The First Baptist Church of Bennington, Vermont

Note: As I wrote this week's sermon, I added some footnotes about my sources consulted. Readers will find a number of online resources to look at for further reflection.  JHH

As I read this week’s Gospel lesson and reviewed the relevant commentaries that help me “hear” the text with better understanding, I noticed that I was mistaken in my first read-through the text. Jesus speaks of “little ones”, and I imagined Jesus surrounded by children who are at his feet, listening to his words. That scene was in my imagination, until I read the commentaries that offered a different understanding of “little ones”. [1] In Matthew’s gospel, the phrase “little ones” is used not exclusively to speak of children. Rather, it is Matthew’s term for the early Christians themselves, a term that recognized that first century Christianity was vulnerable and in need. [2] The “little ones” were the followers of Jesus, called to go forth and hopefully received with good grace. Even the mere gesture of kindness (a cup of cold water) by someone encountered along the way was a sign that you were welcomed and Jesus was welcomed as well.

With our 21^st century ears, we forget that religions can be vulnerable, as we worship freely in a house of worship in a religious tradition long established and well rooted in this country. We are adherents of Christianity, part of the 78 percent of Americans who at least tell the recently completed Pew Forum study on American religious preferences [3] that they identify as “Christian” even if our pews nationwide seem emptier than we would prefer. Certainly, we are not vulnerable in the same way as the first century Christians, the original recipients of Matthew’s gospel. Yet here is this reminder to share the faith, be mindful that there is danger, and pray that you will be received well by others along the way, so what do we make of it as U.S. Christians and as Baptists, one of the many variants who nonetheless are counted together as the largest Protestant movement in this country? [4]

Once while in Montpelier, Vermont, I was walking back to the little back street where I parked, and I ran into two young fellows who asked me for directions to the capital area. They wore identical clothing: white shirts, black slacks, and black ties. A little name badge noted their names and their organization: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a.k.a. “Mormons”. They walked up and down the streets knocking on doors. Then, they were a bit embarrassed to note that they were turned around. I gave them directions and introduced myself as a Baptist minister. We talked for a few minutes, and as we parted ways, the Mormons noted (with gratitude) that I was surprisingly civil toward them. Apparently, some other folks who identified themselves as Christians when answering the door gave them few words of welcome. Then to run into a pastor (a Baptist even!) and get a word of hello meant something after a difficult afternoon on a cold winter’s day.

This contemporary story helps us get into the Matthean teaching before us. In the time of the New Testament, it was difficult for followers of Jesus to move about and proclaim their faith with freedom or acceptance. And it was a tough calling to be the apostles, those sent out in Jesus’ name. While the Mormon missionaries might have gotten an off-putting word or a slammed door in their faces in today’s America, [5] the early Christian movements of the first century Roman world dealt with frightening persecutions from religious and imperial powers alike.

In this country, we affirm the right of Mormons, Baptists, and all other religions to speak of their faith freely. We are a country that affirms freedom “for” religion without legally or constitutionally making one religion “the” religion of the state. For first century Christians, the official religion was the one endorsed by the state, and it most certainly was not Judaism or this new movement called Christianity. To go out in Jesus’ name was to endure rejection, persecution, and was a subversive act.

In the early stories of Christianity as told by the New Testament and other first century sources, we learn of the challenge of a faith facing hostility. Jesus speaks of the welcome that one should expect: to be received well and as if Jesus himself is being received. This courtesy is expected of others for Christians, so it informed my own interaction with the two Mormon missionaries. While I may not agree with the Mormons or their teachings, one religion extending respect and hospitality to another religion seems quite consistent with the Bible. It is also a helpful and corrective word when reviewing the history of Christianity, which is filled with stories of Christians persecuted and Christians as persecutors. We should remember that we may have our faith that we deem well, true, and of great meaning and hope for the world, but we should not share or spread our faith by dominating or belittling others.

As I think about this latter point, let me share some childhood memories back in rural Kansas. It was common for folks to react negatively to other religions. The Protestants tended not to associate with the Catholics. The “steeple church” Christians looked a bit askance at the Pentecostals downtown in their storefront church. And, at a county wide ecumenical hymn sing (well, just the Protestants for the most part), I remember a preacher talking about how to greet Jehovah’s Witnesses when they came to your door. He reached under the pulpit and pulled out a rifle.

While you gasped a bit, the audience laughed a bit. His point in bringing the rifle was in his opinion “humor”, not meaning to say that this was “the way” to greet “J.W’s”, as they were called. Nonetheless, the image still haunts me a bit as I read of the real world violence of Christians being persecuted by others, and yes, Christians persecuting others. We have to be careful in our actions as well as our attitudes and speech about other religions, so that even in what we might feel is jest, there is not another message being sent.

