Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Matthew 20:17-23, Ephesians 5:21-28

"Submit to one another..." Ephesians 5:21

I grew up in a fairly traditional 50’s American home. "Father knows best" could have been a slogan for our household. It was clear that my dad was the head of the house. Dad spoke and the conversation was over. Dad made the important decisions. Who is the head of your family?

I am thinking about the engagement of our youngest daughter a few years ago. Her fiancé wanted to do the traditional thing of asking my permission for her hand in marriage. When he told our daughter that he wanted to fly from Alaska to come ask my permission in San Diego, then with my permission he would officially propose to her. She let him know in no uncertain terms that choosing her husband was not my decision to make. She insisted that he propose to her first and then when he flew down to come meet her family, she would introduce him to me. "Dad, this is my fiancé, Jeremy."

Who is the head of our family—really? This sounds like a leadership question. Leadership is often associated with this idea of someone being in charge, calling the shots, being the head honcho. As we move into the third week of our study in the book Lead Like Jesus, we are discovering that leadership is not limited to those who hold official titles, run companies, or serve in elect ed office. While this book certainly has several examples from these organizational levels of leadership, these leadership insights apply in our every day lives, in our own homes.

Just to review the last couple of weeks, we have discovered that we are all leaders in some realm. Whenever our actions influence others around us, we are a leader. We are all leaders since we are influential in our own families. Instead of thinking of leadership principles as related only to the corporate world of large organizations, let’s focus this week on how we can be better leaders in our homes.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

Ephesians 5:21-28

I love the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." The Greek father is convinced that he is the head of his house. But the mother knows that she can get what she wants for her daughter as long as she makes the father think it was his idea. Their roles in the family fall into the traditional organizational images of leader and manager. If the Greek father is the visionary leader, the mother is the manager that actually makes things happen. I love the scene in the movie where the mother in the household clarifies that her husband is the head, but she is the neck that turns the head.

I like the way that the authors of Lead Like Jesus challenge the traditional view that there is a huge separation between leaders and managers. It wasn’t that long ago in corporate America that business courses were making a clear separation between leaders as the visionaries in the organization while managers are merely the implementers. Leaders ask the cosmic questions and determining the organization’s direction by staying above the everyday fray, while managers merely run the shop on a daily basis. It was clear that being a manager was secondary to being a leader. Management was merely a stepping stone to a position of leadership.

If this were true, then what do we say about Jesus? He told his followers that he was not here to set the course of salvation, but to implement what his father had sent him to do. When the mother of James and John made a request of Jesus, he responded that he did not have the choice who would sit on his right or left in the kingdom. That decision was up to the Father alone. Was Jesus, then, merely a manager?

Lead Like Jesus declares that vision and implementation are both equal in importance for the success of any organization. Both are leadership activities. The leader who can only do the visionary piece without any regard for implementation is nothing more than a dreamer. The vision needs a strategic plan that lays out how to get from the current situation to the expected outcome. Likewise, the leader who loves to do the implementation piece without any sense of vision or direction is merely running in circles like a hamster on a wheel. Both kinds of leaders are needed. They need each other for the good of the organization.

Jesus did not see his role as savior to be a lesser role. He came to earth to serve his Father’s will. On the other hand, the heavenly Father was not embarrassed to remain close to Jesus in order to help him implement salvation. When Jesus prayed for his Father’s help, he knew the Father was there to strengthen him. As Father and Son they practiced mutual submission in love.

What does "mutual submission in love" mean for us?

Ephesians 5:22-23 have been among the most misquoted verses in the Bible. "Wives, submit to your husbands…. For the husband is the head of the wife…." This is a sad mistranslation. In the original language, the Apostle Paul doesn’t have any verb in verse 21. It literally reads, "Wives to your husbands." We have to go searching for a verb in order to make sense of this line in the Bible. Thus, we pull the verb from the previous sentence and assume the verb is "submit." Now, no sooner do we grab that verb from the previous sentence than we discover why he left the verb out of this line. The previous sentence gives God’s teaching regarding a healthy, functional family. That verse sets the tone for the whole paragraph. It reads, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."

