Too Busy Bristling

Pastor Isaac admitted he wanted to skip this passage. Then the words appeared on the screen: “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands.” The room laughed. He had set us up for it, and we knew exactly why he’d wanted to skip this one.
 
I laughed, too, but these words have never been easy for me. Throughout my professional life, I’ve wrestled with the way Scripture has been used to put women in their place, as though our voices matter less or our judgment is somehow less trustworthy than a man’s. I know these verses belong to a larger conversation, but I also know the weight they can carry.
 
Isaac read on. After wives and husbands, children and parents, came slaves and masters. Christians have used these very verses to defend slavery itself. My discomfort with how Scripture has been used to silence women is not the same as the suffering of enslaved people, but both make me pay attention to who holds power and whose voices get heard. Isaac’s point doesn’t erase that history or resolve every tension in the passage. But it does turn the question back toward us: whatever our position in this world, we all answer to a Master in heaven.
 
Pastor Isaac put it plainly: “You never get promoted to God.”
 
We never outgrow our need for correction. No matter how capable or experienced we become, we still have things to learn.
 
It’s easy to recognize that truth in other people. It’s harder to recognize it in ourselves, especially when we’re accustomed to being the one who sees what needs to be done and reminds others.
 
Recently, our church administrator pointed out that I had left Big Buckaroos out of the Sunday program. I thought I was finished for the evening, but I had to open my laptop back up, make the correction, and send it back so she could print it for the next day. The last-minute scramble was frustrating, but what bothered me most was knowing I had missed something that should have been there in the first place.
 
I like to think that when I remind someone of something or point out a detail they’ve missed, I’m simply trying to help. But when she caught it, I was too busy bristling to see it that way. I didn’t want to be the person who had overlooked something, the one who needed someone else to point it out. She was right.
 
But needing a reminder isn’t a failure of faithfulness. Pretending we no longer need one might be closer to the problem. Grace meets us in our defensiveness and makes another response possible. We don’t have to prove we’ve arrived. As God continues working in us, we can become more willing to listen, to receive correction, and to keep growing in love.
 
My own moment of defensiveness was small, but it reminded me how easy it is to resist something we don’t want to hear. Sometimes, though, the words we need to hear come from people whose experiences we haven’t taken the time to understand.
 
On the morning of February 24, 1791, just six days before his death, John Wesley read a tract written by a man he referred to as “a poor African.” Historians identify the writer as Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa, who wrote that he had been kidnapped in Africa as a child and sold into slavery.
 
Equiano described a system in which a Black man wronged by a white man in the colonies had no legal recourse because his testimony counted for nothing. The voice of a man who had endured slavery was being dismissed simply because of who he was. Wesley was struck by this injustice and wrote to William Wilberforce that same day, urging him to continue his fight against the slave trade.
 
He wrote:
“O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”
 
At 87, Wesley was still listening, still being moved by the suffering of others, and still calling for change. Grace was at work in him, turning what he heard into love for people he would never meet and strengthening his resolve to keep speaking for them.
 
In 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church moved toward a split into northern and southern branches, largely over slavery, after a dispute involving a bishop who held enslaved people. A church that had inherited Wesley’s powerful words against slavery still couldn’t agree to stand against it.
 
The same pattern shows up in us when we hold tightly to our faith but dismiss the voices of people whose experiences challenge us, especially when listening might require us to change.
 
Wesley’s words have stayed with me: “O be not weary of well doing!” But listening is only the beginning. Following through on what we hear, especially when it asks us to change, takes the kind of endurance Wesley was urging. Whose voice might we be tempted to dismiss this week, and what might grace ask us to do once we’ve heard them?
 
This Week
The next time someone reminds you of something or offers a correction, let your first words be “thank you” before you explain yourself. You don’t have to agree with everything someone says to take their voice seriously.
 
A Prayer
Lord, remind us that we are not the Master, and that we never outgrow our need for your grace.

Give us humility to receive correction, ears to hear the voices we’ve overlooked, and courage to respond when what we hear asks us to change.

Keep us from growing weary of doing good and loving our neighbors well. Continue your work in us and through us.

Amen.