Our journey begins in the ancient world with the covenant of Abraham and spans to modern interpretations of faith. We explore the symbolic significance of God as Father and how this relationship has been presented and preserved through cultural shifts over the ages. The episode unique highlights that, while religion’s foundational symbols and roles are often patriarchal, the relationship between God and the individual transcends gender, emphasizing personal and familial connections as fundamental to religious experience.
SPEAKER 01 :
The religion of the Bible is, for better or for worse, a patriarchal religion. A patriarchy can be defined as a form of social organization in which the father or the eldest male is recognized as the head of the family or the tribe. Now you, obviously, if you’ve read your Bible, if you have been a Christian for much of your life, what I have said to you is stating the obvious. But that idea has come under a lot of pressure in recent years. I couldn’t trace particularly the moment when it started or the time in which the changes began to take place, but there’s been a lot going on. It’s coming not so much from biblical studies. In other words, it isn’t as though someone has gone into the Bible and found certain scriptures and begun to recommend or suggest changes in that approach that our religion is a patriarchal one. Rather, it’s come out of what one German philosopher called the zeitgeist. Zeitgeist is a German expression which means the spirit of the age. It’s just there is a spirit, a ghost is the German expression for it, that seems to pervade the different ages of mankind and civilizations and societies. And a very important part of the zeitgeist of this latter part of the 20th century and the end of it is the women’s movement. And out of the women’s movement, And out of a general spirit of the age in which we live has come a restructuring of many social institutions, not the least of which is the Church. The battles have been fought through the Presbyterians, the Anglican Church, the Episcopal Church, and others. I think Pentecostal churches have had women preachers for a long time. But in the Pentecostal persuasion, the woman preacher is really not in the role of priest, as she might be in the Episcopal Communion. Rather, she is more in the role of prophetess, which, of course, is a time-honored concept going all the way back, you know, to the Old Testament. Deborah, who was a prophetess, there were prophetesses in the New Testament church. That, of course, is another subject. But in the Pentecostal church, it is in that tradition more than any other. But it is a more recent thing in the Episcopal tradition and others of the Presbyterians, Methodists, and others who have been struggling with the question, as it had been pressed upon them, as to the relationship of women in the ministry and the role of women in the church. In fact, there’s been, oh, it’s sort of joking, but with a significant meaning behind it in many cases, as people, when they began to speak of God, to make a point, used the pronoun she instead of he for God, to try to underline or emphasize the fact that down through generations, men have emphasized or mankind has emphasized that God is sort of male-like, And they reject that out of hand, that God is not male in the sense that we think of male or in the sense that I am male, that God is more, in their eyes, gender neutral. And out of this comes a gender neutral Bible, which has been published, which basically speaks of our heavenly parent. And I suppose, I don’t remember exactly how it’s worded, but in the Lord’s Prayer it must say something to the effect, our parent who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Now, they are hacking away at the roots of our religion. Basically, it is hacking away at the very foundation of this patriarchal religion, which we have received down through the generations, which was, I suppose, first observed by Adam and later on by his descendants, but primarily in a man named Abraham. I think it is hacking away at the very identity, in fact, of God And it’s changed people’s relationships so with God that their religion, in some cases, is hardly recognizable. Now, I think in some quarters this represents not so much a rejection of the patriarchal tradition of the church as it does a rejection of the abuse of this tradition and the abuse of women that has been actually, in some cases, based on it or founded on it, and I think done in a completely wrong way. The exact nature of God has long been a source of disagreement among theologians. I mean, people have killed one another over a question of the exact nature of God, whether God is a trinity, whether God is a two-unit divinity, whether God is one, the nature of the Holy Spirit, how the Holy Spirit proceeds, whether it proceeds from the Father and the Son, or whether it proceeds from the Father through the Son. As I said, nations have split, churches have divided, countries have gone to war, people have been murdered over questions, well, what is God really? We may never know in this life exactly what God is like because I have a very strong feeling that the precise nature of God is beyond our capacity. However, God has chosen to reveal himself to mankind. And he has chosen to reveal himself to mankind in certain terms, in certain ways, at certain times, in certain places. He has revealed himself in sociological terms that all of us understand. And so when Jesus comes along and tells man how man is to relate to God, he makes it very clear what that relationship is supposed to be. In Matthew 6… verse 9 he says after this manner therefore pray you our father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name so from the very beginning the very first words of a man’s contact with God the very first efforts on the part of any of us to reach out and touch God to reach out and know God to come into communication with God the way we are told to relate to God is in terms of a father. Now I think it’s also very important for us to understand something else about this. We are not