Domestic Politics (A sermon on Ephesians 5:21-33)

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Father Dave

Home

Home is the place your heart resides

Home is the place that you decide

Home is the womb that holds the soul

Home is the place where one is whole

 

Home is protective against the others

Home is full of sisters and brothers

Home is where you find your rest

Home is where you feel your best[1]

 

Just Google “home” and “poem” and you too can discover any amount of schmaltzy stuff like that. Ever since the industrial revolution people in the West have idealised and romanticised the home. “Home is a haven in a heartless world.” Home is a peaceful place of rest after the labours and conflicts of our day.

 

But we all know that isn’t true. Home is where much of the real, inescapable, gruelling work of life happens,[2] the work of maintaining relationships that really matter. Home is where our annoying habits are LEAST likely to be calmly tolerated. And it is where the annoying habits of others are MOST likely to drive us crazy. And I think that is true even for people who live alone.[3] Home is where there is no escaping from that annoying person in the mirror.[4]

The homes that Paul wrote to and about were happily free of this sentimental nonsense. In the Roman world of the first century, homes were understood to be the smallest and most important unit of economic production, of politics and of religion. Homes were the small-scale factories of the time, producing most of the goods that were exported or sold at markets. Relationships happened there, of course, but they were not the point.[5] And a man who fell in love with his wife was likely to get teased about it by his friends. Wealthy men had any number of outlets for romantic and sexual expression – slaves, mistresses, prostitutes. Wives were for producing legitimate heirs and managing the household under the husband’s authority. And wives were chosen for the economic and political value that the connection would give to both families.

Men would generally marry women who were much younger than them and would educate them in the work they would be expected to do in the home.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul specifically addresses households that have a husband, a wife, children and slaves. This is only one sort of Roman household, since the majority of families would not have been able to afford slaves.[6] This sort of household was often addressed by philosophers and ethicists of the time, mainly because this is the only sort of household in which anyone had time to read or write philosophy.

Aristotle[7] introduced the study of the household by seeing it as consisting of three sorts of relationship: master/slave[8], husband/wife, father/child.[9] The master, husband and father were all same person and, though he had different responsibilities in each of the three relationships, the nature of his role in each relationship was to rule the other.[10] That is because he believed that “the male is by nature better fitted[11] to command than the female,”[12] the master better fitted by nature to command than the slave, and the father better fitted to command than the child.

In Ephesians, Paul followed the usual format of household codes by addressing those three key household relationships identified by Aristotle. But his take on them is unique: firstly, because he addresses those ruled and not just the ruler. Wives, children and slaves are treated as rational and moral agents who can make choices for themselves. He is also unique because of what he says to the all-powerful husband, father and master.

His overall message in Ephesians is that all relationships, especially power relationships, are transformed by the lordship of Christ, who has abolished all barriers between people.[13]

This section of Ephesians is found at the end of a chapter that calls the Christians in Ephesus to be distinctively Christian within their culture. They are told to submit to a different master, imitate a different father, live by a different code:

vv1-2   be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

vv8-11 For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— 9 for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. 10 Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.[14]  11Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

V15 Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil.

I’m sure Paul knew that he was calling for revolution here – for the overthrow of the values held by the people of Ephesus; for a re-evaluation of everything they had previously thought and done in light of the fact that there is one Lord, to whom we all owe allegiance. Above the husband, father or master, and above his patron, above his patron’s governor, even above the emperor[15]… there is one real master. And that master is the very Jesus who died to bring the church into being.

The Christian claim that Jesus is Lord denied the absolute authority of the emperor and called into question the entire hierarchical structure that he put in place.[16]

I think Paul fully understood how treasonous this Christian confession might sound to a paranoid emperor – or to a sycophantic governor. He knew that this confession could get his fledgling congregations into very serious trouble.

In the third century, Roman emperors did catch onto this, and wave after wave of vicious oppression was unleashed on the church. Thousands of our sisters and brothers were tortured and executed.[17] In the third century the church was large and strong enough to survive that. In the first century it was probably not.

Paul had been tortured and imprisoned enough times himself to have felt the danger personally. What could he say to these young Christians? How could he prepare these people to bravely face martyrdom, if necessary, but to refrain from doing anything that might unnecessarily bring martyrdom upon themselves?[18]

You might be thinking that surely there is nothing potentially treasonous about challenging the structure of the household. I could respond by suggesting that you try publicly challenging Australian family values and see what happens. Romans loved their family values at least as much as any culture. And at this point many of them could remember their greatest emperor, Augustus, pushing a whole raft of family values laws through the Senate: laws that made life difficult for anyone who chose not to marry and raise children.[19] Families mattered in Rome because families produced the soldiers who would defend the empire in the future. But families also mattered because they were seen as a microcosm of the empire. The power of the father echoed the power of the emperor, and any challenge to the father’s power could be heard as a challenge to the rights of the emperor, himself.

