What do you mean, submit?

On your mark.  Get Set.  Go! 

You’ve got one minute and thirty seconds to go through the entire grocery store to grab the most expensive items you can.  You and your partner are racing against another team of two.  Do you go for the shrimp?  The filet? The organic cleaning products? You’re right.  You’re on Supermarket Sweep.  

Do you feel your heart racing? If you pick the right items and your total is higher than the other team’s total, you not only win all of the items you grabbed on your run, a host of other prizes, but you get to return to win more items the next time around.  You could keep playing the game until you won  $20,000. 

There is a strategy, you know?  Before you compete on the show, you need to know your groceries.  You need to know your brands.  You need to understand the layout of the common grocery store.  Where are the high end cheeses?  Where is the expensive seafood? Do you know your cuts of meat?  Beef tenderloin tips are not going to cost the same amount as the filet.  You need to map out a plan of how the items that need to be refrigerated are organized verses the items that are in the center are located.  Where are the high dollar items kept?  Diapers, people.  Diapers can cost $30 a box.  And Formula $40 dollars a can.  

You only have one minute and thirty seconds.  

I have spent time running through grocery stores with my friends for fun, sailing on the carts and spinning up and down the aisles.  Don’t tell anyone, but when I was a teenager, we once played tag with loaves of bread  at 2 AM in the grocery store until we got in trouble by the store manager.  Please do not follow in my youthful grocery store footsteps.  

What if your life, your income, your ability to eat, depended on this one chance to get the most expensive groceries?  

You would be prepared.   You would be ready.  You would know what you needed to do and you give it everything you have. 

ex-agerouozo

ex-agerouzo is the verb used in the letter to the Ephesians that we just read.  Be careful how you live, Paul the Apostle says.  Make the most of time (ex agerouozo).  It translates, no joke, to grab up all the bargains you can in the marketplace.  

It is a biblical super market sweep.  

Make the most of your time.

Grab up every moment you can get.  Take hold of this life with zest and with zeal and Live it.  

Because, as the text says, the days are evil.  

I probably wouldn’t use those words, but Paul does and it might feel a little odd coming out of our politically correct mouths.  But think about it this way…

There are horrific things going on all around us… I bet right now in your mind you could name at least three things that you know of that are gut wrenching…. In every corner, darkness lingers, things are not holy.

The world is hurting.

People are hurting.  Maybe there are parts of you or those you love who are hurting.  

We are all in need of a different way of doing things.  Of doing life.  Of seizing opportunities to fill our lives with what is good and what is beautiful and what is holy.  

And you know how we do it?

We don’t do it by buying more, by comparing ourselves to others.  We don’t do it by getting richer or having a nicer car or getting more likes on instagram.  Seeking after the things of this world will only expand the darkness and place more burden on your already overburdened souls.  

We can live differently by submitting to one another.  

When we got married, a woman in the church I was serving gave Paul and I a book.  It was called The most important year of your life.  The book was split in half.  One half of the book was for one partner to read and one half of the book was for the other partner to read.  The chapter titles and topics were the same on both sides and it was written by a clergy couple.  I overzealously packed the book in the suitcase for our honeymoon, knowing Paul would be so excited to read about important tips for a healthy marriage while we lounged on the beaches of Puerto Vallarta.  That is, of course, every groom’s dream for time spent on a honeymoon, right?

After we arrived at our casita in the jungle I began to unpack and I took out the book and started to read my half.  It was witty and funny and really true to life -- it seemed to address all of my hopes and longings for this new moment in our relationship.  I wanted to have the perfect marriage -- as I’m sure every newlywed couple does and if this book was going to help, I was going to read it.  Surprised at how much I was enjoying it, because, well, sometimes Christian literature can be a bit, uhhh, dull, I encouraged Paul to take a look at his side of the book.  He was less than enthralled at the idea, because A) we were on our honeymoon and B) he, at that time, did not enjoy reading at all.  

But as he started paging through his side of the book, he kept laughing out loud and making comments and asking to compare his side to my side of the book.  We both wanted to keep reading our side of the book because it was just so good, so spot on for the things we were experiencing and the hopes we had for our future.  I would take a turn reading the book and set it down to go to the bathroom or to get a drink and he would swoop in and pick up the book while I wasn’t looking so that he could read more of his side.  

One of the most important components of the book that stayed with us for all of these years was the concept explored in the first chapter titled:  Wet Cement.  When I was growing up, my grandfather poured new concrete steps in front of his house and put a penny in them of the year he poured the steps.  As a little girl, he used to joke with me about getting the penny out of the step, but as much as I tried, Abe Lincoln’s face was permanently a part of that entrance way.  You might have your own stories of initials or handprints placed in wet cement that stayed on as a forever reminder.  

The author encouraged a simple practice around the malleability of wet cement for this tender time in our relationship.  It was wildly simple and equally difficult.  Say Yes to each other.  As often as you can, say yes.  Try for one month to never say no to each other, if it is possible.  

And so, when we returned from our honeymoon we tried to put this into practice.  If I said I forgot something out in the car and looked over coyly to Paul and said, Darling, could you go out in the car and get it for me?  He would say, Yes!  If I was past the point of drowsiness in bed at night and he leaned over and said could you get me a glass of water, I would smile and say, Of course dear.  And I would go get the water.  We joked around with the concept quite a bit and asked each other to do silly things, just for the sake of knowing our requests would be answered.  The author’s intention with this practice was to teach you that the first year of your marriage was a time frame where things were still setting.  The mold had been built and the concrete had been poured, but if you left an impression in wet cement it would stick.  Your patterns would become habits and your habits would become your lifestyle.  

