The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
“Submission”- Episode 50 in the series, “Letter to the Ephesians”
In our next episode, Jonah and Patrick lead us towards a new understanding of a particularly challenging portion of Paul’s letter (Eph 5:22-33). Paul describes a re-ordering of the universe through Christ based on submission (huppotassō, Greek). We are each invited, out of our own freedom and dignity, to follow the True Human Being, one who possesses a wisdom and heart wider and deeper than our own. How does our growing union with Christ Jesus begin to transform our relationships with each other? Can we walk with each other in love, “as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:2)? Are we able to submit?
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Good morning Patrick.
Speaker 3:Hi Jonah.
Speaker 2:Nice to be here again with you.
Speaker 4:Here we are.
Speaker 2:Here we are, it's conversation time.
Speaker 4:The light in everything. It's a place where we like to dive into the depths of a conversation on the mysteries of Christianity here in Vaughan, Ontario, to humans, to priests, servants of a movement for religious renewal at a seminary in 2025.
Speaker 2:And welcome to our dear friends and listeners. We'll begin, as we usually do, with the Gospel of John in chapter 8. Again, jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we are coming to the kind of culminating pictures and revelations that are found in this letter to the Ephesians that we've been living in now for over a year, chapter five and it's such an extraordinarily rich letter, it's covered so much territory, it's had such a wide reach, speaking of the beginnings of time when humanity was inside the divinity, receiving its first purposes, spiritual purposes, being laid inside it. This is what you are destined for and all of what it has meant that the divine son came to the earth and embodied himself in a human being, jesus, and lived through all he lived with, lived through and suffered where he suffered and went through the crucifixion, and then was raised and elevated, as it says in this letter, up into the heavenly places and seated with the Father ruling in the highest heaven and taking us with him into these places. It is looked at the dynamic challenge of a new family of God, a community of God separated from those coming from the pagan traditions and cultural backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds, religious practices, joining together with those who had been raised in the Hebrew tradition, in the ancient Hebrew scripture, and all of them finding their Lord, their true spirit guide and the true creative leading power within the universe in Jesus Christ and the one who accomplished the death and resurrection mystery, and he's then dived. He has dove dived. He dived down into the details. Dived down into the details.
Speaker 4:I like that of just like now. What does it mean to live our lives in the light of this blessing and in this experience that we've been a part of and the realities that this has, that this has brought about? All of that we've been a part of and the realities that this has brought about? All of that has been flowing from chapter three, where he did his core prayer that actually, the community and the individual Christians could be filled with all the fullness of the Godhead so that God's life actually live in us permeate us and work in us into the world.
Speaker 4:What would that look like? And then he starts to unfold that. Chapters four, chapters five, these beautiful things that come in chapters five, for example, at the very beginning, therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. That's such a like massive reference. This is my beloved son. Become the beloved of the Lord of God, new sons in the sense, everyone who is in the church, and also this image that comes so strongly. I've been meditating on it again with brothers and sisters in the priesthood Genesis 22. It's the first time this phrasing comes where God asks Abraham to give back to him his son, whom you love your beloved.
Speaker 4:It's this whole theme of love and sacrifice. That's the next thing that comes. Therefore, be imitators of god as beloved children, and walk in love, as christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to god. Be your, be a priesthood in your life, be a priest, and you yourself, what you are to do, is to actually give yourself in love, to your loved ones, to the people, to everything, to the earth.
Speaker 2:Right. So that's kind of also a way to understand something that we say so often in our movement Christ in you In you Like. It's not just there. It's meant to be awakened and acted out, Acted out.
Speaker 4:Activated.
Speaker 2:Lived, lived, and the way to live it is basically offering yourself for the life of the other. That's it, and that's the essence of pri other. That's it and, in that way, that's the essence of priestly action. Yeah, I give myself to your challenges, your pains. I walk with your journey.
Speaker 4:I think of you, I pray for you and that works because it's mutual. As you have given me your life, I will give my life, and we, and it's right. And then for those who don't, also we will give our lives. We will, but but all what I can work on is not whether or not someone else is giving their life.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's not my job right, I can't give their life for me, but I can be an imitator of God as an offspring of the divine which has come about through this process of Christ in me, and I can walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. So that's how he opens this chapter. That's for everybody in the church, everyone, everyone in the church, man, woman, whatever. This is it, this is our identity in Christ.