If Paul was going to call for his fledgling churches to rethink family life in light of the Gospel he was going to need to do it very carefully.

What he came up with was, in my humble opinion, the most brilliant political strategy ever conceived. But it was not just a political strategy, it was a succinct summary of the life and teachings of Jesus.[20]

Jesus had taught a politic of rendering what is demanded by authority while critiquing the system in which that demand is made; a politic of wise innocence and innocent wisdom. Paul’s brilliant political strategy, based on Jesus, was this:

21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Familiarity can cause us to miss the wisdom and depth of this simple statement. But think about what it means to

21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Submit to people, but not because you are afraid of them…

Not because you have been ordered to…

Not because they are “fitted by nature” to rule you…

Not because you want them to do stuff for you…

But because you reverence Christ.

Because you honour Christ when you respect the people he created.

Because even though the human in front of you might be a worthless scumbag, Jesus, who created and loves that scumbag, is always worthy of your reverence.

Submit to everyone, and that way those who think they deserve your subservience will be satisfied, and those who think they deserve nothing will be reminded of the dignity they have as human beings created in the image of God.

I am reminded here of a scene from Johannesburg of a black child walking along the street with his mother. A white bishop who passes them and doffs his hat to the child’s mother. This simple act of respect changed the nature of the universe for this boy, and set him on a path to becoming the man we know as Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Paul’s political strategy sows seeds of revolution: in the world and in the home. It means you can be humble without being humiliated. It means you can treat another person as though they are more important than you without buying into the hierarchy that keeps you apart.

The psychiatrist, Victor Frankl, who survived the dehumanisation of Nazi concentration camps, wrote that “everything can be taken away from a person except one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances, to choose ones own way…”[21]

To women, slaves and children, who generally had no power and little freedom in this culture, Paul writes of the dignity they did have of choosing their attitude to their subjection. And he gives them honour in their servitude by showing them that while they serve the man who happened to be their husband, master or father, they can be serving Christ. Their humility is not meaningless. It matters for the kingdom of God.

21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives had no choice but to be subject to their husbands. Legally, they were their husband’s property; physically, they were smaller and many would have had the added vulnerability of being often pregnant in a time when the only reliable form of contraception was infanticide. They had no choice about whether submitting to their husband, but they could choose HOW they would submit, and so Paul advises them:

22 be subject to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head[22] of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Saviour. 24 Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.

On first glance this sounds a bit blasphemous. Is Paul really telling wives to worship their husbands as though they are the creator and sustainer of the universe? To act as though their husband is God? I doubt Paul even imagined that readers might take that interpretation.

He is pointing to an example of submission in which the one who submits is not diminished or degraded by the act of submission. In fact, in submitting to Christ[23] the church finds life and growth and salvation. So, he says to wives, you are being forced to submit, so model your submission on the church. Choose active submission over grudging servitude.

Treat your husband as though he is the kind of head that Christ is to his body, the church. The kind of head that will sacrifice himself to save and nourish the body. Treat him like this and, who knows, maybe he will become that sort of husband. But in any case, your servitude will be transformed into Christian service that honours your true Lord. And if your subjection is “as to the Lord” then you will not agree to anything that dishonours the Lord, though you might be punished or even lose your life. Christ gave his life for you and you must be prepared to do the same.[24]

So Paul makes the wife’s submission to her husband secondary to her submission to her real Lord.

He gives similar advice to children and slaves:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord (6:1)

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ. (6:5)

Servitude and obedience need not be dehumanising, and it need not be incompatible with serving Jesus.

Does that really imply that Paul believed it was good and right for the master of a household to have complete power of ownership over wife, children and slaves?

It took way too long for Christians to come to a clear position on the evil of slavery. But we did get there eventually; and relatively soon afterwards[25] we also created laws to enshrine the full personhood of women and children. Only in the last century or so have women gained the vote and the right of married women to own property. More recently we have gained the right to equal pay, to divorce, and to continue to work after marriage and childbirth.

Christian convictions fired many of the people who fought for these rights.[26] But women of my generation can easily forget just how recently these rights were won for us, and we forget to be grateful.

The fact that Paul could call wives, slaves and children to courageous Christian living within their servitude does not imply that servitude should be imposed. All life situations are transformed by the Gospel, but that does not mean that all life situations are good, or that we should hold back when we have an opportunity to relieve suffering and enhance human dignity.

