing that on the next turn, when he needs me, I’ll be sure-footed. At the next crossroad, I will yield, and he will wave me through. And the next time it rains, he can come under my umbrella.
…ella, ella, ella…eh, eh eh eh…Amen.
*Write about the Gospel!” Marybeth suggested, to which I scoff, “This is a hard saying! Who can accept it?”
**If you Google this phrase, you see it attributed to either C.S. Lewis or Buddha. Lewis definitely didn’t say this, and Buddha probably didn’t. George Macdonald said something similar, and Walter M. Miller Jr. used a version of the phrase in A Canticle for Leibowitz, but if you ask me, the originator of the meme was probably “some lady with a blog.”
*** Our follow-up texts are even better:
“What did you THINK I was gonna say? ‘Hell yeah, be glad the leash I give you is as long as it is?’ ����”
“Dude, I can’t write about our leash play on Patheos.”
Theresa Reese Weiler is a Detroit-area musician, writer, and Sick Pilgrim’s resident goofus. Follow her on Twitter @SometimesReese for more jokes and vulnerability. www.weilercreativemedia.com
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In