talking in these terms strictly of gender differences. In other words, the identity of God is not so much a matter of gender as it is of role. And the role that is talked about is father. And father is much more than male. Father is a whole package of things. Father is a relationship. We have in families, and of course one of the ways in which we come to understand God, or are supposed to come to understand God, is in the relationships that exist within families. So that we have fathers, and we have mothers. And we have a relationship with our father, and we have a relationship with our mother. Those relationships are very different. I don’t think in most cases I would need to explain to people the exact nature of those differences, but the difference between the way a daughter will relate to her father and a daughter will relate to her mother are really quite remarkable in some cases. The way a son relates to his father and then in turn relates to his mother are quite remarkable. Some of these things are built into our genes. Some of them are built into the way human beings are made. Some of them are built into the necessary things that are done for children. because of the way that mothers are made, in that they nurse children, that they hold these children, that they bond with these children in very special ways as they are growing up. They take care of the children in ways the father oftentimes does not, and in some cases cannot. That a relationship builds between a mother and a child that a father can never achieve. There’s also a relationship often that develops between a father and a child that a mother never achieves. Somehow in all of this, somehow even in the breach of all of this, there are lessons to be understood. Because in many cases, I won’t suggest most, but in many cases, those roles are confused as we grow up. And not a few of us grow up without one parent or the other, sometimes through death, sometimes through divorce. The reasons can be many and varied. But a lot of women have had to take on the role of both father and mother, Perhaps fewer men have had to do so, but they also have had to take on both the role of father and of mother. And so we struggle through these, but yet through it all, in spite of it all, there is retained in our civilization among our people an awareness of what it means to be a father and what it means to be a mother. And for reasons that we will hopefully in time come to understand, God intends that we relate to him quite specifically as Father which art in heaven This is the way the relationship is supposed to start All this started a long long time ago The founder I don’t know if you would you know we often think about the founder of the Christian religion is is is Jesus Christ the founder of the Christian religion is God, but when we get down to the to earth the first person to enter into the covenant relationship with God which we share. And this is a strange thing. It may fall, if you’re new in our faith, this may come as a little bit of a strange thing to you. The first person to share in this covenant that we share was not Matthew or Mark or Luke or John. It was Abraham. Paul is at great pains to trace the covenant that we have as Christians, the covenant relationship we have with God as Christians, all the way back to Abraham. Now Abraham’s name originally was Abram. Abram in Hebrew meant high father. His name was changed to Abraham, which means father of a multitude. Even in this man who is the father of the faithful, this man who is the archetype not only of all of the faithful men throughout the Old Testament, but the archetype of the faithful Christians, His name was Father. He was, in his family, his religion actually was a pure patriarchal religion in the sense that it was a family religion. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it or not, but when you go back and you look at the religion of Abraham, Abraham’s religion was personal and it was family. Abraham, as far as we know, was not a member of any church. Abraham was not a part of a community of people who worship God and therefore part of a church. The Bible looks at Israel and calls them actually the church that was in the wilderness. They are the Old Testament church or the Old Testament assembly. Abraham was not a part of any assembly of any sort except for the assembly of his own family of which Abraham was the head. It is interesting to think that the original model of faith was not church, was not nation. In fact, the period of a theocracy, that is, of a nation ruled by God, is a relatively short part of the history of God’s relationship with man. We tend to look at That period of time when God ruled over Israel personally or Israel was a theocracy and the government was church-state all mingled together as being, you know, let’s say a golden age of God’s relationship with man, it was nothing of the kind. For the truth is that it was God’s intent even with Israel that he relate to people individually and personally. The time of the judges is often looked at by many people as being a chaotic time, a confused time, and that it was confused because During the time of Judges, every man did what was right in his own eyes. And this was bad. There were all kinds of bad things that happened during the period of the Judges. What they forget is that when Israel came out of Egypt, God’s philosophy, when he brought them into the land and divided the land to them by lot and separated it out, was that every man would live under his own vine and under his own fig tree, that every man would have his own family, and that every man would be very, very lightly governed. It was never his intent to have a king. It was never God’s intent, really, to have a theocracy as such. Israel needed a certain amount of discipline when they were all together marching to the wilderness. But when they got to the land, it was God’s will that they scatter across the land. And his philosophy was he is governed best who is governed least. And so the religion, even in the earliest time of the settlement of Palestine, was personal