Sermon Transcript
I will be reading from 1 Corinthians chapter 11, starting at verse 2.
Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of the wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short.
But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but a woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
Nevertheless, In the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman. For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God. Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.
If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor does the churches of God. And now skipping down to chapter 14, verse 33.
As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord, If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized.
So, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order.
Just when you thought all the controversial passages in— 1 Corinthians might be over, we come to perhaps the most controversial sections of this ancient letter, at least for our current social climate. As a reminder, as we’ve worked our way through studying this entire letter, and we do often study entire books of the Bible here because we don’t want to miss what God has for us, but as a reminder, as we’ve gone through this letter, We’ve grouped together related sections when possible, hence a section from 11 and a section from 14 today. And these sections include Paul’s comments on women and men and gender and how they play out in the church. As you may know, there’s been much written about these verses, much debate, and people can become very heated, understandably so, because there are people who use verses like the ones Todd just read to justify all kinds of inappropriate behavior, abuses, degradation, excuse me, which we fully oppose, of course. Other people try to ignore these passages altogether.
Pretend these verses don’t exist. Um, and that’s not the right approach either, because it’s still God’s word. It still means something for us today. It is still given to us to teach us, train us, help us understand something about God or his world. So we need to study it, we need to try to learn from it and apply it to our lives.
But I’ll be honest, there are probably more questions in these passages than answers. More that is uncertain than is certain. So to help frame our study this morning, I’m going to borrow the structure for this message from one of the college football reporters that I follow. This guy writes a regular blog entitled What I Know, What I Think, and What I Wonder. What I Know, What I Think, and What I Wonder.
The idea for his column is, you know, every week there’s all kinds of events, news stories, there’s player suspensions, injuries, recruiting commitments. So some aspects of the story are certain. There are some outcomes of an injury, for example, that leave no doubt. If a player tears his ACL, that guy is out for the season, right? 100% for sure, he is not coming back.
We know it. But there are other related storylines that are only probable. They are not certain. They might be likely, but we don’t know for sure. You know, if a player is out for the season, we probably know who’s going to replace him.
We can look at the depth chart, like who’s second string. That guy’s probably now the starter. We’re pretty confident of that, but not 100%. And then there are other storylines associated with whatever happened that are pure speculation, right? With the second-string guy in there, will we make the playoffs?
If we don’t make the playoffs, will the coach be fired? What if the second-string guy outperforms the first-string guy? Will the original guy leave for another team so he still has a chance to play? All that’s fun to talk about. I’m sure it creates a lot of clicks, you know, for online content creators.
But honestly, it’s anyone’s guess, right? We don’t know, so we’re just going to have to wait to find out. So that’s his column: What I Know, What I Think, and What I Wonder. And sometimes our best biblical interpretations fit into those 3 categories, because there are some passages like the one we’re studying today where we know some things. We do.
But we don’t know everything. Some aspects of the passage are clear, but other aspects or applications are less certain. They may be likely, but they are not hills to die on, that’s for sure. And then there’s— so they’re just— they probably are. And then there are other aspects of the passage that are anyone’s guess, right?
We’re only left to wonder. We can speculate, but we’re going to have to wait to find out. For eternity, it’s very similar to what I know, what I think, and what I wonder. But one caution before we dive into this, just because I’ve seen it happen. Sometimes people can make the mistake— they feel something like, if anything is uncertain, then nothing can be certain.
You know, kind of like a house of cards. If we can’t trust the ace of spades over here for structural integrity, then there is no structural integrity anywhere, right? If one piece isn’t totally stable, then everything falls. So for example, in biblical studies, sometimes people get hung up on, we’ll say, the creation narrative in Genesis. They say the Genesis account makes it look like the universe was formed in 7 literal 24-hour days And then they say, well, we know that didn’t happen.
The universe was formed over billions of years. So therefore, house of cards, right? Either nothing in the Bible is true, right? Everything false. Or, you know, if the creation narrative is open to interpretation and maybe days aren’t 24 hours, maybe it’s time, there’s a bunch of time in between days, maybe it’s more metaphorical or poetic, right?
