Why Not Women?

 “Why Not Women?”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, May 31, 2015

Text: I Cor 11:1-16 // Series: Messy Church

Welcome here friends.  This spring, we’ve been studying together in the New Testament book of I Corinthians in a series we’ve titled Messy Church.  That’s because life together can’t be stuffed into tidy boxes and neat categories.  Relationships in a faith community like Jericho are just messy.  Working out what we believe together is messy.  Today we come to one of those very messy topics that churches either shy away from or they become so strident that it get’s challenging to relate to one another with grace and love.  Today we are going to look at the role of men and women together in ministry and in leadership.  How do we live together in spaces and places that are faithful to Scripture, consistent with our convictions, give opportunity for the gospel to advance in our culture and perhaps most challenging, how do we do all of these things while we also live with grace and humility toward those who hold different interpretations or practices than we as individuals do?  This is hard work! 

As we have progressed in this teaching series, one of the things we have seen about the church in Corinth is just how different the people who worshiped there really were.  They came from diverse backgrounds, they were in difference places when it came to maturity in their faith, they had vastly different cultural heritages… but they were all trying to follow Jesus together.  One of their biggest challenges we see again and again is that instead of enriching them, their differences have been tripping them up!  They are fighting over which leader is more popular, they are acting proud over being liberated from old-fashioned morality to do whatever they desire.  And one of the things that was negatively affected by this new-found freedom and liberty was their public worship gatherings.  So in chapters 11-14, Paul, writing to this church under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit begins to give them some clear corrections & instruction about public worship gatherings.  So turn with me in your Bibles to I Corinthians 11:1-16. I want to give you fair warning: there is likely no more hotly debated 16 verses of real estate in the New Testament than this.  Let me read it for you and we’ll explore why together.  I Cor. 11:1-16.

Wow.  I don’t know about you, but a LOT of questions come to my mind when reading this text!  So much of it sounds so foreign and strange – mandatory head coverings for women; long hair for guys being suspect and short hair for women being dishonourable; women being under authority, there’s the language of male headship…  What is all of this about?  Let’s unpack a bit of it, talk about what we can agree on & learn from this text and then a good friend of Jericho’s, Pastor Leanne McAlister is going to come and share her own story which will hopefully give you a picture on how some of this gets lived out.  We may not get at this to your level of satisfaction but we’ll get you started thinking and then point you in the right direction for your own further thinking and reading and discussion.    

First up, what’s behind Paul’s suggestion about head coverings?  Some groups still do this such as closed Brethren churches.  In the first century, covering your head was a mandatory Jewish tradition in worship for women, intriguingly now Jewish men do it with skull caps.  But at this time Jewish worship was totally segregated.  Men were the only ones allowed to speak, they sat separately from women and women wore veils and listened in silence.  Now, picture the result when the Good News of the gospel is proclaimed to the city of Corinth, people respond with repentance and faith the Holy Spirit is poured out and they gather for worship and prayer and teaching.  And women begin to engage like never before.  Women are praying and prophesying.  Teaching and preaching. But think about the internal angst that this would cause for a Jewish male who is but one week into his new-found faith.  To that brother, it is a radical, radical  notion that women should even participate in public worship! And these women are not merely speaking in worship, they are leading worship.  And not only that, they doing so in a way that unnecessarily flaunts social conventions – they have nothing covering their heads!  So Paul gives some instructions to his friends in Corinth and he says “listen there’s nothing inherently moral or immoral about head coverings or hair styles BUT there is an attitude taking root that says “I’ll do whatever the hell I want to do, thank you very much!” and THAT attitude and actions that flow out of it is intolerable in Christian community.  That level of independence and individualism and disregard for the feelings & thoughts of others is not acceptable.  As one commentator put it, what was intended to unite – the time of prayer and learning and preaching – has become a place of strife & division (we’ll see this in the Lord’s Supper). 

But I want you to notice what Paul does NOT say, however.  He doesn’t at all say that women should not prophesy, pray, lead or teach in a public worship setting.  He doesn’t question it, in fact, quite the opposite: he encourages it.  But in a way that exhibits self control and deference to others like Pastor Keith talked about with food & idols May 14   

Second question: why is Paul so amped up about Hair lengths?

