[Passage: 1 Cor 11: 1 – 16; Sunday morning, 18 Jan, 2009]

PAUL HATED women. You’ve heard that said, I guess? Is this passage proof that he wished to suppress them? Remembering his comments about women being silent, is it possibly true?

What about the women Paul was quite positive about? What about his friends? There was Priscilla. He seemed closer to her than to her husband, Aquila. He spoke so highly of Phoebe, the deacon, and Junia, the apostle. Euodia and Syntyche, his fellow–labourers in the gospel — he seems quite fond of them. He might have been a man who seems to like women but, deep down, doesn’t. But his behaviour doesn’t suggest that.

So let’s rethink this passage. What is it about?

It’s simple, really. It is about whether women should speak in church, how they should speak in church and why it is this way.

WHETHER
You don’t have to be a Bible expert to work out whether women can speak in church. Yet it’s a big problem for too many people.

Soon after I came here, we had discussions and even ructions about whether women could be deacons. In some churches, you still can’t even get a woman on the nomination form.
I heard all the standard arguments. Women should keep silent in church. Women shouldn’t teach or lead men. None of the men appointed in Acts to look after welfare was a woman.

I did some hard talking and arguing. In the end, even the hardliners agreed that Joan and Gloria had both been doing everything a deacon would do, so we may as well recognise it.
Paul is quite clear here.
When he says,

…every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head

he clearly means that a woman can pray or prophesy in church. The question is how the woman dresses when she does these things.

You know your Bibles. Even if you don’t, you have enough common sense to know that God doesn’t worry all that much about how we dress when we talk to him. So there has to be something else at work here.
Let’s keep this clear. Later, Paul tells women to be silent in church, and this shows that he clearly doesn’t mean that they must not pray or prophesy. You have just seen that he specifically permits women to pray or prophesy.

So what does he mean?

As in all the congregations of the saints, 34 women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

The word, “speak” can also mean, “chatter.” This passage is all about speaking so you can be understood, and not allowing disorder in the church. So it makes most sense to understand it as an instruction to women not to chatter, not even if they want an explanation of something.
So what we have here is something like this. It is fine for a woman to pray or prophesy in church. But it is not good for her to chatter to her neighbours or to call out and ask questions or otherwise be disruptive.
These were women whose main activity when they were outside the house was to chat to their friends. Most were illiterate, they got very little education, except in how to do housework and raise kids. The best thing they could do when they got together was to chat.

Paul says, “When you come to church, by all means pray or prophesy, but don’t disrupt other people. In the same way that a prophet should stop talking and give others their turn, so the women have to keep from interrupting all the time.”

Paul is not anti-women, he is anti-disruption.

So, ladies, if you are led to pray, pray with all your might, and may God bless us through it!
And, if you are led to prophesy, if God has a message through you to correct, to guide, to encourage, then, if it’s brief, share it in the sharing time; if it will take more than 2 or 3 minutes, see me so we can slot you into the program. And God will bless us through you.

I remember that, a good many years ago, a mother and son often attended the activities of this church. The mother had survived a difficult life by being tough and a bit outspoken. The son was into rules and regulations, though perhaps not when it came to himself. He liked to think he was a bit of a Bible teacher.
Once in a Bible study the son was going on about how women should be silent and not teach men, and how they should be submissive and learn.

His mother let him ramble on for a while, and then she fixed him with a stare.
“Didn’t God speak to Balaam through his donkey?” she demanded.
“That’s right,” said her son, not seeing what was coming.
“Well,“ said his mother, “If God can speak through a dumb donkey, he is able to speak through a woman. So I think you are talking nonsense, and you should be quiet.”

She had a point.

HOW
We have seen the answer to whether women should speak in church, and the answer is a resounding, “Yes!”
In the book of Acts, it says that the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost means that even slave girls — the lowest members of Israelite society — would now prophesy in the power of the Holy Spirit.
In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he says that, in Christ, divisions like male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, all mean nothing when we are all made one in Christ.

It’s pretty plain.

So why does Paul teach that women should only do it with their heads covered?
His argument is complex, and that is why so many have stumbled over it. I admit that I struggle to understand his argument.
He begins with the everyday world as it existed in Corinth around 50 AD. But he puts it into a Christian context. Sometimes we need to look at our world, not to judge it, but to see how to live as believers within our culture.

He is particularly speaking to married women here, because different conditions applied to married women and unmarried girls.

In Corinth in that period, a married woman at the very least wore something like a pashmina around her shoulders, and covering her head.
They didn’t use wedding rings, but that was how a woman showed she was married when she went out in public.
Some married women went further and wore an all covering garment, like some very conservative Muslim women do today. It was like a bag with a window, that covered the head and went down to the ground.

An unmarried girl would wear the same all–covering clothes as her mother, except she could leave her head uncovered.

There were two kinds of prostitute in Corinth. One had very elaborate hairstyles, and wore see–through clothes. Women like this worked in the clubs of the city, where men went to eat, drink and have sex.
The other type of prostitute was a temple prostitute. There were hundreds of these in Corinth, and they shaved their hair. I couldn’t find out much about what they wore. Men had sex with them and paid them money which went for the upkeep of the Temple of Aphrodite, which was built on a high place just outside the city.