In other words the letter to the Ephesians is giving guidance about how parents serve each other and their families in servant-leadership. Husbands and wives are to be mutually submissive. The husband is to submit to his wife in love. The wife is to submit to her husband in love. If one is better at the vision piece for the family, the other can head up the implementation piece. Neither is better or worse. They are both needed for the family to be successful.

In fact, as the passage plays out, we discover it also refers to the rest of the members of the household, including children and servants. The servants and children share this call to mutual submission as they grow in love for the whole family. In a healthy, godly home, then, we have different family members trading roles depending on the needs of the situation. Sometimes the parents are submitting to their children, and sometimes the children to the parents. Sometimes the father is submitting to the wife and sometimes the wife to the husband. Sometimes the master becomes the servant and the servant becomes the master. Nobody is locked into a set role.

Let me repeat that: Nobody is locked into a set role.

Years ago I met with an organizational consultant to discuss some of the common issues we face as a church with such a large staff. The consultant listened for a while as I described some of our staff dynamics and then commented that it sounded like we were suffering from one of the common organizational dysfunctions. The consultant explained that organizations function like a family system. One of the most common ways a family becomes dysfunctional is to lock its family members into specific roles. One of the kids becomes the troubled "black sheep," while another becomes the center-of-attention "clown." One parent always plays the role of "rules enforcer" while the other parent always plays the role of "silent partner." The consultant helped me see that in organizations, as in families, teams become dysfunctional when one person always gets assigned and plays only one role for the rest of the team.

By this definition, health involves the freedom to let each person play various different roles depending on the situation. In a healthy, dynamic organization or family system the "black sheep" sometimes becomes the "rules enforcer," and sometimes the center-of-attention "clown" becomes the "wise counselor" to the group.

My middle sister and my wife were college roommates during their first couple of years at Northern Arizona University. While away at Flagstaff my introvert, "black sheep" middle sister blossomed. Kate describes how Bonnie came out of her shell. She was funny and engaging, she teased others in the dorm and smiled a lot. But each time they came home for holidays, Kate noticed how Bonnie changed on the way home. The closer they got to Tucson, the more Bonnie would sink into her defensive self. Like a turtle returning to her shell, her self-esteem would plummet and she would turn sulky.

Kate watched the dynamics around our home and realized what was happening. The Bonnie at school was free to be funny because nobody forced her into the old mold of the sulky defensive teenager. But our family, mostly my dad, could not seem to let her grow up and change. Instead, we held her in the old her role as the sulky "black sheep" of our family. Truth is it was not just my dad. Our whole family system needed her to remain the "black sheep." I needed her to remain the "black sheep" so that I could keep playing my preferred role of the "clown" of the family. Our younger sister needed her to remain the "black sheep" so she could fulfill her role as the dad’s "nurturing daughter." If we let Bonnie change roles, we would all have to find new roles and it was just easier to stay with what we knew.

All that changed when our mom died. After mom died we had some mega-shifts in our family dynamics. For a while I inherited the role of "black sheep." Our youngest sister inherited mom’s role as "connector" for the family. Our middle sister who formerly held the role of "black sheep" at times became the "clown." Then Bonnie moved from "clown" to dad’s "nurturer." As the years role by we see that all our roles are getting way more flexible.

A couple years ago our family was facing some tough decisions about whether dad could remain independent or would need some part-time nursing help. I arrived not sure whether I would play my former role as "clown" or what the situation would need. My sisters took me aside and asked me to take the role of "mediator" to the family. My role that day was to keep the conversation on track as we explored our options with dad. Our youngest sister gave up her former role as dad’s "nurturer" and took the role of "decision-maker." (She took away his car keys for his own safety). Our "black sheep" sister took the role of nurturing dad and being his friend when it felt to him like his youngest formerly "nurturing" daughter was being mean to him. We are learning in our family to share the various roles as we grow in our ability to "submit to one another in love."

Now, who is the head of our family?