Speaker 2:And I like how you emphasize that, not to be too concerned with if that's not being reciprocated by other humans. It's not about that, because if we truly look at what Christ is doing, he's not saying well, I'm not going to give you my full self unless you give it to me. He's just like the sun pouring out. So I think that's a very important piece there.
Speaker 4:It touches a lot on the thing we were talking before we pressed record pouring out, so I think that's a very important piece there. It touches a lot on the thing we were talking before we pressed record. What's my motivation for my work? If I'm not being properly cared for, if people aren't looking out for my needs, do I stop sacrificing Right?
Speaker 2:I had that and you know that I had such a powerful learning through that, my gosh.
Speaker 4:I think we all. It just touches on some very, very deep, deep, deep places.
Speaker 2:Existential places.
Speaker 4:Because behind that is also like will God love me? Is God going to take care of me?
Speaker 4:Because I'm not feeling taken care of, so why isn't God also doing God's job of caring for me? Is God going to take care of me Because I'm not feeling taken care of, so why isn't God also doing God's job of caring for me? And again, the writer Paul is trying to guide us to a Christed orientation. The care we receive from God is the safety, protection and care that is of a divine nature and not of an earthly nature, Just as in the earthly sense, Jesus was abandoned, Jesus was betrayed. Jesus was literally just left by his closest people to go through what he went through, denied by the rock of the church, and went through the treatment and reception that he had through the spiritual leaders and governors of his age that crucified him and abused him. So I cannot count on outer protection and care.
Speaker 3:I can't.
Speaker 4:But I won't feel that if I feel what I'm doing is pouring myself out and being in love with that, With that, not secretly doing it so that these people will do something for me? And you and I know there are false ways of you know martyr, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:The shadow of martyrdom. The shadow of martyrdom yeah.
Speaker 4:The shadow of self-sacrifice in the sense that, um, you have nothing left to give. It's not? You're not yet on the cross and you're, like you know, dying because of the way you're giving yourself and you're not in a breath, you're not free and that, yeah, then you have to go back to the gospel and look, my hour is not yet come he's interesting.
Speaker 4:It's like they want in chapter six and john, for example, they're like this is the nourisher of our souls, this is the one who can feed us even if there is no bread. This is the one who gathers every fragment and lets nothing be lost. He's going to pull us all together again. And they are so inspired because they get a vision. This is the king, this is the one we've been waiting for, the Messiah king, and they go to take him. It's chapter six. We still got a lot of chapters to go until the crucifixion and Jesus leaves them and goes up to a mountain by himself. It's not time yet it's not time and he goes and prays and takes a break.
Speaker 3:But he's alone he needs some alone time.
Speaker 4:And there's lots of alone time that Jesus takes in the course of the gospel.
Speaker 3:I can relate Right you know right, you can feel it, he goes. He needs to go pray and be alone.
Speaker 4:And there are even times where in Mark's gospel it's so moving he's like he wants to go be alone.
Speaker 4:He goes and goes out to the desert, but like all this crowd follows him out there and you just feel for him like he could really stand to use him, get a break. But there is then the moment where it's not about that and I'm not really truly unprotected, and it's about pouring all that I have out and that's at the altar always, and sometimes that altar for me and that's of course a beautiful theme, but where I know we're going to get sidetracked if we do this.
Speaker 3:You can feel it.
Speaker 4:That's at the altar of right now, this conversation. I need to be all in. I'm trying to give myself wholly to this moment, to you, to the word, and see if the spirit will respond. But I'll give everything I have. You know that about me.
Speaker 2:That's key.
Speaker 4:And I know you'll do the same. Yeah, we're forgetting everything and just diving in on this, so key. So that's where the sacrifice can happen right now. Yeah, so it's not always obviously outer pain and suffering or anything like that, but we can't ever think we're guaranteed outer protection, as we've often talked about.
Speaker 4:But the love of wholly giving ourselves to what is to be done and bearing and receiving. Wholly giving ourselves to what is to be done and bearing and receiving the reactivity of the world, but trusting in the act of love for its own sake. For its own sake, living in it as if it's the only thing I can live in. It's the house of my being. Yo Yo.
Speaker 2:Amen the house of my being, yo, yo Amen.