Over the past few months, the Bennington Interfaith Council has been in a process of reexamining its identity and mission. One of the results of this work has been a subcommittee’s work in crafting a mission statement that reads as follows:

The mission of the Greater Bennington Area Interfaith Council is to give witness to the unity our faith communities share, based in justice, peace, and compassion; and to celebrate the diversity of our traditions. Together we seek to maximize and coordinate the ways we care for and minister to one another, our congregations, and the greater Bennington community.

While we do not agree on all matters, we believe and practice different paths of faith, something good happened in Bennington in the last generation. A group of religious communities opted to work on meeting common ground needs. Together, we provide aid to those in need through the Food & Fuel Fund to tune to $50,000+ per year. And, again, even though we have different takes on divine matters, we create some wonderful opportunities for building a stronger community and providing a word of hope to the neighbor, the stranger, and the vulnerable in need. Further, I would trust, it sends a message to one another about the authenticity of the faiths that make up our religious landscape around here. I would much rather be known as a Baptist who cooperates! (We seem to be a rare breed!)

In August 2008, First Baptist will host a public event, featuring a rabbi and a Muslim who are stand-up comics. [6] Locals will know Rabbi Bob Alper from his long-time residency in Bennington County, and you will be delighted to meet Azhar Usman, a young Muslim comic, who is likewise a gifted performer. Both of them will be here in the sanctuary performing their touring show “Laugh in Peace”. I think it is a good opportunity to help our community see not only interfaith cooperation but also a spirit of mutual respect while also poking a bit of fun at some of the fears, stereotypes, and lamentable attitudes that our society harbors.

As we consider taking up the call to be Jesus’ followers, his apostles who go forth sharing his good news, we have much to celebrate as well as much to remember. We celebrate the faith that we are committed to sharing with the world while being mindful that it is a challenge to share the faith when religious toleration is low as well as when we ourselves are in majority or minority situations.

In the end, I believe we are being quite faithful to our Christian identity. I believe that the gospel communicates more profoundly through our willingness to be in the midst of the world. Christ calls us to go out to the whole world. We are called likewise receive one another in a spirit of welcome, hospitality, and humility. We proclaim the Christian faith while also assuring that all persons are free to practice their faith, whether in a country where religious freedom is challenged or in that moment’s encounter just down the street.

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[1] For this sermon, I consulted the following commentaries: M. Eugene Boring, “Matthew”, New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1995); Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000); Daniel J. Harrington, Matthew, Sacra Pagina series (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991); and Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007).

[2] Matthew 10’s instructions to the apostles, a.k.a. the disciples sent forth, reflect the tension of the early Christians as a new movement as well as the thought that the original audience of Matthew’s gospel being followers of Jesus experiencing tension with the Jewish leaders and synagogues. A sensitive interpretation of these sort of texts requires that we do not confuse first century inter (intra?) religious strife with giving warrant to continued tension between modern day Christianity and Judaism. Carter’s commentary is quite helpful as is the work of Ronald J. Allen and Clark M. Williamson, Preaching the Gospels without Blaming the Jews: A Lectionary Commentary (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2004).

[3] “The U.S. Religious Landscape”, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life”, 2008. Accessible online via: http://religions.pewforum.org. For insightful commentary, see the essay “Crunching the Numbers” written by James P. Wind, President of the Alban Institute, accessible online via: http://alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=5818.

[4] In a May 2008 essay, J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, reflects on the concerns that Baptists in the United States have (or ought to have!) for domestic and global challenges to religious freedom. He shares some of the questions encountered in a recent dialogue with Argentinean Baptists, who are less than one percent of their nation’s populace, a different context than the U.S. where Walker notes Baptists are in “the overwhelming majority and dominate the culture”. See his “Religious Liberty is an International Issue” via the BJC website, accessible online: http://www.bjconline.org/news/news/052108%20_Reflections.htm.

[5] By coincidence, as this sermon was being readied for preaching, the local newspaper’s weekend featured an article about Mormon missionaries making the rounds in Bennington, Vermont. See Mark E. Rondeau’s “Men on a Mission: Far from Utah, Men Bring Their Faith Home to Vermont” (published on Saturday, June 28, 2008). Accessible online: http://www.benningtonbanner.com/local/ci_9727294.

[6] Rabbi Alper and Mr. Azhar Usman are receiving great reviews. See the stream video online the CBC Sunday website: http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/2007/09/091607_4.html. Quite recently, the New York Times reviewed the show in their May 31, 2008, edition. See the article by Marek Fuchs, “Jesters of Different Faiths Use Laughs to Bridge the Divide” online via http://www.nytimes.com.