Paul did not explicitly call for the overthrow of slavery or patriarchy, but if Christian men had paid more attention to his words to husbands, fathers and masters those evils would have been abandoned much sooner. The call to overthrow slavery and patriarchy is not explicit in Paul’s words, but it is subversively implicit. Look at what he says to husbands[27]:

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, 27 so as to present the church to himself in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind – yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.

Husband, he says, you legally have complete power over your wife. OK then, exercise your power the way Jesus exercised his: in love. And just in case you have some sentimental or patronising ideas about love I’m telling you that your love is to be modelled on Christ’s love for the church. That means self-sacrifice. It means giving everything of yourself in order to see your wife become the complete, whole, mature person she was created to be. It means that the fulfilment of your humanity is to be found in the full expression of her humanity. She is not there to serve you. Quite the opposite. Just as Jesus came not to be served but to serve, so you are to serve your wife. Roman law does not require this of you, but the law of Christ does.

Just as the wife’s servitude is transformed by the Gospel, so the husband’s mastery is transformed. It is transformed into servitude.

I have to say that when one of the authors of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood writes that “A man, by virtue of his manhood, is called to lead for God.” and “A woman, just by virtue of her womanhood is called to help for God”[28] he sounds a lot more like Aristotle than Paul.

That is not the biblical message about gender. Genesis 1[29] tells us that men and women were made to jointly image God in the world, leading and nourishing and benefiting from the rest of creation. Genesis 3[30] shows us that the rule of men over women is a consequence of the fall of humanity, not a part of God’s original intention for creation. And throughout the Old Testament, the story of women under the rule of men is told as one of oppression and violence, of rape and powerlessness. And within that story we find just a few women who shine as victors over their humiliating position. We need to remember their stories: Rachel, who outwits her deceitful father; Deborah the victorious prophet and Judge, Tamar who tricks her father-in-law, Judah, and establishes herself as a righteous person and as an ancestor of the Messiah. I could go on, but you can read about them for yourselves. The female heroes of the Bible are not doormats who put up with anything the men around them choose to do with and to them. They are women who use their intelligence, and whatever other resources they can get their hands on, to gain victory for themselves, for their children and for their people.

They are people who transcended the restrictions placed on them as women under patriarchy, just as the women of Ephesus are called to do, not by outright rebellion, but by having an attitude to their subjugation that preserved their personhood and their capacity to act.

We are blessed to live in a very different world. The humanity of men and women has been enhanced as we have left patriarchy behind… or at least as we have begun to do that. Men have been released to be persons, not masters, and women have been released to be active agents for good in the world. And the world is a better place for it.

We can be grateful now that the words of Paul eventually bore fruit. But families are still hard work and men, women and children need to keep working at doing whatever in means in our situation to:

21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

I would like to finish by paraphrasing Paul’s words from chapter 2 of Ephesians, where he wrote about how Jesus abolished the barrier between Jews and gentiles. Imagine that he was writing instead about that more fundamental barrier between men and women:

11 So then, remember that at one time you who are women by birth, called “helpmeets” by those who call themselves your “head” – based on a merely physical difference – 12 remember that you were at one time without Christ, alienated from the world of men, prevented from learning the law of God, and told that God is male and concerned only for men. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who were subordinate have been raised up by the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the patriarchy that divided us. 15 He has abolished the curse of male dominance, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16 and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death all hierarchy through it. 17 So he came and demonstrated humility to you who were at the bottom of the ladder and humility to those who were at the top; 18 for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer dehumanised and humiliated, but you are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (including Junia and Hulda), with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Amen

[1] Home by Aisha Patterson, www.poemhunter.com/poem/home-174/ My apologies to Aisha for making fun of her poem.

[2] In our culture, every home is so different from every other that no generalisation can be applied.

[3] Though I cannot speak from experience because I have never lived alone.

[4] For many of us, home is where the incredibly demanding task of raising children takes place, along with the even harder work of maintaining a marriage. Home is not a place where you find your rest; and it is rarely a place where you feel your best. And all that sentimentality about home life only makes those of us who live in real homes – and that’s all of us – feel as though there is something deeply wrong with us and with the people we live with.

[5] It would be wrong to say that genuine affection was never present in the Roman family, but it was expected more in parent-child relationships than marriage relationships.

[6] Aristotle, Politics I, 1252b: Hesiod was right when he wrote “First and foremost a house and a wife and an ox for the ploughing”, for the ox serves instead of a servant for the poor

[7] Aristotle was, of course, long dead by the first century AD, but his influence was still substantial. Later Greco-Roman household codes differed little from his.

[8] Aristotle, Politics I, 1253b “an article of property is a tool for the purpose of life, and property generally is a collection of tools, and a slave is a live article of property.”