Speaker 4:Spirit of fire. And then, when I'm killed, I'll notice I'm still alive, because you cannot kill love. And so far as I've united myself at all with self-sacrifice, god raises me, and I realize that's where the protection is. I was feeling like getting a download Amen Preach.
Speaker 4:So that's the opening kind of bell, but also I would say that like kind of the, the culminating picture that he gives from also chapter four, as he builds towards it too. He's kind of building up this picture of the community of Christians is a priesthood who is always offering itself as its very identity, because that's God's identity God is always wholly present, wholly giving to what needs to be done. Yeah, amen, so what?
Speaker 3:needs to be done, yeah, Amen.
Speaker 4:So that led to this powerful passage then in verse 14 of sleep or awake and rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you, a kind of resurrection process in the disciple, you, a kind of resurrection process in the disciple. You should again and again be in this process of rising up out of the old human in you, resurrected through the Christ light that can shine upon you. So all of that is for the whole community. And then he is going to pick up a theme that has been a theme since the beginning of this letter. I think it's one of the core themes throughout the whole letter Jonah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, Including chapter six with the armor of God and the battle pictures.
Speaker 4:So he's going to pick up the battle pictures in chapter six. There are all these powerful spirit powers who seem to be having a lot of influence, who are able to have a lot of power over situations ruling in cities, in cultures in the world, in the powers of decay and death. Where is God? Is God ruling? Is God going to win? Is the Lord of love winning within this battle? And that's, I think, part of the fear that he's trying to address in the listener. I know you're seeing this and feeling this, but you need to know this is the one who is in the process of bringing all those powers under his feet. So I would love to go back to that, because this is the term here is submission that we're going to get into now. My long preface here, brother, Hang in there, I like it, I like it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so he concludes this Verse 20 in chapter 5. Giving thanks always and for everything to God, the Father. It's another core prayer activity. Giving thanks is. Let's see what he uses as a word here the Eucharistic activity, giving thanks always for everything to God, the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the secret of the spirit, I am in Jesus Christ. So that's our activity. And then what's the other one? Submitting to one another out of reverence for the Christ in them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very important. I'm so glad, because if you don't really deepen that, let that take root in you. What comes next is going to be more challenging. It's going to be more challenging.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So everyone in the church is called to submit to one another, seeing that the Lord of the universe has taken up a throne room in the heart of each person. That's just a massive social transforming fact.
Speaker 2:Right. So, for example, when you just kind of caught fire a little bit there with the Spirit, I heard Christ speaking through you. Now I have an opportunity then to submit, Not like give away my integrity. That's not the kind of submitting, but the submitting. There is more of a surrendering to the word of the one that I love and allow it to obey it. So just allow it to be the only thing. I just need to receive it and love it and rejoice in it. So that's one just concrete example of what does it mean to be and it's not always being spoken in everyone, but when it does arise, surrendering to it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it'll be beautiful, I think, to take a little bit of a moment to just contemplate the kind of sides, many sides, of this activity of surrendering of submitting yeah, what is? This gesture and that will help us. But one thing that's helpful as a kind of orientation in general and working with a text like this. Well, how has the author already used the word?
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, very helpful. How does he?
Speaker 4:use it within this letter as a kind of okay. So he used it before, so now he's using it again.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So he's making a connection, and the first time that he uses it in this letter is back in chapter one, and it's this beautiful hymn that we spent a long time on describing kind of the arc of this being and our relationship with Jesus Christ, his relationship to the Father, the effects of the deed that he did. It's just this beautiful thing and the power and might in Christ that is described. So I'll go back to chapter one, verse 19. What is the? Because he wants them, in knowledge, to become aware of Christ's power in the world and in themselves.
Speaker 4:What is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ, that's actually to God, the Father, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church. So this is the guess which word is submit? Because I didn't say it right, but in Greek it's the same word. They didn't translate it the same, very interesting.
Speaker 3:Interesting yeah.
Speaker 4:What would you guess? And that last line.
Speaker 3:Read it again.
Speaker 4:And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things in the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all Gave yeah right Is it.
Speaker 4:No, it's put oh, put. Yeah, he put all things under Interesting. Interesting, because the term hypotaso in Greek has the root word taso. Hypo is the over or the sub part of it. Submit, right, it's like a prefix that has to do with where you are put. So the taso has to do with order, placement, or even in the sacred realm, it's commonly used for ordaining. This is what you are purposed for, ordained for, assigned.