But if that’s the case, They say if creation is open to interpretation, then everything is open to interpretation, right? Did Jesus really die on the cross, or is that really just kind of like a phoenix rising from the ashes parable, right? Everything is up for grabs. And again, the house of cards falls, right? They think if one thing is unclear, nothing is clear.
And that’s a mistake, right? Just because we can’t be certain of the meaning of every small detail of every verse, that does not mean that we can’t know anything. Some things are clear, and we should never let the unclear fog the clear. And if you think back to the football reporter in his column, if someone tears his ACL, okay, fine, there are many things that we don’t know. How’s it going to reshuffle the depth chart?
Playoffs are in question. We don’t know. There’s things we don’t know, but it would be a mistake for those uncertainties to go back and cloud what is certain. You know, just because we don’t know if we’ll make the playoffs, that doesn’t change anything about his injury, right? The unclear doesn’t have any bearing whatsoever on the clear.
Like, regardless of playoffs, we know for sure this guy’s having surgery, he’s out for the season. If we let the uncertain inform the certain, like we’re going the wrong way. The correct method of interpretation is to let what is known inform the unknown to whatever extent that is possible. So, anytime we have an uncertain piece of Scripture, and we have many of them, we can’t let that uncertainty go back and cause us to doubt what is clear, what is known. The right way to deal with unclear passages is to take whatever we can find that is clear and use that to make our best guess about what is unclear.
Okay, thanks for sitting in interpretation class for a minute. And now, with more than a little trepidation, let’s venture into our verses, these highly controversial verses, largely speaking to gender differences, especially within the church. And as we do, we’ll look at what is clear, what is likely, and what may be. What is clear, what is likely, and what may be. So first, what is clear?
We have 3 of these. There’s a difference between men and women. Men’s headship role is at least sacrificially loving like Jesus. And Paul appreciated women speaking in church. There’s a difference between men and women.
Men’s headship role is at least sacrificially loving like Jesus. And Paul appreciated women speaking in church. We’ll work through these quickly because there’s so much here. So first, there’s a difference between men and women. Paul, in many ways in this passage, speaks about men and speaks about women as 2 different distinct groups.
Now, it’s not always totally clear what he means when he refers to men and their responsibilities versus women and their responsibilities. Not always clear. We’ll get there. But we can’t let that uncertainty overturn what is clear, which is he speaks to 2 different groups as 2 different groups. So, for instance, Paul says, you know, men are the head or the source or both of women.
And there’s much debate about what that word in verse 3 is, what it means. Is it head? Is it source? Is it some combination of those? But where people agree is that when Paul uses that word, head or source, in reference to men, he’s at least saying that man was created before woman, Adam before Eve in the biblical story.
And in that way, you know, men first, so that means women came out of man. Man is source. But then later Paul adds, you could say hedges, that women have a source-type role as well. He says man comes out of woman. Again, people agree he’s at least referring to childbirth, right?
Men literally come from women. So in one sense women are the source, in another sense Men are the source. In that way, they are similar, but they are also different. They are not the source in the same way. Men don’t give birth, and women were not created first.
Men and women are distinct from one another. He speaks to them as separate groups. He does it again as he separates them into different groups in what are very confusing instructions. Where he says women should wear something involving their head or style their hair in a certain way or have some kind of sign on them. I mean, it is unclear exactly what he means.
But again, don’t let that overturn the fact that he says something to women and then he turns and says that men should be different from that. Men should wear a different thing, if it is a thing that you wear. They should look different somehow, and we don’t know exactly what he means. More on that shortly. But what is undeniable and we can’t overlook is that he addresses men and women as 2 different distinct groups.
They are not the same. They are not interchangeable. You can’t move from one to the other. It’s clear he is at least saying that. In the midst of everything else that is murky, that’s one thing we can know.