[9] Aristotle, Politics I, 1253b

[10] Aristotle, Politics I, 1259a “for it is a part of the household science to rule over wife and children （over both as over freemen, yet not with the same mode of government, but over the wife to exercise republican government and over the children monarchical)”

[11] For Aristotle, what was right was determined by what was fitting according to nature, and therefore he often ran the risk of saying that something was right just because it was generally done.

[12] Aristotle, Politics I, 1259b

[13] Ephesians 2:11-22

[14] Compare this with “As wives, our life’s work should be to perfect how we may please our husbands.” Debi Pearl, Created to be His Help Meet, 151

[15] They all served the emperor, but they served him at a distance via a hierarchical structure. Hardly any of them expected ever to meet him, but they obeyed him by obeying his representatives. And in the Roman Emperor, the better emperors were very good at ensuring their governors and other representatives at every level understood what they expected.

[16] People of the Roman Empire honoured their emperor by honouring the men above them in the hierarchy that the emperor had imposed on them. The real master is nothing like that. Each Christian person reports directly to Jesus. And for the Christian person, this revolutionises every other authority structure we find ourselves in.

Claiming that Jesus is Lord was an outrageous political statement for these early Christians. This claim rendered the authority of the emperor relative at a time when emperors were claiming absolute power over their subjects and were moving towards an insistence on being worshiped as gods.

[17] And thousands of Christians renounced their faith under torture and the bishops had to think and argue hard about what to do with these people when they later repented.

[18] How could he hold the zealous ones back from acting in ways that might bring the full force of the empire down on the church? And at the same time, how could he call these Christian people to find ways of living in their culture that reflected absolute allegiance to Jesus?

[19] Those laws remained in effect until the fourth century when Constantine made some changes to allow for celibate clergy.

[20] In thinking through the way forward, Paul must have reflected on

Matt 10:16            See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Matt 17:24-27      24 When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax came to Peter and said, “Does your teacher not pay the temple tax?” 25 He said, “Yes, he does.” And when he came home, Jesus spoke of it first, asking, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?” 26 When Peter said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the children are free. 27 However, so that we do not give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin; take that and give it to them for you and me.”

Matt 22:21            Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.

[21] Man’s Search for Meaning

[22] How kefalh is translated is, of course very important. However, because of time constraints and the fact that it has been dealt with well by many commentators, I choose not to focus on it here.

[23] We know that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. The church consists of those people who bow their knees willingly, in advance of that day.

[24] I want to be clear here that this was a real possibility in the first three centuries AD, but we are blessed to live now in a time when abused women have many more options for leaving dangerous situations.

[25] This is because many Christian people who had campaigned for the abolition of slavery turned to the emancipation of women once their first goal had been accomplished.

[26] It seems to me that those who call for a return to patriarchy demonstrate great naivety in light of how we know women have fared under patriarchy in the past and in other cultures in our time. They also demonstrate a lack of gratitude for the blessings God has given us: blessings that have been hard won by our sisters and brothers in the past.

[27] Remembering that Aristotle’s words to husbands consisted of arguments for why it is right and natural for men to rule over women, and then a few thoughts on how to exercise that rule. Nothing of the sort is found in Paul

[28] Raymond Ortland, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 72

[29] vv26-28

[30] v16

First preached by Margaret Wesley at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill June 9, 2012.

To download or hear the audio version of this sermon click here.
To see the video version of this sermon click here.

Margaret Wesley 

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A Line in the Sand? (A sermon on 1 Timothy 2)

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Father Dave

A few weeks ago, as most of you know, Dave and Denning from Holy Trinity went to Syria as part of a peace delegation, and we all held our breath and prayed for their safety. Especially Denning’s mum. We hoped that the outcomes of the mission would be worth the risk they may have been taking with their lives. And we were all relieved when they made it back safely.

This morning I am placing myself in another war zone, and I hope I am also here as a delegate of peace. It may be true that lives have not been lost in this battle, but livelihoods, reputations, and a sense of belonging have definitely been gained and lost. Christian witness has been seriously damaged, and Christian unity disastrously compromised. This battle is over the inclusion of women in leading and teaching ministries in the church.

Just last Christmas, John Dickson published a little modest book that made a little modest claim about the verse we will look at this morning. He said[1] that when 1 Timothy 2:12 says “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man”, the word for “teach” is a technical term for a type of teaching that has no longer been practiced in the church; so the verse does not prevent – or even refer to – the sort of teaching women might do today.

This was a very modest claim. Too modest, to my thinking, but because the uproar that followed it, his invitation to speak at the Katoomba Women’s Convention was withdrawn. And I suspect he lost a few friends. And maybe gained some, too.