Bitterness.

I really think he felt bitter each holiday when there would be a time in the worship service where guests would be welcomed. A grandmother who stood up with an entire long pew filled with children and grandchildren and go through the litany of the assembled kids, grandkids, and itty-bitty great-grandchildren must have wore down on him.

He had a son who was married, but no grandchildren. They came to visit, but then so did everyone else’s families with all those grandchildren in tow.

Then one year, as it came time in the service, there was a wail from his pew, not from a frustrated old man, but from his newborn grandchild making a fuss.

He stood up at the time when guests would be recognized and welcomed, took the grandchild in his arms, and did not settle for just saying a word from the pew. He walked up to the front of the sanctuary, and asked the minister to step aside. In addition, standing in the pulpit, he held that small child up and said, “This is the world’s greatest grandchild. And he’s mine.”

Now, we might smile a bit at the story and enjoy the warmth of how the story ended. But did you catch onto the part of the story about the struggle, the frustration, the sense of bitterness? We enjoy a story with a good ending, but we sometimes rush right past the reality that not everything in life ties up in a neat or tidy manner. Some of us laugh a bit with the joy of a grandfather finally holding that grandchild, but not everyone feels the joy. Instead, some of us quietly grieve, hearing in the midst of a story about a long-awaited grandchild not a “happy ending” but the loose ends and unraveled threads of life that may not have a thing to do with grandfathers and grandchildren but nonetheless connect with “our story” in ways that we’d much rather not talk about.

I approach this morning’s two readings from Genesis with the same awareness that on one hand, there are some good things that come from the story of Hagar and her son Ishmael alongside some very painful twists and turns to their part in the larger Abrahamic narratives of Genesis. We have tended to focus our telling of the story of Abraham in broad brushstrokes: his call to follow God’s call to a far-off land, the promise of the many, many generations, the delight of Isaac’s birth to his elderly parents. Faithfulness, covenant, and God’s promises are all the stuff of what we tended to learn in Sunday school (if we grew up in the church), or what we would hear if we read the lectionary’s selections for the past few Sundays. Unfortunately, the edited “highlights” of the stories of Abraham are not the “rest of the story” that is there in Genesis. Indeed, the narratives are quite complex, as we discover from hearing the story of Hagar, an Egyptian-born slave.

The first eleven chapters tells us stories of origins: how the world came to be, how the first humans began in the beauty of Eden and the hubris that happened soon thereafter, the stories of a great flood, the story of Babel. But then, as the story of Abraham is about to commence, and you think that we’re going to see Genesis really start moving along on a merry trip through the stories of patriarchs and the matriarchs who loved them, we read a rather sobering note. From the time of Babel to Abraham, the begats and the begots trace the generations down to Abraham, but then Genesis 11:30 reads: But Sarai was barren; she had no child.

Genesis comes to a bit of a halt there. And even though we get to the promises of God that Abraham will become a great nation, father of many generations, the narrative of Genesis also admits that there is some difficulty on this road ahead. And even as the household moves far afield in pursuit of the call, in faithfulness to the covenant to be made with God, there is a great deal of pain at work here as well. Sarah is unable to conceive, and so she suggests a different route, offering her slave Hagar as a surrogate.

Hagar is caught up in the web of divine promise and human desperation, bearing Abraham’s true firstborn Ishmael. She is driven out twice by the jealousy and anger of an embittered Sarah and left with little support by an Abraham who tends to be a bit like a mixture of a henpecked husband and a politician making decisions after the latest opinion poll results are in. Hagar is less “the other woman” causing a marital rift and more the pawn in a household split apart by the promise of destiny and human failings. Her presence in the story of Abraham reframes the story of patriarchs in quest of their glorious destiny into what really is the gist of Genesis: a cast of characters who are just as prone to life crashing down on their heads as they are as likely to find some sense of symmetry or plot. The distinctiveness of Genesis comes, however, in the radical way illumined by Hagar’s story of woe and plight. God is not only with Abraham. God is not only with Sarah. God is not only with Isaac. God is with Hagar and Ishmael, too!

As Hagar, pregnant, alone, and chased away by Sarah, God intervenes and tends to her fear and needs. Hagar is given what might sound a bit of strange advice: go back and submit to your mistress. This is a difficult word to hear, as we are still not so removed from the atrocity of slavery in this nation’s history and live in a time when human trafficking is alive and well around the world. In the context of the ancient Genesis story, this is the only way a lone pregnant woman might be able to make it, so she goes back.