religion. It was, in the purest sense, patriarchal. If you were a member of a family, your dad, your father, was the head of your church, if you want to call it that. For when the family assembled together to worship God, that was the unit of worship. Now, that doesn’t mean as we come down to the 20th century that the church is somehow wrong in pulling individuals together and combine them into a church because it’s obvious that Jesus intended that to take place. But he did not intend for the church to smother us as individuals. It was the purpose of the church to pull us together as individuals and to foster our individual and our personal relationship with God so that we have an Abrahamic relationship with God, personal, family and that when we come together as a church for fellowship for sharing for mutual support and for love this is not because the church is more important or the relationship with the church is more important than our relationship with God or even that our relationship with God depends upon the church for it does not it did not from the very beginning of time and it does not now You can have a relationship with God apart from the church. The problem is that you can have a better relationship with God with the church if the church exists to foster that personal and individual relationship with God. I won’t go into that in any greater detail. I spoke many years ago. I gave a sermon entitled The Primacy of the Individual. If you haven’t heard it, I recommend it to you because it goes into that in some great detail. Later, God would bring Israel out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses. And when the time came to construct a government, God chose 70 elders. He said, somebody asked me the question, well, where in the Bible does it say that all these elders were men? Well, it’s in the book of Numbers. I didn’t write down the reference. I think it’s Numbers 11, where it says specifically, I want you to go and choose out among the men of Israel 70 elders to serve in this particular capacity. And so 70 men were selected. They were elders. They were, in a sense, patriarchs. In their areas, they were the elders, they were the fathers, they were the father figures, if you were, over families, clans, and what have you. And because of their age and because of their roles as fathers, they were positioned to serve as elders in ancient Israel. Seventy of them were selected. When the priesthood was established, the priesthood were all men. Now, they were not only all men, they were all Levites. They were not only all Levites. They were all sons of Aaron. In other words, you stop in some cases and you think, well, why this discrimination? Now, the idea that all this involves some sort of discrimination against women may not be an entirely new idea, but it has, as it is currently proclaimed by people, it has its roots in the modern zeitgeist, the spirit of the age and the way things are going nowadays. The fact of the matter is, though, that all those men, all those priests were men The fact that, let’s say, women were excluded from the priesthood was not a great deal more significant than the fact that all Jews were excluded from the priesthood. The fact of the matter, no Jew could serve in that priesthood. No Manassite could serve in it. No Ephraimite could serve in it. And in fact, the Kohathites, I think it was, the sons of Asaph, quite a few of these people who were Levites were barred from the priesthood Only those who were physical descendants, sons of Aaron, could serve in the priesthood. And as I said, they were all men. Why do you suppose that was? There was a ceremony once a year, which I think might illustrate what I’m driving at. Once a year, in the autumn, we are approaching that day right now. It comes down in September this year. It’s a day called the Day of Atonement. On the Day of Atonement, the people were supposed to select two kids of the goats. And they would bring these two kids of the goats up to the temple, the tabernacle as it was originally, and the priest would cast lots upon the heads of these two goats and select one for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat or for the azazel, that is the goat of departure. Now we’ll discuss later in the year, on the day itself, what all of this ceremony means and what all the significance of it is. But in this ceremony, the priest will select one of these goats to serve as a goat for the Lord. He will then kill this goat The priest will then take some of the blood from the goat, and along with some incense, and he will go back to the Holy of Holies, first of all sprinkling it all over the place to purify the altar and purify the holy place and so forth. Then he will go back and he will put the burning incense inside the veil to create a cloud of smoke. Because when he goes in there, he cannot look upon the ark. He creates the cloud of smoke and then he goes into the Holy of Holies, the ark which is symbolic of the presence of God. Here is a priest. going through a curtain into the presence of God, presenting and sprinkling blood there to make an atonement for the people, then coming back out of that place and returning out to the people to finish the remainder of this sacrifice and what was to be done that day. Now, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to find the image of Jesus Christ, our high priest, carrying his own sacrificial blood, as it were, through the veil to the throne of God, making an atonement for us and turning around and coming back out of there as Christ returning to the earth. In other words, the priest represents Christ. Christ is the Son of God. Now, I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but he is the Son of God, not the daughter of God. The relationship of the high priest who symbolized Jesus Christ symbolized one who was going to come as a sacrifice for our sins, a lamb of the first year, a male lamb without blemish, that was to follow through with all of this. Now, the maleness, which keeps intruding itself into this thing, is one of the things that troubles people. And