This paragraph from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians sounds very alien to our modern ears. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord”? It’s even weirder in the original Greek: “People should be subject to each other out of fear of and awe for Christ, the same way that wives have husbands as their ruler.” What’s all this being subject to someone else’s rulership about? Isn’t that un-American? What’s all this business about making a distinction between people, on the one hand, and women, on the other?

One reason we get confused is that the letter to the Ephesians was probably written in the last few years of the first century, about twenty years after St. Paul was executed by the Romans. It was very common in the first century for a writer to use the name of someone he honored when he was interpreting the earlier writer’s work for his own community — and of course, female writers had to write under men’s names if they wanted to be read in the first place.

At the end of the first century, most men literally could not get their minds around the idea that women are people too. The apostle Paul was an important exception. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul wrote, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28).

Paul said, everyone is equal in God’s eyes. That’s what he believed and that’s what he preached. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul said that when a woman is up in front of the congregation leading a worship service, preaching and praying, she should keep her hair neat and tidy so that she won’t be mistaken for a priestess of Diana or Isis — that’s the first few verses of chapter 11, where most people think he’s saying women should wear hats to church and keep quiet. The world has changed a lot in the last two thousand years.

BUT — here is this set of verses in Ephesians where the Bible, God’s holy word, appears to be telling us that women ought to obey men the same way that men, the real human beings, ought to obey Godde. Some Christians take the Bible literally. You may have heard the slogan, “Godde said it, I believe it, that’s that.” Two years ago, the Southern Baptists decreed that wives should submit graciously to their husbands’ absolute rulership because these verses in Ephesians appear to say so.

It’s been more than nineteen hundred years since these verses were written. Has anything about the world changed in that time?

Godde is perfect, I believe it, and that’s that! — But Godde did not grind the ink and whittle the pen and mash the reeds that became the papyrus that these ancient words were written on. Human beings did all that. A human being did the very best he could to convey his understanding of how we should live our lives. Only Godde is perfect, which means that the human being who wrote down these words was not perfect.

I want to pause here for a moment to give you some background about Jewish life and marital customs, in order to help us understand verses 25 through 32, and especially verse 27. These verses stress the importance of husbands LOVING — and making sacrifices for — their wives, and actually form the bulk of today’s reading.

More than nineteen hundred years ago, most men considered most women to be their property. More than nineteen hundred years ago, right around the time the letter to the Ephesians was written, a rabbi said, “For a father to teach his daughter how to read and write is the same as teaching obscenity.” Only three men in a hundred knew how to read and write, and probably for women it was more like three in a thousand.

More than nineteen hundred years ago, there was no indoor plumbing. No toilets, no kitchens, no running water, no sinks, no bathtubs.

More than nineteen hundred years ago, most men got married at about the age of thirty, to women who were much younger — about fourteen or fifteen years old. Because there was no indoor plumbing, taking a bath was a very special occasion. Unless you were as rich as Donald Trump, you went down to the river to take a bath. For soap, you used a mixture of ashes and olive oil. Oh, goody, that must have been fun!

More than nineteen hundred years ago, life for most people was more difficult than you and I could possibly imagine. Because life was hard and monotonous, special occasions, like weddings, were a very big deal.

First, the man’s parents and the woman’s parents would get together to negotiate. Marriage was not a religious ceremony, as it usually is today; it was primarily a legal contract.

Then the groom would pay the bride’s parents a minimum of one year’s salary, to hold in trust for the bride. This was because most women were not allowed to work outside the home. If the husband died, that one year’s salary would have to last his widow for the rest of her entire life. Some people think that Joseph was killed when Jesus was about 13 years old. Can you imagine being Mary, about 29 years old, and having to live for the entire rest of your life, and support eight or nine children, on a grand total of about twenty thousand dollars in today’s money?

After the money was handed over, the engagement period began. This was actually more than what we consider an engagement. It was just like being married, except that the bride lived with her parents and the couple wasn’t allowed to have sex. This engagement period lasted for a minimum of nine months and a maximum of one year. That way, the community could be sure that the young couple wasn’t getting married because they had to.