A second piece of this passage we can know is that men’s headship role is at least sacrificially loving like Jesus. Paul makes these comparisons: as Christ is to man, so man is to woman, or as Christ is to husband, so husband is to wife. Those terms can be translated either way— man, husband, woman, wife. And they are translated different ways depending on the version that you’re reading. It’s a common theme throughout this passage.
There’s so many words that have multiple meanings, and it’s one of the reasons why this passage is so difficult to understand. But in terms of Christ is to man as man is to woman, Paul says that and then he doesn’t elaborate much. So we’re left to wonder, how does that play out in life? What’s the application? How are men and women supposed to interact with each other?
He doesn’t really specify in this passage, which has caused people to jump in with their own ideas that has led to all kinds of abuses. You know, sometimes men say something like, well, if men bow the knee to Christ, then women need to It can get ugly, and I’m sorry because Christ’s instructions are always life-giving, never degrading, and it’s frustrating that anyone would use God’s word for some kind of personal gain. The truth is this passage is not degrading to anyone, it’s elevating, but don’t take my word for it. I don’t want to be just another guy inserting my own ideas about how to apply this passage. We do not need to rely on my ideas.
We can actually hear from Paul himself because Paul expands on this exact same concept, not here in this letter, not in our verses, but in another letter to the church in Ephesus. Paul writes, Ephesians 5:25, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. So there’s our same comparison again, right? Men, relate to your wives as Christ has related to you. And how is that?
Well, he gave himself up for her. That’s how Christ relates to us. Christ prioritizes our lives over his life. Christ puts his own needs, his own comfort behind our needs and our comfort. Christ gave himself up for our benefit.
Christ did not come to be served but to serve, and he gave his life as a ransom for many. That’s how Christ relates to us. So that’s how Paul says husbands are to relate to their wives. That’s the minimum of the headship role. It’s service.
It’s not being served. And men, more broadly, that’s how we relate to women. We serve, we make much of them. Look, there’s no specific instructions for how men are to do this, but generally, women should feel elevated by men, certainly not degraded. They should feel cherished, honored.
The idea is chivalry. Rather than chauvinism. Not because women are incapable on their own, right? I mean, sometimes chivalry can be misconstrued to communicate women are helpless or something like that, but that’s not the idea. The idea as a man is to spend what I have, even all of myself, for your benefit, as Christ poured himself out in order to elevate us.
Men likewise elevate women. At a minimum, that’s the headship role of husbands and probably more broadly to men. It’s clear in this passage if we get a little help from Ephesians. Third clarity in this passage is Paul appreciated women speaking in church. He appreciated them speaking.
Oftentimes, people can fixate in chapter 14 where Paul says, women must be silent in church.
Yikes! And we’ll get to what that probably means in a minute, but when people fixate on women must be silent in chapter 14, they overlook chapter 11 where Paul gives instructions for women who speak in church. Verse 5, he’s addressing orderly worship in church and he says, when, when a woman prays or prophesies. And then he gives some directions for how they are to do that, which is unclear. But what is clear is that he does not forbid women from speaking in church categorically.
They were speaking in church, and he says, when you do it, here’s how to do it. He was supportive of women in speaking roles. Now, we’re going to need to figure out how what he says in chapter 11 great for women to speak, how that fits with what he says in chapter 14, women must be silent. We need to make sense of that somehow. And spoiler alert, we won’t be totally certain.
But what we can be certain of is that women were speaking in church and Paul supported it. Which brings us to what is likely, what is likely. Some women were disruptive, And sometimes one gender tried to appear as the other. We’ll cover those one at a time. First, it seems probably how to reconcile Paul’s apparent contradictory statements.
One, that women speak, they must do it thus and so, and also 2, women must be silent. How do we reconcile those statements? If we give Paul the benefit of the doubt, if we believe Paul was coherent, if we assume he remembered what he just wrote a couple chapters before, you know, if there’s a way that his comments can go together, okay, what is that? It seems Paul could have been dealing with some women who were disruptive, and we have 2 clues to point us in that direction. One clue is his comments on women having questions.
