"When Traditions Are Handed Down" 1 Corinthians 11 (A sermon by Jerrod Hugenot)

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.