Despite the culture of the day working against her, Hagar the outsider (the Egyptian slave woman) talks with God just as Abraham and Sarah do, yet she the excluded one names God as “God who sees”. It is the first time in the Bible that such an act happens, and it is not by someone “chosen” or “inside” the fold. The one cast into the margins is the one who is seen by God. While Hagar’s story is not the “bigger” story of Abraham and Sarah (indeed, Isaac will still be the “chosen” one to fulfill the covenant), Hagar will not be cast aside in the way that Sarah’s jealousy callously intends and Abraham’s reticence passively permits.

The narrative, however, just like life itself, will continue to twist and turn, and Hagar’s story is imperiled to unravel a bit when again Sarah enters into a time of jealousy after Isaac is born and the two boys grow up together. Again, Sarah begins the push to cast away Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham again is less likely to intervene, but God gives him a word that while Isaac is to be the chosen one of the covenant, Ishmael will not be forgotten.

Unfortunately, while this is promised, Hagar finds herself wandering with her child, with quickly depleting rations, and this time, she is certain that her circumstances are beyond hope. Again, God steps in and provides for her in a time of need. Hagar and her son will not be left to the whim of existence or the severity of the fate of those who wander in the wilderness without provisions. As you trace the rest of the biblical narratives out, there are occasional mentions of Ishmael (he joins Isaac in burying their father) and his descendants (shown to be in relative harmony with the Israelites, the children of Isaac). Indeed, Islam also reveres the Abrahamaic story alongside Judaism and Christianity, counting Ishmael as a spiritual forebear.

What we contemporary readers encounter in Hagar’s story is a good word first for ourselves. The stories of the Bible are not unacquainted with the challenges of this world. Indeed, many women who know hardship and difficulty in their lives have found great strength in the Hagar narrative. Being cast out or marginalized, being made to feel as if always the “other” and never the “included”. Striking out on one’s own, despite the odds against you. Calling up God for strength and consolation and knowing that you are indeed heard, all of these things are possible, because no one—not even a complete outsider like Hagar—is ignored by God. God sees, and we are not alone.

Recalling Hagar’s story, we are challenged to examine our ways and beliefs so that we do not commit the same jealous rejection of someone “other” to us or say nothing in hopes that we will not have to get involved in controversial matters. We live in a world already schooled in pitting Isaac against Ishmael, claiming divine blessing for one and occlusive rejection for the other. Genesis would say that it could indeed be otherwise.

In 1893, Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown, a hymn written by Charles Wesley (still present in today’s United Methodist Hymnal), had a line that went like this:

To me, to all, thy mercies move—

Thy nature, and thy name is Love.

The line is reasonably poetic, though we would note the archaic language of “thy” as a word we would not use any longer. We would also be a bit nervous about singing the original version of the hymn, published in 1742 on two counts. First, the original hymn is fourteen verses long. Secondly, the hymn had to be changed in 1893. The language of 1742 had become quite embarrassing, for the line “To me, to all,…” was written:

To me, to all, my bowels move,

Thy nature, and thy name is love.

Hymnist Brian Wren quotes this hymn as a good example of how the church changes to keep up with the current day. Wren observes, “When a lyric from the past gets too archaic to be understood, or too out of sync with today’s hope, faith, and issues to speak for us, it will eventually cease to be sung, or amended to keep it singable.” (Praying Twice, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1999, p. 298). While we look at today’s church thinking of the various things that we need to change and modernize, the experience of embarrassed Methodists in 1893 is helpful to recall. How do we help words keep their intended power and meaning?

In this morning’s Gospel lesson, we have another embarrassing bowel issue. In the Greek text, as Matthew describes Jesus beholding crowds of needy persons, there is a word that requires some sensitivity in translating: splangchomai. The word is typically translated as “compassion”, but the earthiness of the Greek gets lost a bit in translation. The word is more closely tied to the Greek belief that pity or compassion came from the depths of the human being—literally from the bowels. Listening with today’s understandings, we become a bit like Victorian Methodists, wanting to get away from the language that offends (or amuses) unintentionally, while missing the challenge of the word altogether.

Jesus is in the midst of his ministry, and Matthew tells story after story as Jesus travels around, healing and tending those in need. In Matthew 9 alone, Jesus heals a paralytic, raises a woman from the dead; heals a woman of her chronic hemorrhaging, two blind men, and a demonically possessed person. Throughout the countryside, Jesus goes where he is needed, and his friends and even his detractors are amazed at the power he evidences in all this work.

But then Jesus gets around the corner and is confronted by a crowd of needy persons. What does he do now?