out of this, some men have developed a theology of male supremacy, that men are somehow better than women. Out of it, some men have used it as an excuse to abuse women. to dominate women. So many of these things, and again, today I will not have the time to go into all the applications of it, but these things to me represent abuses. Nevertheless, we still keep running into this maleness, and I use that for want of a better term, but it is the term we keep running to in the Bible, even to the selection of the Lamb, which was to be a male of the first year. To represent the son, not the daughter, of God. Now what is all this stuff about? And why should it be so? Why is it this way and not some other way? Because the truth is it could easily be another way. It could just as easily have been done by God in a totally different way. If you’ll turn back to the first chapter of Hebrews, I think maybe we can begin to underline a little bit of what we’re talking about. I doubt if I will answer all the questions you may have. In fact, I have been told before, and I barely believe it’s true, that my sermons often raise more questions than they answer. So be it. That in itself, raising of questions, is a very useful purpose. In Hebrews, if I can make my way there without too much confusion, the very first chapter, there are some insights on this subject. Beginning in verse 1, God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by a Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. Now, this expression, this description of Jesus as being the express image of God is fascinating all by itself. All through Jesus’ ministry, you have these little references. For example, they came to Jesus and they said, Lord, show us the Father. And Jesus looked at him and said, Have I been so long with you and you haven’t seen me? He who has seen me has seen the Father. Now, if we look at this in its simplest possible terms, we have encountered all through the Old Testament this, if you will, male dominance. Rather than male dominance, I prefer a patriarchal religion. a religion that in all of its symbolizing or symbolism still focuses around toward the Son of God and does so even with a lamb that is male. What is all this about? And then here we come to Jesus, who is male, who is a son of God. But you see, it seems that he has to be the son of God rather than the daughter of God to be the express image of God. Why? What does that tell us? Well, when we combine it with the fact that Jesus said, now when you pray, pray, our Father who art in heaven, that it is obvious to me that from the beginning to the end of this, it is God’s intent that we think of him in terms of a father, with all that that entails, including the distinctions that exist between father and mother and apparently those distinctions themselves are a part of the message and a part of what God wants us to understand Jesus came to reveal the Father now you may not you know it’s it’s funny it’s hard for us sometimes to put ourselves in a position of someone in the first century listening to Jesus we already know so much we already have so much in our tradition and We already have so many ideas that sometimes it’s hard to realize how startling and how stark, how dominant an idea is when it finally does begin to be presented. We have, I think, an image of Jesus Christ as he comes and he does his ministry and he carries out the work that he does, that Jesus himself is the center of everything. Jesus does a healing. Everybody looks at Jesus. Jesus gets up and gives a sermon everybody listens to Jesus that Jesus words Jesus message Jesus thing all of it this is Jesus sacrifice we hear Jesus Jesus Jesus and this is all well and good did you realize though that that is not what Jesus talked about you listen to Jesus messages and all of his messages are father centered they are not self centered. Again and again he will say, look, I’m not here to bear witness of myself. If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. He does, he comes to let us know that I have come to reveal the Father, to bear witness of the Father, to show you the Father, so you can understand the Father, to introduce you to the Father, to reveal the Father, to make the Father known to you. Again and again and again. Now in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew the fifth chapter, If you just picked up your New Testament and paged through it, the very first time that Jesus ever refers to God as Father is found in this fifth chapter. I’m going to begin reading it in verse 13. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it gives light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they can see your good works and glorify Jehovah which is in heaven. Now, I didn’t read it correctly, deliberately, because I wanted to underline, if you were following me, a distinction. Jesus, had he come along and said… let all men see your good works so that they may see what you have done and glorify Jehovah in heaven. To glorify God in heaven, he would have said one thing. But he didn’t say that. He said something different. He said that men will see your good works and will glorify your Father who is in heaven. Now the distinction is important. Because what he is setting out to say to us, and this is only the beginning, only the first time, only the initiation of the idea, is to begin to implant on the minds of all of his listeners that he came from his father. Not just from a god, but from his father. That he came to reveal to us his father as our father. that we were going to have the right to relate to the Father, that we could go and call him our Father, that I could actually get on my knees and lift up my eyes and my voice and my hands to heaven and say, My Father, hear what I have to say. And that the relationship between me and God can be not merely personal, which it is, but more closer family. My Father. My Father. Now, when you look at it this way, God is not merely a distant figure who cares little for what goes on down here in the world. There’s an image of God, I think, of some people