Conversations at Midnight #18: The Headless Horseman of Ephesus

Growing up in North Carolina, every October brought a fresh retelling of an old ghost story. One of my favourites was the tale of the Headless Horseman. As children, we delighted in trying to outdo one another with the scariest version. We'd imagine a mysterious night rider galloping along the railroad tracks outside our house, searching every crossing and every telephone pole, hoping to find the head that a passing train had lifted and carried away.

It made for a wonderfully spooky story, one that kept me up at night. Recently, reading through Ephesians 5, I found another headless figure—not a ghost galloping through the woods, but an equally unsettling one we may have accidentally created with our theology.

Thank goodness Paul never imagines a head without a body! That would be even scarier than a Mr. Potato Head after a toddler has finished dressing him. And—if you'll pardon the pun—it's completely out of place.

Perhaps that's where we've gone wrong. For centuries, we've debated the meaning of the "head," while quietly overlooking the fact that Paul never speaks of the head apart from the body. The two belong together. Separate them, and we've already stepped outside the picture Paul is painting.

Last week we ended with the realization that perhaps we've been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, "Who gets the upper hand?" Paul invites us to ask, "How do we help one another stand against the darkness?" The thread running through the entire letter does not seem to be power or authority, in the human sense, but reconciliation.

When Paul speaks of the head, he immediately speaks of the body because the head belongs to the body just as the body belongs to the head. Separate them, and neither can accomplish its purpose. A head without a body is not powerful; it is tragic.

As I thought about that, I couldn't help remembering my story. For many years, I treated my voice as expendable. I thought of it as an appendix, an organ thought to serve little purpose. If it caused trouble, one simply removed it. I did that with my voice when I suspected it of causing trouble. Whenever Larry and I disagreed, I often remained silent because I believed submission meant my perspective mattered less. After all, in those days, he was the elder, and then the pastor. I was just... the wife. What I failed to understand was that removing one part of the body doesn't strengthen the body but wounds it.

Marriage was never intended to erase my agency; but to exercise it differently. It's like moving from a solo to a duet, where each voice adds a new texture with harmonies one could never sing alone.

In a healthy partnership, both voices matter because both people matter. Perhaps that is what Paul is trying to show us. Christ never treats His Church as expendable. He doesn't silence or discard her or make her his slave. He gives himself up for her.

In a culture where most women (unless they were from wealthy or noble families) had little or no choice in whom they married, encouraging a wife to cooperate with and respect her husband's place within the Roman household was simply wisdom. It reflected the world they lived in.

For the husband, there is a radical shift. The husband had far more say in choosing his wife, or at least in negotiating the marriage contract with his family. I can't help wondering: Was this connection of head to body a simple command to love the person he had chosen, not just use her to satisfy the Roman requirements for marriage?

To reject or neglect her would be to tear apart what God intended to be one. If we are honest, that tearing is awfully painful. Paul is simply showing us that just as a person loves and cares for their body, so the husband should love and care for his wife. Otherwise, God forbid, he becomes like Mr. Potato Head. Remember that the head rises and falls with the body. (grin) When the body flourishes, the head flourishes. When the body suffers, the head suffers too.

Was Paul was addressing the quiet emotional isolation that sometimes creeps into marriages? Two people may share a home and even a life together, yet slowly stop cherishing one another. They become partners in routine rather than partners of the heart.

Recognizing how destructive that kind of disconnection can be, a wise husband will seek to keep the connection with his wife healthy and alive, even if it means sacrificing himself, his wants and needs.

Why was only the husband called to such sacrificial love? It would seem to me that the reason the husband is specifically named is that, in this culture, the men were the power brokers. Paul recognized that and compared them to Jesus, who, being equal to God, could have lorded it over the church. Instead, he used his privilege to serve.

This should remind us of another scene: On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus wrapped a towel around His waist, knelt before His disciples, and washed their feet. The Head knelt before the body. Then he looked at his disciples and said,

Go and do likewise.

We've spent far too many centuries using Paul's writings to argue over who gets to wear the pants, while Paul seemed far more interested in who would wear the towel.

He then takes us back to the very beginning. In Genesis, the woman is taken from the man's side. But the story does not end with separation; it ends with a reunion.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Competition drives people apart. It's the passing train that left our poor horseman searching for what was severed. Sacrificial love leads us home again.

I suspect that reconciliation—the joyful reunion of what has been separated—was the landscape Paul had in mind when he penned this letter.

Don't get me wrong. The words hupotassō and kephalē are important terms, trees deserving our attention. But they reveal their full beauty only when we step back and see the forest they belong to.

Once we see that larger landscape, the individual trees don't disappear—they simply make more sense. Which is a relief, because headless horsemen and tree-hugging theologians are probably not what Paul had in mind when he wrote Ephesians.