In our current environment in Sydney churches there are consequences for stepping out of line on this issue. Michael Jenson, in his recent book on Sydney Anglicans[2], says that 1 Timothy 2:12 has become a “line in the sand” for most of the leadership of our diocese. Those considered to be on the wrong side of the line are not only labelled as feminists, but as unbiblical, unevangelical and sometimes even heretical.

We are in the middle of a battle here.

And those of you who know me at all know that I am not a fighter. I REALLY don’t like conflict. But a few months ago when some of us were discussing this battle, I found myself saying, “Um… I have some thoughts on 1 Timothy 2. Maybe I could put them into a sermon some time…” And somehow, some time has turned into this morning.

Since I made that offer I have been given some great reasons for not preaching this sermon. Quite apart from the fact that I hate conflict.

Those reasons come down to a question of how much weight should be placed on 1 Timothy 2:12. By focusing on this verse, am I reinforcing the “line in the sand” mentality that has brought us to this crisis.[3]

I have been wrestling with this question for a few months now. And I can definitely see compelling reasons for not focusing on 1 Timothy 2:12; reasons that have nothing to do with feminism and everything to do with a couple of principles of biblical interpretation that are honoured – and I’d like to think practiced – in most Sydney Anglican churches.

  1. We should give more weight to the whole message of the Bible and less weight to individual verses that seem out of step with the rest of the Bible.[4]
  2. We should give more weight to clear, straightforward passages and less to obscure ones.[5]

Both those principles encourage us to approach 1 Timothy 2 with great caution.

In relation to the first principle: I can’t take you through the whole Bible this morning. Maybe another time.[6]

But consider 2 Kings 22:11-12. The young king, Josiah, has given orders for the temple to be repaired and a priest brings out the book of the law, which had been hidden.

In this Key moment in Old Testament history, a female prophet exercises what is arguably the highest form of authority there is in any spiritual community. She decides whether or not a piece of writing should be heard as the word of God. And not just any piece of writing either. This is the book of the Law! The book that all their civil and religious activities were supposed to be based on. And she also announces the timing of the coming destruction and exile: it is inevitable, she says, soon but not until after the death of the current king. And that’s how it was. Jerusalem was destroyed and its population taken into exile during the lifetime of Josiah’s sons.

It is clear in the Old Testament[7] that the way to know if a prophet is genuinely from God is in hindsight. If their predictions prove true then they are legitimate prophets of God. So readers of the final version of 2 Kings can be in no doubt about Hulda’s legitimacy. Her predictions proved true, so readers can be assured that her authority was from God. It is not common for women to exercise this sort of authority in the patriarchal Old Testament culture, but it was accepted without comment when it did happen.

In the New Testament we also see a number of women exercising leadership. We find them mainly in the greetings sections of Paul’s letters. Again, this is a patriarchal culture where men are better educated and so are generally better suited than women to teaching ministries so, yes, more of the teachers are men, but women are there, teaching and leading, and no embarrassment is expressed about their presence.

If 1 Timothy 2:12 really is saying that women must never teach or exercise authority over men, then this one verse is on its own[8], and it stands against a thread of biblical tradition in which women have taught and exercised spiritual authority in the Old and New Testaments, and have been commended – not condemned.

So, on the principal that we should give more weight to the whole message of the Bible and less to contrary individual verses, we see that 1 Timothy 2:12 needs to be read with a lot of caution.

And this is even more the case when we consider the second principle: that we should give more weight to clear passages and less to obscure ones. Let me read 1 Timothy 2:12-15,

12 I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

 

There are so many questions raised by this difficult passage. When the various puzzling bits[9] in these verses are added up they amount to easily the most obscure passage in the New Testament, maybe even in the whole Bible. We must be very cautious about allowing these verses – on their own – to direct our doctrine or practice in the church.

Making these verses a line in the sand is simply not sound[10] biblical interpretation.

If you believe that women should be fully involved in the leadership and teaching ministries of the church, just don’t accept the accusations that you are therefore unbiblical, unevangelical or unchristian. And if you believe that women should not be involved in leadership in the church, please don’t accuse people who disagree with you of being unbiblical.

I’m not saying that we should ignore these verses or cut them out of our Bibles. We should just give them their proper weight.

But in spite of all that, I decided to go ahead and preach on 1 Timothy 2. That’s because I know a number of ministers who are afraid of where they might end up if they follow the call of their heart and their mind: if they give women the same respect and dignity that they give men; if they allow their churches to benefit from the gifts of all members, including the teaching and leadership gifts of women; if they submit to the transformation that must take place in the church when the voice of women is heard as well as the voice of men.

I know women who sense a call and gifting toward ministries of leadership and teaching, yet are told that the God who seems to be calling them does not allow them to practice those ministries.