At the end of nearly every episode of Grey’s Anatomy, a song plays as the camera switches between the various doctors of Seattle Grace Hospital, lingering for a moment over each one as they ponder the challenges and troubles on their minds. Each week, the doctors deal with complex cases, difficult patients (or the patients’ families), hospital rules, their personal lives, and more than a little hubris about their careers, love lives, and interactions with other characters. Sometimes, a character has an “aha!” moment and figures out how to treat the patient or repair a relationship. Other times, the viewer is left wondering if a doctor will get things sorted out, the camera fading away as the doctor looks bereft, puzzled, or in despair.

Jesus stands before the crowd of needy people, surely wore out from the many, many people that he has been healing and tending in his ministry. Sometimes, at the end of the day, we put our feet up, groan a bit, and then let Jon Stewart take away our fears and fatigue with a few laughs before heading to bed. You just do not want to see another person, deal with another situation, or put up with “one more thing”. Jesus stands there, facing the crowd, and he is deeply moved by the need before him. When you look at your own life, feeling bedraggled by the day’s events or the travail of life in general, yet you still have that bit of energy to volunteer or offer help to someone who need sit, or listen on the phone to that friend who you haven’t heard from in months who reached out to you for advice, it is that moment you experience splangchomai. And the fact that we humans can experience it means that Jesus knows what he was doing when he turned from his own moment of realizing the pain of the world before him and did not settle for just sending himself back out there to help. He sent his disciples as well, calling them to be his apostles.

“Apostle”—now there’s a word we have heard of but tend to steer clear. For many years, I thought the word “apostle” was reserved for the twelve disciples, thus keeping the image of an apostle as an old guy with a beard and a robe standing real close to Jesus in the Sunday school quarterly pictures. Instead, the term “apostle” designated one who was sent out. The great work of Jesus’ ministry was not reserved for Jesus alone. In fact, the whole reason for Jesus calling disciples was to empower many to do the work at hand. Matthew ties together chapter 9’s stories of Jesus healing and teaching with Jesus giving instructions throughout chapter 10 for his disciples to go and do likewise in his name. Out of deep compassion, Jesus sends forth not just himself, but a people to proclaim and tend in the name of the Kingdom/Reign. Like the Sermon on the Mount, this teaching about apostles is not for mere reflection. To be the apostles, the disciples must live out a way of life that says, “Go!”

In his recent commentary on Matthew’s Gospel, theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas observes, “In a wonderful moment Jesus, confronted with such need, asks the disciples to pray that God will send helpers. The mission of the church has begun. The disciples’ prayer is answered, and the answer turns out to be them.” (Matthew, Brazos Press, 2006, p. 104)

It is a difficult word to hear when our definitions of church are more tied to institutional identity. We know the familiarity of pews and budgets and committees and potlucks, but we often settle for just these things as the sum of what our faith community does with itself. Words like “evangelism” and “mission” might be the work of a committee that meets from time to time or we decide that evangelism is the pastor’s job here and mission is the missionary’s job way off somewhere else in the world. So when we hear “the harvest is great, but the laborers are few”, many of us tend to let the words roll right by.

In the midst of a great time of ministry, Jesus tells his disciples, “I need you out there in the field.” And then he gives a set of instructions about getting out there in the field, what to wear, what to say, how to deal with difficulty, and even what to take along with you. It may seem like quite the list of instructions, but the idea is to strip away any thought of Jesus doing all the work and realize that there is work that Jesus gives us to take up ourselves. As St. Teresa of Avila put it, we are called to be “the hands and feet of Christ in the world”. Indeed, when you boil it down, the call to be apostles is part of the continuing message of Matthew’s gospel: trust in God to provide your needs and take up your cross and follow. Or, as American Baptists have put it about our denomination’s history in a recent promotional video (available on Youtube and the church’s website), we “do not travel the easy road, because ‘easy’ never changed the world.”

Jesus calls forth the many to do the work of ministry. This is a saving grace in itself to hear that not just one, or a few, are called to bring about the work of the Reign of Heaven. Even in times of conflict within the Church, when it seems that it is more like "the Harvest is great, but the laborers are feuding", the work of God continues.  A good apostle keeps moving on, just like Jesus, profoundly aware of the pain of the world embodied among those in need.  The Church is found among those who are an eclectic group of people, not likely to be assembled by choice by any other standards imaginable, other than the Gospel itself.  The Church is found among those who know all too well the wearying world and yet still traverse it, bringing the gospel to light, moving in the midst of those in need.

