“Wives, be subordinate to your husbands”

“Wives, be subordinate to your husbands.” With a reading like this, I wonder why Fr. Jeremy decided to let me preach today instead of him? Thanks, Fr. Jeremy.

When I was a kid and this line was read at Mass, I remember my Mom having such an adverse reaction that I could almost feel her cringe and shudder in the pew next to me. As someone whose formative years were shaped by the women’s liberation movement, for her, and for many strong women like her, I think this line represented all that was misogynistic with the Church.

Some people read this line and mistakenly take it to mean that wives are to be treated as slaves by their husbands. This is not at all the case. Many times, people hear this line from today’s second reading and they stop listening, but I believe this is exactly the time it is most important for us to start listening.

That’s because the next line says, “Husbands, love your wives.” This tired old English word, “love,” doesn’t have much meaning anymore because we use it so loosely. We say we love our new clothes and our new phone we got for Christmas in the same breath as we say we love our spouse. We have to keep in mind that the New Testament was originally written in the Greek language, which has four main words for the word “love.” In English, however, this single word “love” is tasked with describing the way we feel toward our friends, the way we feel toward our family, our physical attraction to another person, and the self-sacrificial way God loves us.

The line that was translated into English as “Husbands love your wives” originally used the Greek word Agape, which is the highest form of love; the divinely-inspired self-giving love. It is the self-sacrificial type of love that God has for us. So, what we are meant to hear in this line is that husbands are the ones who are called to lay down their lives for their wives in the same way Jesus laid down his life for each of us.

There is a mutual submission that is meant to be at play here that is often overlooked in the Bible. In today’s Gospel reading, we see this mutual submission at work as Joseph listens to what God wants him to do and then puts the needs of his wife, Mary, and son, Jesus, above his own as they travel to safety in Egypt.

But today’s Gospel reading isn’t just a true tale about a husband named Joseph and the Holy Family. No, today’s Gospel reading is a true tale of two very different husbands and their two very different families. One holy husband named Joseph and one unholy husband named Herod. Herod, is someone who historians tell us lived his life in a completely different way than Joseph.

Herod’s one and only love was Herod and his own selfish ambition. Herod was a man who was willing to do whatever it takes to selfishly obtain and retain power, even at the expense of his own family. This tyrant had his own wife executed and Herod’s killing didn’t stop there. Herod was so paranoid about holding onto his power that he believed he must kill three of his sons or else they might try to take his power away from him. So, Herod then had three of his sons killed. Instead of protecting his family, Herod destroyed his family and those people entrusted to his care.

The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Herod’s killing of sons continued on from there with Herod ordering the execution of all sons under the age of two in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Herod ordered these executions to prevent any of these toddlers and baby boys from growing up to one day take power away from him.

This is why Joseph is given a divine wakeup call in today’s Gospel reading saying that he should get up and go with Mary and Jesus out of the land which Herod ruled over and enter into the land of Egypt. This was to protect and save Mary and Jesus. In this moment and similar moments of importance, Joseph listened to God and did what he needed to do to protect and love those entrusted to his care. Joseph did this when he welcomed Mary, who was with child, into his home after the angel appeared to him in a dream telling him not to be afraid to do so. Joseph also did this when he rose and went with Mary and Jesus back to Israel after the angel told him in a dream to do so.

Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t record Joseph’s post-dream travel conversations with Mary. I would love to have been there when Joseph woke up in the middle of the night from his dream, to hear his conversation with Mary. I imagine the conversation went something like this: “Mary, Mary, wake up, God wants us to wake up little Jesus and go to Egypt now.” I believe Mary was so trusting of God and her husband’s holiness that she probably responded by saying, “whatever God wants.”

What would we do if God asked the person we love most in this world to do something crazy like this? Let’s imagine for a moment the person we most love most gets visited in a dream tonight by an angel who says to get up in the middle of the night to go 350 miles away to, let’s say, Charleston, West Virginia, and the only modes of transportation available are by foot or by donkey. What would our response be and what does our response say about how trusting we are of God and where we are at on our path to becoming a Holy Family?

In my own life, I think about how grateful I am to have my wife, Julie. Eight years ago, I told her I felt like God was calling me to become a Deacon. Through her own prayer and understanding, she gradually came to realize that, as she says it, “who am I to stand in the way of God calling my husband to become a Deacon?”

Discerning who God wants us to be, what God wants us to do and then having the courage to do it, this is what it means to be a holy disciple. When we support those we most love in the unique divine mission God has for them, this is how we discover what it means to be a holy family.

Just as the family is the building block of society, the Holy Family is the building block of the Kingdom of God, with Jesus as its cornerstone. What we see with Herod and Joseph is that the way we answer a certain question will impact not only our own lives, but also the lives of those entrusted to our care. The question Herod and Joseph and each one of us have to answer is this: “Which Kingdom do we want to build?” There are ultimately only two responses: Building a little kingdom, like Herod, by pursuing our own selfish desires and ambitions at all costs, even if the cost is having this little kingdom becoming our eternal prison. The second option is helping build up the Kingdom of God, like Joseph, by listening to God and submitting to his will of loving and protecting those entrusted to our care.

Joseph realized that our mission is submission … to God and those God entrusts to our care. Joseph realized that God’s mission for our lives is so much bigger and better than the selfish mission Herod pursued. Joseph knew the battle Herod started over 2,000 years ago that would determine who would rule over the Kingdom of Galilee wasn’t a battle worth fighting.

Joseph knew we should concern ourselves instead with a different ruler, a different battle and a different kingdom. We, like Joseph, should focus on a different ruler: the newborn King, who is King of Kings. We, like Joseph, should focus on a different battle: a battle over a much more valuable territory … the territory of our own hearts, where there is a battle raging over who will reign in our hearts. We, like Joseph, should focus on a different Kingdom: a much more important kingdom … the Kingdom of God. We can build up the Kingdom of God by learning and discerning in prayer what God wants us to do and then submitting to God and self-sacrificially submitting to and loving those God entrusts to our care.

The issue then is not one of whether or not we should submit to someone. The reality is we all submit to someone. The real issue is to whom are we submitting. Are we just going to submit to ourselves and our petty, selfish agenda or are we going to submit to God’s will for our lives and those God entrusts to our care? The decision between being like Herod and being like Joseph is each of ours to make.