Many good-hearted people are conflicted and confused. They want to obey God, yet they are told that the command of God on this issue is the opposite of the voice of their own conscience. There is a battle: not just between factions and between denominations. There is a battle in the hearts of a lot of Christian people.

Before we move on to examining 1 Timothy 2, I would like to give you half a minute of silence to ask yourself how you have fared so far in this battle …

 

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.

 

This chapter begins by calling for a non-anxious attitude toward civic authorities who would mostly have been pagan and hostile.[11]

 

Paul calls Christians to be wise. If they openly oppose those authorities they will bring down retribution on themselves. Surely the best outcome for everyone would be for those authorities to come under the influence of God’s spirit and submit to the truth. As Paul goes on to say:

 

3 This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

 

5 For

there is one God;

there is also one mediator between God and humankind,

Christ Jesus, himself human,

6        who gave himself a ransom for all

 

There is only one ultimate authority. These leaders might put themselves in the place of God.[12] But this is blasphemy, and the Ephesian Christians could be confident that God would deal with them when God was ready.

 

Don’t bother trying to gain influence with the governor or the emperor. You have influence with the one who has real authority. So use that influence by praying!

 

Paul goes on to say:

 

7 For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

 

Paul’s defensive tone here suggests that his authority as an apostle was being questioned by some in Timothy’s congregations. Paul doesn’t like having his authority undermined[13] because his authority is intimately connected to his message.

 

Paul wrote this letter to Timothy because his message of the Gospel was being corrupted. At the start of the letter he says, “I urge you to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine.” He speaks of endless genealogies, myths and speculation. This sounds like the sort of stuff that has often popped up in the church – the DaVinci Code type conspiracy theories, the secret knowledge that only select Christians possess, those stories that are just so much more exciting than the Gospel.[14]

 

Some of the myths and conspiracy theories in Ephesus probably related to the temple of the goddess Artemis that dominated the city. And because of that female deity it is likely that some of the myths were about women and birth and about relationships between men and women. In 4:3 we read: “They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods.” In 5:13 Paul speaks of some young women gadding about from house to house, saying what they should not say. So perhaps some of these speculations had something to do with a need for women to escape from biology in order to enter a genuinely spiritual life.[15]

 

In this church that seems to be oppressed from outside by hostile civic leadership, and conflicted within by disagreements over doctrine, Paul says to the men:

 

8 I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument;

 

In this conflicted church, the men need to be told to lift their hands in prayer [prayer hands] rather than in anger [fists]. They are told not to use their physical strength to gain the upper hand in church conflicts, but instead to use their influence with God.

 

The men are told to pray rather than fighting, and the women are told to

 

9  dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, 10but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God.

 

Most Australian women have a few pieces of gold and a string of pearls in our jewellery box, but in the first century only the wealthiest of women would have had those things; and if they went all out and put on all their finery it would have been for only one reason: to make an ostentatious display of their wealth in order to intimidate people who were less well off. And men often dressed their wives up like dolls in order to display their wealth.

 

Why would they do that? In that culture, even more than in ours, money was power. This was a time when slavery was an entrenched part of the economy, but slavery wasn’t the only way that people with money gained power over people without money. Wealthy people tended to be patrons to little armies of people who were technically free but who depended on their patron financially and would be expected to demonstrate loyalty and to do whatever favours their patron might ask of them.

 

So Paul is being completely counter-cultural here by saying that wealthy women should not use their wealth to gain influence for themselves or their husbands.[16]

 

Now, looking at the separate instructions given here to men and women, do you think that these instructions are exclusive to each specified gender? Is Paul saying that it is fine for women to get into fist fights and it is OK for men to use ostentatious displays of wealth to gain power and influence?

 

I’m hoping you are all thinking, NO. It just seems that in this particular situation a lot of people were agitating for power, and some men were doing it with their fists and some women were doing it with money. And each needed to be corrected appropriately.

 

Paul has more to say to women:

 

11 Let a woman learn in silence with full submission.

 

In other words, let women be disciples.[17] Let wealthy women listen to the Gospel, even when it is being taught by rough working men. Men like Paul. There is no question that this would have been mortifying; that it would have required remarkable humility, from the women and from their husbands. These women would have been tempted to use the influence of their wealth in spiritual matters[18] but they are told to be submissive instead.

 

In 6:5, Paul condemns people who are using godliness as a way of getting rich. There Paul is saying the same thing but the other way around. He is telling the poorer members of the church not to suck up to the wealthy ones in order to get something out of them. And in Ephesus, sucking up might have included agreeing with their speculative theological ramblings… or maybe putting their name forward when bishops were being selected.

 

The Christian life is not a means of gaining power or money. It is not about gaining the upper hand, but about laying down our lives, giving up our influence. Submitting to God and to one another.

