A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Our lord said, what does the reign of god resemble? To what shall I liken it? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. The seed grew and became a large shrub.
Even the birds of the air nested in its branches. Then Jesus went on, to what shall I compare the reign of god? It is like east, which a woman took to knead into three measures of flour until the whole mass of dough began to rise. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. Praise be you, lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. You have just had the privilege of hearing read to you an excerpt from Saint Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Now let me assure you that is not one of Molly Ward's favorite passages. It is not one of the fame favorite passage of any feminist. This is one of the great reasons they loathe and hate Saint Paul, because Saint Paul did not preach the equality of men and women in the holy state of matrimony.
Notice, in the holy state of matrimony. He's not talking here in general about men and women, which we used to call the opposite sex. Now we're trying to have the unisex. He's talking here about the married state. And I, for one, don't ask me to prove this, for anyone who's played a team sport, basketball, football, soccer, lacrosse, any of those team sports know very anyone who's done that knows very well that while in a sense all the players are equal, in another sense all the players are not equal, and you can't even have a good symphony orchestra without a leader.
No symphony order was ever a pure democratic society. You have to have a leader. Everybody knows you can't have two quarterbacks on a football team. And, of course, anyone who's played football knows how that does happen occasionally. You have some wise guy on the on the team who thinks he knows more than the quarterback, and he may know more.
I remember we got in one game when the quarterback that got knocked down, he started to call the same plays every time. And after about the thirteenth play, we began to think, well, he's more crazy than usual. So they yanked him out. But you can't when you I I remember the first talk I gave down at the Naval Academy. It was on patriotism.
And during dinner, I was told, and it was plenty of evidence, one of the great controversies sweeping across the academy was, do you do you recognize and respect the man with the stripes or the stripes with the man? We didn't have women in the academy then. That was the debate. Well, of course, you'd respect the stripes. And if that is not adhered to, you won't have a no you won't have a defend you won't have a navy.
You'll just have anarchy, a mob. What what Saint Paul is talking about here is marriage. As I've said many times, only a fool tells a lie. The way to tell the best kind of a lie is an incomplete truth. And people who quote Saint Paul as being anti feminist, misogynist, all that, they quote only the first part of this passage that we've just read, where Saint Paul says that in marriage, the husband is head of the family.
There's somebody got to be head. Either that you're play either that or you play Russian roulette. No. They don't quote what follows. And they are among the most beautiful lines that have ever been written on the holy state of matrimony and the way husbands should love their wives.
And Saint Paul goes into great detail. He says, husbands should love their wives as they love their own bodies. Now if any anyone thinks for a minute, that is frightfully strong language. I mean but then Saint Paul develops. He doesn't stop there at all.
But these people who wanna present Saint Paul and to denigrate him, of course, they don't mention what follows at all. You'd never know he wrote it. But as I say, nothing more beautiful has ever been written about marriage and how husband should and notice one of them, that when a man marries, he ought to be ready to leave his mother. I love that. That's what Saint Paul says.
That and he he also mentioned, incidentally, he's old man too, his father. But the thing is, Saint Paul knew this knew the situation. You know how these mother boys get married and married another mother. Saint Paul says, Nicks, when you get married, you cling to your wife. She comes first, even over your mother and father.
Just think if that were adhered to in every marriage that is performed or entered into. Think of what difference will make. Think what a difference every single marriage that is existing today, how that would improve overnight if husbands no. She does she does Paul doesn't say anything about the women doing that with her husbands, which is very unfair, believe me. I hate him for that.
But anyway, he says that he that husband think of how these marriages would improve overnight, instantaneously. If husbands showed the same love, the same thoughtfulness, the same anticipation of trouble, taking the same preservatives to preserve their youth and all that stuff, if they had that same love of the body that they have of their own bodies if they had that same love for their wives. It would change like that. You see, Saint Paul isn't talking about equality. He's not saying that husbands and wives are equal.
He's saying that the husband has the major responsibility. The major responsibility. Paul doesn't say a thing in here about how wives ought to love their husbands, which I think is dastardly unfair. But I'm telling you, when have you seen that quoted? And the answer is you probably have never seen it quoted.
And so, you see, the Strictly Orthodox Jews there was an article published that several years ago by The New Yorker, and it was written by a Jewish lady up in New York who spent over a year living with a very Orthodox Jewish in a Jew in a very orthodox Jewish community where they adhered strictly to the old testament, such as shaving their heads and wearing wigs and and the whole caboodle, and the place of women in the synagogues, you know, they weren't allowed to be down but up in the galleries and all that, how they had to have their heads covered and so forth and so on. But the point is this, this big issue remember, a lot of the women who were living in that community were Jewish women who had come from a very freewheeling society and chose that. Because that kind of a society, which was the collectivity of the family, was built on solid rock of authority, not consensus. Because when the chips are down, there has to be an authority which says this is the way it is. Either that or you or you throw dice or you flip a coin.
There's no getting away with it. You see, we are living in an age which has a terrifically artificial view of equality when it when it doesn't exist. There are certain kinds of equality, but they're ever scarcely mentioned before, for example, the equality of men and women before God. I haven't yet to hear Molly Ward talk anything like about that. She has a lot to say about women's rights over their own body to kill their own baby.
Well, anyway, I just wanted to bring home to you very, very urgently. Keep this whole text in mind of Saint Paul to the Ephesians about marriage and the beautiful lines he has in there. Because if people live, as this text says, under God, under God, because act of all authority is God's authority. God is not a democrat with a small d. It's God, and we have to recognize it, that God is running the show.
And that gives that takes us out of ourselves and binds us to God almighty, where we should be bound, not to any man or any woman primarily. In the name of the father, of the son, holy spirit. Amen.