The commenter, a newspaper columnist whose writing I really enjoy, liked what I'd said. But in her comments, she wrote something that disturbed me: "I'm also a priest - Though I believe women should keep silent in the 'church.'" She goes on to cite 1 Corinthians 14:35, where Paul writes, "it is shameful for a woman to speak in church," as the reason for her position. I don't agree with her interpretation of that passage. I feel that it ignores the context in which Paul was writing.
Chapters 13 to 15 of Paul's first letter to the church in the Greek city of Corinth deal with what's called, "the gift of tongues." For the uninitiated, this is a rare gift God gives to some Christians, mostly to help them worship and praise God in a way that brings them personal comfort.
At Corinth, there were Christians insisting that their possession of this gift made them spiritually superior. They also were disrupting worship, many different people speaking in tongues at once. Without someone to interpret the meaning of these strange utterances, these verbal eruptions were making some members of the Corinthian church feel excluded and visitors thinking that Christianity was nutty.
Paul told the Corinthians that while he himself had this gift, they should have at most only three people speak in a tongue and that even they shouldn't do it unless there was someone else able to interpret it so that everybody could benefit. Otherwise, Paul said, people should keep their mouths shut. "For God is a God not of disorder but of peace," he writes.
Within the context of discussing disorder in worship, Paul then says that women shouldn't speak in worship. What's up with that?
The Corinthians and other first-century Christians apparently configured their worship in the way Jews historically had in their synagogues, men formed an inner circle or semi-circle in an area closer to the rabbi and readers and explicators, while women and children were consigned to a grated or meshed divider. Some women at the Corinthian church, unable to hear all that was being said, were calling out to their husbands, asking them to repeat things. To Paul, this would have been another disruption of worship, which should always be orderly and, for the sake of those who don't yet follow Christ, understandable, accessible.
Paul never engaged in frontal assaults on societal conventions. He had bigger fish to fry. He seemed to believe that if people came to know and follow Jesus Christ, it would change how they lived in society.
The whole point of the "household codes" with which he and Peter end some of their New Testament writings wasn't to endorse things like slavery or patriarchy, but to encourage those living under such systems--masters, slaves, husbands, wives, parents, children--to live in such a Christian fashion that those with whom they rubbed shoulders on a daily basis would be attracted to Christ.
Whether as preachers, worship leaders, readers, minstry leaders, musicians, or worship participants, I believe that women who have been called to do so should speak up in worship.
Jesus too, bowed to the conventions of first century Judea when He only called men to function as apostles, as leaders of the Church, knowing that in that time and place, only men would be accepted in the role of leaders. But unlike other first-century Judeans, Jesus spoke to women with the same consideration and respect He afforded men.
- He refused to sanction the stoning of a woman caught in adultery.
- He upbraided His apostles when they condemned a woman extravgantly anointing His feet with expensive perfume.
- He playfully dialogued with the foreign woman who asked for His help, extolling her faith to others.
- He chose a sinful woman from Samaria to proclaim Him as the Messiah to the villagers at Sychar.
- He chose women to be the first to proclaim the Good News of His resurrection.
No wonder then, that Paul wrote: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul makes clear that speaking up in worship is no right. It's a call. But I believe that the God Who calls people to play their parts in the ministries of the Church calls women just as He calls men.
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