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1 Corinthians
11
The Corinthians were a messed up church. Pride and boasting, Fights and
factions, Christians taking each other to court, sex with prostitutes,
one guy’s was having sex with his step-mother, others were proud of that,
many were flirting with idolatry and even if they weren’t they were
dragging others to sin against their conscience, destroying their
faith. As we’ll learn tonight,
some were getting drunk at communion, some were gorging themselves while
others went away empty handed.
Church meetings were noisy, boastful, free-for-alls and in chapter
15 some were denying our physical resurrection. That’s messed up.
If a friend of yours was moving to Corinth,
would you recommend this church?
And yet Paul gives thanks for these
Corinthians. And he patiently
deals with these issues one by one.
He starts by addressing their thinking in
chapters 1-4.
[SLIDE – In the mind]
Then in chapter 5-7 he addresses their
relationships among one another.
In particular sex and marriage.
[SLIDE – In the bedroom]
Then in chapters 8-10 he addresses their
relationships with the wider unbelieving world
[SLIDE – In the world]
And now from chapters 11-14 he addresses
their conduct in the church meetings.
[SLIDE – in the church meetings]
And in every scenario Paul is true to his
word from 1 Corinthians 2:2 – into every situation Paul proclaims “Christ
and Him crucified.” According to
Paul the answer to every problem is always Jesus. Even the thorny question of men and
women.
Sharp intake of breath. It’s almost unspeakable to speak about
gender differences in our day – but that’s what we’re going to do for the
next few minutes. And before we
do, I want you to know a couple of things.
One is – it’s a great thing when the bible
contradicts you. It’s a wonderful
thing when the bible says something that your culture and your personal
preferences would never say. Because
then you know you’re dealing with the word of GOD. If you read a book that just said
everything that you’d always thought, you’d have every reason to suspect
that this word wasn’t from God.
But if you believe in GOD then God can contradict you. If He can’t contradict you then He’s
not God – you are. So here’s a
place in the bible where God’s Word can come crashing down upon us with
unusual force – because these first 16 verses are not the way we usually
think. Well that’s alright because
maybe God thinks differently to you, and maybe we should listen up.
Second thing to say is that this stuff on men
and women and hair and heads is by no means the centre of
Christianity. Jesus Christ is the
centre of Christianity, so don’t think that this is what the Christian
faith is about. BUT, when you come
to Jesus Christ at the centre, He starts to make sense of a lot of
stuff. Including gender. My prayer is that tonight Jesus will
help us to think more clearly about this subject.
To begin with, let’s think about the word
‘head’ for a minute. The word is
mentioned 13 times in this short section.
And just as in English, the word for head in the bible can mean lots
of things. Two things in
particular – it can mean your noggin or it can mean the one who is your
superior and representative – we talk about the Head Honcho of a
corporation. The Head of an
organisation. They are superior in
that organisation. And they take
responsibility if it goes wrong.
In a sense the Head stands
above but also stands for
his or her people. The Head ‘stands above’ but also ‘stands for’ his or
her people.
So Jesus is our Head. He is our superior AND our
representative. He stands above us
and He stands for us. When we His
body go wrong, our Head takes responsibility. He died on the cross as Head – He had
the authority to stand for us and take our punishment.
So I hope you can see being the head is a
fearful responsibility. Imagine being the head of a failing
school? Head of a corporation and
the share price is plummeting.
Head of a department and you’re not meeting your targets? You see if you’re head – you stand
above, Wahey! But you also stand
for your people, Gulp! That’s the
reality of being head.
So in verse 3, Paul shows us important
relationships of headship:
3Now I want
you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the
woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
Before Paul says anything else he says
‘Remember Jesus.’ Remember that
Jesus has a head – God the Father.
And Jesus is a Head –
the head of man. Remember
that. And then Paul teaches that the head of woman is man. The words for man and woman could mean
for husband and wife won’t go into
that but I just want you to be aware that that’s a possibility.
[SLIDE]
So one way of looking at this is: The Father
is to the Son what man (or husbands) are to woman (or wives). Question are the Father and the Son
equal? Answer: Yes.
100%, utterly and absolutely equal. Jesus is fully God – as fully God as
the Father is fully God. To say
that He’s even slightly less divine than the Father is to fall into the
foulest of foul heresies. They are
equal. But are they
different? Yes. The Father sends the Son. The Son never sends the Father. The Son is the great sacrificial Lamb,
He is the great Priest, He is the Word, the great Mediator. The Father is none of these
things. They are different – but
equal.
