Be Subject to One Another Part II

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Sunday Scripture Reading: Ephesians 6:1-4 (NRSV)

1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Read more…

Looking to Sunday

by Elaine Poproski

If you Google privilege you’ll find the following definition: a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people. It’s a word deeply connected to power, particularly power imbalance between people groups. It speaks to the realities of inequality that have been prevalent in human society for most of history. Reading the Bible, I think it’s clear that in God’s Kingdom, these inequalities will be no more. I also think it’s clear in the Bible that until God’s Kingdom is fully realized, God has something to say both to those of us who are and those of us who are not privileged.

All four gospels are riddled with stories of Jesus’ encounters with those His society declared to be of less worth than Jesus was – lepers, women, disabled people, children, Samaritans. Every interaction He had was another example of Paul’s description of Jesus from Philippians 2:6–7, in which Jesus is spoken of as He, “who, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself…” Both in the divine act of the incarnation and in the day-to-day interactions of the man who was Jesus, we see the example of one who always chose to identify with those who were not privileged, even at the expense of any advantages and benefits the world had to offer Him. When the Apostle Paul, at the end of Ephesians 5, gives his instructions about husbands’ behaviour toward their wives, we see a similar expectation of those with privilege.[1] This week, when we read the comparatively brief passage about children and parents, we will again be challenged to think about the upside down nature of God’s Kingdom – a Kingdom in which those with privilege bear great responsibility for those without.

As you prepare for Sunday, I invite you to read and meditate on the words of Philippians 2:5–8. Consider all that Jesus gave up. Spend some time reflecting on His extraordinary humility. Pray through the passage, asking God to reveal how you do and do not “have the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

[1] If you missed last week’s sermon, you can listen on-line either through the church website or the church facebook page.