Which is perhaps why they were being disruptive, verse 35. And the second clue is when he says all things should be done decently and in order, verse 40. He wouldn’t have told them you need to be orderly unless there was something that was unorderly, right? So we could easily envision a scenario where some congregants kept interrupting services, creating chaos, making it difficult for anyone to get through a point, being loud, you know, during songs and everything else. And the leaders go and tell the disruptive people, you need to cut it out, you are unorderly.
But then these disruptive people reply and they say, well, we have questions about what’s going on. Aren’t we allowed to ask questions so we can understand what is happening? You know, kind of like sometimes some people that you go to the movies with and that person talks through the entire movie you’re trying to watch. Just constant questions. Why did she go in that room?
Doesn’t she know the killer’s in that room? Who do you think the killer is? I think it’s the mailman, except maybe it’s not the mailman because the mailman had an alibi for the second murder, so maybe it’s the banker. Do you think it’s the banker? He looks so mean.
Just constant, so you can’t watch the movie. And then you turn and say, look, can you be quiet? To which the person responds, but I have questions! Am I not allowed to ask questions? Do you want me to enjoy this movie?
I won’t be able to enjoy this movie unless I know what’s happening. I guess you want me to leave the theater and not watch it at all.
To what are you going to say?
If you can keep your composure, you will say something like, questions are great. How about you hold those to the end? I bet if you just wait, the movie will answer your questions for you. And if the movie doesn’t, then we can talk afterward for as long as you want. You would say that.
And it seems, though we can’t be sure, that is all Paul is saying. In this case, some women were being disruptive in the service with questions, probably. It could have just as easily been men, right? Men can incessantly ask questions during movies or choir performances or church services, right? Being irritating is not gender-specific.
Specific, right? But in this church, I guess it happened to be women, or at least right then it was. And Paul says, if the reason you are disruptive is because you have questions, ask them later. It’ll probably be answered anyway if you just wait, but in case it’s not, hold on. Ask your husband when you get home.
Which out of context might be the most offensive verse in the Bible. Ask your husband when you get home. But in a certain context, you would say the exact same thing. You would say, don’t be disruptive, and if you have questions, ask the people you came with later. Since you came with your husband, ask him, right?
You would say that in a certain context. It seems like that’s what was going on because we know we didn’t have a— we know Paul didn’t have a problem with women speaking in general, but there was some kind of problem with these women. That’s what is likely. Second likely of this passage, sometimes one gender tried to appear as the other. Like we’ve said, while it is unclear exactly what Paul’s instructions specify, for what women should wear on their head or how to style their hair, or was it clothing?
I mean, we don’t know precisely what he was referring to, but whatever they were doing and whatever the men were doing, it seems one gender was doing the thing of the other gender. Women trying to appear in some way as men or men trying to appear as women, however they were doing it, right, which people have argued about forever. And it’s why if you read different translations, you’ll see different words, and even Paul uses different words throughout this passage, hair length, head covering. In one place, he references a sign of authority, which, what is that? I mean, can I go pick up a sign of authority at Safeway?
We don’t know precisely what this style was. They knew what it was, but it has been lost to us, and that’s okay. It’s okay that we don’t know. Because Paul doesn’t actually seem to expect us to conform to the specifics of what he described. In fact, he accommodates for changing styles of men and women while at the same time he maintains a distinction between men’s styles and women’s styles.
He says, verse 13, judge for yourselves, basically how genders should look. In other words, he is saying the specifics might be up for grabs. But also, verse 14, not everything is up for grabs because he says, doesn’t nature teach you there needs to be a distinction basically between men and women? So maybe in God’s wisdom, maybe Paul might be saying, while it is inappropriate for men to try to look like women, and vice versa. The specifics of what we mean are undefined because if you’re a man in Scotland or Ireland, you may wear a skirt.
It’s called a kilt. Apparently it’s manly. Or if you’re a news anchor, you’re probably going to wear makeup even as a male. Or our continental fathers wore frilly wigs. Right?
