A Teaching Sermon for Kait Pence, who had the courage to ask…
Preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Livonia, Michigan
October 4, 2009
Pastor Dana Runestad
Someone in this room has been waiting a long time to hear the sermon today. Several months ago, Kaitlyn Pence came to me and told me that her friend from school says that our church doesn’t follow the Bible. She said that in the Bible it says that women shouldn’t be ministers. Well, I can only assume, since I haven’t spoken with her, that Kaitlyn’s friend is referring to First Corinthians 14: 34-36. That’s where we find these words attributed to the apostle Paul:
“…women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”
Kaitlyn and I have had some interesting conversations ever since that day. One day, I said to Kaitlyn, “Maybe I should do a sermon about this.” Her face lit up. So here we are.
But why today? The text from First Corinthians I just read to you makes me feel as uncomfortable as someone else felt in Bible Study last Tuesday. Many many years ago that someone else was divorced from her abusive husband and married again. Last Tuesday we were studying today’s Gospel about divorce (Mark 10:2-16). And she said, “I hate this Gospel.” How many of you were squirming when I read our Gospel today? Last week I received a phone call from someone asking me to preside at her marriage service. She is Roman Catholic and divorced. Somehow she did not realize that she had to have her first marriage annulled before she could marry again in the Roman Catholic Church. And she did not realize that an annulment could take up to a year. She was in a bind. She had already booked the hall for three weeks from yesterday. So – did she call me because I serve in a church that doesn’t follow the Bible? Is it possible that our church came to the decisions it did at our church-wide assembly in August in Minneapolis because we’re just a church that doesn’t follow the Bible?
Does our church follow the Bible? What do you think? What does it mean to follow the Bible, anyway? It depends on how we read the Bible. Dr. Rolf Jacobson is a professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary. “When you think about the Bible,” he says, “one of the things to think about is that it’s not a book in the sense of having only one kind of literature. Like a library, it has many kinds of literature. A good example of that is a newspaper. When you come to a newspaper, there are many different types of stories and different types of articles. There are factual articles that describe what happened. There are editorials – opinions – what one person thinks about something. There are comics that talk about truth, but they don’t talk about truth in the same way that a story talks about truth. There are ads, there are advice columns, and so on. What that means is that you have to read each part of the newspaper differently. You have to mentally adjust. And the same is true of the Bible. It’s a library with lots of different types of literature: poems, songs, proverbs, parables, history, letters, a love song, prophetic passages.”
Some of you might say, “We follow the Bible. We just don’t take it literally.” But we can’t really say that, because, like a newspaper, it depends on what it is we’re reading. Some things we do take literally. Some things we should take literally -- just like we would read a news story literally. And other things we don’t take literally. Like the comics. You have to adjust. It depends on the type of literature we’re reading. Do we read poetry literally? No -- even if it’s in the Bible. Do we take that poetry seriously? Yes, because we take the Bible seriously. And we do our best to read the Bible responsibly, using the brains that God gave us. We state in our church’s constitution that the Bible is the “authoritative source and norm for this church’s faith and life.”
But here’s one of the main reasons it may seem like we don’t follow the Bible. One of the most important things we do in our church when we read the Bible is we look at the context of a passage. What does that mean? It means that we look at the time a passage was written, the place it was written, the history, the kind of literature it is. We look at what precedes a passage and what follows it. We ask, “Who is being addressed here?” “What is happening in the community at the time?” We try to find out who wrote it. We ask if the author may have been trying to get a certain point across, and why. We sift through the words for the Word with a capital W. We look for Jesus, the living Word. We look for what conveys Christ in a text. We try to keep the main thing the main thing. Otherwise we can become so easily distracted. We can major in the minors. We can get all tied up in the words of Scripture and lose sight of the Word of God. Looking at the context also means being aware of our own context as we read. What filters do I bring to this text as I read it? What preconceived notions, what prejudices do I have that may influence how I interpret this passage?
Sometimes it seems like the Bible contradicts itself. We might read in one place where God says, “I’m going to condemn you for your sins and I will not save you.” And then we read the majority of the passages, which talk about how God forgives sins and saves us. Dr. Jacobson says that where God says, “I’m going to condemn you for your sins,” God is most often talking about a specific action, a specific time. That passage is located tightly in history. The other message, however, is a universal message. We do Bible Study to understand which messages are specific to a certain situation, and which messages are relevant for all times and places. And we study to understand what the universal message or meaning is behind a specific passage.
