Sermon Tone Analysis

Parental Interjection

How many of you have heard the term “parental interjection”?

I had not until just this past week.

You do know what it is, even if you don’t know the term.

We’ve seen all these commercials, which are fueled by “parental interjection”:

VIDEO

We laugh because this is all of us.

We laugh because we’ve all experienced parental interjection… which is when a child begins adopting many of the traits of the parents.

These ads made Dr. Rick, or comedian Bill Glass, a star.

The coach who helps us not become our parents.

The ad agency that created these ads did some research.

They expected to find that kids begin acting like their parents when they have kids.

But research shows that kids begin acting like their parents when they buy a home.

And of course, Dr. Rick was created to help sell home insurance.

Something about the idea of a house and a home that is our own… that triggers something inside of us that we all reach for.

We reach for comfort, we reach for the familiar, we reach for our parents.

In making the big step of buying a home, grown American children are trying to bridge a gap between generations, a gap that our own society has widened with home ownership and cars and meaningful incomes.

Paul’s Instructions for Families

When Paul writes to the Ephesians who are gathering as a church in Ephesus, these kinds of generational gaps were not as wide as they are now.

In fact, Paul is writing to families whose generations all live together.

Many homes in the Jewish and Roman cultures were like compounds.

It wasn’t simply the nuclear family.

They were more like clans living together, mom, dad, aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, cousins, grandkids… they all lived in the same basic space.

I’m fascinated by the colonias here in the valley, many of them have the same kinds of familial arrangements that could be found in the first century.

So Paul, writing to this gathering has some comments and instructions for families.

We have been making our way through Luther’s Small Catechism, and we are nearing the end of Luther’s instructions for church members, and before he is done, like the great missionary Paul, Luther has some words for families.

And he simply repeats the same words Paul uses here in Ephesians.

Husbands, wives, children, workers, supervisors… we’re going to work our way through this list, but then we’re going to look at these through our gospel prism.

First, here’s the list:

Wives: Wives, submit, to your husbands (Ephesians 5:22) “Wives, submit to your husbands...”

Husbands: Husbands, love your wives (Ephesians 5:25) “Husbands, love your wives...”

Children: Children, obey your parents (Ephesians 6:1) “Children, obey your parents ...”

Parents: Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children (Ephesians 6:4) “Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children...”

Workers: Slaves, obey your human masters (Ephesians 6:5) “Slaves, obey your human masters...”

Employers: Masters, treat your slaves the same way (Ephesians 6:9) “And masters, treat your slaves the same way (serving with a good attitude)”

There’s a lot that could be said here and our purpose today is not to unpack each one of these instructions.

In fact, these instructions, on the bare face of it, are pretty straight forward, even if at least a couple of them seem a bit jolting.

We’re not going to jump into the questions of what it means for wives to submit, other than to say that this doesn’t mean that there is a master and servant relationship between husband and wife (and yes, there are those who pretty much attempt to interpret it that way… and that’s not what Paul is after.. Wives are to allow their husbands to provide leadership in the home.

End of story.

And because of the way the service industry in ancient Rome was a part of the family unit, slaves here are not a one-to-one correlation with the kind of slavery we have known here in America.

Luther has it right when he uses the words “employees” and “employers” here.

But what we need to see in this list is what is missing.

Wives, submit.

Husbands, love.

Children, obey.

Father’s, don’t stir up.

Workers, obey.

Employers, treat.

If I had to wager, most of the sermons and classes I’ve heard and experienced regarding these verses, that is the main summary of what is being said.

These are simply instructions on what our roles and our duties in the home should be.

But I would suggest that such a reading of these in this way is absolutely tragic, because it misses the whole point, to the point of being completely wrong.

Paul isn’t giving a bunch of rote commands.

These are absolutely radical for Paul’s day.

The first century world was not used to thinking about family relationships this way.

But I would argue, neither does our own day and age, even within Christianity.

You know how many books have been written about these verses here?

Hundreds.

And most of them run along the lines of providing for a well-ordered society.

“If we could only go back to the way things were here in the book of Ephesians.

If we could just get people to do these things, we’d be much better off.”

There might be some truth to this.

It’s not too hard to see the breakdown of the family in our culture.

but if this is what we’re selling, there is no hope for the American family.

Commands don’t change hearts and they don’t change lives.

If we are going to rightly think about the family for our own families, much less Los Fresnos, then we’re going to have to think about these instructions in the way that Paul gives them.

And he doesn’t give them as brute or blunt instructions.

There are at least four ways that Paul is giving us something more than just bare instructions here.

First, this list, or theologians commonly call “housecodes”, or codes for home life, doesn’t begin in Ephesians 5:22.

“Wives, submit” isn’t the beginning.

That word “submit” has already been used once by Paul… in the verse immediately preceding verse 22.

And it’s almost always excluded, but it shouldn’t be.

These housecodes begin in verse 21

Eph 5:21 “Submit to one another in the fear of Christ.”

Everything that follows flows out of this verse.

Wives, husbands, children, parents, workers, and employers… all relationships are to be characterized by mutual submission.

There isn’t a thought break between verse 21 and verse 22. There’s no philosophical or ideological break.

It’s all the same thought.

If you want to know what it means for all of us to submit to each other, then this is what it looks like for wives, what it looks like for husbands, for children, for parents, for employees and employers.

Mutual submission.

Always giving deference to the other guy.

This is in keeping with the entire framework of loving others as we love ourselves.

Mutual submission is everyone in the relationship being willing to give up for the benefit of the other.

This is true love.

And that brings us to the second way Paul frames these instructions.

Ephesians 5:2 “Walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.”

This entire section of the letter has love in the backdrop.

“Love”.

If you look at those family instructions as simply roles to play in the family, or raw, simple commands, it’s not too long before love goes missing, even in the instruction to husbands to love their wives.

It’s impossible to legislate love.

But the love that Christ gives us becomes love in the way we treat each other.

“Walk in love”… what does that look like?

Well, for starters, it means these family instructions.

And these family instructions are to be absolutely saturated in self-sacrifice, laying down our lives for each other in the home.

That’s true love.

Allowing the other person to win.

Allowing the other person to control the TV remote or the radio channel.

Overlooking offenses.

Putting up with flaws and setting aside disappointments for the good of the other person.

The list goes on and on.

Self-sacrificial love colors everything.