 

And so… verse 12:

 

12 I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.

 

The Greek word behind the translation “to have authority”[19] is not used anywhere else in the New Testiment and its meaning is not completely clear from other literature either, but it certainly is more negative than the word Paul normally uses to talk about healthy, legitimate authority. It has a sense of grasping or userping authority that belongs to someone else.[20]

 

And when Paul says that women are not to teach or to usurp authority, those two words need to be understood together rather than independently.[21] What he is saying is that women are not to teach in a way that usurps or grasps at the authority of men.[22]

 

…but she is to keep silent.

 

Now, the word translated “silent” here was also used[23] in verse 2 and there it was translated not as “silent” but as “quiet”:

so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life

 

The word can mean absolute silence but it often means quiet in this sense of being calm and untroubled. And given that this whole chapter has been about living peaceably in a time of conflict, it makes much more sense to translate the whole sentence like this:

 

I am not allowing women to teach in a way that usurps the authority of men, but they are to live quietly.

 

And the quiet living that women are called to here is the quietness of prayer and good works that the whole Christian community is called to, not just the women. And again I would ask if you think Paul would say that it is just fine for men to teach in a way that usurps the authority of other men. I don’t think so. It just seems to be that, in this situation, Paul is addressing a particular problem with women teaching, probably teaching speculative, sub-Christian doctrine, as a way of getting hold of authority that was held at that time by men.

 

Paul says much the same thing, through Timothy, to each of the agitated groups he addresses in this letter. Quieten down. Use your hands for praying, not for fighting. Use your money to do good rather than to get hold of power. If you have opportunities to teach, use those opportunities to promote peace and truth rather than to usurp authority that you have not been legitimately given.

 

Notice that the next chapter begins with the words: “whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task”. There is nothing wrong with wanting to gain a position of authority in the church. The questions Paul raises are to do with how a person goes about it, what they plan to do with it, and whether they are yet sufficiently mature in Christian character to be able to handle it without hurting the people in their care.

 

Now I can only make a few brief comments on verses 13 to 15:

 

13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

 

Within Genesis 2[24], the creation of Adam first does not imply authority. It illustrates how incomplete and lonely men would be without women.[25] So Paul is saying here, I think, that Adam needed Eve to complete him, so that they could enter together into the destiny of their shared humanity; but instead she brought harm to him by leading him into sin. So, to the agitated women at Ephesus, he says, “The men need you. There is no question about that. But make sure that what you contribute is for their good, not for their downfall. Be like your mother Eve was supposed to be but don’t do what she did.”

The phrase about being saved through childbearing needs to be understood alongside the renunciation of marriage that has been happening in this community. Women do not need to deny their biology or separate themselves from men in order to be spiritual. We can embrace the gift God has given some of us of bringing life into the world, just as Mary embraced the opportunity to bring our saviour into the world. I think the move from the single “she” to the plural, “they” is a move from Eve to women in general, and is a clarification that it is not, of course, childbearing that saves women but that, like men, women are saved by Jesus, through faith that is expressed in love, holiness and modesty.

OK. Take a deep breath. It has been a long journey.

In his letter to Timothy, Paul speaks into a chaos of conflict and opposition; of false teaching and exploitation; of money being used to gain influence in the church and “godliness” being used to gain money; of men fighting men and women asserting their independence from men; of the church being used as a rung on social, political and financial ladders.

This is a mess, and it is a mess very much like this that we see Christian communities descending into time and again.

The heart of Paul, the apostle of Good News to the gentiles, must have been broken. Just as it breaks my heart to see these words of his being used to justify the marginalisation, diminishment and sometimes the outright abuse of women.

The Gospel was supposed to set these people free from all that nonsense! But the power of the Gospel is always in tension with the weakness of Christian response. This is a tension that will, at some point, break all our hearts and humble us to the point where we are willing to do the only things we can do. Pray. And work for the good of others, including our enemies.

Into the chaos in Ephesus, Paul calls for quiet, for peace, for prayer and for a focus on doing good for others rather than seeking power for self. In our battlefield in Sydney we need to hear Paul’s call to respond with quiet, with prayer, with a genuine effort to do good. And we also need to follow Paul’s example by opposing teaching that undermines the Gospel and distorts the truth revealed in Jesus: To be quiet, prayerful, humble… people of the truth.