Speaker 2:Your task.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And within a hierarchical order, and the hierarchical order is the above and below piece.
Speaker 4:Everyone is placed first, everyone has a role within the household of the universe, and then there are some who are ranking above, who have a greater responsibility that, in order for this to work in harmony, you want to come under their guidance, yeah, and let their wisdom rule in you so you can do your work well. And so there's this multiple submitting to more and more ranks above you and in ordering yourself into this harmonic, harmonious world order. And so what he's talking about is the reordering of the universe through Christ. Christ is raised to where the Father was, and now he's working to place under his rule all the other rulers, dominions, authorities and powers. He's in a cosmic ordering work all the other rulers, dominions, authorities and powers. He's in a cosmic ordering work.
Speaker 4:I think that's just a very important point and it culminates with the imagination of the ecclesia, the church. So he puts all things under his feet. God puts all things under jesus christ's feet and gave him christ, jesus as head over all things to the church. So the head image as the wisdom, guiding, executive function, leading force, the ruling power, the archaic, the principle, the first ruling force, and you get a picture actually in the cosmic human is the head over the whole body of the universe. But the body that he says is now also the ecclesia, those who are called out and into this order, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. So don't think little tiny churches. He's talking about the cosmic body of God. Christ is the head.
Speaker 2:Right. So a priest, if I'm ordained as a priest, I'm submitting. I'm submitting myself to the head, which isn't João Turinski, our head, but Christ Jesus, but the Lord through.
Speaker 4:João, but the Lord, as a representative of a greater consciousness, then I am tasked to carry.
Speaker 2:And some of our most difficult challenges comes when our brothers and sisters aren't able to be in the right relationship with this ordering process, with this being guided by Christ, submitting myself to something greater than myself to be guided by.
Speaker 4:I feel like this is like a core issue with every human right now in their lives. Amen, Because we've gone through this incredible like submission sounds to me, and this ordering and this hierarchy sounds to me like the opposite of everything we have been achieving in human culture into the modern era.
Speaker 3:Amen, that's why it's so hard to talk about.
Speaker 4:And every culture through all time had these kinds of hierarchical forms. I'm a culture anthropologist.
Speaker 4:I know there are various kinds of forms that have existed in different cultures, but they've all had an order and a hierarchy and they've all had weight, different weights to people's voices, matriarchy or patriarchy or whatever. Archi there's Archi, and Archi comes from Archi. There's a head, and that's it's. So that an organism can function, it needs an ordering. So my hands submit to my head. They're not the leading power. Really, you can study the human being's bodily structure and capacities and it's very clear that there is a place where this leading is happening and where the ordering under is happening by the other organs and other cells and so forth.
Speaker 4:You always see that and all the cells inside the spleen order themselves under the purposes of the spleen and do their job, and when they're not, then you're sick. Sickness is actually disorder. And when cells break free and start doing weird things. So we've broken through this old order of being forced to submit to authorities in culture to grant authority and freedom and dignity to every human being equally To every human being equally.
Speaker 3:That I can never rightfully order.
Speaker 4:You put you under me Right.
Speaker 4:That becomes now a violence in our age. If I put you under me, I'm generating an order, a hierarchy, through a kind of violence over your will, and we've done this work of trying to acknowledge and lift up every person into their own authority. Acknowledge and lift up every person into their own authority man, woman, the anti-slavery movement, the women's rights movement, the gay rights movement, people who've had their rights as human beings within the society denied and they've been forcibly ordered in a way that dishonors their dignity. That's kind of been like the story of the modern world. Yeah, so it seems to be an anti-submission movement and submitting feels like the opposite.
Speaker 2:Going backwards, going backwards, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean a lot of people are worried about that in our time. A lot of people are very afraid that a kind of tyranny will come, is coming, that will strip people of their dignity and oppress people in a new way, right?
Speaker 4:A lot of people are feeling we've just thrown off a tyranny.
Speaker 3:Exactly yeah.
Speaker 4:And we're finally freed up.
Speaker 2:To be good again, to find the goodness of yeah, and truth of.
Speaker 4:All the overreach of the state in our lives.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So there's a ground level, proper fear of tyranny. Yeah, somebody overpowering me and taking away my dignity.
