• What does subject one to another mean?
• Where the Missal stops reading
• Filled with the Spirit, not with wine
• A wedding without the word obey
• Subject one to another, in practice

What does subject one to another mean?

Subject one to another means that everyone in the church gives way to everyone else, out of reverence for Christ. It is the last line of today’s Lesson: Being subject one to another, in the fear of Christ. Paul is not writing to one kind of person. He is writing to brethren, the whole assembly, and the instruction runs in every direction at once.

The Greek makes that unmistakable. The word for one another is allelois, which Strong’s lists as a reciprocal pronoun: one another, each other, mutual. A reciprocal cannot run in one direction. Whatever subject one to another asks of me toward you, it asks of you toward me.

The verb matters too. Paul uses a participle, hypotassomenoi, and the interlinear renders it submitting yourselves. In that rendering it is an act of your own, freely given, not something done to you by someone with more power. Subject one to another is a gift each person gives, never a payment one person extracts from another.

The Latin says the same thing with a lovely word. Subjecti invicem, says the Vulgate, and Lewis and Short give invicem first as by turns, in turn, and then as mutually, reciprocally. In the Church’s own Latin, being subject one to another is something you take in turns.

And the reason comes in four words: in the fear of Christ. Not fear of each other, and not fear of losing your place. Reverence for Christ is the ground on which a church learns to be subject one to another, which means the person you yield to is never your master. Christ is.

Where the Missal stops reading

The Missal stops here, and where it stops matters. Today’s Lesson ends at verse 21. The very next verse, which is not read this morning, says in the Douay: Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord. For centuries that verse has been read on its own, as if it began a brand new thought.

It does not begin one. In two of the oldest manuscripts of Ephesians, Papyrus 46 and Codex Vaticanus, verse 22 has no verb at all, and the standard critical edition of the Greek New Testament prints it that way. The verb has to be carried over from verse 21. Read that way, the sentence runs on: being subject one to another in the fear of Christ, wives to their own husbands as to the Lord.

Scholars still argue about whether Paul himself wrote a verb there, and some recent studies think he did. But on either reading, the instructions about husbands and wives sit inside a sentence about everyone. The household rules that follow are written in the language of the first century, and they begin from subject one to another.

There is a pastoral lesson in the Missal’s choice as well. Whoever decides where a reading stops decides what the last words in people’s ears will be. On this Sunday the Church decided the last words would be subject one to another, and that decision deserves to be taken seriously by every pulpit that reads this Lesson.

Then hear what Paul asks of husbands four verses later: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it. The husband is not handed a throne. He is handed a cross, which is what being subject one to another becomes when Christ does it.

I want to say plainly who has carried the cost of reading verse 22 without verse 21. Women have been handed this chapter as a reason to keep quiet, to step back from the pulpit and to defer in every decision, and some have been handed it as a reason to stay in homes that were not safe for them. The Missal does not do that. On this Sunday it ends the Lesson on subject one to another and lets that be the last word.

Test the reading by what it grows. A church that preaches one-way submission grows marriages with one voice and congregations with half their wisdom silenced. A church that preaches subject one to another grows people who give way to each other, in turn, out of reverence for Christ, and no one in the room is anyone else’s master.

Filled with the Spirit, not with wine

Back up two verses and the whole passage changes shape. Be not drunk with wine, wherein is luxury; but be ye filled with the holy Spirit. Paul sets two kinds of fullness side by side, and then he describes the second kind.

In the Greek, everything that follows hangs on that one command. Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns, singing and making melody to the Lord, giving thanks always, being subject one to another: the NET Bible’s notes read these participles as the results of being filled by the Spirit. Mutual submission is not a rule laid on top of the Christian life. It is one of the signs that the Spirit is actually present.

So the test of a Spirit-filled church is not only how it sings. It is whether its people are subject one to another. A congregation where one group always yields and another never does may sound full on a Sunday morning, but by Paul’s own measure it is running on something other than the Spirit.

The difference between them is plain. Paul ties wine to luxury, a fullness spent on the drinker alone. The Spirit fills a person toward others: every sign Paul lists, speaking, singing, giving thanks and being subject one to another, is done toward God or toward a neighbour.

One word of care about the line just before it, giving thanks always for all things. That line has been used to tell people to thank God for what was done to them. It does not say that. The thanks are given in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and nothing done to you in cruelty was ever done in that name.

A wedding without the word obey

In May 1840, in Johnstown, New York, a young woman, Elizabeth Cady, married Henry Stanton. Before the ceremony she had one more argument to win, with the Scottish clergyman who was to marry them, the Reverend Hugh Maire.

She wanted the word obey taken out of the vows. In her memoir, Eighty Years and More, she gave the reason in one sentence: As I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation, that point, too, was conceded. The National Park Service tells it the same way: the ceremony omitted the vow to obey.

Think about what that took. A bride in 1840 argued with the clergyman marrying her over a single word, because she believed the word would shape everything that came after it. She did not ask to be set above her husband. She asked for an equal relation, and the clergyman agreed.

Keep her phrase, because it is the best short definition of today’s Lesson that anyone has offered. An equal relation is what subject one to another produces: not two people who never yield, but two people who both do.

That is subject one to another put into a vow. Not a promise that one person will obey and the other will command, but a promise made in both directions at once. The Missal makes the same choice: on this Sunday it ends the Lesson at verse 21.

Subject one to another, in practice

So what does it mean on an ordinary Tuesday? It means taking turns. Invicem: by turns. The person who always decides learns to wait. The person who always waits is asked what they think, and then actually heard.

In a marriage it means two people who both give way, out of reverence for Christ rather than fear of each other. In a congregation it means the pastor yields too, and that the people with the least power in the room are not the only ones asked to bend. In a friendship it means no one keeps score.

It means, too, that decisions are not made by one voice, that those who lead also listen, and that the person in the back pew can correct the person in the pulpit and be thanked for it. A church that is subject one to another can survive being wrong, because someone is always allowed to say so.

It also means the Introit’s prayer is shared. We have sinned against Thee, says a faithful man in the furnace, and he says we. Being subject one to another starts with confessing together, rather than one person confessing for everyone while the others confess nothing.

And it means the Collect asks for all of us alike: pardon and peace to Thy faithful. Peace in a household or a church is not the silence of the people who were told to submit. It is what is left when everyone has been subject one to another long enough to trust each other.

If you have spent years being the only one who yields, hear this. Being subject one to another was never meant to be your job alone. You are allowed to ask the people around you to take their turn.

And if you are a woman who was handed verse 22 as if it were the whole chapter, hear this as plainly as I can say it. Paul did not ask you to carry submission alone. He asked a whole church to be subject one to another, and he asked the husbands in it to love as Christ loved, who delivered himself up.

If none of the theology is yours, the human half is simple. In any relationship worth keeping, both people give way, by turns, and neither one owns the other.

↑ The order resumes below.