that as it’s been characterized, he goes way off someplace and that he has little interest in the things that are happening here. Or if he does, he watches it sort of like you and I might watch Twin Peaks or Dynasty or some other television series because it’s entertaining and there’s lots of sex and violence and all this kind of thing to keep anybody busy watching it all the time. Not at all. That the relationship and the interest is one of a father to a child. What does a father do when his child is hurt? What does a father do when a child running along on the beach somewhere stomps his foot down on the bottom of a Coke bottle and puts a deep slice in the bottom of his foot and starts bleeding? What does a father do? Is he concerned? Does he care? Does he sit up in the pavilion up here somewhere and say, tough luck, kid. Why don’t you put a handkerchief around that and go see somebody over here and maybe they’ll take you to the doctor. You know, a father is going to feel the pain A father is going to go cold all over. A father may even find himself feeling a little faint. A father is going to take immediate steps to stop the bleeding. A father is going to load his child in the car. A father is going to take him to the clinic. And a father is going to be there when all the stitches are put in. Because a father’s relationship with his son is personal and intimate. The idea, folks, is that Jesus is presenting to us a God who is not just a God. He is our God. And herein comes another interesting little sidelight on this concept, because Paul will later say that we are able to approach God and say, Abba, Father. And Jesus on one occasion used the expression, Abba, Father. We are told that this is a familiar expression for Father. Some have even suggested that it’s not at all unlike our Daddy or our Papa as an expression. I think, my impression of it is that it’s not quite at that level of familiarity of our own, that level of informality, but that it is different from the distant or the formal father, that it is the intimate father. So that we are able to go to God intimately as our father, not impersonally as our father and pray. Now, this is not always the easiest thing to keep in the front of our minds because our fear of God has been taught by the precept of men and because of our own attitudes and confusions about these things that a lot of times when we get on our knees and we say, Our Father, hear our prayer, and we go on down through it, we are still thinking in terms of a God, of Jehovah, of a distant God, of a God whom we hope kind of cares about us, but that we’re not quite sure, and that we reach out hoping that he will do something about what we’re asking about, but we’re not quite sure. As opposed to before any other words come out of your mouth, you say, Father, and you pause for a moment to consider what that really means, to consider what the relationship is. Now, Jesus will. as he develops his gospel and begins to preach more and more to these people, we’ll develop the themes a little later in the same chapter in verse 45. Actually, beginning in verse 44, he says, I say to you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to the people that hate you. Pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. Why should you do all these things? That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward do you have? Don’t the publicans do the same thing? If you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others? Do not even publicans so? Be you therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Now, a lot of people spend a lot of time worrying about that being perfect, like God is perfect, and how can that ever be? But the message in this context is one, if you stop and think about it for a moment, I don’t have children, and so you may be able to tell me things about this that I can’t tell you. But I’m under the impression from watching you and listening to you talk and seeing your children the way they respond to you that children can sometimes be ungrateful little wretches. that children often do not really understand what you do for them. Am I right? That a lot of the sacrifices that you make for them go over their heads. A lot of the sacrifices you make for them are unappreciated, unknown, sometimes not even beginning to be grasped. And I think it would be fair to say that even though your children love you, that a lot of you probably feel that your children do not love you as much as you love them. And I think that really should be what we expect. You have more reason, in a way, to love your children than they do to love you. Oddly enough, gratitude is not that great a foundation for love. The fact that people do things for us and we appreciate it, you know, that’s not that great a foundation for love. But you see, you knew these children before they knew you. And I use the word knew in a sense of knowing, understanding, and grasping who you are and what you stand for. You knew your children before they were born. You knew your children from the moment they were born. You held this child in your arms and nursed it at your breast. This child was not even aware of what was happening. You cleaned this child when it was dirty. You gave it its bath. Let it lie on your belly. You know, you bounced it around on your knee, and the child enjoyed it as excitement and fun and all the things that you did together. But you see, children, if I understand what I see correctly, especially the little bitty children, are totally selfish creatures because they really haven’t got it through their heads yet or are able to even begin to understand what unselfishness means. And so when Jesus comes around here and says to us, I want you to have this attitude toward people who don’t love you, in order that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, he is saying essentially that one of the ways, one of the big things of the perfection of God is that he is capable of loving children who don’t love him back in the same way at all. That your love for God cannot touch his love for you. That you are no