Speaker 2:And at the same time, in tension, in dynamic tension, a ground level, feeling that finally things are coming into order again. I mean for real. I talked to some of my friends that are of that mode and finally we're gonna get back to the way it should be ordered properly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, a battle for right order. What is the right ordering of reality?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What's right, what's wrong?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so these are just. I mean, I think that's also part of the experience, right, that it feels chaotic.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 4:That the human order is not a decided order. It doesn't just run like the orders of nature, the order, the harmony of the starry worlds, the way things are ordered in various relationships in the natural and animal world. When fire comes near ice, it melts. It's ordered, it responds in a very specific way and doesn't fall outside of its ordering.
Speaker 4:And in the human realm there's this constant transformation, specific way and doesn't fall outside of its ordering. And in the human realm, there's this constant transformation, the ordering isn't done. It's like we're in the midst of a great dynamic battle for the ordering, the right ordering. So I think that's some of the themes, some of the themes. So when we hear submit, we can also hear put place, assign, ordain, order. But it's order under. I want to order myself below you, in reverence and respect. I look up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so for the Christian? I think it's important to remind ourselves again that, for the Christian, we all have been called to do that, every single one of us, yes, every single one of us, yes. Freely placing ourselves, acknowledging ourselves as submitting to the Lord of life, christ Jesus, walking in the spirit before us, that's actually a universal activity of first finding a kind of dignity that is free enough to say now, I'm giving my life in service of this greater one.
Speaker 4:And that seems to be the subtle little difference he does not force our allegiance but is himself, does his work. And if we see in him that power greater than ourselves, that wisdom that is more than mine, that heart that is wider and deeper than mine, that is the most beautiful I have found, that I long to follow and serve and permeate my life. I want to order myself under the law of Christ. He is my Lord. That experience Right.
Speaker 2:I think we can distinguish there the difference between tyranny and submission in this life. Yeah, tyranny, you are not freely deciding out of your own dignity to surrender to the Lord of what you see as true, beautiful and good.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Tyranny doesn't have any regard for that dignity or that freedom in you. Yeah, and I think that's a really important distinction, huge, huge. We're not talking about a submitting that is forced or connected to a tyrant, yeah, which I can just even feel in my soul. I need to say that, oh, yeah, to name that fear that everyone I know has of not wanting to be oppressed in that way, losing your dignity.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we've described. We find the Lord in him when we meet him in different ways. However, we have come to know him and meet him in many ways. We know him. But then this guidance for the ecclesia from Paul in this letter submit to one another. So I want to order myself under you out of reverence for Christ, out of reverence for Christ, so I have this fear and awe and love to look up to this greater power. I order myself under him, but I want to every single.
Speaker 4:If every person in the community is submitting to one another, who's the boss? What's the order? It's such a magical orientation that means there is no old hierarchy anymore, because the head is in each person. That is so radically different than the Egyptian imagination, where the head is in the Pharaoh and you are the limbs. The slaves of the Pharaoh do the will of the Pharaoh or they feel the whip of the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh does not have the consciousness. My God is in my slaves, no way. So there's this ordering and equality happening at the same time. We're submitting to Christ, we're feeling a headship, and then I'm submitting to you, but you're submitting to me. Everyone is submitting to one another in approaching as if you're a holy temple too, it's a priestly approach also.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm this is radical and it was very radical in the world back then because it was a break and the Christian communities were like you read the commentators, like some of the early Greek people, for example, writing about their encounters with Christian community Like I'm not sure. This is how? Could it be a good thing that you've got like thieves and robbers and women and men gathering together and sharing in a holy meal?
Speaker 4:there's no order yeah this was a big complaint, interesting about the christian church. You're breaking all the orders and I think that's that. That is the background to the next sentences there is an order.
Speaker 3:That is the background to the next sentences.
Speaker 4:There is an order, and all the old order is not going to be destroyed, but it's going to be utterly renewed and changed, and I think that's what he's going to try to do. So let's see, with that as a bit of a preface, what happens now for us.
Speaker 4:I'm so eager, just to let you respond and share with us today, after you hear these words, what feels important to you, what stands out and what you want to bring there. Okay, so after verse 21, we get the very famous word taken out of context, verse 22. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, 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. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Speaker 4:Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 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. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I what strikes you? Where do you want to start when you read that, when you hear that this morning.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess what just initially strikes me, I mean, obviously, in the cultural milieu that we live in, it's a challenging passage, but it's interesting, just first and foremost, to see how many more sentences there are in directing the husband. It's so interesting.
