Variety: Matthew 20:28

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” Matthew 20:28

I’m not called to die on a cross. But I am called to do last night’s washing up without expecting a medal.
Simon Martin from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity writes:  

The latest season of one of my favourite shows, Couples Therapy, has just been added to iPlayer. For those of you unfamiliar with it, each season of the show follows four couples in therapy with the remarkable New York psychologist and psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik. Each of these couples is at a crisis point in their relationship. 

A common theme is that each of the individuals in the couple is wanting something from the other that they’re not getting. They want their partner to understand and meet their needs, but they’re reluctant to commit to do that for their partner if it impedes their own freedom, often to seek fulfilment from others outside the relationship.

You end up rooting for the couples in the show. Often they have trauma or tragedy in their past, which affects their ability properly to commit. They cling on to the agency that they may have been deprived of as a child because of the neglect of others. They are enormously emotionally articulate but need the help of Dr Guralnik to find solutions to the destructive power of their freedom on the man or woman they love. They appear unmoored. Their freedom is that of a ship adrift on the ocean without captain or crew to shepherd it safely to port.

The Bible speaks of freedom very positively.  It was for freedom that Christ has set us free, Paul writes (Galatians 5:1). But he instructs married couples to submit freely to each other out of reverence for Christ, to use their freedom not to advance their own interests but to serve the other – in effect, freely to give up their freedom. In Ephesians 5:21–33 Paul instructs every husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it. 

That’s a big ask. Fortunately, I’m not called to die on a cross. But I am called to do last night’s washing up without expecting a medal. Relationships are built on mutual reciprocity, outloving the other without a ledger.

I freely gave up my own freedom 30 years ago last July. All that I am I give to you, I promised to my wife. I will love and cherish you, whatever state we find ourselves in. I will forsake all others and be faithful to you for as long as we both shall live. I was free, then I wasn’t. It seemed like a good deal then, and it still does today.