Friday,
July 17 –
We are
at the end of the workweek in our reading thru the New Testament in a year.
Today’s reading is short but has been controversial in the church for decades.
We read from 1 Corinthians 11:1 – 16. Read the scripture passage thru twice if
you have time, and then I invite you to come back and I will humbly share some
thoughts about what Paul is saying to us today.
Just when we thought we had navigated through the most difficult parts of
first-century practices and problems we discover this section on men and women,
hair, head-coverings, “oh my”. I was watching an old movie last weekend and was
struck by the way men and women dressed in the 1950s. I was a young boy in the
1950s and I remember my father always had a brimmed hat that he wore to church
or formal gatherings such as weddings. I remember always seeing my mother in
the kitchen with an apron around her dress. One of the first political things I
observed was in the 1960 election between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon. I
was 11 years old and the political coverage made a point that JFK didn’t wear a
hat in public like gentlemen were supposed to do. In our culture today we are
more inclined to see men without hats at all unless it’s a baseball cap, and
that might be worn backward! Aprons are certainly still around – I have one myself
which must make a point of how we’ve changed because I don’t remember my father
ever wore an apron. Then again, much more than that has changed. As a child
growing up tattoos were for bikers and only men had them. Women wore dresses
and those were down to their knees or lower. What is this all about?
We see
that cultural changes happen as generations come and go. While Paul writes
about a man not covering his head since he is the image and glory of God
(11:7), he also says a woman should not cut her hair short and should cover her
head in public (11:5-6). Are we looking at the cultural realities of the
first-century Corinthian world? In many ways, yes. Yet it is not all cultural
realities that Paul is dealing with and when we “step into” this world – if we
could only transport ourselves back to Corinth in 50 a.d. – we discover much
more is going on than head coverings and length of hair. We approach passages
like this with a need to step back into Paul’s world to understand the issues
he is addressing and then we can step back into our own world and make some
applications for our own life in Christ.
Paul
begins the 11th chapter with a plea – based on all that he had written that
culminated in 10:33. There he had said that his actions and behavior were based
on two desires - to be a good witness to those outside for the sake of their
salvation, and secondly to do everything for the glory of God (10:31-33).
Again, the chapter division does not help us, for after he makes these two
points at the end of chapter 10, he makes this direct appeal to “Be
imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (11:1). Immediately he adds this
curious comment: “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything
and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you” (11:2).
Previously (chpt 10) he had appealed to them to surrender their rights for the
greater good, and for the glory of God; and so he appeals to them to follow his
own pattern – “imitate me” – and yet says, I know you know what I mean, and I
am confident that many of you are doing that. So, not everything is wrong in
Corinth. While there had been problems with many different issues, many of them
had listened and were following Paul’s example.
As we
read the next section it’s important that we keep our head above the water and
see the section as a whole and not in pieces. In pieces, it all gets very
confusing, sort of a “huh?”, “what am I supposed to do with this?” Paul begins
with theology – the relationship of us to Christ and Christ to the Father –
“But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of
a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (11:3). The Greek word
for “head” is “Kephale” (kef a lay), and literally means the “head of”,
as in “the authority”, or “the source of”. While it designated roles for
leading, it was not based on superiority, or “better than” ideas. For example,
Paul says God the Father is head of Christ, but what he is saying is that
Christ Jesus submitted himself to the Father to accomplish the Father’s
redemptive plan. My guess is that most of us, if not all, have no problem with
that since we know that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one in being, and
in substance, even though they are persons equally sharing the Godhead – the
Trinity. We also probably don’t have a problem saying that Christ is the
authority over every man. The question is the authority of a man and a woman.
If I read Paul correctly he is stating an obvious observation based on
creation. The Father and Son, co-equal in being, began the creation with the
man, and from the man came the woman. It isn’t about superiority or
inferiority, it’s about relationships that come from God.
The
issue of a man not covering his head and a woman covering her head is where the
need for cultural understanding comes into play. Paul had spent eighteen months
in Corinth and so had plenty of opportunities to speak to them about the
cultural practices he witnessed in Corinth and the biblical, or theological
intersection with those practices. First-century dress for men and women were
not terribly different, except for “head coverings”. They wore togas for their
outer apparel, and women – in general – wore a kalumma, a veil over
their hair. It is not the kind of veil we see in Muslim women because the veil
only covered over their hair. Men did not wear any kind of covering. Since they
wore similar outer garments it became apparent that the head covering made a
distinction between a woman and a man.
