The sermon at church last Sunday morning dealt with the Colossians passage that we studied last week in our home group.
Its conclusions were right, basically, but for all the wrong reasons...or, to be fair, for some of the wrong reasons.
We got off to a bad start with a reference to the common misunderstanding of the 'give way at a roundabout rule' as an illustration of the operation of rules. The speaker told us that we had to give way to traffic on our right. Not so! The rule is give way to traffic in the roundabout.
The sermon then followed the tenor of this slight misunderstanding, to slightly misunderstand scripture, in my view.
The obvious connection was made with Genesis 3, and the curse undoing harmony in relationships, and it was well made, with the further point being that Col. 3:18-4:1 gave us a set of rules for family life (slaves included in the household, as they often were then).
For all its good, I don't think that Paul is giving rules here, but is rather showing how life in Christ undoes the mores of life in the world. Each of Paul's calls for behavioural change is not so much a rule (albeit a rule that reverses the outcomes of the fall for relationships), but a reversal of the power and exploitation that exists, or could easily and acceptably exist in the relationships mentioned at that time, particularly. The way of Christ is not the way of the world. Our relationships are to be different because of him who called us.
Unsurprisingly the 'role' of the husband as the 'head' of the wife was mentioned. Given the spotlight, in fact, for part of the talk. However, the Biblical relationship identified in the connection of 'head' between man and woman, (and between God and Christ, Christ and man and Christ and the church) was by a slight of hand made in to the office of 'headship'. I don't and can't see an 'office' in these relationships. It is alien to the whole tenor of the Kingdom of God, and it is certainly alien to the tenor of human relationships (although a reference was made to Eph 5:22 as illustrating what 'head' meant, and that itself was fair enough). But the central reference by Paul to these relationships has got to be Galatians 3:28, where distinction is tossed out altogether, in Christ, which is where we are. Everything must be read in this light, I would think.
The idea of an office of 'headship' also brings with it ideas of power needed to overcome opposition. The idea is simply at odds with not only the life of the Kindgom of God, but of the relationships in the godhead itself. See this short blog on 'head'. The sermon talked about an 'established order' but there is no such thing, in the terms presented in the sermon (that is, 'headship' being about some sort of authority order) just the distorted dis-order of the fall, which we go against as we head to the new creation, where the strictures of the world and its confining 'established order' are rejected. Sure, one could say that a new order replaces the old, but my concern is that mainstream readings of this and related passages of scripture see order at the forefront, and not relationships of mutual submission, love and service (as elusive as they might be).
Paul is not about rules, per se, but about the reconfiguration of the concept of self from independent to Christ-centred.
The last comment that horrified me was the local favourite 'servant-leadership' with reference to husbands and wives. This is another concept (along with 'headship') which does not exist in the Bible. Servant, yes. 'Leader' no. A leader knows where they are going and where to take followers. But we follow Christ, and his Spirit is the one who knows where to take us. We are all for each other but servants along the way. This 'servant-leader' oxymoron is a dreadful intrusion of worldly thinking into the church and it cannot fall out of favour soon enough for me. Matthew deals with this (oh, and I know 'leader' pops up in Hebrews too, but I doubt it can be recontextualised to how the term is conceived in contemporary life when it must be read against the full biblical background).
Now the sermon did say agreeable things about the actual relationships, but unfortunately not for always biblical reasons. Cultural reasons intruded.
