Wedding Homily, December 30

In the past week, we have celebrated Christmas, commemorating the human birth of the Only-begotten Son of the Father. At this feast, we were reminded of central mysteries of Christian faith: The Son who is eternally in the bosom of the Father is born from the bosom of a virgin; the firstborn of the Father becomes the firstborn of Mary; the Creator of heaven and earth becomes a creature; the Word who was with God and is God becomes flesh and dwells among us so that we may see His glory; the Lord of all becomes the servant of all.

These basic truths of the Christian faith, these basic confessions about the incarnation of the Son of God, are not distant or impractical or speculative. They are not merely truths for Sunday morning. They must be embodied in our lives every day and in every area of life, and particularly in marriage. The events we celebrate at Christmas can help to orient us to the realities and demands of marriage, which also manifests the mystery of Christian faith.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians that Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate as the Son of Mary, is the ?head of every man,?Eand elsewhere he writes that the Father has ?put all things under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.?EJust as the first Adam was the beginning of the human race, so Jesus is the new beginning, the ?headwaters?Eof a stream of descendants. And beyond Adam, Jesus is king and ruler of all. Here in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul makes an explicit comparison between Christ?s universal headship and the headship of a husband has over his wife: Christ is the head of every man, and the man is head of the woman. In Ephesians, Paul makes this comparison more specific, teaching that ?the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is head of the Church.?EThese passages are foundational for a Christian view of marriage, and they show that marriage is organized in terms of headship and submission.

But these passages occasion great offense in our day. Feminists claim that Paul is the original misogynist, who gives his apostolic benediction to male oppression and tyranny over women. The feminist criticism comes from both sides. On the one hand, Paul endorses male dominance: If the husband is head as Christ is head, then the husband has absolute rights of ownership, absolute lordship, absolute claims over his wife. On the other hand, Paul treats women as inferiors, who must scrape before the ?headship?Eof men. Paul, for feminists, supports male pride on the one hand, and female humiliation, on the other. These feminist criticisms of Paul are not confined to the fringe, for in the culture at large and in the church at large, everyone is a feminist now.

But one can read Paul?s teaching on marriage in this way only by misreading, only by completely forgetting the reality of Christmas. After all, what does Jesus?Eheadship mean? How does Jesus exercise His headship? He is head over all things, but He has taken the form of a servant. He is Lord of the whole creation, but as Lord He humbles Himself. He rules as the great King, but becomes great by becoming the servant of all. Jesus?Ehumility is not some clever ruse that enables him to achieve a position of dominance. Humility is the very form of Christ?s lordship. As Paul says elsewhere, Jesus is Head of the church in order to be Savior of the body, and He saves by giving Himself in a free gift, by voluntarily giving ?of His life, of His love, of His Spirit?E(Bobrinskoy). For Jesus, headship does not mean tyranny; headship means service.

1 Corinthians 11 also challenges the other feminist objection to Paul. Paul?s comparison is not merely a two-way comparison between the church and marriage. It?s a three-way comparison: a husband?s headship over his wife is like Christ?s headship over every man, and that is like God?s headship over Christ. Christ, in short, is submissive to His head, the Father, and a wife must be submissive to her husband in the same manner.

This is critical to a right understanding of the God we worship and of marriage: The Son who obeys His Father, the Son who is submissive to His Head, is the same God as the Father, equal in all respects to the Father. The obedience of Jesus points to the prior obedience of the Son, and the submission of Jesus is the submission of the Son. For the Son does not obey only after He has become flesh. His coming into the world is itself an act of obedience, as the Son accepts the commission from the Father. The fact that Jesus obeys the Father does not make Him inferior to the Father. It does not make Him less glorious than the Father. On the contrary: According to John?s gospel, Jesus?Eobedience on the cross is the climactic manifestation of His glory, the glory He shared with the Father from all eternity. When Paul demands that a wife submit to her husband, he is simply demanding that she display the glory of Jesus.

These basic confessions about the Son?s headship and the Father?s headship must shape your headship and leadership. Jesus is the servant-head, the Lord who leads by service, and you are called to manifest that self-giving headship in your marriage. Humble service is not a mask that you may throw aside like a villain in a melodrama when you have achieved dominance over Alberta. Humble service is not another, super-subtle strategy for oppression. It is the form of Jesus?Eheadship, and must be the form of your own. As head, you are called to give yourself, to die to yourself, in order to serve your bride.

At the same time, they apply to the wife. Jesus is the Eternal Son, equal to the Father, and yet He denies His own will to do the will of the Father. You are called to manifest Jesus?Esubmission in your submission to James. As a wife, you have the high calling to manifest Christ?s character, the character of the eternal Son, in a way that your husband cannot do, for you are called to imitate the submission of the eternal Son to the Father, His head. This is not demeaning; it is glorifying. For, as Paul says later in the passage, Christ is ?the image and glory of God; and the woman is the glory of the man.?E

This is the Christmas gospel that you are called to embody in your marriage, but if you rely on your own will and strength to do this, you are going to do it all wrong. In the flesh, the husband will turn headship into an excuse for pride, self-centeredness, and tyranny, and in the flesh wife will come to see submission as a burden and strive against the headship of her husband. You can manifest Christlike headship and Christlike submission only through the power of a Third Person, only in the power of the Spirit. In this respect too, you are being called to manifest the gospel of Christmas, for Jesus was sent by the Father through the Spirit, accomplished the Father?s will in the power of the Spirit, cheerfully obeyed the Father in the joy of the Spirit, and now rules all things through the working of His Spirit. You can manifest the headship of Christ and the submission of Christ in your marriage only if you remain continually dependent on the working of the Spirit. You will manifest the Christmas gospel only if your marriage is also carried out under the banner of Pentecost.