Back in the Midwest, I remember speaking to a fundamentalist Baptist minister about his life spent in congregational ministry. The minister worked with a congregation large enough that they ran their own camping program, including one camp that featured horse riding. He said that this camp was the most popular, but it also became one of the most controversial issues in his congregation. Now, listening to this story, I am wondering how controversial a horse riding camp could be. Were the kids betting on the horses? Did it turn in Vacation Bookie School? The minister explained that one day a camper showed up in a pair of trousers. It was controversial because the church held that women (including this female camper) could not wear trousers. Women could only wear skirts to church, including such ministry activities as horse riding.

Another story, a bit closer to home: Back in the 1960s, residents of a local town became apprehensive of this strange group of men that appeared one day. They had long beards and odd choice in clothing. Some folks thought that these men must be some sort of hippies, given the beards and how they dressed. It turned out that these men were actually monks, getting ready to establish a Russian Orthodox monastery that we now know as New Skete monastery.

How should you dress yourself? Around here, it does not seem to be a burning theological question. However, as you listen to the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians, however, you overhear the conversation between Paul and this congregation about the suitability of women wearing head coverings, or veils, in worship. It was the practice of early Christians of the time to have the women wear headdress, and it seems that now some women are starting to remove their head garb.

Paul’s response to this issue might seem as odd to you as the modern day example of a church banning women from wearing jeans, slacks, and even coo lots. For Paul, however, this is a matter that he addresses at length, responding to the situation with a great deal of fervor. He complements the Corinthian church’s value of tradition, but then he starts down this line of argument, wanting to know why tradition was being broken?

The tradition of early Christians held that women should wear head coverings in church, so why should certain among the Corinthian women do otherwise? Women should wear these head coverings; otherwise, it was considered shameful. Women should be dressed this way, as it is reflective of the submission that they show before their husbands and before God. As far as Paul can see, this is to be so; it is the natural order of things.

If you look around you this morning, two millennia later, you do not see many, if any hats or head coverings out there in our predominately female congregation. Perhaps if it were Easter Sunday or another special day, but again, the hats would appear out of style or custom, but not on theological grounds. What happened over the centuries to hats for women in church?

Something changed in the traditions of the church! While we read and appreciate 1 Corinthians as part of the New Testament, we should remember that this epistle is a product of a particular era and cultural context that is different to our own. The issue of head coverings for women was part of a culture that highly valued honor and avoided acts that would be shameful. Yet, these texts are still with us two thousand years later, and we wonder how to puzzle out what traditions we hand down and which traditions we do not. Take for example the quandary of gender issues, how did first century Christians address the role of women and men? Paul’s writings reflect that struggle, with some of his writings presuming a hierarchy of Christ then man/husband then woman/wife then children then household/slaves). Other parts of his writings proclaiming that there are no distinctions between “Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free”. Which of these traditions do we hand down?

First Corinthians also reflects an interesting tension regarding the role of women in worship. Here in chapter 11, Paul spends much time debating the headdress of women, while he also assumes that it is normative for the women to be active participants in worship, here in the work of prophesying, suitably attired! In the larger history of Christianity, another text from 1 Corinthians overshadows this passage’s affirmation of women in religious leadership. In 1 Corinthians, you encounter a text oft quoted by opponents of women in ministry. In 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, we read: “As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”

It was “Women’s Sunday” in the first church I attended. Hosted by the ABW circle, the women performed a play recalling many of the women in the biblical story. One by one, a woman from the Bible is introduced through a monologue telling her story. The play ends with all of the biblical characters lining up and ending with the words, “Remember the women. Remember the women.” They keep saying this as they walk off stage.

 

The play was published in the early 1980s by the ABW national office, so I saw it first performed as “new material” when I was a middle schooler. Flash-forward to present day, twenty years hence, and I was surprised and delighted to see this play performed again when your congregation’s women performed this same script last year. (My wife played Jezebel!)

Yet, as I watched the play performed by First Baptist, Bennington women, I could not stop thinking back to my childhood when my mother and other women performed the play in a little church in rural Kansas. It was a Sunday morning, and the women offered the play in the place of the morning sermon. That morning, my family sat a couple of pews behind Mrs. “Smith” (we’ll call her), my Sunday school teacher. Mrs. “Smith” sat there and cried throughout the whole play. Afterwards, when I asked her why she was so upset, she said, “It’s because women should not be up front in church leading like that.” Then she cried some more.