But no one, when they looked at men in those settings, would say, those guys are trying to look like women. So, we have a general principle which is pretty clear, don’t try to look like the other gender, but we also, in terms of the specifics, we can’t nail them down. And this text accommodates for both of those realities, which makes sense. Because we wouldn’t be able to create a specific rubric that articulates how we know when a man is trying to look like a woman. We can’t nail it down.
We couldn’t make a list. I mean, he may wear a kilt, he may wear makeup, he may wear a frilly wig, and he still is in line with what men look like. There’s not a specific list of things that means man or woman in terms of appearance. And Paul’s list of things is indiscernible I believe on purpose. And yet, even though we can’t list the specifics, and we shouldn’t, we can tell if a man is trying to look like a woman, and Paul says that’s inappropriate.
It’s against nature. So, that’s what might be likely going on in Corinth. Some women were being disruptive, and sometimes one gender tried to appear as the other. Can’t be sure, That’s not a hill to die on. Don’t want any arguments over these unclear matters to overturn what is clear.
Those are pretty good guesses. Now finally, what may be? What may be? Perhaps gender differences teach us something about God.
I wonder many things, so many things about gender. In our sports column headings of, you know, what I know, what I think, what I wonder, I wonder why God made us gendered in the first place. Why not design us, you know, as able to, you know, reproduce by splitting ourselves in half? Or, you know, why aren’t we just all the same? What is gender supposed to communicate?
What can we learn from each other as gendered men and women? You know, when God made us in the garden, he made us male and female. And he made us, it says, Genesis 5:12, both in his image. We’re distinct from each other, but we’re both in his image, which means there are aspects of God’s image reflected in what it means to be feminine. And there are aspects of God’s image reflected in what it means to be masculine.
So, what are those? And what are we missing whenever we try to say that we are the same, as our culture can sometimes do? We are not the same, and we will not learn from each other unless we can admit we are not the same. What might we be missing, for example, around the fact that Jesus arrived on earth as a man? And He is described as a groom, as we just sang about, whereas we are described as His bride.
Even the 7-foot-2 grizzly lumberjack, part of the bride of Christ, he doesn’t get to be a groom.
What is that communicating? What could that guy learn from a woman? About what it means to be a bride? Why is that image gendered?
Right? What could the woman learn from the 7-foot-2 lumberjack about being a groom and seeing his bride come down the aisle? What doesn’t she know that he does know?
What could they teach each other about how we relate to Christ? Why is gender part of the image?
Or why is gender part of the image when Jesus in one place refers to himself as a mother hen who wants to gather her chicks, Luke 13?
Why not use a male image right there, Jesus?
What does that teach us about God? Similarly, why are images of Christ as Savior, Christ as Rescuer, Christ as Redeemer, images of men. When Jesus comes back riding on a white horse leading the armies of God to kick— to conquer evil once and for all, Revelation 19, does his masculinity mean anything in that image? I wonder. What does it mean that a man died on the cross for our sins?
A man stood in our place.
Or what does it mean that because it was the sin of one man that collapsed the world into darkness, it needed to be the obedience of another man, Christ, to rescue us from it? Romans 5:19. You know, in Adam all die, in Christ all will be made alive, 1 Corinthians 15:22. What are we missing by removing gender differences from these conversations?
What is it that God has placed into the hearts of men?
What is it that He has placed into the hearts of women? What can we learn from each other?
I wonder.
But I do know we won’t know, we won’t be able to learn from one another unless we admit there are differences. And then lean into all these images in the way that they were written. They were given to us to help us understand God, understand his world, understand each other, meet one another’s specific needs, some of which are tied to gender.
It is part of what we need to know in order to fully flourish. So, we would be foolish to ignore it. It’s God’s Word meant for our benefit in thriving. Let’s pray. Father, sometimes we are left with more questions than answers, but we know that You are good and You love us.
And we know, Lord, that You sent Jesus to reconcile us to You. And where everything else is confusing, we see that as some shining light that we can follow. And so, I pray, Lord, that maybe some of our preconceptions could be challenged by You and Your Word, and we could grow into the people that You have created us to be.
We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