Dr. Jacobson gives this example. “My mom said to me once when I was a kid, “Don’t go into the street!” Now, that was a message for that day and that hour. If I had interpreted that as a message for all the universe, I would still be stuck on the 800 block of Sherman Avenue in Jackson, Minnesota, right? If I’d apply that forever I’m never allowed to go into the street.”
Is that what his mother meant? No. The very specific message to him at the time was, “Don’t go into the street.” Those were her words. But the meaning behind those words was, “I love you and I want you to be safe.” We have to know the context to understand the meaning, to understand what the universal message is. We have to understand that the person who said that was Rolf’s mother. And the person she said it to was her son, and at the time she said those words he was 4 years old. That specific message was located tightly in history. The context influences how those words are interpreted. But the meaning behind the words, that Rolf’s mother loves him and wants him to be safe, doesn’t change.
Context is almost everything when it comes to understanding what words mean. Here are some other examples. What if the street is blocked off to cars for a block party? If Rolf follows his mother’s words, “Don’t go into the street” on that particular day, Rolf will miss the block party. Is that his mother’s intention? Or, (bear with me for the sake of argument here) what if Rolf is being chased by his dog whose mind has snapped and he’s gone wild but there is an electric fence buried along the curb? The dog will get zapped if the dog goes into the street. But if Rolf goes into the street in that context he can get away from the dog. In that context, disobeying his mother’s words would achieve what his mother wanted for him to begin with – to stay safe.
Let’s say Rolf steps off the curb to get away from the wild dog. We could shake our fingers at him and say, “You don’t follow what your mother tells you.” Would that be true? Yes. Absolutely. He did not obey the words his mother spoke in the original context. But did he understand what his mother meant? Did he act on the larger message and meaning and principle of what she said and who she was in his life? You bet he did. He did what he had to do to stay safe. Do you think she would be glad that he did not follow her words? If I was his mother, I would be very glad. In that context, he may not be following what his mother says, but he is following what his mother means.
Let’s look at one more scenario. Rolf’s mother says to him, “Don’t cross the street. If I catch you crossing the street, I will spank you and send you down to the basement for the night without supper. Then, if Rolf is in his front yard and the dog starts chasing him, what do you think he will do? I wonder if he will agonize, “Should I risk getting spanked and sent to the basement without supper, or should I stay here and let this dog attack me?” Or, I wonder if Rolf could confuse the meaning behind his mother’s words? Could he think that, since she doesn’t want him to go into the street, she must want him to be attacked by the wild dog?
What would a loving mother want her child to do in that situation? What would be more important to a mother who loves her child? That he obey her words? Or that he stay safe? How Rolf will act in that situation might very well depend on how he feels about his mother. If he is afraid of his mother, he will be torn between two fears. For Rolf, what is the most important thing about his mother? Her power and control over him, or their relationship and his confidence in her love for him?
Following the Bible is kind of like this. Following the Bible depends on how we read the Bible, and how we read the Bible depends on how much we learn about the context of a particular passage. What else is going on here? What else is going on in my situation? When we don’t ask those questions, we might miss the meaning, or even worse, we might confuse the meaning for something else.
Probably the most important thing about how we read the Bible, and then how we follow the Bible, has to do with how we feel about God to begin with. Do we believe God is love, or do we believe that God just wants power over us, and tries to control us by making us afraid of Him? When we come to a passage of Scripture, what thoughts are in our minds? Do we ask, while we are reading, “How is God trying to get us to do what He wants us to do?” and “What will happen to us if we don’t do it?” Are we torn between two fears? Or do we ask, “How is God trying to show us that he loves us?”
Today in our Gospel Jesus says some words about divorce that are words located tightly in history. If we don’t dig deeper and learn about the context, we could be like Rolf if he stayed in the yard and let the wild dog attack him because his mother told him not to go into the street. When we read this passage, if we don’t study the context, we may be torn between two fears.
When Jesus says these words about divorce he is not speaking to a woman in 2009 who is being abused by her husband. He is speaking to some religious leaders who are trying to trick him regarding how a specific law should be interpreted. It’s a discussion in the abstract, like asking, “what if…? Or “supposing that…?” Women at that time were regarded as property that men owned. In the Jewish world they would never be allowed to seek a divorce, but a husband could divorce his wife if, for example, she couldn’t bear children. The husband’s pride could be shattered over this and he would bring shame and disgrace to his family. Divorce, for the husband, would almost be like returning his broken lawn mower to the store. And the woman, if she had been divorced, had no alimony, no opportunity to be employed, except as a slave in another household, where she would surely be taken advantage of.