In this section of 1 Corinthians on women and proper attire, Paul commends to the Corinthians the keeping of tradition, that which is handed down generation to generation. “I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions just as I handed them on to you.” (1 Corinthians 11:2) J. Paul Sampley, a New Testament scholar, writes in his recent commentary on 1 Corinthians, “Traditions play an important role in Paul’s gospel. They provide a solid foundation which the life of faith, may be built and upon which moral reasoning and action may be properly grounded” (NIB, Vol. X, “I Corinthians”). At the same time, Sampley is not remiss in demonstrating that Paul’s writings often reflect a conversation between first century Christians that needs pondering for its application to the contemporary world of today’s church. We would be wise to decide what is relevant to our modern day and what parts of the conversations are reflective of first century ways of viewing the world. Is every tradition necessarily to be passed down from generation to generation?

When I would drive down the street in Kansas City, often I marveled at the diversity of churches along the same stretch of road. Along one street in particular, you passed by several different Baptist churches. Quite truthfully, each one of them was theologically apart from the others. Some churches were moderate, some churches were fundamentalist, and some churches were conservative. (There were liberal Baptists around town, just not on this road.)

If you were to visit each one and sit in worship, or bible study, or just slip into the fellowship hall for the coffee and doughnuts, you would encounter churches with a great deal of difference. Ask them about women in ministry, civil unions, abortion, poverty issues, and you would hear varied responses. In some churches, folks would be offended that the question even came up. Other places, you might find spirited engagement of the questions, folks from “both sides” speaking up. Finally, you find few churches where the host might smile a bit, and say: “Oh, we don’t talk about that stuff around here. We don’t like controversy. Would you like a doughnut?”

Reading the Bible is a bit more complex than we might care to admit. Gender roles in the church and the home, the right practice of human sexuality, speaking in tongues, the exercising of spiritual gifts, the ways we worship, the ways we live out our lives. How do we deal with the atrocious ways that Paul’s writings have been used over the centuries to oppress women, to bait anti-Semitic sentiment or actions, to justify slavery? How do we address the current issue before us, whether or not gays and lesbians can be part of the life of the Church, let alone serve in the ministry as ordained clergy?

I look around for what is the best word to give in times like these, understanding that there are people who will say “yes” and people who will say “no” alike in the pews when a difficult question is posed. As a good Baptist, however, I am more concerned with preserving what makes us Baptist. We are a tradition that affirms the right for the individual as well as the local congregation alike to interpret the texts without hindrance of creeds or authoritarian influence. Thus, to tell you “how to vote” is not my business.

However, I am charged with helping you ponder the questions at hand, so this morning, I have to leave those questions hanging in the air a bit. How should you decide? How should First Baptist decide? How should our region decide? Sorry. That’s not my place. Thus, I take my cue from the epistle itself. As Paul moves onward from his question of headdress and what is appropriate for faith and practice among the first century Christians, he takes the moment when he is addressing a controversy to remember one tradition that I seriously doubt anyone (liberal, moderate, conservative) would argue is up for debate whether it is as a tradition to pass down. Of course we hand it down!

Paul puts down the headdress and picks up the bread and wine.

The Grace of Conflict

You might wonder about the curious sermon title this morning: “The Grace of Conflict”. If there are two words that do not seem to go together, “grace” and “conflict” might win prizes at the Oxymoron Olympics. Oxymoronic phrases are those word pairings that puzzle us a bit: “civil war”, “clearly misunderstood”, “committee decision”, “new classic”, “authentic replica”, “operating instructions” (this is funny if you have ever tried to put together anything from a kit), and one that you churchgoers might find quite funny indeed: “brief sermon”.

So “graceful conflict” might win the silver, or even the gold for odd phrases that puzzle more than fit together. “Grace” is a word that means “the experience of things going well”. Conflict, on the other hand, is a word that you do not expect to see hanging out with “grace”. Conflict is a word that means “the experience of things going ka-blooey”.

Conflict in the church can be an interesting experience, especially if you are hearing about it after the fact. One church I encountered had a story in its decades of existence that had my jaw on the floor. The old timer showed me a historical timeline of the congregation and pointed to one minister’s photo from the mid-20^th century. “This minister got fired, but he refused to leave the church. The police had to come and drag him away from the pulpit.” Another church of my acquaintance was a place where you could not say the words “linoleum” or “carpet”. A church business meeting became overheated regarding the decision about new flooring for the fellowship hall. Another church story still haunts me a bit. I was newly appointed to serve a congregation in Kansas. When I traveled around for national denominational meetings, folks would ask, “Where are you at nowadays?” I would tell them, and the folks who knew that area of the country (or at least the various American Baptist congregations of the area) would think for a minute, and with little variance, say, “Oh yeah, that’s a tough church.”

