September 19, 2010
Say What? - 1 Timothy 2:8-15
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI thought it was a great idea a few weeks ago to preach on all of 1st Timothy. The Revised Common Lectionary covers 1st Timothy in September, and then goes into 2nd Timothy for October, and it conveniently skips the hard stuff. I decided not to skit to hard stuff, and I thought that was a great idea, until right about now. What in the world are we supposed to do with this passage? Now I have thought about this a great deal this week, and to the very best of my ability, I can only think of three options. I’ll just go through each one and then land on one, which is not by any means perfect, but I do think its faithful. The first option is the literal option, which is to say that this is the word for word, literal, inerrant Word of God Himself. That would mean, then, that we men should be praying everywhere, lifting up our holy hands in every place: at work, at home, at the bar, at the Carolina Panthers game this afternoon (where we’ll probably mention God’s Holy Name often, but not in the way that Paul envisions). The literal option means that you women cannot braid your hair. I don’t see much braided hair out there anyway, so that’s not much of a problem. This next part, however, is. You also can’t wear earrings, or pearls, or gold, or jewelry of any sort, or expensive clothes. Now we have a bit of a problem. Ya’ll need to look as plain-jane as possible. And, if you’re in Church, women, you’ve got to be silent. The only possible exception is that if you’re around only other women. If you’re around men, though, you should be seen at not heard. My young son, Jack, turned five months old this past Monday. He is among many things, well, a little man. A woman (I’m not sure which one) is keeping him right now in the nursery, probably rocking him to sleep. If you want to get really literal about this whole thing, then that’s all wrong. He should be teaching her, even though he can’t even talk yet. Women, after all, were formed second to men. And, according to Paul’s literal word here, the woman was deceived, but the man was not. So your only hope, women, is to have children, and lots of them. In short, as far as the Church is concerned, as far as the literal option is concerned, you should be submissive, silent, and pregnant.
I don’t know about you, but I do not like the literal option. In fact, it goes against every bit of sense I ever had. Most of what I, a man, have learned in life came from a woman. I cannot imagine my life without the women who have taught me. One of my favorite teachers in seminary was a woman named Cynthia Rigby. She was incredible. She was instrumental to my theological formation. I cannot imagine going to either a Presbytery meeting or a session meeting and not seeing women there. I cannot imagine how the conversation would be lessened without them. And as much as we men would like to think that we want our wives to be submissive, we all know that we’d be dead right now if our wives always submitted to us. My wife does not submit to me simply because she’s a woman and I am better off for it. There was a preacher who once told the couples whom he married that he didn’t make his brides promise to submit to their husbands because there was no need in having them make a promise that they were just going to break. I would add to that that their husbands would want them to break it. Keeping women silent, as Paul literally suggests here, does not make any sense. Furthermore, nobody, not even the most strident literalist in the world, does it.
And we haven’t even mentioned that Paul himself didn’t do it. Women clearly had teaching roles in the New Testament Church, at Paul’s bequest. Paul specifically told older women to teach in Titus 2. In Philippians, Paul commended the way in which Euodia and Syntyche labored with him in the Gospel. If you read the end of Romans, Paul mentions a number of disciples, many of whom were women. Philip’s four daughters are described in Acts 21 as prophets. Lydia was instrumental in establishing the Church in Europe in Acts 16. Priscilla (a woman) was a teacher, even over her husband, Aquila, and even over the learned Apollos (a man), who was himself an authority on Scripture. As far as keeping women seen and not heard, or always submitting to their morally superior husbands, I just don’t see it in Scripture. One of the overarching themes in the Bible is what Paul himself wrote in Galatians 3: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Yet, if you take the literal option, then you have to literally obey it. To do otherwise would be to flagrantly disregard the Word of God.
But we’re not big fans of the literal option. So that brings us to option #2, which is what I call the “Weasel Option,” because it weasels us out of this thing. I’ll just go verse for verse and tell you how. First of all, Paul is telling the men that they should not use prayer as a dividing wall, so they should pray in all places and for all people. Secondly, Paul essentially tells women that their outward appearance should match their inner peace of knowing Jesus. Third, Paul did not mean that women should learn in silence, this option says. The Greek there literally means quietness or solitude. Paul tells men to learn in quietness and solitude in 1 & 2 Thessalonians and in Titus. Fourth, the Weasel Option concedes that Paul tells women to submit, but he does not say who they submit to. Paul is surely telling them to submit to God and not their husbands. Paul tells men to do the same thing. Fifth, according to the Weasel Option, Paul’s reference to Adam is actually a compliment for the woman. God took the very finest of the dirt of the ground and made man, and then God took the very finest of the man to make woman. Eve did indeed sin first, according to the Weasel Option, only because she was naturally more curious and “ahead” of the man. Finally, the whole thing about child bearing, according to the Weasel Option, actually refers to the birth of Jesus. I’m still not sure exactly how that happens, but that’s what this theory says.
