BE SUBJECT
“Be subject to one another.”
A friend of mine recently posted a quote from season 3 of the West Wing on Twitter. In the scene, President Bartlet is expounding on the true meaning of Ephesians 5 having just heard, in his opinion, a poor sermon on the passage.
The post caught my eye for a couple reasons. First, the West Wing is the greatest television show of all time. More importantly though, I’ve been wrestling for a while with what it looks like to live together in church community.
I’m finishing up my first year as an elder at Sanctuary CRC in Seattle, and this question of what it means to be a church keeps percolating in the back of my mind. What does it mean for a group of believers to call themselves a church?
“Be subject to one another.”
As with much of my faith over the last few years, the deeper I dig into scripture and prayer, the simpler the answers I find. Don’t get me wrong, there is a beautiful intricacy and depth to faith and Biblical literature, but you know where I keep landing when I ask myself what it means to be a Christian? Live as Christ.
“WWJD” may have been a kitschy Christian culture fad but, seriously, was it wrong?
There are cosmic implications for Christ’s death on the cross and subsequent resurrection, and debates have raged for 2000 years over issues of dogma, canon and orthodoxy. But when I come to Christ looking for a model of how church should work, what a church should be, I see a Savior who embraces brokenness and humility, and models reconciliation and restoration.
Ephesians 5 could have been written better. At least, I would like it better if the husband and wife stuff wasn’t there. Because I think Paul’s talking less about marriage and more about Christ’s model for how we should do church together.
Paul writes, “[Christ] gave up his life for [the church] to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.” Christ became equal in the pain and suffering of brokenness in order to restore the church to beauty.
That seems like a pretty clear call to me. What does it mean to be a church?
Be restorers of brokenness together.
“Be subject to one another.”