In the case of this latter congregation, the one that ordained me to ministry, the church had a few years of conflict that had dissipated a bit before I wandered into the pages of their history. I had a good experience with the folks during my time there, but nonetheless, I still pondered a bit the experience of folks trying to summon their mental “rolodex” and saying with some consistency, “Oh yeah, that’s a tough church.” The “linoleum vs. carpet” congregation was the church that “raised me” in the faith, which helped me hear my call to ministry. (I admit great relief, however, that when the trustees here decided to replace the hallway tile a few months back, it went by without incident.) As for the church with the pastoral transition that needed a SWAT team, I was just guest preacher with his jaw on the floor.

Again, “grace” and “conflict” seem to have little to say to one another, yet there is Paul taking those words and drawing them together. The Corinthian church had many factions at work within its fellowship. Read the two epistles, and you encounter more than a few problems vexing these people. Yet, Paul keeps writing his words of encouragement and imparting his teachings, in hope that the fractures within the fellowship be mended, the broken made whole. Grace can make its way into the oddest of places, even when it seems that the only possible outcome is “ka-bloooey”.

How does Paul do this? It can be argued that he did not have lasting success. An early Christian writing First Clement, written a generation after Paul’s day (ca. 96 CE) reports that the Corinthian Christians were still well known for engaging in partisan strife (NIB, I Corinthians, 775). Yet, the Corinthian correspondence from Paul appears in the New Testament for a reason. What is that reason?

These past two weeks, you have received a letter from me, notifying you that there are some controversies going on within our American Baptist region. Last week and later this morning, opportunities are given for this congregation to review and discuss the issues at hand. Shall we ordain gay or lesbian persons to the ministry? How do we deal with the reality that this is not an easy question to answer in one congregation, let alone the many congregations that make up the American Baptist Churches of Vermont and New Hampshire.

Then this week, I received an epistle, well, technically, an email (so, perhaps we should call it an e-pistle) from Susan Kachmar, who will facilitate our discussion time this morning. We have been in contact throughout the week, discussing the work for today, and one of her email messages bore the subject line that piqued my attention. It read, “What’s the story about Sunday?” Now, Susan really meant something to the effect of “we need to talk about our planning”, but there was that line “What’s the story about Sunday?”

Paul addresses the Corinthians not as “us” versus “them”. He calls them adelphoi (“my brothers and my sisters”), summoning them to be “united in the same mind and the same purpose”. Then he tells them what the story is about for Sunday. As they gather for worship, perhaps even sitting intentionally across the room from those with whom they find disagreement, they hear Paul’s letter read aloud to them. They hear the story that is the reason for their gathering: Christ, the crucified, has summoned you together into fellowship, not a partisan word, but one given over to this strange language of what is foolish and what is wise. In sum, the arguments can eclipse the real story of why you are here together. Seek unity so that you may be together. There will be differences among you, and that is to be expected. Paul was not asking for uniformity, or for everyone to move in lockstep. Treat each other well, but realize that there will be variance and difference. What Paul seeks is to make sure that folks are grounded not in the issues but in the cross.

It can be a hard word to hear. We humans are prone to our partisanship. In the second century CE, a writer would speak of the city of Corinth itself as a place “without grace [or charm] and not the least convivial”. (NIB, “1 Corinthians”, 775). It reminds me of this country during an election year! Paul’s writing here also makes me mindful that there are choices that we make about dealing with difference of opinion or controversial matters or even how we interpret scripture and debate theological matters. We can fracture and grow distant, or we can embrace that mediating grace, that symbol of all the world’s brokenness being taken up by God, and keep the cross as our center point. Not the issues of the day, not the conflict of the moment, but the grace upon grace, Jesus Christ, whom Paul claims became for us “wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”. By keeping to Jesus, we draw closer to God, the source of life, and away from the temptations to cast away or worse, homogenize the diverse people called “Church”.

“The grace of conflict” still sounds a bit audacious. I hope, however, that we can live into the complexity of such a statement. Conflict is with us. “If you’re human, you deal with conflict”, I said to the press as we advertised a community-wide conflict transformation workshop a few months back. And as I think of the potential ways that things could play out: words said in haste, anger, dissension, grudge matches, and yes, the list can go on, I take greater stock in the word called “grace”. In the presence of grace, conflict will seem far more like words exchanged in dialogue, attentive listening, open hands, and the prospect of unity, a unity not kept out of uneasy truce, silent stalemate, or a politically convenient peace. No, just the grace of Christ crucified, the story that transforms a world wracked by conflict, a story that transforms a church prone to partisan bickering, and a story that transforms a heart tapped into the source of life, the God made known to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. AMEN.