Lent & Submission

By Andrew Tai

Submission is the spiritual discipline that frees us from the everlasting burden of always needing to get our own way. In submission we are learning to hold things lightly. We are also learning to diligently watch over the spirit in which we hold others— honoring them, preferring them, loving them. 

Submission is not age or gender specific. We are all—men and women, girls and boys—learning to follow the wise counsel of the apostle Paul to “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21).” We—each and every one of us regardless of our position or station in life— are to engage in mutual subordination out of reverence for Christ. 

The idea of “submission” as a spiritual discipline is about choosing others’ interests above our own, demonstrated most dramatically in Jesus’s submission to the cross out of love for us.  It is I think core to what it means to be a Christian, and yet it’s an often uncomfortable idea for me to think about because I’ve most commonly heard it weaponized by those in power to force others to do what they want.   

Because of how it’s often been used, it makes sense that nowadays “submitting” is often viewed as weakness, since the submitter is most commonly doing so out of fear.  Yet Christians throughout the centuries have recognized submission as a critical spiritual practice, especially in a world where we are increasingly taught that our needs are more important than others’; that we “win” in relationships by getting our way.  Christian submission is not borne out of weakness, fear, or respect for hierarchy, but out of reverence for Jesus and love for one another.   

I have been privileged to see this type of submission lived out in our community.  In fact, I think submission has become so core to our community’s shared life together that many of you perhaps don’t recognize how deeply sacrificial and remarkable your actions are.  I don’t say this to pat ourselves on the back or imply we are without fault, but simply because I think there is a power in translating feelings into words, and I want you all to know and reflect on the type of people I see you all becoming. 

A few weeks ago, my family decided we needed to move my dad’s bed downstairs since he was having trouble going up and down the stairs.  Unfortunately, the only room that would work had been used by our family as a study for over 25 years, and so had accumulated mountains of junk and trash, along with heavy desks, bookcases, computers.  I worried that to get the room prepared would take several weeks of cleaning, rearranging, and moving.   

On Super Bowl Sunday–literally, during the Super Bowl–about ten members of our community came to come help us with the move, and in less than two hours had completed the lifting, cleaning, and rearranging work necessary to turn the study into a new bedroom.  These folks came and helped out even though they could’ve been munching on wings, chips, and beer, not because I offered them reward or recognition, but because they were willing to choose another’s interests–namely, my family’s–over their own.  They did so because they believe Jesus has called us to love and support one another not simply with thoughts and prayers but with real, concrete acts of love and service.  That they did so on Super Bowl Sunday, a day which in many ways exemplifies our culture’s obsession with desire, greed, and excess, is simultaneously ironic and perhaps entirely fitting given these folks’ desires to live out of the example of Jesus.   

I look around and see these types of things happening all the time in our community–not necessarily always in huge gestures, but in the day-to-day goings on of a people I am proud to call my family.  I see submission out of love in folks’ willingness to sit with and listen to one another; in others’ choosing to confront conflict with each other; in others’ attempts to live more simply that they may give more generously.  I see these things and want to name them not simply as nice things that nice people do, but as remarkable things that I have seen as part of folks’ following of a remarkably loving and giving God. 

As we continue during this Lenten season, I pray we might continue to have in mind our Lord Jesus, who chose and continued to choose the interests of imperfect people like us over himself.   

Amen.