From David Garner's post...
"Deaconess Meyer, I hope this is helpful, and I also hope it is not repetitive as I can't remember if I've mentioned this here before.
When my wife and I were crowned in the Orthodox Church, the Church gave us an icon of the 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebaste. In our understanding (and, perhaps I'm recalling incorrectly, but I believe in yours as well), marriage is a type of martyrdom. We are to die to our spouse. In the husband's case, that may mean literally give our lives, but even absent that, we still give all that we are and all that we have for the benefit of the other. In so doing, we learn what it is to empty our selves and live for the other, as Christ lived for the Church, and ultimately died for her.
You are correct -- we can never do this as Christ did. It would be wrong and a complete undoing of the Scriptural admonition to husbands and wives for either the husband or wife to consider themselves the Christ figure. Rather, my wife is Christ, and I serve her as Christ served the Church. And to her, I am Christ, and she serves me as Christ served the Church. Not by lording over each other or keeping each other under a boot heel, but in love and submission and giving and charity. And we do this very imperfectly. But that is our calling. We are to love the other unconditionally, forgive all their sins, give ourselves for their benefit, etc. It is very much a mutual thing. That the husband is given the responsibility of headship in this relationship does not in any way undo that model. It strengthens it, in that the husband is to be the pastor of his household, and in that role, he is called to set an example of love and charity and forgiveness and self-emptying. He is the first servant, not the boss or ruler...
Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Headship carries with it great responsibility. I don't take it lightly, and in fact it is with fear and trembling that I nonetheless take up the calling Christ has given me. I would suggest that is not so very different from how wives ought approach their vocations."
Marie offers a few thoughts...
Rather than saying of husband and wife, "We are to die to our spouse," I submit the directive is that each, as the baptized husband and wife die to self. That is the say each puts the welfare of the other above self. Both have been recreated to serve as they are served by Christ. In baptism both die to self
David writes... "That the husband is given the responsibility of headship in this relationship does not in any way undo that model. It strengthens it, in that the husband is to be the pastor of his household, and in that role, he is called to set an example of love and charity and forgiveness and self-emptying. He is the first servant, not the boss or ruler..."
Reading the above I experience a bit of Lutheran cognitive dissonance. If the husband is to be the head of his wife as Christ is the Head of the Church... remembering that husband and wife both ARE the church and the Bride of Christ, then they are both severed as Christ serves the Church. Here the husband must literally "see" or "know" that he and the his wife are served by Christ in the same way.
How then does Christ serve all, men and women, who ARE the Church? Does He not lift His Bride up, Give Her all that She needs to be His Counterpart on earth and give Her the power and authority that comes from Christ alone to forgive sins. What Christ gives to His One Body, the Church, is given to the many members of His Body whether they are male or female, husbands or wives.
I return to the model of relationships where there is the giving, receiving AND returning. In the faithful heterosexual procreative model of marriage there is a giving by the husband and a receiving by the wife. Is there also not a returning by the wife, not only of mutual love and pleasure, but the giving in return of the new life of a child?
The mystery of Christ's relationship to the Church is that He, knowing that God the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in the Church, His Bride, so that She will be the Mother of all God the Father's children.
So we return the doctrine of the Trinity and the Unity of the One Godhead in the creation, redemption and recreation of the many who are the One Church.
Marie