These days, it’s not so cool to be called to obey. I’m on the way towards getting married, and one of the fun conversations to have with your spouse-to-be is about whether that line where she promises to “honour and obey” me will be part of our wedding ceremony. Obeying someone has meaning in our culture. We don’t like to submit, we don’t like to think of ourselves as less than anyone else. Particularly in a marriage between a (very much) less than perfect man, and an exponentially more wonderful woman, it seems a bit perverse that I be the one who gets the obedience. If anything, life would go better for me if it was the other way round. But, you see, the thing is, husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loves the Church – a daunting task, one which can only be carried out and through if it is done with sacrificial love, and an honouring of the sheer wonder, beauty and all-round amazingness which lives within and radiates out of the woman who has agreed to marry us (or, more correctly, me).
The Church is the bride of Christ (I was getting to it all along, you just had to be patient) and if any bride should obey the commands of her husband, it’s us. But what are Jesus’ commands to us as we wait for our marriage feast? They are to love one another, as He has loved us, to love Him, the Lord our God, with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and love our neighbour as we love ourselves. We can’t do any of this without God. We can’t claim to love God if we don’t love our neighbour, or love ourselves. It’s a triangle which requires all three sides in order to function correctly. For the longest time, I thought I was rubbish, and I thought I was loving God, and loving others, but could never love myself. These days I truly don’t think this is possible. If I want to love God, or my neighbour, I have to love myself too. Have to. If I want to love myself, I have to love God too. This is Jesus’ command to us at the start of 2013, as fresh and vital as the first time He uttered it. If we don’t have love, the truth isn’t in us, if we don’t walk the path of love, sacrifice, humility, peace, joy and justice, we don’t love, we don’t obey Jesus’ command, His loving gift of life to us.
But what joy if we would but try. If our human relationships and our relationship with God even scratched the surface of true, radical obedience like this, what would happen in our world? If we put others before ourselves, we sought fairness and favour for all, we fed the hungry, clothed the naked, healed the sick, released the oppressed and freed the captives, in Jesus name. Revolution.
If only we had someone who would help us love, and be obedient, like that.
**Haydon is the singer/keyboardist for Ghostree.
**Haydon is the singer/keyboardist for Ghostree.