[SLIDE – equal but different]
So, question:
Are men and women equal?
Answer: Yes! 100%, utterly
and absolutely equal. To deny that
women are completely equal to men is to involve yourself with the foulest
of foul heresies. No Christian can
ever say women are not equal to men (in the same way we can’t deny that
Jesus is equal to the Father). To
deny that women are equal to men is to deny the faith. Simple as that.
But are women different to men? Yes.
Yes. Do women have
different roles? Yes. Yes.
There are good and God-given differences between the sexes. And in certain circumstances, within
certain church structures and within marriage, there are structures of authority.
This is not about whether women make good Heads of industry – of
course women can make terrific Heads of industry. But they mustn’t make themselves Heads
of marriage. And there are certain,
limited aspects of church life in which there ought to be female
deference to male. I’m not going
to say at what level that should happen, we’ll think more about this when
we get to chapter 14. But clearly,
according to this chapter women can pray and prophesy within church
meetings alongside the men. But
even as a woman exercises these public gifts they do so as a woman and a
man does so as a man.
Well what does that look like? It looks like v4, let’s read together
4Every man who
prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5And
every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her
head—it is just as though her head were shaved. 6If a woman
does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a
disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover
her head. 7A man ought not to cover his head,[b] since he is the image
and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.
Ok first question: What is this covering? Well literally the word for covering is
the word for ‘thing hanging down.’
The man should not have something hanging down from his
head. But the woman should
have something hanging down from her head. What should that be? Well I think the clue is from v13:
13Judge for
yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head
uncovered? 14Does not the very nature of things teach you that
if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15but that if
a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as
a covering.
So if you ask me this is not about hats. The word hats is never mentioned
here. In fact it really can’t mean
hats because throughout the Old Testament the men who conducted all the
worship wore stonking great hats called turbans. But if men aren’t meant to be covered
then it can’t refer to hats. But
v15 says the covering is hair.
Which is why the footnote at the bottom of
p1152 says what it says. This is
another way you could translate it:
4 Every man
who prays or prophesies with long hair dishonors his head. 5
And every woman who prays or prophesies with no covering (of hair) on her
head dishonors her head—she is just like one of the "shorn
women." 6 If a woman has no covering, let her be for now
with short hair, but since it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair
shorn or shaved, she should grow it again. 7 A man ought not
to have long hair
That seems a good understanding of what Paul
is saying. One of the ways we show
our gender differences is hair.
Paul says if you see a woman just from from the neck up, you
should be able to say there’s a woman.
And if you see a man, even just from the neck up, you should be
able to say ‘there’s a man.’
Now what do I want us to take away from this first
half of the chapter?
Well let me challenge us all in four
stages. If you agree to stage one,
perhaps you’ll be challenged by stage two and if you agree to stage two
we’ll probably all be challenged by stage three.
Here’s stage one – maybe you’re here and
you’re not sure what you think about Jesus and now you’re reading about
haricuts and thinking all Christians have lost the plot. Let me say – this is about as kooky to our
modern ears as the bible ever gets.
This is not in any sense a central issue to Christians, the centre
for Christians is Christ. But
because Christ is the centre, there’s actually wonderful news about
gender equality. The entire
feminist movement is caught up and always has been caught up in a
seemingly unsolvable problem. How
do you work for equality when there are differences?
Some feminists have tried to say, there
aren’t really differences between the genders, it’s all culturally
constructed. That’s nuts! There are deep differences to the
genders that go much deeper than physiology and deep down everyone knows
that. Well then – how do you
equally honour different people?
Do you go for positive discrimination which means unequal
treatment? Or do you go for equal
treatment which means women will only be judged as a success if they
succeed how a man defines success?
There’s real problems about how to honour equality and difference. But do you see that Jesus has the
solution? Only Jesus has the
solution. Because Jesus shows us
how to be equal to Someone who is different and who takes on a different
role. Jesus is ONE with God the
Father, but this ONENESS is expressed by Him taking on a different role
to His Father. We can’t go into it
here – I’d be glad to chat things through afterwards, but actually the
Christian doctrine of the trinity IS the world’s only hope for gender
equality. Because there we see
what it looks like for different Persons with different roles who are
nonetheless equally honoured.
Don’t walk away from Jesus because of this gender question, draw
closer, He has the answers.
Here’s stage two: Will you accept that men and women are
equal but different? And will you
acknowledge that those differences might in certain circumstances
(marriage and certain church structures) mean taking on different
roles? So that there is headship
and submission within marriage – men standing up and standing for their
wives, taking responsibility and their wives allowing that and supporting
their husbands in that. And that
there can be authority structures in certain aspects of church life where
its appropriate for men to take responsibility and for women to allow
that. And therefore in this both
men and women have Christ as their example.
