Words on the Word
Christ & the Church
Ephesians 5.25-33: I am saying it applies to Christ and the Church
Luke 13.18-21: The kingdom og God is like a mustard seed.
Give way to one another in obedience to Christ. Wives should regard their husbands as they regard the Lord, since as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife; and as the Church submits to Christ, so should wives to their husbands, in everything. Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy. He made her clean by washing her in water with a form of words, so that when he took her to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless. In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself. A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is the way Christ treats the Church, because it is his body – and we are its living parts. […] This mystery has many implications; but I am saying it applies to Christ and the Church.
Our reading from Ephesians is a preacher’s nightmare these days. It seems to be stuck in a gender paradigm many now consider obsolete, even destructive. This passage used to be a fairly standard text at weddings. Now many couples go for other options.
The particular hang-ups of the hour must not blind us, though, to what is after all St Paul’s primary concern. The Apostle does speak of the relationship between husband and wife, man and woman; but even more essentially he speaks about the relationship of Christ to his Church.
Let us take what he says to heart. ‘The Church’, says Paul, ‘submits to Christ’. Her life unfolds from him, in him. He lifts her up and points her heavenward, enabling her to prepare her children for eternal life.
He is her light; were she to turn her face away from him, she would walk in her own shadow. Instead of contemplating Christ’s face, she would be preoccupied with her own form. It is a sad prospect, against which we must be on our guard.
Christ loves his Church; he loves her as his own body. For her he gave his life, to make her glorious. He adorned her, and adorns her still, with a beauty she could never approach by herself. Being of uncreated origin, this beauty cannot be reproduced, only received as grace and gift.
If only we knew the extent of divine love poured out on us! If only we knew the heights God’s grace calls us to reach! Well, then all our earthly relationships, too, would fall into place; and we would live happily on this earth, grateful to God for giving us through one another all that which of ourselves we have not, are not.
Then we should, together, constitute a mustard seed fit to be thrown into this world, God’s garden, there to become a lovely tree, and the birds of the air would shelter in its branches singing joyfully, spreading abroad comfort and delight.
The Word became flesh to make us, creatures of flesh, song, to the praise of his glory. Amen.
A wonderful tree with birds drawn by Dom Robert of En Calcat.