There’s a lot about the Weasel Option that I think it helpful. It is very true that our outward appearance should match our inner peace. Or, to reverse it, if our outer appearance inhibits our inner peace then we should probably change it. I got in trouble recently telling a story about a preschool teacher (not at this preschool) who wore a thong. I wasn’t peeping around, I promise. Her pants were too low and her shirt was too high and her thong was too was obvious, and it was distracting, and what it suggested about her inner peace was not very good. I wore my college ring out of habit to a homeless shelter once. All that those people saw was my fancy ring. So maybe Paul is on to something. Men should pray without anger, and women should pray without ostentation. We furthermore have good reason to believe that Timothy’s Church needed to hear that message. And yes, we should all learn in quietness. We need to take time to be still. And, that Eve was formed second in the creation story does not make women inferior. The Church has long used this passage and others like it to shut women up, with what I think are devastating results. The biggest thing that I like about the Weasel Option is that it clearly allows Cindy Rigby to teach me. It allows Kathy Bricker to teach me. She has led an incredible class on the different denominations of the Church. Sandy Hart has taught me a lot about leadership. She is our current Clerk of Session and she has taught me more about getting people to work together than probably anybody else.
I want women to teach us. So I like the Weasel Option, but I do not accept the Weasel Option as a whole because it, well, weasels. This whole bit about women is mentioned at least four other times in the Bible. What do we do with those passages? What do we do with this passage? We cannot get away from the fact that Paul wrote his letters in a male dominated culture. In fact, that Paul ever lifts women up at all as being equally valued by God – which he clearly does – was a radical idea then. But Paul was a 1st Century Jew and a Roman citizen. As such, Paul had a few prejudices, like we all do. We are reading Paul’s personal correspondence here. Paul had no way of knowing that his letters would still be read two thousand years later in a place that he didn’t even know existed. To ignore the man that Paul was, to ignore the times and culture in and to which he wrote these letters is to take the human out of Paul. The Bible is more than a computer and it’s more than an instruction manual. Neither the Weasel Option nor the Literal Options takes any of that into account, so they both come up short.
So now we have the third option, which I call the “Here & Now Option.” And that is this: somehow or other we have to live together here and now. Somehow or other we have to apply the Gospel to our everyday life together. We don’t live in 1st Century Palestine. We live in 21st Century Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. What we wear, what we say, how we say it, how we treat one another, how we submit to one another or stand up to one another, how we interact with one another matters very much. Paul had good reason, for example, to believe that some women were abusing the new freedom and status that they had found as Christians. So Paul told them to cool it. Paul had good reason to believe that men were using their new faith to build walls instead of bridges. So Paul told them to knock it off.
Was Paul biased by his culture? Of course he was. Is his writing biased by the same culture? Of course it is. So we have to put Scripture into context, and that does not diminish it. If anything, in my experience, it strengthens it. We live the Gospel in a context, too. We live in the here and now. So how do we interpret Scripture in a meaningful way in the here and now? That’s the beauty of Christianity, and that’s why it has flourished all over the world. If you throw a Bible into the middle of a tribe in Africa, it will speak just as powerfully to them as it does to us. It may speak in a vastly different way, but it is still, as the Psalmist says, “a lamp unto our feet and light for our path.” The Bible always, always, always speaks to people where they are. Rulebooks cannot do that.
So what to do we do with this passage? Well, we study it. We wrestle over it. We pray over it. We read it together and we apply it to our lives together. Of course we’re not going to get it right every time. Of course we’ll be influenced by our own biases just as Paul was. But somehow, the Holy Spirit still burns in us, just like it burned in Paul. Our own context changes by the minute. The rules change around us all the time. We relate to one another differently today than we used to. My marriage is very different than my parents’ marriage, which is fine. We “do” Church differently today than we used to, or at least we should. But we still have the One God who has not changed, and who has given us some old, ancient, and holy words. If we read that Holy Writ and interpret it faithfully, then we may not be perfect and we may not be popular, but we can be disciples.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
