Wives be WHAT ?!?

On Holy Family Sunday, the weekend between Christmas and New Year’s, the Church gives us three options for the Second Reading.  The first option is from Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, verses 12-21.  It includes the problematic verse, “Wives be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord.” Fortunately, at St. Francis Xavier the third option was proclaimed — 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24. “Beloved:  See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God…” 

We weren’t so lucky back in August when SFXers heard Ephesians 5:21-32 proclaimed: “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.”

In everything? Really?

Ughhh.

No amount of parsing will convince me these passages should be proclaimed as “The Word of the Lord.”  I’ve read the Biblical commentaries and I am familiar with the culture of first century Palestine.  That’s great fodder for Bible study, but the passages shouldn’t be read as part of worship.  

I know of presiders who want the passages read, so they can preach on them.  But that is to miss the damaging and hurtful point. It would be like me using the “N” word to explain why the “N” word is so offensive.

The reality is, we only hear a very small percentage of the Bible at our Sunday worship.  Jesuit priest  Felix Just, SJ gives us some really interesting stats.  He explains the post-Vatican II revision of the Sunday and Major Feasts Lectionary gives us just 40.8% of the New Testament over a three-year cycle.  If you go to Mass every weekday, too, you’ll hear 71.5% of the New Testament.  If we just look just at Paul’s Letters, the Sundays and Major Feasts Lectionary gives us 31.3% of his writings.  Less than a third! But still, somehow, those “wives, remember who’s in charge” verses get in. 

Before Charlie and I were married we did the required marriage prep – and it was a great experience.  We were 40 years old and had known each other for three years, yet we still learned about ourselves and each other as we discussed family of origin, communication, in-laws, finances, and sexuality with a lead couple. My favorite piece of wisdom they gave us was, “there is no ‘right way’ or ‘wrong way’ to do anything in a marriage…just keep talking-talking-talking until you find ‘Mariann-and-Charlie’s way.’”  Some folks might call this mutual subordination, but really it’s just about love and respect.

The Church has a lot on its plate right now (more about that next week).  But I hope to God a revision of the lectionary is in the works.  There’s room for improvement.