Deal with this very quickly.  Other than contemporary western cultures, most cultures in history have had norms that have distinguished hair lengths between genders.  Men have had shorter hair, women tended to have longer hair.  But in Corinth, there were some exceptions to this.  Several regarded first century historians write that in the highly sexualized culture of Corinth, men who were involved in same gender homosexual relationships indicated this publically by wearing longer hair.  And if a woman was involved in a same gender lesbian relationship, one partner would indicate this by wearing much shorter more masculine hair.  On top of this, in Jewish tradition, women who were adulterers or prostitutes shaved their heads or wore their hair short to signify their profession or their actions.  Hair length was not an expression of personal style; it was a sexual and religious statement.  In a very public way. 

So with that in mind, you can see how Paul’s instructions begin to make much more sense.  He is saying to them “listen: if you do these things, you are creating confusion for people around you because they are saying wait a minute, isn’t’ that guy a Christian?  Aren’t those Christians known for a sexual ethic of monogamous male-female marriage?  Why is his hair long, then?  Or why is her hair short?”  If we were to think of an analogous situation today, what does this photo signify [priest]?  What about this one? [Hare Krishna: wears saffron coloured robes and shaves their head].     

Boil it down: How we dress and how we carry ourselves communicates something to our culture.  There can be sexual or religions connotations to our clothing or behaviour.  Paul seems to be saying to both the men & women in Corinth that they need to be mindful of how they are acting toward one another and toward a watching world.       

Beyond this, consensus on what the text is trying to say breaks down.  It can get pretty crazy.  Especially when it comes to the discussion of head / headship?  The word Paul uses here is one of the most hotly debated words because it is notoriously challenging to translate from Greek into English.  Does it mean authority?  Source? But can I suggest to for us that

the overall emphasis of the passage is clear, even if you want to argue semantics: that is Whatever Paul meant by head, headship, when we are talking about submission it is intended it to be mutual interdependence (see also Eph 5:21; Galatians 3:27-28).  Whether we are talking about husbands and wives or men and women serving together in God’s family the church, there is a fundamental interdependence and humility and sense of respect that ought to be present.  Look at 11:11.             

In the spring of 2009, our elders' team led JRCC through the constructive tension of analyzing our biblical interpretation and our present context with respect to questions of calling, giftedness, and the roles of men and women in the life of a local church. We invited all views, questions, and concerns to be expressed in healthy and respectful ways; driven not by emotion or experience, but by theological conviction. Our dialogue was called Women in Ministry Leadership (WIML).

We studied the hard passages.  We explored people’s experiences and backgrounds.  We tried to put our own pre-suppositions on the table and ask if they were biblical or cultural or if we could even identify them.  We worked hard to listen to each other and respect those whom we disagreed with.  And we came to a few convictions around this topic. 

• No one is going to hell for getting this one wrong. This is not a core issue where you salvation is in jeopardy. 
• Not having a position about this issue IS a position. We decided we were going to wrestle this though as a community together and see what seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us as we worked at understanding God’s Word.  We decided that we   
• We can graciously agree to disagree. Jericho has wrestled with our interpretative lens or stance on this issue BUT we are also are deeply committed to live with gracious respect in ongoing relationship to those who come to different conclusions than we do.  There is room for you here at Jericho if your convictions differ.     

You might be in a place where you are still exploring what you think and believe about how men and women should serve together in the life of a local church.  If so, I want to encourage you to head to our website to the WIML resources section.  There’s a huge list of recommended reading, some excellent audio teaching, and also JRCC’s position paper.   

One of the things that I found profoundly helpful in our WIML discussion was to hear the stories of others who have wrestled with this not only biblically and theologically, but also personally.  So this morning, I want you to hear from Pastor Leanne McAlister.  Some of you know her from the Free To Lead Conference that a group of women from Jericho attended last fall.  She has been on pastoral staff at Living Waters in Fort Langley and has recently transitioned to working with global mission and ministry projects with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada.  She and her husband Darcy call Langley home along with their 3 young adult children (Nicholas, Robyn and Ben).  Leanne, I’m going to turn it over to you as you share your story and some words of challenge and encouragement for us.    

Leanne to share (25 min)