more capable of experiencing the love for him that he has for you. then your one-month-old child is capable of loving you like you love it. The difference is a great gulf that is built into the nature of things. And so God, as a father, has to love those who do not love him in return, or do not love him that much in return, or who are just simply not capable of loving him in return at the same level or in the same way that he loves them. Now, time won’t permit me to read all of it today, but I’d like for you to take your own time and study the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. I’ll read some of it to you. To notice the incredible emphasis that begins to be developed about the Father, who he is, and what he is. He says in chapter 6, verse 1, Take heed that you don’t do your alms before men, to be seen of them. If you do this, you have no reward of your Father, which is in heaven. Therefore, when you do your alms, don’t sound the trumpet before you like the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets, that they have glory of men, or they have their reward. When you do your alms, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand does. So your alms are in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly. And when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites. They love to pray, standing in the synagogues, the corners of the streets, to be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when you pray, enter into your closet. And when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret shall reward you openly. And it goes on and on in time and again throughout these six and seven chapters. The Father this, the Father that. Jesus came to reveal, to teach us, and help us to understand the Father. And the way, if we’re going to know him, If we’re going to understand him, if we are going to relate to him, we must understand him, know him, and relate to him as father. If you attempt anything else, to whatever degree you attempt any other relationship, you have lost contact with who God is, what he stands for, and the kind of relationship you are supposed to have with him. And you cannot know him unless you know him as he chooses to be known. When the time came to establish the leadership of the New Testament church, Jesus, although he flew in the face of conventions of the time about women, he was a champion for women, he did not put women down. In spite of all that, when the time came to establish the leadership of the church, he chose twelve. whom he named apostles to provide that leadership for the church and to bear witness of him after his resurrection, all of these 12 were men. Now, you could wish it were otherwise. You could argue that it were otherwise. But it is a fact that we are left with that we have to deal with that it was that they were men, that the choice was deliberate, because otherwise you are left to say, well, Jesus didn’t know any better than his society. or Jesus was prejudiced, or that Jesus was so weak that he would give in to the prejudice of society and not do what was right because he was afraid of offending somebody. And anyone who has read the four gospel accounts knows that there is no way that Jesus would have made a decision like this simply to avoid offending a bunch of Jewish males whom he had stomped on, infuriated, and used every opportunity to fly in the face of what they believed that he could possibly find. And they wanted to kill him anyway. He might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb, as the saying goes. There’s no way. Therefore, you can only conclude that the selection of 12 men, with no women included, was significant. You may want to disagree about what it was, what the significance was, but that it was significant can’t be avoided. Then we have to also consider, then, that it may have been a part of the message. Later, Paul will restrict the preaching ministry of the church to men. And we turn back to 2 Timothy, and there’s a connection here that sometimes I think is overlooked in 2 Timothy, because the message, this actually leads into and is a part of the qualifications for the ministry. In 2 Timothy, I’m sorry, 1 Timothy chapter 2, 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 8. I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. In like manner also that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly array, but which becomes women professing godliness with good works. Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed in Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing if they continue in the faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. Now, I’m not going to go into that. The arguments about that and the theological arguments about that could fill up the rest of the afternoon. The point simply is that Paul makes a statement here, I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man. Now, the expression to teach obviously also includes to teach the man because later on, He makes it very clear that the older women should teach the younger women and that obviously there’s nothing wrong with women teaching children. Paul seems to take no position in that regard at all. But we are here left with what in our world, in our time, in our circumstance seems like a very male chauvinistic statement on Paul’s part. I just don’t permit women to teach nor to usurp authority over the man. Now we have to come back to the same question. Why? Was Paul discriminating against women in making that statement Was Paul prejudiced against women? Was he simply a part of that society and didn’t know any better? Giving in to pressures from society. Once again, you’re left with a very deep problem with this because if you decide that it was discrimination, if you decide that it was prejudice on Paul’s part, then you have to almost throw his epistles out as far as any religious authority. You can read them like you might read any other historical document for interest about what was done at the time. But to look at them as a man who was with Christ, taught by Christ, learned from Christ, led the New Testament church, established much of the theology upon which we base our theology today, you’ve got to throw it all out if Paul is simply responding to prejudice or to society. And once again, you are left with the possibility also, well, here’s a man who was simply caving in to the prejudices of the people around him. But you see, once again, you’re dealing with a man who didn’t care a fig for the prejudices of people around him. Paul liked nothing better than a good argument. Paul liked nothing better than getting involved in a debate. And if Paul thought he was right about something, he would fight you on it right down to the last two legs. He was not the kind of a man to give in. What did he mean by it all then? Listen as he continues on this, because he doesn’t stop here. In chapter 3 he said, now this is a true saying. See, this follows on the heels of what comes before. