Everything Is Inside-Out--August 19, 2022

Everything Is Inside-Out--August 19, 2022

"The husband should give to his wife the good due to her, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the husband does." [1 Corinthians 7:3-4]

I can't get over how truly radical the New Testament really is sometimes.  We who are so used to the mindset that says, "Everybody's gotta look out for Number One in this world" should be brought up short by the startling move that Paul makes here.  He takes the conventional wisdom [both of his day and of ours] that proudly boasts, "I am the captain of my soul; I am the master of my fate," and he turns it on its head.  Among the followers of Jesus, the exact opposite is true:  each of us is meant to seek the interests of others, and they are in turn to look out for our interests.  In a culture that so often tries to make a virtue out of selfishness, that new arrangement sounds absolutely bonkers.

And who knows?  Maybe it is--maybe the way of Jesus is absolutely, wonderfully, blessedly bonkers to a culture that is drowning in the logic of self-interest.  To be sure, Paul is taking what everybody would have assumed was "the usual order of things" and turning it all inside out.

Let's just really allow the ideas in these verses to sink in, because they are so counter-cultural that we might not get the point at first.  To a culture where patriarchy was assumed and taken for granted, Paul has blown apart the idea that men get to dominate their wives [or, for that matter, that men get to rule over women in wider social situations, too].  And he gets his readers on board cleverly, by starting out with half of an idea that sounds like what they are used to.  "The wife does not have authority over her own body," he starts, and you can tell that the male readers in a first-century Greco-Roman audience would have all nodded their heads in agreement. [The trap is set.] They were so used to assuming that men should be in charge of everything, and they had built a whole way of life where men dominated everywhere--in government, in the marketplace, and in the house, that they didn't even realize they were getting lured into Paul's snare.  "Yeah, you preach it, Paul," you can hear them saying.  "You tell our wives that their bodies are under our manly authority!"  [The bait is taken.]  But then Paul finishes his thought, the spring is triggered, and the patriarchy is pinned in place.  Because in the very same breath that he talks about wives, Paul says with exactly the same wording that husbands do not have authority/dominance over their own bodies, but rather their wives do.  In other words, there is utter and complete mutuality--nobody gets to dominate anybody else, in truth.  Everybody offers up their whole selves to their beloved, and their beloved in turn offers their fullest self back.  For folks in Paul's audience expecting him to give a religious support to the notion of men ruling over their wives, the apostle has just sprung a sucker punch on them all.  There is no hierarchy of one over the other--there is instead, the constantly turning, bowing, bending, serving, and being served of mutual self-giving, in both directions.  Both spouses place their lives in the hands of their beloved, and both know that it is safe to do so.  

Paul's thinking also turns our old selfishness upside-down and inside out as well.  Instead of accepting the dominant mindset that everybody has to look out for their own interests, Paul calls us to offer all of who we are to our beloveds, and to be careful and caring stewards of their lives as they place their own gifts of self in our hands.  It is so completely foreign to the self-centered thinking that so much of our society is built on, and it completely undermines the old assumed patriarchy where men are "supposed" to be in charge... of their marriages, of their families, and of their governments.  Paul just shuts it all down with a sentence: "Whatever wives are to do as they offer up their lives, bodies, and well-being to their husbands, their husbands are to do as well--complete mutuality."  I'll bet it took a while for the men in Corinth to pick their jaws up off the floor.

The apostle is saying what Wendell Berry says in his customarily beautiful poetry:

"Loving you has taught me the infinite

longing of the self to be given away

and the great difficulty of that entire

giving, for in love to give is to receive

and then there is yet more to give..."

It is so beautiful, and yet also so completely inside-out from our usual ways of doing things as human beings.  We tend to either look for schemes to dominate each other [and often have tried to gin up some nonsensical theological reason for men to be the ones bossing women around] or excuses to retreat to our own little fiefdoms of self-interest with the battle cry, "Every man for himself!"  And yet here, Paul takes human marriage and re-imagines it in light of Christ's own kind of self-giving love.  We are called to love one another in utter self-giving [rather than domination or self-interest] because that is Jesus' way of loving--without seeking his own interests, and without dominating anybody else, certainly not women.

This whole new way of ordering things is rather like that old fable they tell about the difference between the spoons in heaven and in hell.  The story goes that a man has a dream that an angel takes him on a tour of hell, and it is subtly cruel. In hell, all the damned are seated at a great banquet table, laid out with the finest linens, gleaming silver candelabras, and elegant place settings. And fastened permanently at each person’s place is a bowl of delicious, steaming hot soup, whose rich, intense aroma makes their mouths water. And beside each soup bowl is a metal spoon… that is six feet long—far too long for anyone to grip properly and be able to hold in hand at the end and still get the soup into their mouths. They cannot lift the bowls from the table, and they cannot get a spoon full of the soup (I like to imagine it is a lobster and tomato bisque) into their own mouths. So all the people in hell are famished, dying of hunger with the most delicious food right in front of them, while the spoons are longer than their arms. It seems the design of a terrible genius.  Well, then the angel leads the man to another dining hall and says, “Welcome to heaven!” But as they peer into the room from a distance, this second banquet table appears almost identical at first. There are the same elegant place settings, the same bowls of delicious soup, and they are still bolted to the table in front of each guest’s place. And to top it all off, there are the same outlandish spoons—the man can see that even from a distance. But there is no wailing and moaning from hunger. There are no anguished looks on the faces of the guests. In fact, the man hears… can it be, laughter? And he sees expressions of delight and satisfaction on their faces. The people are eating the soup somehow—but their bowls are just as fixed to the table and their spoons are just as long. And yet, these people are satisfied and enjoying the gourmet food in ecstasy.  “How can this be?” asks the man of his angelic tour-guide? “What is the difference between this wonderful feast and the torments at the table in hell?”  The angel replies, “Can’t you see? The guests here at the heavenly banquet have learned to feed each other.”

Paul dares to imagine that, not simply as a fable or a morality play, but as the architecture of our deepest, most essential relationships.  What if spouses were devoted to making sure their beloved was fed, and trusted that they would in turn be fed as well?  What if those who were called to marriage could utterly give themselves away to their beloved, and care for their spouses as good and faithful stewards, too?  What if there were no made-up hierarchies where men gave themselves permission to boss women around, and certainly not in the name of "god"?  What if there were no attempt to baptize selfishness where everyone only seeks their own interests?  What if, in other words, we actually dared to let the way of Jesus shape the way we love one another?

I dare say that would turn our whole world completely inside out.  But maybe we would discover that was precisely how it was supposed to be all along.

Lord God, remake all of our relationships in light of the love of Jesus and the ways he gave himself away for all.