In today’s mass, as a continuation from last week, we once again hear from Saint Paul (Ephesians 5:21 -32) instructing us on how we are to live our lives in God’s light and love.

This passage is maybe most particularly directed towards husbands and wives.  But I had to chuckle, when the lector skipped over verses 22-24.  It seems that in the church lectionary we are given the option to skip over the part of the passage that speaks about a wife’s submission to her husband.  I guess the church feels that these verses might be taken out of context and could be interpreted as an indication of gender inequality or female inferiority.

But in all actuality, the opposite is true.

If one reads the entire passage we hear Paul tell us to “be subordinate to one another”.  Paul is telling us that ALL of us – not just women – must subordinate ourselves.  It has nothing to do with inferiority or about one gender being subservient to the other.  In fact one could even argue that Paul challenges the men even more than the women in this passage.  Paul instructs the husbands that they must “cherish and nourish” their wives – that they must love their wives more than their own selves just as Christ loves the church.  Paul tells us that a husband must love his wife to the point of sacrificing all of himself for her, just as Christ did for his church.  

For all of us, what Paul is saying is that BOTH husbands and wives, as imitators of Christ, must love each other – a love characterized by kindness, forgiveness, service, sacrifice, and an emptying of oneself in order to put the other first. Paul is telling us that, like the relationship between Christ and his church, a husband and wife’s love must be an expression of their unity, their oneness, their complete equality as children of God.