Finally, the big day arrived. First, the bride’s mother and her close friends gave the bride a ceremonial bath, and then she was anointed with nice-smelling oils, which would also make her hair nice and shiny. Then she was dressed up in clothes as beautiful as the family could afford, and she wore every jewel the family could get its hands on. The dressing up for the wedding was so important that the prophet Jeremiah tells us it was unforgettable (2:32). The bride and the groom looked and acted like they were a queen and a king.

Late in the afternoon, the groom set out from his house to go fetch his bride. At this point, the bride was wearing a veil so you couldn’t see her face. That’s how come Jacob could be fooled into marrying Leah when he really wanted to marry Rachel. At some point during the wedding, the veil was taken off and it was proclaimed, “The government shall be upon his shoulder.” In other words, the husband was the absolute boss. If the wife didn’t submit to her husband’s complete control — if, for example, she allowed a man who was not her husband to see her hair — her husband could divorce her by saying aloud three times, “I divorce you.” Wives did not have that option. (Incidentally, this “I divorce you” option for husbands is still around in some Islamic countries. Late in 2000, one country declared that husbands were not permitted to dump their wives by writing “I divorce you” three times in an e-mail!)

Next, the groom took his bride to his house. The dark roadway would be lit with oil lamps held by the wedding guests. There was singing and music along the way. When they got to the groom’s house, the bride and groom entered under a canopy. Then there was a big feast, with lots of food and lots of wine. Usually the feasting went on for at least seven days, and sometimes even longer. If the groom’s family was wealthy, they gave beautiful new clothes to all the guests as wedding presents. Clothing was very, very expensive. Today it would be like giving beautiful new Cadillacs to all the guests as wedding presents.

I’ve gone into all this detail because of verse 27 in this epistle reading. Remember, it says that husbands are supposed to love their wives “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle.” The writer is saying that Jesus loves the community of believers the way a groom loves his bride. For a wedding, a bride is first cleaned by washing, and then dressed up in splendid clothes, without a spot or wrinkle. When Christ died for us, this epistle writer is saying, he made us clean and holy, splendid and beautiful, without a spot or wrinkle.

The writer is saying that Godde loves us enough to marry us. This was not a new idea back then. The prophet Hosea compared Godde to a husband and ordinary people like you and me to a wife who doesn’t love her husband enough, who wants to go out and be a good-time girl and have fun instead of being nice and submissive and obedient. The Fourth Gospel is all about how in his earthly life Jesus was our messianic bridegroom.

Godde loves us intimately and intensely, as intensely as a husband ought to love his wife, as a wife ought to love her husband. Earlier in Ephesians, in verses we heard two weeks ago, the writer says, “Therefore be imitators of Godde, beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” And in today’s reading, he says that a husband should love his wife just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

The writer tells wives that they have to respect their husbands, but he tells husbands they’re supposed to love their wives so much they’d be willing to die for them. He’s saying, “Your wife would starve to death without you to take care of her. Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. Love your wife as much as you love yourself. Wives, respect your husbands. Husbands, love your wives so deeply that if necessary you would die for her.” And not by e- mail.

Today, almost two thousand years after the letter to the Ephesians was written, our world and our culture have changed dramatically. And we’re not going back. I don’t think that even the Southern Baptists are going to want to make it illegal for a woman to know how to read and write, or illegal for a woman to work outside the home. I don’t think even the Southern Baptists are going to say that a wedding has to last at least a week, and that the groom’s family has to give every single wedding guest a present that is as expensive as a new car.

I don’t think Godde wants us to turn off our brains, just because we’re Christians. I don’t think that just because the human man who wrote the letter to the Ephesians lived in a world where men were in charge of everything and women either did as they were told or became prostitutes, that’s the kind of world we ought to want for ourselves. Just because the holy scriptures were written in a certain world, that doesn’t mean that THAT WORLD was holy. Only Godde is perfect. ONLY Godde is perfect.

I think that Godde loves us intimately, intensely, unconditionally, the way a husband should love his wife and the way a wife should love her husband. We should treat each other with respect and dignity. And we should imitate God’s love. We should walk in love, LIVE in love, because Christ loves us enough to be willing to die for us. It doesn’t get any more beautiful than that.