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[Phl 2:5-7 ESV] 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
[Eph 5:25 ESV] 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
OK, seriously, what is wrong with me? Am I going all patriarchal and Westboro Baptist on all of you? Am I suffering from some sort of ultra-conservative and temporary lapse of madness?
Before you declare me clinically insane, or worse, a conservative, I pray you read what I have to say!
I will base my theological musings on these 3 verses. These theological musings emerged from a conversation I had with my fiance about leadership in relationships, and she deserves half the credit for what is written here.
Before I start however, I want to say that there is a huge difference between being conservative and being Orthodox. Conservatives love to think of themselves as Orthodox, but their "orthodoxy" is so entangled with so many political assumptions and values that it is no longer Orthodoxy.
Conservatism is a counterfeit of Orthodoxy.
If only we would realize this, in my opinion, we would avoid many serious mistakes, like the exodus of Christian Liberalism from Orthodoxy, in the hopes of distancing themselves from the horrific mistreatment from conservatives of Orthodoxy.
Anyways, that's another blog post! Back to our topic!
I believe God calls us man to be leaders. Crazy huh?
This leadership, however, is so radically different from what the world views as leadership. They are diametrically opposed to the point that I am willing to say that male leadership does not equal patriarchy. If anything it is the subversion of patriarchy!
Say what?!
I know. But before you sent me to a medieval asylum, or before I get killed by an angry mob of radical feminists, let me explain my exegesis of these verses!
I believe that Jesus was trying to destroy patriarchy by transforming our notion of leadership.
What Jesus is saying in Mathew 20 is this: leadership does not equal authority! If we truly follow the logic of what He is saying, then having leadership is not having authority, but literally becoming slaves of all.
Now, we may read this and think, "this is just Jesus being poetic and cute, you know that hyperbole thing". I don't think so. I think He means what He says, and it is crazy.
First, He starts by asserting an undeniable fact: rulers lord it over others. This is our basic definition of authority. Authority over others means that your will dictates what others do. Plain and simple. And yet Jesus says "it shall not be so among you",
Crazy!
He is saying, you should not lead with authority! Why? This is more than just a lesson of humility. This is a lesson on Christian leadership. Lord it over others, I believe, is the way the world leads, and as a consequence, and by the simple command of our Lord, it is sinful for the Christian to lead this way.
It is sinful not because it is wrong, though a case can be done for its wrongness. It is sinful because it disobeys a command of our Lord and therefore misses the mark of Christian leadership: "it shall not be so among you".
If we lead, according to Jesus, then we must serve like slaves, or bondservants. I have said before that the word translated here as slave is from the Greek doulos.
If you had told a first Century Jew that slaves were full of authority and therefore leaders, they'd have laughed at you! I think the irony was not lost to Jesus' disciples, and His words were as perplexing then as they are now.
Now, this is not to say that all authority is evil, but an authority that forces and commands others to do as you will is definitely evil.
Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus "emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant". Here is that doulos word again! It is not that Jesus didn't have authority. That He has is undeniable to the Christian. But in order to lead, He had to serve, and in order to serve, He had to empty Himself!
In other words, in order for Jesus to lead, He had to empty Himself of authority, and lead as a servant!
Leading, therefore, is not a position of authority. Leading is a position of servitude.
See where I'm going with this?
The third passage from Ephesians commands man to "love your wives". How? "as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her".
How did Christ give himself to the church? By emptying Himself and serving, and giving His life as a ransom for her!
Now, leadership demands not that we have authority, but that we have initiative.
To lead is to have initiative, and to lead as a Christian is to lead in service, to take initiative in service.
Why is the task to take the initiative given to man, and not woman? Isn't that unfair? Isn't this more or less a more "gentle" form of patriarchy?
I don't think so, and here is why.
Man are asked to take initiative out of the simple fact that in society, historically speaking, and even true today, are the ones who have more power and authority. This was an undeniable fact in Jesus' days, and it is an undeniable fact today.
Women, sadly, are the ones whose society bestow less power to. This is unfair, and I'm not advocating for this.
Therefore, since men have more power given to them by society, it makes more sense to make the demand of them to lead, and by leading, to empty themselves. To lead is to give up voluntarily that power, and offer it to the powerless.
Crazy huh?
I think what Jesus is saying here is this: you guys are used to having all the power. Guess what? I'm asking you that if you want to lead, you must give it up and become a servant.
To ask women to give up what little power they had would be unfair. Therefore, it is the task of the men to lead, and by leading, to give up that power in service to the powerless.
This is not patriarchy. This is the subversion of Patriarchy, and it is beautiful.
The Pharisee prayed every morning what is called the three morning blessings, thanking God for not making him "a gentile, slave or a woman".
The Kingdom of God comes and subdues these blessings and declares: The Kingdom of God is also for the gentiles, requires its leaders to be slaves and to give and offer their lives to the powerless, including, in Jesus' days the woman.
Rev. Eric Law says that Jesus, in His encounters with the rich and powerful, preached the gospel of the cross, and to the poor and powerless, He preached the gospel of the resurrection.
This means that to the rich and powerful Jesus is asking them to give up that power and give it to the poor (sell all you have and give it to the poor) and to carry the cross and follow Him.
To the poor, He already calls them blessed (blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God).
It would be wrong and unfair to ask the poor to give up their power and preach a gospel of the cross to them, for they are too familiar with the cross.
I believe Jesus is doing something similar here with leadership.
God calls the powerful to lead by giving up their power and become servants. If men were and continue to have more power then God will continue to ask them to give up their power in servant leadership.
Relationship and the sharing of powers
Lastly, how do all of this relate to relationships between a man and a woman?
Man, in a relationship, is asked to lead. This is how I interpret earlier passages of Ephesians 5, where man is seen as the "head".
This sort of leadership, however, has to be closely tied to Christ's leadership. If man is to lead, he is to do so like Christ, by loving his wife and giving himself to her like Christ did to the church.
In doing this, man becomes the servant, and by becoming the servant, he is "emptying" himself and sharing the power with this wife. This takes tremendous courage and vulnerability, for here they become vulnerable to their wives.
The wife, in return, honors this servant leadership and shares that power back to the husband, and an intimate circle of power sharing is created, where one doesn't "lord it over" the other, and thus obeying God's command, but where the man leads by serving and emptying of his power, and the wife "submits" by honoring the husband and sharing the power back.
In this vision, both man and woman share power by giving up power.
When we give up and share power, we are exalted. The Scriptures gives firm testimony of this. Christ, in that same passage of Philippians, is exalted above any other name, since He was willing to empty Himself.
The Virgin Mary in the Magnificat proclaims that He "casts down the mighty from their thrones, and lifts the lowly".
The mighty shall be brought down, and the humble shall be exalted. If we have power, whatever our circumstances, then we are called to give it up in service of others, and God will take care of the exalting.
Leadership is one way to do that.
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