Speaker 4:Just textually.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. There's a lot more emphasis on giving the husband orientation than giving the wife an orientation. That's just interesting, I think, if I just look at my simple life. I think, if I just look at my simple life, I've needed a lot more schooling to be a good husband than my wife has needed to be a good wife. Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, yeah, Is there? Yeah?
Speaker 2:But I Is there. Yeah, so this, but I mean in terms of just the archetype. Now, it seems that in the context of the beauty of your, your preamble, your, your introduction, this imitation of Christ, where we freely and willingly try to submit to one another, all of us, and be guided by the Christ in the other, know and love the Christ in the other, this is that principle now, that fundamental activity of offering ourselves. In a way we're all wives in this context. Now it becomes differentiated, it's like another fractal, another differentiation in that main archetype.
Speaker 4:Sorry, that was a very big sentence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4:We are all wives, I know.
Speaker 2:So I think that's really important to just say look, and maybe that's why the wife is only given a few sentences in this, because actually that's the fundamental reality of being a Christian, is being a bride. So I think, if we you know, because sometimes it can seem as if the woman and the bride gets the short end of the stick, but it's actually the reverse, if we understand it rightly, because everyone is a bride, is a wife.
Speaker 4:I mean, that is you know, that is the logic and statements of the writer here. He is saying all you men are brides yeah, relative to Christ. Who is your bridegroom? Yeah, that's huge that I mean. I know a lot of christians who get beginning squirming and uncomfortable yeah um, with a kind of misunderstanding and over emphasis in their identity with their maleness. But you have just told us that the fundamental orientation of a Christian, male or female, is this imagination and reality of being a feminine figure relative to the bridegroom in that relationship, right?
Speaker 2:And we could also say, in a way, the reverse so be imitators of Christ. Yes, so we have both. It's so important right to think these things, not with just kind of old, tired categories, but archetypally. So if you think archetypally, then you can also, on the same token, say be imitators of Christ. Oh, wait a minute, that's not just. Oh, gentlemen, be imitators of Christ. It's everyone, every Christian. Be an imitator of Christ. It's everyone. Be an imitator of Christ. So that's why these two things are starting out as universal. That's important. You have a divine masculine and a divine feminine, or a Christ in you and a bride in you Both. The bride is meant to submit to Christ in everyone and in himself. The Christ in you is meant to constantly be willing to love the church, love the body, love the community, give everything selflessly for the life of another.
Speaker 4:For the life of another as if it were yourself, as if it were yourself and your own body.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:So I think if we don't forget that both of those activities are actually called for in every human, then we can connect to a universal, that's foundational nature of married life and start to see, oh, there's a kind of specific ordering that is most helpful, but it's an image and likeness of Christ's relationship to the church.
Speaker 4:I just feel like you've given us such a key that's so, so beautiful. So you can feel, though I think if I were a married man and my wife has joined this church and in that church she can be an imitator of christ, yeah, I might feel threatened. And paul went around with leaders who were women. As we know from the other letters, he speaks of them with the same terms as fellow workers, with him, for example, proclaiming, and they're all gathering in the same room, which, in the Hebrew tradition, you do not do To this day in any orthodox situation. If you're having a bar mitzvah, it's a big party, but the men are dancing in one room and the women are dancing in the other, you don't mix. The whole temple was separated.
Speaker 4:You're having a gathering and there's men and women in the room and they're all equally taking communion, which means Christ is equally entering them and they're equally to be imitators of Christ in the world. This is radical. It's radical, let alone the priesthood. So she's kind of like hey, you're potentially breaking up the order of my family. So he says this first word and it sounds like you can just feel the men in the room go oh, thank god, they're gonna. Okay, we're gonna keep the same order. Wives submit to your husband. But then when he turns to the husbands, they're like oh, oh, wait a second, what, what?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:How does this work for me Be?
Speaker 2:a living sacrifice of selfless love to your wife. Think way more about her well-being than about your well-being. Yeah, it's breathtaking.