So Paul is saying that women in church basically should dress like a modest married woman does, and should not dress like a woman who is available either for sex or for marriage. They should be dressed decently.

He says that this shows their respect — respect for their husbands, respect for the other men in the church, and, above all, respect for Jesus and for God.

So it’s not that men are masters of women, that they are the bosses. After all, Jesus said that there is only one Master, and you can’t serve two masters. So Paul means that women and men are not independent of each other, and what one does will always affected the other. So we need to respect each other.

But then he turns it back on the men. “Stop focusing on the women and what they do! Your real role is to worship God through Jesus. Your job is to show respect by behaving like respectful men.”
Paul knew what was expected. Within the Roman Empire, a man with a covering over his head was a man with something to hide, like some criminal, lurking in dark places and keeping his face hidden.
“And,” Paul says, “If a woman thinks it is OK to look like a prostitute, then maybe she should look like a temple prostitute, and cut her hair right off.”

Paul’s next point has to do with God’s purposes in creation.

The thing is, it is not just a cultural issue, nor is it just about who is the head. It is almost as though Paul is saying, “OK, the man is the head, but don’t take this too far.”
If you look at the rest of the passage, what he says is, “Really, everyone is interdependent anyway, because women might originally have come from men, but men come from women, so everyone depends on everyone else, anyway. So don’t get too excited about this. Women were given long hair, and that’s good. Men generally have shorter hair, and that’s good.”

“Do what is decent in this society,” he says.

Finally, Paul takes up the practices of the other churches.

He says,

16 If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice — nor do the churches of God.

In other words, this isn’t just a local matter. You have to think about the other churches.

Someone who used to come here once went to another church. While they were giving the announcements, he looked through the hymn book, and then got up and left.
He told me about this.
I said, “What made you leave?”
He replied, “Their hymns didn’t talk about Jesus. I don’t know much about Christianity, but I think that a church that doesn’t talk about Jesus has something wrong with it, doesn’t it?”

If a person who at the time made no profession of Christian faith could see problems in a church just from the hymns they sang, what of a Christian who comes in and sees a church of people with no respect for themselves, for each other, or for Jesus?

Pretty soon you’d have people saying, “Don’t go to that church in Corinth — they are definitely wierd in there!”
So we have seen that women are perfectly free to pray and to prophesy in church, but it is important for them to still observe appropriate dress standards, and not to leave the impression that they are no different from prostitutes.
If angels are watching, then so are people from every part of society.

WHY
And that brings us to why Paul has these restrictions.
You probably know already.
We have seen that it is fine for women to pray and prophesy in public.
We have seen that they need to dress decently if they are going to do it.
We have seen that a big part of that has to do with showing respect for God, for husbands, for the church, and for other churches you are in fellowship with.

The Corinthians were very proud of themselves. It seems that they tended to imagine that they knew more than anyone else, and that they were free to do things other people were too stuffy and old–fashioned to do.
That can be good, if people are prepared to move on as God leads them, but it is not so good if it is just a matter of being arrogant and doing things just because you can.

There was a story in The Herald a day or two back under the heading, Girl power turning violent. It reported on a growing trend for girls to commit violent crime. It said that they are starting to smoke, drink, swear and have sex like men. The statistics have dramatically changed over a few years.
The writer said that it seems to go back to a distorted idea of women’s liberation. They have the idea, “If I am not tied down by the old conventions, anything goes.”

This is like what the Corinthians were doing. The women were liberated, but they were pushing their freedom into wrong areas.

We need to go back to Paul’s two major concerns. Preserve fellowship, and don’t hinder the gospel.

A friend of mine went to Kings Cross as part of her University course. It was getting dark when she was coming back, walking with a young man doing the same course.
They realised that the prostitutes were out, and Thao told her fellow student to take her arm and walk with her as though they were boyfriend and girlfriend, or husband and wife, so the girls would leave him alone.
They didn’t need a photo and descriptive notes to help them identify prostitutes.

And you and I might need no help if one came to church dressed for work.

I might have trouble concentrating on my sermon. You might not be sure how best to welcome her and help her to feel at home.
It wouldn’t matter what you tried to do, you would probably over–react. We would possibly even argue among ourselves over how we should have handled the situation.

And, if that was a common standard, people would probably think that Christians have church prostitutes just like the pagan temples used to have temple prostitutes. And I am sure that there would be unnecessary arguments.

CONCLUSION
When you boil it down, Paul has a quite liberal attitude to the ministry of women. He would probably be considered a bit radical in many Sydney churches.
But he also has a very firm commitment to fellowship and gospel preaching, and, if any of us has to pull our horns in so that fellowship is preserved, and Jesus is preached as Lord and Christ, then we have to pull those horns in.

People are dying around us without Christ.

It is all very well for you and me to say, “I am free to eat or drink what I like,” but if my freedom turns my brother or sister away in some way, or if it keeps someone from hearing the gospel, then we have to rethink our freedoms.

When some Muslim and Hindu young men came to a fellowship night here, we were careful that we had sandwiches without ham or beef on them. Each of us should ask ourselves, “Am I permitting myself a freedom when we meet together, which hurts my fellow Christians, or hinders the Gospel?”

It all boils down to putting love into action. Let’s do it!

AMEN