You could say I was submitting to Paul.  And you could say he was submitting to me.  

And I think it is beautiful and holy to submit to one another.  

I was raised in an era were I was told that women can do anything and be anything. I was encouraged to learn about female astronauts in outer space and I was told over and over again that women are equal to men.  I grew up in a church that allowed me to speak and lead in worship from a very early age and I always felt empowered and encouraged to stand up and be heard.  Though I knew that there were plenty of churches where women’s voices were relegated to coffee hour, I was never part of that kind of church.  

And so, when I would hear of examples of people using the Bible to suppress women, I was always amazed and perhaps disappointed that the church that I loved and the God that I loved could ever be a part of something exclusionary and sexist.  

And yet, the text that Valerie so beautifully read for us this morning speaks to a long list of things that Paul the apostle writes to the people in Ephesus about what not to do.  Do not be silly, do not be foolish, do not be drunk on wine (one commentator that I listened to said try scotch instead…  I’m just kidding!)  

But Verse 21 says to us Be subject to each other, Submit to each other.  

What do you mean, Submit? 

Certainly women and minorities could point to hundreds of examples of ways in which the call for obedience and submission was used as a weapon of power to silence voices and cause evil and harm.  I can fully understand in the middle of movements like Black Lives Matter and Me Too that a call to submission might cause a little push back from those who have been marginalized and powerless for far too long, as it should. 

But I’m a firm believer that God gave us this Bible and invited us to look deeply into it and to receive faithfully from it, to not look away when there are tough topics to discuss because our God is in the tough times and the good times.  

But verse 21 to me… Submit to one another out of reverence to Christ —

Submission to me sounds like a horrible concept when it stands alone.  It sounds like dominance and lording power over another, it sounds unequal and something to rise up against.  

But I believe that the emotional allergy we feel when we hear the call to submit is felt because we automatically recoil and enter a mode of self preservation.  We are afraid that if we let someone else have power over us, we will lose what we have. 

We will lose what we believe is ours.  

What would it even look like if we were to submit to one another?

Would it mean that no one would ever go at a 4 way stop because we are always letting the other person go first?  Would it mean that you could never get in line at the grocery store until every other person there got in front of you?  Would it mean we would lose the supermarket sweep because we would let the other person win?

Would we ever make it in the door if Christians everywhere were bowing down before one another waiting for the other person to go first?

The world tells us and we tell each other -- strive to be first in your class, go for the  gold.  Run for president.  We give glory and laud attention on the best.  The worldly best, that is. 

You see friends, we have become confused about which race we are in.  We have been running through the stores and through the days and through the streets and alleys of our lives gathering badges of honor and trinkets of worth all in order to gain power and prestige.  

But what God wants for us, what Paul beckons us to is to is a life as perfect as a pile of wet cement.  

A life ready to be molded and shaped and ready to say Yes.  Yes to each other.  Yes to molding our days around prayer.  Yes to molding our schedules around worship.  Yes to actually praying for people when we say we will.  Yes to showing respect to our parents and kindness to our children.  Yes to loving the unlovable, the difficult boss, the miserable teenager, the tantruming toddler.    Yes to offering change to the person with the jar.  Yes to increasing our offering and sacrificing more. Yes to opening the book that was designed for our lives and entering into a new relationship with Jesus, because new beginnings aren’t just for the first year of marriage, they aren’t just for couples, they aren’t just for grown ups.  They are for those who want to be on the journey that leads to peace, to harmony, to love, and yes, to submission. 

You know what happens when you start to say yes?  You realize how often you’ve been  saying no.  You notice how often you are focused on self interests, on busyness, on the mundane.  You notice how often you are looking at your phone or your computer or the TV and how little you are looking at those you love and especially how little of your life you are giving to your savior.  

When we were going through a rough patch with one of our children, a book was recommended to us to sit with each child for 7 minutes a day.  7 short minutes and submit to them.  Do whatever they wanted to do.  If they waned to draw, if they wanted to sing, whatever they wanted, do it for 7 minutes a day.  It sounds so simple and yet, it was unbelievably difficult to do nothing self serving for 7 minutes.  

Can we carve out enough time, carve out enough of our ego, carve out enough of our lives to truly serve God and to truly serve one another?  

Submission in this holy form doesn’t sound so bad to me.  

On your mark.  Get Set.  Go! 

You’ve got much more than one minute and thirty seconds to go through the rest of what life has in store but now is the time to take hold of the most important moments you can.  You and your partner and your family and your friends and your community  are racing against a society that tells you that you have no worth and you will only feel satisfied when you have more, buy more, do more.. You are already submitting to something, but from this moment on, who will you start submitting to?  Will you say to your spouse, I want to say yes to you?  Will you say to the one with him your relationship is broken, can we begin to  heal this?  Will you say to the person at the check out counter — Thank you for the job that you do, to the teacher, thank you for loving our children, to the police officer and the solider, to the street sweeper and the congressperson …  I need you.  Can I help you?  We’re in this together.   

You’re not on supermarket sweep, but hopefully your heart is racing with new possibilities, new ways of living, new patterns and rhythms that will set the stage for a new chapter in your life, a chapter that begins right now.