Men take the example of Christ as the
Head. Men are to be like Jesus,
standing up and standing for others, taking responsibility, laying down
their lives. No man wants to do this
(just so you women know). This is
why your average man sits in front of the tv, part man – part sofa, never
standing up, never standing for anyone.
No man wants this job. But
when they step up and take on this role like Jesus did, then they find themselves
getting in touch with something very deep, implanted in them by God.
Women also have Christ as their example. When it comes to those very specific
circumstances in which men are to lead – marriage and certain church
structures – women are to be like Jesus, who trusted His Head – the Father,
and who rejoiced in His Father’s leadership. No woman wants to do this, which is
why when they are faced with their part-man-part-sofa husband they will
nag him like a dripping tap until he submits to her. That’s the way things usually go. But, when women, in these specific
circumstances, take on this role of inviting a man to lead and allowing
it to happen, they get in touch with something very deep, implanted in
them by God.
So Stage two:
Will you see that gender differences are good, God given and that
in certain circumstances they are expressed in the taking on of different
role? That’s Stage Two.
Here’s stage three: Will you accept that our
differences as men and women should be enjoyed and expressed
physically. Now quite often when
you talk about masculine haircuts and feminine haircuts people say: How
ridiculous! What matters is my
heart, my haircut is irrelevant. Well
don’t be so sure.
You see the Corinthians had such a low view
of the body. So some of them went
and slept with prostitutes because, Hey it’s only my body. And others
refused even to have sex with their spouses because – Ew, it’s bodily
yuck. And Paul is forever saying
in this letter, the body matters.
What we do with our bodies is part of our discipleship. And we need to hear this today when we
struggle so much with body issues again.
We have a very Corinthian spirit these days that thinks spiritual
matters are one thing and body matters are another. Paul says no, even your haircut is
important. Will you agree in
principle to the fact that your bodily expression of your gender is
important? And so will you agree
that a male-looking haircut is what a man should have and a
female-looking haircut is what a woman should have?
Here’s stage four. Let me begin with a question: Do you think the bible is allowed to
tell you how long to wear your hair?
Interesting question isn’t it?
Is the bible allowed to have an opinion on this question or must
such things always just be matters of personal preference and cultural
practice?
Now most commentators and bible teachers
won’t come to stage four, but let me give you some idea of my take on
these things.
Many of you will know that there’s a repeated
command in the New Testament to “Greet each other with a holy kiss.” And of course most of us make that
command culturally appropriate by saying ‘Greet one another with a firm
handshake.’ You take the principle and recast it in a way that your
culture finds more palatable. I’m
the sort of person who thinks – You know one day it would be great if we
let the bible tell us what was culturally appropriate and that so shaped
our thinking that we’d get over the cultural awkwardness and one day we’d
greet each other with a holy kiss.
Some say that I’m a dreamer.
I’m not saying we all try it tonight. I’m saying, will we allow the bible to
challenge what we think is culturally appropriate? Which means maybe one day we greet one
another with holy kisses, and women wear hair long and men have it short. It’s not about getting the ruler out
and enforcing hair length, but it’s about allowing the bible to shape our
minds and our bodies.
Have I challenged you enough on this part?
Let’s move on to talk about the Lord’s
Supper.
First let’s think about what the Lord’s
Supper should be.
Have a look at chapter 10:16-17.
16Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a
participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break
a participation in the body of Christ? 17Because there
is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the
one loaf.
When we eat bread and wine together, the
bread and wine remain bread and wine.
But as we eat there is a
‘participation’ in the body and blood of Jesus. The word for participation is the word
we get communion from. We have
communion with Jesus in a special way as we eat the bread and drink the
wine. We taste the benefits of His
death, we are nourished by Him, we take these truths into ourselves in a
way different to just hearing about it.
I can tell you Jesus gave Himself for you
even to death so that you can receive Him today. That’s one thing. I can put a piece of bread in your hand
I can hand you a cup of wine and I can say ‘the body and blood of Jesus
given for you’ and you can take these things into you. There is something special about communion.
Luther used to say the great thing about
communion is that you take it into yourself. When I speak words to you, they can
bounce off. When I give you the
bread – you take it in. You
appropriate it, you receive it, you eat it, it goes in. All of us have trouble getting the
truth of Jesus INTO ourselves.
Communion is one way Jesus gives to help us.
