1 Corinthians 14:29-40 Wild and Domestic

I didn’t want to go there, but right in the middle of today’s sermon text is this about women keeping quiet. And even if it isn’t the basis of the sermon, there it is, and I probably should say something about it, though for most of us it is an issue already settled. And I’m guessing there is nothing I can say- or either side of it- that will cause you to change your mind.

People smarter than I believe that God intended women to be submissive, while other brilliant biblical scholars believe women should be equal partners with men in the church and in all walks of life. Some think that this is a cultural commandment from Paul, which may not apply to our world today- or even to other churches in his time. And some think that verses 34, 35 were not written by

Paul, but by someone else later on; in fact, some ancient copies of 1 Corinthians have these two verses out of place, and added to the text at the end of the chapter.

Let me just say, from my viewpoint, that this teaching seems not to agree with Jesus’ acceptance of all persons, or with what we know about influential women in the very early days of the Jesus movement, or with chapter 11, where women are described as praying and prophesying, or with Paul’s attitude towards the many women he praises as leaders in their churches; particularly those he names in Romans 16.

Here it is, written perfectly clearly in the Bible, “Keep silent.” What should we do with it? We can’t simply dismiss it, but neither is it proper to use scripture to minimize a group of people- any group of people. Both are easy ways out, too easy, and scripture is sometimes difficult, as we know. It takes hard work to try to understand God’s purposes for us all.

There is much more, theologically and textually, if you want to discuss this with me. I might be able to point you to some readings, as well.

I assume you’ve been around animals enough to know the difference between a wolf and a collie, or a buffalo and a Hereford. And there are other wild canines and wild equines, wild bovines and wild ovines, distinguishable from their domesticated kin perhaps only by how they act- by the fact that they are wild. It may be the same for wild humans, too, as compared to civilized, though we may wonder about the civility of some; we know that ambition and cruelty often hide behind polite mannerisms and smiling faces.

But what can we say about God? Wild or tame? In the old days of Israel it was said God’s Spirit was with bands of prophets that traversed the wild places and practiced certain disciplines in order to attain altered states, and a kind of God- consciousness that would result in trances, visions, ecstatic utterances; perhaps like the famous oracles of Greece, or the shamans of various tribes all over the world- even today, or like the Sufi Dervishes or the Hindu Fakirs. Think of Elijah fasting for 40 days and hearing the small, still voice, or Isaiah in the Temple and seeing the vision of God on the heavenly throne; think of Ezekiel and the seraphim and the “wheel within a wheel,” and Jeremiah and John the Baptist; and Jesus starving in the desert and discovering his mission. Think of the religious awakening in the

19th century on the American frontier, the beginning of our own church history: those pioneers speaking in tongues and barking and rolling on the ground, or lying on the earth as still as death. Sometimes God is wild. I love that passage in The

Chronicles of Narnia, where C.S. Lewis has a character describe Aslan, the great lion, the Christ figure of the novels, saying, “He is not a tame lion.”

Last Sunday was Pentecost, and that story in Acts 2 is certainly a wild one.

The Holy Spirit blows in like a roaring whirlwind that maybe doesn’t destroy property or kill, but it overturns hearts and minds; the Spirit like a fire, not consuming buildings but burning up pride and superficiality, making room for truth and for loving one another. Think of the Spirit that first day blowing all over Jerusalem, nothing could stop it, no way to control it, and burning in the conscience of everyone who heard the story. That is God’s wildness.

So what happened in the following two decades that caused Paul to write to the Corinthians that everything must be done “in order”? Is there no place among these believers for the untamed Spirit?

That last phrase of our scripture, “decently and in order,” is one of those church affirmations I remember clearly from my childhood, perhaps you do, too: an important church profession, as though it were the great commandment Jesus quoted when he said “You shall love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and decently and in order.” Pentecost was so wild, so loud and unrestrained; did the church then, quickly and intentionally set out to housebreak and civilize the Spirit? What made order and organization so important?

A partial answer at least is that churches came to believe they had arrived at final and complete understanding of God, and anything outside the system was disorder, anything unorthodox was confusion, and thus, not of God. (We know, if we are honest, that’s not exactly correct. How can we completely define, or confine, God- God is not tameable.) We may consider it, cynically, one way for preachers and priests to maintain control over the parishioners, a way to shut down independent thought. And it has worked pretty well, keeping people in line, for the most part, for long ages of church history. Though not always through reason or by a living example of the gospel of love; more often through fear and force, war and torture. And we know these controlling attitudes didn’t end with the

Inquisition. They are alive and well today. Some people simply want to control others- that’s the way to get to your pocketbook, the way to feed their egos, or to ease their insecurities. But at the heart of the issue- and this is tricky- is the desire to tame even God and to make him yours.

But this is not at all what Paul meant for those believers in Corinth. Yes, they had many problems, but “decently and in order” did not mean stifling God’s

Spirit. Look at verse 30, “if a revelation is made to another”: he is talking about the Spirit moving however it willed during the worship; he is talking about worship without a program; letting God’s Spirit guide the worship of God. The problem in

Corinth was not the untamed Spirit among them or a theology they were still learning, but a selfish spirit of pride, that made them want to boast about their spirituality, “Look how much I can speak in tongues, look at the prophetic insights

God has given to me.” And Paul’s answer to them is to encourage them to strive for the most important spiritual gift, love, which he defines as patience and humility in that famous text on loving, chapter 13; and his command that they sometimes should just shut up and let someone else speak. Because even the most gifted or the most learned or the most spiritual among us doesn’t know everything.

That would be too neat, too orderly; and also dangerous, that one person, or one elite cabal, could control the people of God.

But God is not always tame, and the Spirit reveals truth and spreads it around so that somebody else has a piece of it, too, that the rest of us never knew.

Let’s take a moment to listen to each other.

Five times in chapter 14 Paul uses a word, or a variation of it, that means, literally,

“to build the house,” and it’s translated in verses 3,4,5,12,17, 26, “to edify,” “to build up.” And Paul means by it, that our individual gifts are not for showing off- they are not really for ourselves at all- they are for building up and encouraging each other. I mean, the church is a fellowship and a partnership, and we share and grow and learn and worship and rejoice together.

The root of that Greek word has given us the English word “domestic,” as in a household that operates best when neat and clean and organized and orderly. The point for us to know in chapter 14, is that the church is God’s house, God’s family; and so God’s Spirit, at times, may seem to be domesticated, because our work here is encouragement and hospitality and loving, or just getting along, and even making plans and making meetings: so that we may know best how to help one another, how to love and serve one another.

But still a little bit wild, the untamed Spirit, coming to us in strange ways and odd places, that moves unexpectedly among us, showing us how much we can learn from one another, and how much of his love we must share. How much love? All of it. That is the proper “wild” response to being loved.