The
exceptions to these cultural customs were many folds. First women of
distinction, wealth, estate owners (because their husbands had died, or because
they were the only child to inherit a family estate) often wore their hair “up”
– braided, with adorning jewels to show off their wealth and status. Second,
women who were slaves usually had their heads shaved, or hair cut short,
without a veil, to demonstrate who they were in public. Finally, the
priestesses from the cult of Aphrodite who practiced a form of cultic,
religious prostitution in the name of their god, wore their hair down, long,
without a veil to cover. Lastly, let’s remember that in the Jewish synagogue
men and women were separated, often not even able to see one another, for the
purpose of worship.
Paul is
addressing the worship services that he had overseen for those eighteen months,
and what he had taught to them about men and women worshiping together. What
did he want them to remember? First, even as the Son is submitted to the
Father, so also in our worship together we demonstrate a mutual submission for
the sake of Christ. Women with heads uncovered was a distraction – an
unnecessary one if you consider that after leaving a worship service the woman
would immediately cover her head in public. A man is uncovered even as we take
off our hat when someone who is to be honored enters a room. Eugene Peterson’s
The Message captures the picture well:
“Any man who speaks with God or about God in a way that shows a lack of
respect for the authority of Christ, dishonors Christ. In the same way, a wife
who speaks with God in a way that shows a lack of respect for the authority of
her husband dishonors her husband. Worse, she dishonors herself—an ugly sight,
like a woman with her head shaved. This is basically the origin of these
customs we have of women wearing head coverings in worship, while men take
their hats off. By these symbolic acts, men and women, who far too often butt
heads with each other, submit their "heads" to the Head: God”
(11:4-7).
In our
modern culture, it might all seem ridiculous, but in Paul’s culture of the
first century, it was important. While we might dismiss the regulations for
worship, if we’re willing to step “into” Corinth, we can also step “back” to
our own and make an application. First, note in vss 8-11, Paul comes full
circle. He reminds them/us that Biblically Man was created first, then the
woman from the Man (11:8). Yet, that’s not the whole story, for now, it is the
man (male child) who must come from the woman (11:12). In between, we realize
that they are mutually needed and equal: “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is
not independent of man nor man of woman” (11:11). The head covering is a
symbol and represents an attitude of submission.
In our
culture, the word submission has fallen on hard times. It is almost anathema to
point to passages like this to speak about women and men in terms of
submission, etc... Yet, for several chapters, Paul has been seeking to get
across the character of humility, serving, and submission to one another in
order to live Christ-like lives. I don’t think any of us would see Jesus’
submission to the Father as anything inferior, or “beneath” Him, or think that
Angels don’t submit themselves to the Father (11:10). We need to rethink what
it means to submit to one another for the sake of Christ.
The
guiding principle – I believe – in this passage comes from the end of verse 12:
“for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things
are from God” (11:12). It is a circle of God’s creative work that leads
from God, to man, to woman, to God again. Submission is about mutual dependence
– which is remarkably unlike our culture that is marked by the value of
independence. Paul argues in the end that “common sense” ought to help us
understand what is necessary:
“Judge for yourselves: Is it
proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not the very
nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to
him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given
to her as a covering. If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no
other practice—nor do the churches of God” (11:13-16).
A woman
covering her head in public, as well as in the church was normal. A man with
long hair in Greek culture was uncommon, and as in our own present-day, a man
is much more likely to lose hair as he gets old.
Our
response to these things is important. It’s easy to dismiss this as culturally
irrelevant, but that would be a mistake. While the issue of head coverings
seems dated – except in the Amish communities where I live – the issue goes
beyond dress to other things.
Is it
important that we have things that demonstrate respect, mutual submission, a
willingness to serve others by not showing off? What would Paul think if he
stepped into our worship services today? It’s a bit of an unfair question since
none of us step into a worship service without some cultural background. Yet it
is a fair question since we are often asking people to join us in worship.
It’s
fair to say that dress, fashion, styles have changed radically over my lifetime
of church leading. While my father, and his friends, always wore suits and
ties, we have a rural church where blue jeans are the most common apparel. We
don’t need rules about dress, except to remind ourselves that our apparel does
communicate something. I believe that our worship should never be about “look
at what he/she is wearing”. Our identity should be about our relationship to
Christ, first, then to each other, as we come to worship together. Like all
areas of Christian living, so much of what we need to remember is simple: “Do I
wear this, or dress like this, to put myself on display, or to come into
community with others for the glory of God?”
Peace
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