Learning How to Kneel--July 20, 2023

Learning How to Kneel--July 20, 2023

"Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 5:21)
Here’s a simple question, if not an easy one: if Jesus is your picture, not only of what God is really like, but also of what being human really looks like, then how would it affect every other relationship in your life? How does who-Jesus-is make a difference in who-you-are?

Once we cross the bridge from talk about Jesus into talk about us, we are potentially opening up our whole lives, our widest furthest interests, and our deepest selves, to a re-orientation. When we really take it seriously that Jesus is our picture of what we are meant to be—that Jesus shows us humanity in its fullness—we are in for reinvention. And we can’t compartmentalize our faith, our religion, to just what we do for an hour or so on Sunday mornings. As the Switchfoot song, “The World You Want” puts it all too clearly, it will affect every part of who we are:

What you say is your religion

How you say it's your religion

Who you love is your religion

How you love is your religion

All your science, your religion

All your hatred, your religion

All your wars are your religion

Every breath is your religion

If that’s somewhere close to being right, then all of our lives—our words, our loves, our ways of thinking, our patterns of feeling, and everything else about us—is going to be remade, remolded, in the image of Christ.

So, for example, take this verse from Ephesians: “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” In the whole book we call Ephesians, this will kick off an extended discussion about how all of our relationships—spouses, children, parents, employees, employers and so on—are changed when they are put through the lens of Christ. And yet it all starts here: “be subject TO ONE ANOTHER.” Everybody bows. Everybody bends. Everybody puts the needs of the other ahead of themselves. And then each one of us, in turn, has the whole rest of the circle holding their hands up to carry us because they are putting us ahead of themselves. It is a brilliant and beautiful picture, where everyone can give way to everybody else, and there is a constantly turning, constantly folding-in-on-itself loop of serving love.

The whole of the Christian life is bearing the needs of others as they in turn bear us up--putting ourselves in the position of serving the person next to me, as they do the same for me and my needs, and all because that is what we have learned from Christ himself.  Like the lyric of the U2 song, "Vertigo," puts it, "Your love is teaching me how to kneel."  I'd be hard-pressed to find a better eight-word summary of the way of Jesus than that, even without the catchy guitar riffs in the background.  All our lives in Christ are spent learning how to kneel--to place ourselves in the position of bearing the needs of one another, as they in turn bear our own.

While it’s true that in just another verse, the text is going to start sketching out what he thinks this looks like for wives and husbands and then all the rest, it’s really important for us to see that the point is not just to give us advice for having happy families. Lots of authors have made a lot of money and sold a lot of books starting with the premise that the Bible is interested in answering the question, “How can I have a cookie-cutter family with 2.5 kids, a white picket fence, and a dog?” or that the Bible is particularly interested in helping you find the man or woman of your dreams. These are, frankly, narrow, short-sighted, and self-interested questions to be asking, rather like getting an appointment with the governor and asking him just to validate your parking.

No, Paul isn’t writing to answer the question, “How can I have a happy family, a sustainable love life, or a house full of smiling cherubic children?” He is writing to answer the question, “How would your life sound different if it were played in the key of Jesus?” That’s a lot bigger than just managing your nuclear family. In fact, as much as some may be uncomfortable with this language, frankly, it redefines what “family” is. It remakes “family,” and even what it means to be “human” in light of Jesus.

And because of who Jesus is—because his power and his love are both expressed in self-giving service—Paul’s direction to us today is to “be subject to one another.” He says, first and foremost, that if our lives are going to be recast in the likeness of Christ, we will more and more defer to each other and put preference toward each other, rather than to ourselves. It’s not one-way—not just wives for husbands, or just children toward parents. It’s in both directions, where everybody, in whatever role they find themselves in, looks for ways to give themselves away to put the needs of the other first. I put your needs first before my own. You put my needs ahead of yours. And in this ongoing, always-turning loop, our lives take on a little more of the character of Christ, who put us all before his own comfort and who gave himself away for the love of us.

What are ways today where you can consciously and joyfully put the needs of others ahead of your own—not as a helpless victim or passive doormat, but as an intentional act of Christ-like love?

Lord Jesus, make us to be like you. Teach us to bow. Teach us to bend. Teach us how to kneel. Teach us to love.