When Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Britain, the press was as much interested in her husband, Denis Thatcher, as they were in her. One day, as the Thatchers were moving into the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street, a reporter asked Mr Thatcher, “Who wears the pants in this house?” Mr Thatcher’s prompt answer was, “I do, and I also wash and iron them.” The advice in today’s second reading for women to be subject to their husbands is often quoted out of context. Insensitive men cite it with approval to support exploiting their wives and turning them into foot mats. Angry women cite it with disapproval to show that the Christian religion regards and treats women as second class citizens. When the advice is understood in its proper context, however, we see that these one-sided views of the teaching on marriage in Ephesians are indeed caricatures of the true teaching. There are three reasons for this. First, the injunction for women to be subject to their husbands is predicated against a more inclusive teaching for husband and wife to be mutually submissive to each other. The first and general exhortation, which every other advice in the passage tries to explain and apply, is found at the beginning of the passage. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). Two things are important here. (1) The submissiveness between husband and wife is reciprocal. The wife is to submit to the husband just as the husband is to submit to the wife. An Igbo proverb says that two dogs can play only by the one falling for the other and the other falling for the one. (2) The submissiveness envisaged here is not a submissiveness borne out of weakness or fear but “out of reverence for Christ.” The service that husband and wife give to each other is an expression of their faith in Christ. Marriage, like priesthood or religious life, is a vocation. It is a God-given mission. When husbands and wife take on the challenges of marriage, the challenge to be a pillar of support to each other as well as to the children God gives them, they are serving the Lord. Secondly, the injunction for wives to be subject to their husbands is given on the assumption that the husband is a man of faith, who loves and cares for his wife in the spirit of Christ. People are afraid to submit themselves to those who are likely to abuse and exploit them. A man of God, who loves and takes care of his wife would be the last person on earth to abuse or exploit her. The assumption of faith and love on the part of the man is crucial. A man who has neither faith in God nor love for his wife has no right to demand that his wife submit to him. A man has to earn his wife’s submissiveness by his own total submission to the Lord and love of his wife. It is not a right. It is a blessing and a privilege of faith. Finally, in the world of the New Testament, a woman was treated as the husband’s property. This is equally true in the three dominant cultures of the New Testament: Jewish, Greek and Roman. Given the view of marriage in the cultures of that time, the teaching in Ephesians stands out as an oasis or order and sanity in a desert of marital chaos. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Wives are enjoined to submit to their husbands, but husbands are enjoined to love and spend themselves for their wives, to the point of dying for her, as Jesus did for the church. The demand of the sacrament of matrimony is equally radical on both partners. Today, marriage is in crisis. So also is the Christian family. Many celebrities of our time are either people who chose to be unmarried, people are many times divorced and remarried, or people who advocate same-sex marriage. Our prayer today is for Christ to enlighten and strengthen his church to uphold the sanctity of marriage and promote the Christian family as the ideal environment for man, woman and child to live out their faith in the perfect harmony of love.