So this physical act is very helpful to our
spiritual life. Let’s not be like
the Corinthians who thought that the spiritual and the physical are miles
apart. In the physical acts of
eating, spiritual things are happening.
Which is why the liturgy we say as we hand out the bread goes
says: “The body of our Lord Jesus
given for you... Feed on Him in your heart by faith.” As we eat the bread there is
participation in the body of Jesus – we feed on Jesus in our hearts
through faith.
And Paul says that as we have communion with
Jesus, we also should have communion with one another. Verse 17 says: As we share in one loaf
we share in a oneness with one another that is especially close. Again – there is something special
about communion. We have a special
kind of communion with Jesus and a special kind of communion with one another
as we eat and drink.
Which is why, in chapter 11, the Corinthians’
actions are so awful. Verse 18 –
there are divisions that seem to be very obvious – perhaps different
factions sat in different places and they wouldn’t share. Then v21, when
the bread and wine come out, there’s a free for all – some gorge
themselves, some get nothing, some get drunk. Appalling!
And this is what Paul talks about in v27:
this is the ‘unworthy manner’ of the Corinthians. Their factions and disunity – the way
they treated one another – this is what’s so unworthy of the Lord’s
Supper.
And so v29:
29(For) anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of
the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.
This is what I think Paul’s saying: “At a time when you remember the
physical body of Jesus broken for you, how can you treat His spiritual
body, the church, in such a terrible way?? If you do that, you’re playing with
fire. Verse 30:
30That is why many among you are weak and sick,
and a number of you have fallen asleep.
This is serious. If you were pushing in the queue for
communion or carrying on some argument I would not give you the bread or
the wine. For your own sake. This stuff is serious. Mess with communion at your peril. So Paul says examine yourselves in v28.
Now we can be very good at examining
ourselves at communion can’t we?
We put our heads in our hands and try to remember all our personal
sins. That’s not what Paul is
talking about. Paul is more talking about looking around the congregation
and making sure I’m in good relationship with my brothers and
sisters. Are there unresolved
issues with those who are here?
Well hold off on communion until you sort it out. This is why in many churches you share
a sign of peace with one another before communion, you go around the
church and shake hands (or if I had my way, give holy kisses) because
you’re saying ‘I am in good relationship with these people with whom I’m
about to share one loaf.’
Do you see how communal communion is? We tend to think of communion as my
private experience but the bible
says – it’s a supper, it’s a meal, it’s communion not only with Jesus but
with one another. Therefore it’s
more than ok to make eye contact during communion. It’s ok to share a word with one
another. In fact it’s of the
essence of communion to be communal.
Usually when we take communion we go and sit down and go back over
an inventory of our personal sins – instead of that tonight. Why not go back to your seat and look
at the people receiving communion and pray for them. Thank God for each of them and pray
that these gospel truths would go into them even as the bread and the
wine go into them.
So that’s what we’re going to do now. I’m going to start leading communion.
23For I received from
the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he
was betrayed, took bread, 24and when he had given
thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do
this in remembrance of me." 25In the same way,
after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant
in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." 26For
whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's
death until he comes.
This proclaims the Lord’s death.
Think about it – Jesus took bread, gave
thanks, broke it and gave it out.
This whole thing is preaching the gospel. Jesus took bread. Jesus came into our world and He took
on our flesh, our human condition, He became our Brother in every way
except He was without sin. Jesus
took bread. He gave thanks. Jesus’ whole life was a life of
thanksgiving. We are a grumbling,
bitter, ungrateful lot. We live as
though we were owed life. Jesus
gave thanks in everything He did.
Not once in 33 years years did Jesus do what we do every
minute, He never sinned. He always gave thanks to God. But having lived this perfect life,
having given thanks – He broke it.
Jesus said in John 6:
51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats
of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will
give for the life of the world."
Jesus was broken for us, like a loaf torn
apart. We can receive His life
only because He died. We eat
because He was broken. And then
Jesus hands Himself over to us and says “This is my body, which is for
you.” Do you ever doubt that
Jesus is for you? Take this bread
in your hand and realize that Jesus has made Himself as available to you
as bread on the table. He is
yours, take Him. His body was
broken for you – receive His life.
So here is the bread and wine. In a second you can come and eat. If you are out of relationship with
someone here – tap them on the shoulder, go to the creche, sort it out
and come and eat. If they’re not
here, come and eat and then go and be reconciled to them. But here is the invitation – Christ’s
body broken for you, Christ’s blood poured out for your forgiveness, come
and eat.
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