Speaker 4:It's breathtaking and utterly shocking to the times. I mean, women were just property To say this was like wild, like your priestly activity of being in right relationship with God is being Christ relative to your bride and sacrificing your life so that the blood of your sacrifice cleanses them in purity, and you preach the word in such a way that they. It's wild, it is shocking, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah.
Speaker 2:So these archetypes, yeah, how do we then get a little more with with these big archetypes in mind? What, then, are the challenges of this life? You know, if I, as a husband, am trying to cleanse her with my word, if I'm trying to love her as my own body, if I'm trying to guide in a way, there are all sorts of dangers to those ideas. And I wonder how do you, patrick, how would you start to get into the details of this? Or do you want to still stay on that? Details of this? I just, or or do you want to still stay on?
Speaker 4:Well, I guess I find the magic here is he's going to then continue to talk about children also, cause he's I think he's, he's got this challenge in mind, the whole letter what is the world order that the Christian mission has? Is it the destruction of all older forms? What is the order of things in these new mysteries? And so he's going to walk us through the family order also, and he's going to bring up the love your parent, you know, honor your father and mother. He's going to bring that in, for example, he's going to talk about slaves and free.
Speaker 4:He's going to talk about all these different places where there are orderings, all the whole society, because in the church, yeah, in worship, they disappear. In galatians, for example, he says there is neither male nor female right, there is neither slave nor free, nor Scythian or whatever ethnic background you come from. We are all one in Christ. Yeah, and people were feeling that, and it was a liberation experience and a blessing experience. And you're just like in this love fest of where all those differentiations are out the window and you are one. Yeah, that was the holy meal experience of the church and is it is the holy meal experience of it. So it's like, okay. How does that express itself in the given orders that you go back into in your lives exactly?
Speaker 2:it's make it's it's you could call it sacramentalism it's making the sacrament which is the communion of the bride and the groom. It's making that, it's bringing that out into all realms of society so that the image of that communion shapes and forms the whole of reality, right?
Speaker 4:so I am. I am like drunk on the word of my Lord coming out of my brother right now, like I am submitting.
Speaker 4:That is probably one of the most profound sentences I have ever heard in my life. I've never heard it. It exists nowhere no book have I ever seen that the archetypal process of bride and bridegroom is the core ordering for worship and for every relationship and order that exists, and the task of the church is to bring that out into all relationships. Yeah, so you may find yourself right, because the thing is in the church, where we experience the elevation into a realm in which all this up and down ordering disappears and we feel one in Christ, as a bride, in union with the bridegroom. We go back into a world that has an ordering and our destiny has placed us into different relationships. Somebody goes back and they're the boss over a bunch of employees and for that company to work well, there's going to be an ordering. It's got to happen for it to achieve its goals.
Speaker 4:Some are going to be children going back to their parents and those parents. There are children in the church and children can mean even just a 25-year-old who go back at home and their parents worship other gods and are sacrificing to other gods and they might want to get rid of their parents and and disown them. And paul's saying submit the way christ jesus submitted to the order he entered. He did not start a war and depose the romans. He did not make an alternate priesthood to depose the Pharisees and Sadducees. He submitted to the trials and terror that they put him through, while maintaining his dignity through his submission to God. This is where I'm going to put it to you. I think you can say that the world was saved because one human fully submitted.
Speaker 2:The most powerful event on the earth was someone achieving so then in that light, the husband also submits to God. And I have to say, just as a little personal experience as a husband, my submitting to God so that Christ shines through me as a husband has been not always. It's happened. It continues to happen, I hope more, more and more. But first of all, my submission to God is a key in my own experience of being a husband that can shine Christ.
Speaker 2:So I think one error is to commodify Christ in the soul, meaning I possess Christ because I'm a husband. No, nope, if you just get that title and that's like a de facto possession that you have, you're not in right relationship with submitting to God, because very often other egotistical, non-loving, non-christ voices rule my soul, that's it. And then if my wife submits to those forces, it's not the same, suffers them, she suffers them, she rails against them, she gets rightfully angry about them. So this is what I mean about the detail into the kind of more intimate realities of this. I think one of the dangers that I see kind of more in our fundamentalist, more evangelical brothers and sisters is it's considered just a kind of entitlement. Yes, I get to be the head because that's my role, 100%. No, actually you only get to be the head when Christ is shining through you, which means that you're submitting to God like Christ did in his will.
