You Cannot Keep Silent — You Must Speak
by
The Rev. Steven S. Bryant
*The Post-circle Meeting*
Imagine that your circle meeting is over. It was not only inspiring and
informative, but a delightful and diverse collection of women from your
church. The teacher presented a lesson on a most controversial Pauline text:
_’Let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted
to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law also says.
And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at
home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church. Was it from you
that the word of God first went forth: Or has it come to you only?”_ (
I Corinthians 14:34-36)
And now, you are standing in the parking lot on a beautiful Spring day.
Several circle members hurry on back to work, but a group of you stand in
the warm sunlight visiting for a few more minutes. It’s the ‘post-circle
meeting” where people are more apt to say what they really think. Standing
there next to you is a friend who has never exactly been known for her
grace. She says what many other circle members want to say:
_’Who in their right mind would pick a passage like that for a Presbyterian
Women’s Bible Study?!!!”_
In her less than graceful way, she’s actually done you all a huge favor. She
broke the ice that held through the 30 minute Bible Study, and now you can
share with candor. Another circle member says, _’Well, to tell you the
truth, I’ve always been embarrassed by that passage. I think Paul was a male
chauvinist pig whose teachings perpetuate the oppression of women in the
Church and the society.” _
Someone who nods in agreement says, _’I’m no Bible thumper so I can’t give
you chapter and verse but I think what Paul said about women is different
than what Jesus said.” _
Still another member of the parking lot circle says, _’Now don’t be so hard
on Paul. He couldn’t help it. He was a product of his time and culture. We
thinking Christians just have to sift through his writings to find the truth
and the relevancy. I think a lot of what he said is worth reading.” _
There’s a woman standing next to you. She joined the church a year ago,
having moved her letter from some Baptist church. You can’t remember her
last name. Edith something. Her cheeks are flush and her eyes are piercing
each of you with the glare of righteous indignation. She puts her hands on
her hips and says, _’Well, I think….” _ And it dawns on you in
mid-sentence that these are the first words you’ve ever heard her speak!
_’Well, I think what Paul said about women speaking in church applies to
women in the parking lot too. So button your lips!” _ With that, she
marches to her station wagon, leaving the rest of you in stunned silence.
One thing is absolutely certain: Paul never prohibited female laughter in
church, so go right ahead.
Remember, we’re just imagining a scene; plausible, I might add, in every
Presbyterian parking lot in America.
If you haven’t noticed yet, you haven’t said anything. Everyone has
deposited their two cents on Paul, and now, all eyes are on you. You may get
away with silence in the church but not in the parking lot. It’s time to
speak. What will you say?
I’m going to pray for you while you prepare your answer. And this is what
I’ll pray:
*That you will be the kind of Presbyterian who approaches any and every
Biblical text as the Word of God, and God’s Word to you.
*That you will not be the kind of Christian who checks her intelligence
at the door, but one who thrives on deep study, and who uses her mind to
the fullest capacity in the study of God’s Word.
*That you will not be afraid to explore the ‘tough texts,” nor will you
allow your understanding of those texts to be dictated by people at the
extreme ends of the theological spectrum, whose theology has more to do
with politics than actual faith.
*The All Too Familiar Problems in the Corinthian Church*
While you are standing there in the parking lot preparing your answer, let
me tell you a story about a particular congregation. They were one messed up
bunch of ancient people! But God loved them dearly and Paul wanted to help
them, because both God and Paul could see through the rampant problems to a
better and more faithful church. To become that church, Paul had to confront
the problems.
The basic problem with the church at Corinth is that they were nearly
invisible. The church had set up shop but you could hardly distinguish
between the people of the church and the culture surrounding them. Within
the life of the church there were people whose morals were invisible. Sexual
immorality was as common place in the church as it was in the society. Some
of them were even debating the virtues of incest. Don’t believe me? Go read
it for yourself. There was no sense of foundation or grounding. They had
even corrupted the Lord’s Supper into a gross ‘love feast.” And when they
weren’t wallowing in the gastronomic orgy of a love feast, they were
fighting like cats and dogs. The battle du jour was between the tongue
speaking charismatics and the ‘ungifted” lesser Christians.
It was a real mess. Line them all up and you couldn’t tell the Corinthian
Christian from the plain old ordinary Corinthian.
In fact, when it came to worship, the church looked more Corinthian than
Christian. Across the bay from Corinth sat a pagan temple on a hill, The
Temple of Apollo, home of the Oracle of Delphi. Women, not men, played the
key role in this pagan religion. Practiced from 1400 B.C. to 381 A.D., the
ancient oracle was akin to the modern day psychic hotline. Today, the
gullible pay by the minute through a 1-900 number. 2000 years ago, the men
of Corinth would travel across the bay, offer up an animal sacrifice, and
enter the chamber of The Pythia, the highest position in the pagan religion,
only occupied by a woman. The Corinthian man would ask a question submitted
on a lead tablet. ‘How many sons will I have?” Or maybe, ‘Will my crops be
abundant or dismal this growing season?” The Pythia read the tablet, ate a
laurel leaf, and then perched herself upon a tripod in her chamber, whence
she would then go into a bizarre euphoric trance.
Mostly, her utterances would sound like babbling nonsense, according to
ancient historians. Another priestess would translate the nonsense mostly
into gratifying news. ‘She said you’ll have a whole herd of sons!” Or, ‘The
Oracle declares you will have a bumper crop!”
