DAY 243

WOMEN KEEP YOUR HEAD COVERED

Psalm 129, 130 & 131 and 1 Corinthians 11:1-16

“I have calmed and quieted my soul” – “My soul waits for the Lord” Well with today’s New Testament reading I am certainly waiting for something, and my soul is not all that quiet because today I get to talk about how “woman should cover their heads in church!” It is a passage that used to lead the nuns at my elementary school to put Kleenex on top my female classmates heads as they went into church. It is a passage such as this one that gets Paul labeled with some less-than-complimentary names.

Two areas to comment on in regard to this passage, and here I am leaning heavily on Tom Wright’s commentary. In his commentary Wright writes that in this passage we need to be careful not to push too far for answers, for we are somewhat groping in the dark. Turning to those two areas:

First, Paul was not addressing the social issues we know in our world. Visit a different culture, even today, and you will discover many subtle assumptions, pressures and constraints in society, which appear in the way people dress and wear their hair. In our country you would not go to a wedding wearing a bathing suit (unless maybe it was on the beach) and most of us in the west do not think it appropriate, even today, that men wear hats in church. The list could go on. We want equality for woman, but Paul is the one who has already written we are all equal in the eyes of God – there is no longer male or female. So this is not a commentary on male dominance over women…at least I don’t think it is.

Second, Paul is writing about worship. We also know that so far in this letter Paul has been critical of the Corinthians about how they exercise their freedom in Christ. Think back to all the talk about eating food sacrificed to idols and also about the sexual freedoms – all of this is taking place within the context of a church – a church that seems to be using its freedom as the basis for its behavior. My idea, and I pray you can sense my caution, is that there is something going on in the way the church in Corinth is worshipping and Paul finds it dishonoring to God. The bit about the angels in verse 10 is confusing, until I read what we learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls. We learned that the people of that day thought that when they worshipped God that angels are present. It was further thought that angels cannot be in worship and also in the presence of anything unholy. Now I certainly don’t know if this is true, and I certainly do not need to be speculating about angels. But if that is the way the people of Paul's day thought, then this passage is possibly about people worshipping God in a way that Paul judges as displeasing. If that is the case, then I want to ask you what in our day and age you would find offensive in church, especially if people told you they could do it because they were “free in Christ to worship however they want.”

Worship is about us giving our best to God – it is not about what we are "free to do" or what we can “get.” Yes we often receive. We receive the sacraments, we receive good teaching (I pray we do), we receive fellowship with others, we are blessed with music and art…and more. And with all we receive the point of worship is not about receiving and it is not about doing whatever we want because we are free…it is about giving our best to God. It would appear that is not going on in Corinth.

That is what I think the text is driving at…and if it is, then the point for us is to realize that worship is serious business. I also think it is good we got to this point in the text. We ought to not think we can “stand above the Scripture” and “know it all.” I fully do not expect to understand all the Scriptures, it is why I keep studying…so I pray you won’t be too out-of-sorts if you every now and then are scratching your head - with or without it covered!