So Jesus really turns the tables on those religious leaders who were tricking him. He throws the challenge back at them. He insists that when two people marry, the man leaves his father and mother. It doesn’t matter if her inability to bear children disgraces his family, for example. They are a new family now. In marriage they have become one flesh. He reminds them of God’s original intention. His concern is for the quality of the relationship. He lifts up the dignity and value of women in their own right. And by the end, when he is talking just with his disciples, he also asserts the woman’s right to divorce her husband.
What about I Corinthians 14: 34-36, where it says “women should be silent in the churches?” These words appear in a letter from the apostle Paul to a congregation where there is lots of conflict. These verses seem to contradict what St. Paul says in other passages where he approves of women speaking. They also contradict the fact that the news of the resurrection, the reason the church even exists at all – was first delivered by women, who were the first witnesses to the world changing news that Jesus had risen from the dead. Some Biblical scholars believe that later scribes who were copying the original manuscript of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians added these words about women being silent. There is convincing evidence to support this. Others wonder if it might be the kind of speech the women engage in that is at issue. When we pass the peace, for example, we should not be talking about yesterday’s football game – right guys?
How does our relationship to these words change when we first ask, “How is God trying to show us that He loves us?” Maybe the women were chattering so much no one could hear the transforming, life changing Word proclaimed in the gathered assembly. A God of love would urge them to be silent, the way my mother would tell me to be silent when I was giggling with my brother in the pew and disrupting worship for others. (“Shhhh…” she would say as she put her pointed index finger up in front of her lips.) We’re not sure about this passage. But we also know God has given many women gifts for ordained ministry in the church. We know that Jesus said, “No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket…” (Mt. 5:15), and we also know there is precedent for women preachers in Scripture: the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well was among the first to proclaim him as Messiah. “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony,” it says in John 4:39. I wonder why Jesus didn’t tell her to be silent?
What I try to do, dear Kaitlyn, is to read and understand Scripture through the mind of Christ and with the Holy Spirit as my companion. Does our church follow the Bible? Sometimes we don’t follow what the Bible says. But we try very hard to understand what it says so we can follow what the Bible means. Sometimes that’s clear and sometimes it’s not so clear. Sometimes we even argue about it. Sometimes churches divide over it.
It’s no coincidence that our Gospel today ends with Jesus insisting, “Let the children come.” Children, like women at that time, were also pretty much treated like property. They were to be seen, to make their fathers look good, maybe, but not to be heard. And Jesus says something new about them too. “Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom. Unless you accept God’s kingdom with the simplicity and trust of a child, you’ll never get in.” Then he gathered them up in his arms, and blessed them.
So, Jesus seems to be telling us today that we have a lot to learn from boys like 4 year old Rolf, and girls like you, Kaitlyn. And we’re trying to understand what Jesus says so we can follow what he means. That’s why we’re mentoring children at Coolidge School through our "Kids Hope" program. That’s why we’re investing in our Sunday School and our "hearts hands and voices" camp. That’s why we welcome children at the Table for the Meal of Holy Communion. When it comes down to it, it takes what you children show us for us to really understand what the Bible says and follow what it means. It takes simplicity – keeping the main thing the main thing, and it takes trust – being vulnerable enough to give and receive the main thing. And the main thing, as Jesus would say, is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength.” The second main thing is “to love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus shows us how to do this through his life, his death, and his resurrection. The Holy Spirit gives us the power to do this by transforming our hearts. Today Jesus invites each one of us onto his lap along with 4 year old Rolf and his street’s curb and his wild dog and along with Kaitlyn and her wonderful questions. On that lap (which we sometimes call the altar rail), Jesus welcomes even us. He puts his arms around us and blesses us with his very own body and blood. Somehow, our hardened hearts are surprisingly softened and our moldy minds are miraculously made new. Then we go out from here and keep the main thing the main thing. We love God and we love others. Because we’re God’s people doing God’s work. That’s how we follow the Bible in our church. AMEN
i Presented in “The Lutheran Course” DVD format, Published by Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, MN, ISBN 9780806652764, Item No. ED008925.