(Ephesians 5:17-33)

I love preaching on this passage.  That might sound a little strange, given the amount of ill feeling it generates in some parts of the church, but that’s actually why I love preaching on it.  There are some passages of Scripture that have gotten jammed up over the years in interpretations that don’t actually make sense—Jim Eisenbraun pointed me to another one this year, in Job 42—and it’s a joy and delight to be able to come along and say, “You keep using that passage.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”  (Gotta keep the Princess Bride references going here.)  There are interpretations of Scripture which ought to be inconceivable that are widely assumed to be obviously true, and they need to be set right.

That’s what we’re dealing with in Ephesians 5.  It’s a widely-misused passage which illustrates two common pathologies of biblical interpretation.  One is the mindset which reads the Bible as an instruction manual from which we are to extract “biblical principles” to follow in our lives.  With that approach, the instant the brain sees the word “wives,” the mental guillotine drops and everything that follows is cut completely out of its context.  It’s as if Paul said, “OK, I’m done talking about all this grace and unity stuff; now I’m going to sit down and write you a rulebook on ‘how marriage is supposed to work.’”  That’s how it’s frequently read, as if it were a marriage manual that got mixed up with the letter and published by mistake.

If we’re going to take this passage seriously as Scripture, we can’t do that.  We need to understand it in context—both the context of the letter, in which it serves a purpose in Paul’s overall argument, and its historical and cultural context.  Ephesians wasn’t written five years ago by a youth pastor in Iowa, after all.  We need to ask ourselves how the Ephesians would have heard this passage, which was written to address their questions, concerns, and culture, not ours.  When we ignore the context of a passage, we almost always produce interpretations which serve the agenda of the interpreter rather than challenging it.  In this case, that has historically meant two profound errors:  first, the idea of absolute unilateral submission of wives to husbands—the husband is supposed to be the lord of the house; and second, a focus on wives rather than husbands despite the fact that Paul addresses eight verses to husbands and only three to wives.

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(Psalm 68; Ephesians 4:7-16)

To my way of thinking, this is one of the two hardest passages in Ephesians to preach.  The other is the one I’m preaching on next month.  I don’t mention that because I’m fishing for sympathy—I volunteered—but because there’s one point to be made about both of them; I’ll talk about that later.  In general, though, the challenges are quite different.  With Ephesians 5, the problem is the way the passage has been misused and abused through the centuries.  That one, you might call the “No, Paul isn’t who you think he is and he isn’t saying what they’ve told you he’s saying” sermon.  Here in Ephesians 4, the issue is with the text itself, and one you may have already seen:  does Paul even know how to read?  Compare the text of Psalm 68:18 with the way Paul quotes it, and you have reason to wonder.

To understand what’s going on here, we need to begin—as always—with the context.  Read more→

(Ephesians 3)

OK, Tychicus, are you ready to start?  Listen, brother, I’m really sorry your hand cramped up so badly . . .  I have to admit, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a pen fall out of someone’s hand like that.  —But you’re better now?  Good.  Thank you.

Just let me put myself in the proper frame—  Yes, I’m going to take a minute to think about—well, I know we’re planning to send this around all the churches in the province of Asia, but “Asians” sounds strange, and the only church I really know is Ephesus; I’m just going to call them “Ephesians.”  If I can fix them in my mind’s eye, it will be like I’m talking directly to them.  You know that’s how I work.

No, I don’t want to sit down, I think better standing up.  —Something to lean against?  You’re right, I’m not feeling well; that might be a good idea.  —Though I think you’re just hoping if I walk less, I’ll talk less.

So . . .  where did you put the copy you made?  —Oh, right, I’m holding it.  Thank you.  Now, where were we? . . .  Hmmmm . . .  Tychicus, I never finished my prayer for the Ephesians—I must have forgotten I was writing a prayer, because I went off on a tangent.  It was a good tangent, but still . . .  I wonder why we didn’t catch that?  —You caught it?  Of course you did.  Why didn’t you tell me?  —Because it was a good tangent and you didn’t want to interrupt me?  Well, that’s something, anyway.

Still, I need to finish that prayer.  So, let’s see, where did I leave off—mutter mutter “no longer exiles and resident aliens, fellow citizens with the members of the house of God, built on the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus the cornerstone, being built by the Spirit into a temple for God.”  OK.  Ready?  Good.  Continuing:

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(Ephesians 1:15-23; Hebrews 2:5-10)

How many of you recognize the name of Abraham Maslow?  For those who don’t, he was an American psychologist of the last century who was one of the founders of the discipline of humanistic psychology.  If you know his name, though, the first thing that comes to your mind probably isn’t “humanistic psychology,” it’s this:

Recently, Maslow’s hierarchy has been on my mind quite a bit.  For one thing, Sara is working her way through the online coursework for the Transition to Teaching program, and has discovered that the folks who developed the program are true believers in Maslow’s hierarchy who present it uncritically as the truth about human nature.  That’s the sort of presentation calculated to raise her hackles, so she’s been mounting a counterattack in the privacy of our home.

As it happens, she’s had a fair bit of material to hand for the purpose, beginning with the thing that first drew my attention back to Maslow—a remarkably efficient takedown of his hierarchy published a few months ago in Christianity Today.  Once Sara started me looking, I quickly discovered an avalanche of arguments against his work; one piece in Forbes declared, “Simple, orderly, intuitively sensible, cognitively appealing and offering order out of chaos, the hierarchy of needs has only one problem:  it is plain, flat, dead wrong.”

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