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desires a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife. And that’s sort of gender specific, isn’t it? We’re not given that the person can only have one spouse or a wife, maybe a wife can only have one husband. He has to be the husband of one wife. That is pretty clear. He has to be vigilant, sober, good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre, but patient, not a brawler, not covetous. One that rules well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. Now this is really interesting as he goes on to develop his thought. Think about what he’s saying here. He has to rule his own house, specifically his children, well with all gravity, because if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? In other words, He has to be able to carry out effectively the role of a father. If he can’t carry out the role of a father, he is not competent to provide leadership for the church. Therefore, while we do not call a bishop father, for Jesus said, call no man your father, the role of a bishop in a church is analogous to compares to or is a type of a father in a family, that he is in a similar position, although he is not a priest, he is a similar position to the priest of the Old Testament who actually stood in the place of, spoke for, addressed people, called people to the father. And the thing about this that I think we have to kind of come down to is that in all of these things that are being done here, that the father image, the father relationship, the father role, seems to be not merely a matter of gender selection, not merely a matter of male dominance, not merely a matter of one being stronger, one being weaker, one being higher, one being lower, one being better, one being inferior. That’s not what it is at all. That the point is, it is to keep us mindful of the relationship with God. It is a part of the message. So that we don’t lose track of who God is. What he is like. How we are to relate to him. There are more ways for people to become confused about God than one can ever imagine. In 1 Corinthians, Paul will make another statement of the same sort, where he says, let the women learn in silence. You know, let them keep silent in the churches. I don’t want them to speak. If they’re going to ask questions, let them ask their husbands at home. Now, we could argue again about where all that came from and what it all meant. But before he said that in 1 Corinthians 14, back in 1 Corinthians 11, he draws out something else for us to understand. Now, a lot of this really does have to do with the sociology of the day, with the customs of the time, the way people were, the way people did things. And so I’m not going to enter into all the questions about hair and hair length and all of that type of thing because I don’t think that’s not what is really important about this passage of Scripture. He said in chapter 11, verse 1, Be you followers of me as I am of Christ. Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and you keep the ordinances as I delivered them to you. But I would have you to know that the head of every man is Christ, The head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. Every woman that prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, because it is even one as if she were shaven. The context seems to tell us that what he is talking about when he talks about a woman’s head being covered is not a hat, but is her hair. For if a woman be not covered or veiled, let her be shorn. For it’s a shame to a woman be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. For a man ought not to cover his head, for as much as he is the image and glory of God, the woman is the glory of the man. He goes on with some additional things about his theology and his ideas about the origins of it, but he says what I think is very important here. In Hebrews we read that Jesus Christ is the express image, the stamped icon, the Greek word is, of God. Here we are told that the man is the icon, that is the stamped image again, of God. There is something in this. I am not capable of defining it for you to the end of its meaning. But there is something intentional in the relationship that exists in the gender identities that exist, that led God in the Old Testament to say that a woman should not wear that which pertains to a man. Then when we come all the way down to Paul, Paul makes the distinction which until our society made until recently, that women should have long hair and men should not have long hair, and it is a matter of gender distinction. And it has to do with identity, with who we are, with how we relate to one another, and it’s all part of the package of how we relate To God. How does it work? My, I would be at a loss to tell you, except that we depend so much on our visual imagery. We depend so much on our human relationships. And you know, you think, well, all things are easy to God. Yeah, I suppose so, except communicating with man. For God to communicate with man is not an easy thing. Because man doesn’t understand at his level. Man is not able to grasp the things of God at his level. So that God has given us all kinds of images. He