Ancient historians reported that the babbling hallucinations of the high
priestess were actually induced by vapors rising from the ground within the
Pythia’s chamber. For many years this was dismissed until a recent
geological survey discovered ethylene gas rising from volcanic fissures in
the rocks of the Temple ruins. Ethylene, a sweet smelling gas, produces an
hallucinogenic effect. (Reported by John Roach for National Geographic News.
August 14, 2001)
Unlike the oracle, what Paul said wasn’t just hot air. It was truth. Truth
for yesterday and truth for today. And this is what he truly said:
Women _’keep silent.”_ Or more true to the Greek, _’keep the peace.” _
And then he said, _’For they are not permitted to speak.” _ But his choice
of words was precise. The Greek word loosely translated as _’speak”_ is
more carefully translated as _’to utter incoherent sounds.”_ Paul was
inspired by God to write these words because some of the married women in
the church at Corinth were disrupting services and confusing people by
babbling away in tongues in a fashion very similar to that of the oracle.
Don’t you see it? Paul is not an oppressor of women but a liberator of
people. His words aren’t about women. They’re about the Church of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the people of the Church rising above the amoral practices
of the world around them. Paul’s instructions call for the people of the
Church to work hard at distinguishing themselves from the people of the
world. Paul is telling the church, and particularly the women of the church,
not to ‘shut up” but to stick out like a sore thumb. If the pagan
priestesses babble in pagan worship, then you charismatic women are going to
have to be very careful about expressing your gift in church. Don’t confuse
people. Make it virtually impossible, Paul is saying, for anyone to confuse
your faith and practice with the faith and practice of an unchristian and
unholy culture.
_’What about Paul’s teaching about women covering their heads?”_ someone
asks.
There were a thousand priestesses in the Temple of Aphrodite at the
Acrocorinth, as well familiar to all Corinthians. These women practiced
cultic prostitution in their pagan religious rites. Their hair was kept
short, nearly shaven. For the same reason, Paul instructed women to keep
their heads modestly covered or to cover their heads with long hair. (See I
Corinthians 11:1-16) Don’t confuse people. Distinguish yourselves from
pagans who are leading people astray.
Again, Paul was no oppressor of women, but a liberator of people, and he
knew full well that God wanted to use the Church to liberate or redeem a
sinful world. Lord knows we make it hard on Him when our lives (our words,
our choices, our behavior, our relationships) are barely distinguishable
from the lives of the unchristian men and women around us. Paul may be
writing about hair in the 11th chapter, but the truth God was communicating
through him has nothing to do with hairdos and everything to do with the
conspicuous faith.
Paul’s message is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago. This is what I
hear Paul saying to P.C.U.S.A. Christians in the year 2004:
‘You are to be in the world but not of the world. Stop confusing the very
people we need to be reaching with transforming love of Jesus. You confuse
them when you tell them that what they believe isn’t really all that
important as long as they try to be good. You confuse them when you ignore,
or at worst bless, behaviors that contradict God’s clear instruction. You
confuse them about the validity of the Christian faith when the divorce
rates of some of your more conservative and evangelical members are higher
than the general population. You confuse them when your General Assembly is
the last institution left in the American culture that wants to validate
partial birth abortion. You confuse them when you spend more time on
internal squabbles than on reaching the unchurched. You confuse them when
you say ‘we’re about mission” and then you make draconian cuts to the
missions budget. You confuse them when a Christ seeking visitor sees you
watching the clock instead of listening to the sermon. You confuse them when
your ministers preach one ethic and then live out an entirely contradictory
one. You confuse them when you say ‘Jesus is my Lord,” and then spend the
overwhelming majority of your time seeking after material possessions. You
confuse them when an inventory of your life looks no different than that of
a polite agnostic. Your faith is nearly invisible. And you’re confusing the
world to death, literally.”
Paul had some tough words to Corinthian Christians too. But to the very same
crowd of Christians, Paul gave the most beautiful words he was ever inspired
to write. If we will endeavor, by God’s grace, to diligently follow them,
the world will see you and me and say, ‘Beyond a shadow of a doubt, there
goes a Christian.”
‘If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I
have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of
prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith,
so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give
all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned,
but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind,
and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act
unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into
account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices
with the truth; love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things, love never fails…” (I Corinthians 13:1-8a)
*You Cannot Keep Silent – You Must Speak*
Well, so much for the story of the Corinthian Church learning what it means
to be the Church in an unholy culture. And you’re still standing in the
parking lot and the rest of the ladies are waiting for your response. You
cannot keep silent. You must speak out. You must speak clearly,
intelligibly, as informed by your diligent study of the Word of God. You
must speak a peaceable and edifying word, even in the parking lot. What will
you say? Make Paul proud.
*Closing prayer:*
Holy God,
You have spoken through your Word. Remind us that You only speak perfect and
holy words. You have spoken clearly, as you have clearly inspired Your
chosen authors. Help us to listen more intently, to understand more clearly,
and to seek Your Truth more diligently. Give us the courage to speak and not
babble. Give us the grace to know when silence is both golden and
appropriate. Give us hearts that care more about the world in which we live.
And please, Lord, embolden us to a more faithful and consistent witness,
that we might show Christ to the lost and find our greatest delight in
leading others to You. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.