Speaker 4:Otherwise, actually I become a Caesar or a pilot. I actually become these other abusers of power and actually the beloved whoever and this is why for me it works in every relationship but also my spouse. They become the Lord who is being wounded and pierced, and this is why I think we set it up so beautifully. It does not say husbands, submit your wives. Good, good, good. This is huge. It's huge. It's only I who can submit to anything. So he appeals to the wives. You actually might be more connected to the Lord.
Speaker 2:My wife could be a better Christian.
Speaker 4:Christ's service by submitting. And how should they submit? Exactly as he said. He sets it up. He sets it up so beautifully. He says all of us should submit to one another. Yeah, out of reverence for Christ. That's the reason. That's the reason, no matter what the relationship. That's the reason, exactly. So what does that actually? No matter what the relationship, that's the reason, exactly.
Speaker 2:So what does that actually look like in reality? Is that the wife is constantly hoping for, looking for, orientating her attention for the Christ shining through the husband, the Christ shining through the husband. And again, that might not always be the case, because the husband might be falling into this more tyrannical, not submitting to God place, and so, again, it's also not a static entitlement for the wife either, so to speak, or it's a life of. If I'm trying to also submit myself to Christ, that's a struggle, that's not just something that's going to immediately happen.
Speaker 2:No, so I think that element that it's kind of like it's not an entitlement, it's not a set thing, it's arising. There have been moments when I felt in my marriage the Christ speaking through me, christ speaking through me, as a kind of word that was true and good and beautiful and from God, and my wife heard it and it was healing and beautiful and helpful for the life of our community, our family, yes, but that there have also been times when my word and my intention was full of egotism and self-serving and my wife was pierced and suffered it. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just I that's been.
Speaker 4:That's a very important nuance in the actual living of these right and I think that's that's so. We worship and then you go back home and you go back into an order and in that order in your case it's wife and husband and children that your household has these orderings and you know you face falling into an old order.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and other things ruling rather than the new Christed order, amen. And so the order is like the new human being and the old human being process that came before. It's such a beautiful challenge then, to recognize how am I living within an order, in a way that is the tyrannical version of hierarchy, rather than the christened order, and to see that it actually in Ephesians he is saying every single Christian, everyone, when we gather in worship, come and form a bridal body and celebrate a union with our bridegroom, we have a feminine relationship to the power greater than ourselves. That's already, I think, massive news for Christianity and humanity. And then we are to take him in and then go out into the world and be imitators of Christ and now express the self-giving, word-speaking love of the other, of the bridegroom, men and women. I just think that's part of the solution of so much of the poisons and pain that are at work, that, as in the name in the I am of Christ, we need to grow into the activity of embodying ourselves into this feminine and masculine.
Speaker 2:And when we find ourselves into an order of wife and husband, that includes that Amen, and I think the name of the I am, in its detail and activity, is self-giving love, giving yourself for the life of the world. That's named in our sacrament, the new divinity that's given again the name of God, the I am, dies, resurrects and shines. And so, in a way, if I'm a husband and I'm trying to practice that name in the light of Christ's true activity, I'm constantly trying to die to my personal desires and tyrannical egotisms and kind of selflessly be interested in what she needs and my family needs, and I find that when I'm able to do that, some good word comes. On the other hand, what I see in my wife is actually she's so connected to what the needs are of the family and actually my needs. She's very aware of them. She's already got that capacity, she's just naturally Other oriented.
Speaker 2:Other oriented, and she, she, the, the. The challenge is she falls into the place where she's alone in that, and then she doesn't. Then she gets resentful, bitter, angry, despair, isn't it? And she's not feeling the companionship of the Savior, yeah, and closes off her submission to the Savior because it's all up to her.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, you see what I mean, oh yeah.
Speaker 4:These are big dynamics. Sadly, I have to round up for today, but that, I think, sets up. I don't think we can be done with this, and it will be really good also just to hear from our listeners too, what comes up from them.
Speaker 1:I can imagine that one or the other might be thinking.
Speaker 4:Who are these two dudes talking?
Speaker 3:about this.
Speaker 4:What could they possibly say about this? And I appreciate that and, yeah, I really look forward into diving deeper into it in our conversation. Thank you, Patrick.
Speaker 1:Thanks Jonah © transcriptF-WATCH TV 2021. I'm.