gave us the holy days. He gave us the Sabbath day. He gave us the priesthood and the temple who sacrificed lambs and animals, who went up and sprinkled blood here and sprinkled blood there and went here and went there and did this. All this ceremony, every bit of it had meaning and all of it was played out in order to reveal to man the nature of God, the plan of God, the identity of God, what God is doing, what God is not doing. Even down to the Sabbath day, which is to keep us in mindful of who God is and who he is not. All the way down to the fact that God is our father, not our mother. And it’s a distinction which is important, which God seems determined to maintain. From Abraham to Israel to the church, the identity of God as father has been a part of his message. The priest was a type of Christ, Christ was a type of the father, and the father of the family, once again, a type of God. Ephesians, the fifth chapter, which is one of those that’s often gone to and talked about in relation to marriage, has a message buried in it that is deeper, I think, than many people have ever understood. Beginning in the 22nd verse, it says, Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife. I’m afraid a lot of men would like to stop reading that chapter right there The whole idea, the man’s the head of the household, the woman’s supposed to do as she’s told and shut up and do as she’s told and go and fetch and carry. And this type of thinking has been used to dominate women from time immemorial, and that is not even what it’s about. It’s not even close. He says that husbands is the head of the wife, just like Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. A husband is the head of the wife in the sense that he is her savior. He is her protector. He should protect her life with his own. He should protect the life of his children with his own. Being the head of something has to do not so much with rule as with responsibility. And I wrote into my marriage ceremony the importance of a man protecting, caring for, looking after his wife because it is so important as a part of his responsibilities. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. The relationship is the relationship, he said, between Christ and the church. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. Jesus Christ suffered for the church. Jesus Christ endured humiliation. He endured a whipping and a scourging. He endured a crown of thorns. He endured being spit on. He gave his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. And he finally endured a crucifixion and a hot blazing sun. And he finally endured a sword being put into his side and shedding his life’s blood for his woman. That’s the kind of responsibility that Paul here is laying upon the Father. the head of the house, the father of the children, those who would provide leadership in the church. All of that responsibility is there. He said he did that, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word that he might present it to himself. A glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives like their own bodies. He that loves his wife loves himself No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it like the Lord, the church. To nourish and to cherish the wife. This seems to be the strongest part of the admonition to the husband rather than be in charge, doesn’t it? For we are members of his body and of his flesh and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and should be joined to his wife and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery. But I’m talking about Christ and the church. Do you realize that what he is saying is, this whole passage is not really about marriage at all? This whole passage is about Christ and the church. And only about the family, in that the family is an image of the relationship between Christ and the church. There is this idea sort of, well, that God should have both feminine and masculine characteristics. That God should be both female and masculine. I asked the question, I said, well, what do we mean when we talk about feminine characteristics? Well, sensitivity and an emotional response. And I said, wait a minute. Aren’t fathers supposed to have sensitivity? Aren’t fathers supposed to have an emotional response to their children? This is a hoax. I mean, God has these characteristics. They’re not limited to women. Men are supposed to feel. Men can be sensitive. And they have sensitivity sometimes that may not be appreciated. We fathers are expected to provide these things not because they are feminine characteristics, but because they are the right characteristics of a father who loves and who cares. Well, then where does the woman come into the picture? The woman comes into the picture with the church. Because in the imagery of the whole thing of the family, The father is in the position of Christ and the mother is in the position of the church. And the work is done by the father and the mother to take care of the children and to bring them finally into the family of God. And so the role is carried out. Why does God not have women preaching in church? The only thing I can see after all my studying is that it is a part of the message. It’s a part of his identity. It’s an extension of the family. It’s the image of the family. And it is because, for better or for worse, when God established a patriarchal religion, he wanted the symbolism and the symbol of him to be a father, who of necessity must be a man. And through all of this, the message seems to be that all of this argument about dominant submission needs to go into a cocked hat. The argument is about who sacrifices the most, who gives the most, who has the greater responsibility not to rule, but to give, to care, and to nurture. You know, sometimes in that area it seems to me very much like a dead heat. But through it all, the one thing we must never lose is that when we get on our knees and we lift up our face to the heavens ready to pray, that we begin that prayer by saying, Our Father… which art in heaven. And no one understands precisely what that means.