 

Let’s pray,

Lord, Jesus

Please give us peace in our anger

Quiet in our confusion

Love, to respond to past and present hurts

And creativity to find ways of genuinely doing good to people who, at present, seem to be our enemies.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen

 

 

 

 

Resources

I recommend you have a look at the resources tab at the web site for CBE – Christians for Biblical Equality:

www.cbeinternational.org

CBE has a Sydney chapter that you can find at cbesydney.org.au

 

 

[1] Dickson claims that “teach” is a technical term for passing on and laying down the original Gospel tradition. That laying down of the Gospel was finished with the completion of the New Testament, so now nobody – women or men – teach in that particular way. Therefore, 1 Timothy 2 does not apply to the sort of preaching and teaching we do today, so there is no reason why women should be prevented from preaching today.  See Hearing Her Voice: A Case for Women Giving Sermons by John Dickson.

[2] Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology

[3] What I want to do is rub out the line and dance all over it in the name of respect and Christian unity – but by preaching on this difficult verse am I actually making the line deeper and clearer?

[4] See Article 20 of the 39 Articles

[5] See Westminster Confession Ch I, 9

[6] You might choose to read through the Bible for yourself with that question in mind. Look at the few places where women exercise leadership – and yes there are only a few – and ask whether there is any comment in the narrative about whether it is a good or bad thing that they are doing. You do need to keep in mind, of course, that the Bible was written in an utterly patriarchal environment and that male leadership is always assumed to be the norm. You do need to read carefully to separate out what is cultural from what is the biblical message that is spoken into that culture.

[7] Deuteronomy 18:22

[8] The closest other verse is 1 Corinthians 14:34, which says:  “women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says.” This verse needs to be read in light of the fact that just a few chapters earlier Paul wrote about women praying and prophesying in church. And while it is possible to pray silently, it is really not possible to prophesy silently! So the call for silence cannot be absolute; it must be a certain type of speaking that is being prohibited, and unfortunately it is extremely difficult – I suspect impossible – to be absolutely certain about what sort of speaking that is. 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy are letters. They are one side of a written conversation, and while I am reasonably sure that the people these letters were addressed to: the church at Corinth, and the young missionary, Timothy, knew what Paul was saying, we just don’t have the inside information that they had.

[9] The word translated “to have authority” here is not used anywhere else in the New Testament. It is a negative word that seems to indicate a usurping or grasping of authority that legitimately belongs to someone else, but it is not clear exactly what it means.

Then the reference to Adam and Eve is puzzling. When we read Genesis 3 it appears that Adam was just as deceived and just as much a transgressor as Eve. Is Paul perhaps misreading genesis here? And then Paul doesn’t draw any particular lesson out if it – he just lets it stand. Presumably Timothy knew what he was referring to, but unfortunately we don’t.

And then comes the incredible statement: “she will be saved through childbearing”. What could that possibly mean? And on top of that there is a change from “she” to “they”. Who are “they”, and for that matter, who is “she”? Eve? Women generally? Mary? It isn’t clear.

[10] In this context I mean the reformed Evangelical type of biblical interpretation that is honoured in Sydney.

[11] Why does Paul call them to pray for these authorities? Because they are good or worthy of prayer? No, he is much more practical and realistic than that. He tells them to pray for people in authority because those people they have the power to allow the church to live a life of quiet and peaceable godliness and dignity, and they also have the power to subject the church to violence and oppression.

[12] Throughout the first century Roman emperors were becoming more and more bold in their claims to be divine.

[13] He believed that God sent him to take the Gospel of Jesus to the Greek-speaking world. And he defended his call to be an apostle, so that the people who had come to believe through him would continue to believe the Gospel he taught them.

[14] I’ll admit to being captivated by some of that sort of stuff when I was a teenager. Things like mapping the Book of Revelations onto twentieth century events. I suspect, though, that the stuff going around Ephesus would have been more damaging than that.

[15] If so, this was an issue Paul had addressed in other churches, and seems to have been a typically first century Greek distortion of the Gospel. See 1 Corinthians 7 and 15

[16] Remember that in this culture, money was probably the only power these women had. And Paul is telling them to lay it down. To let go of power and influence… to submit to the one true God and live a life of good works rather than a life of influence. To live the God-centred life that was available to all women, rich and poor.

[17] Learning in silence and submission was the role of a disciple in a rabbinical school.

[18] Some of them would have been hosting the church meetings, and it would have been the most natural thing in the world for a host to use that position to influence the guests. Remember there were no church buildings at this stage, and the only people with homes big enough for church gatherings were the wealthiest people in the church.

 

 

[19] αὐθεντεῖν

[20] The word for “to teach” is just the usual word. I mentioned earlier that John Dickson has suggested that it has a specific, technical meaning related to the handing down of the original Gospel tradition. I have read his book and I am not sure that I agree with him completely but I think he might be onto something. I think, though, given the emphasis in 1 Timothy on stopping people from teaching false and speculative doctrines, that it is more likely that Paul has false, teaching in mind here.

[21] When those words – to teach and to usurp authority – are brought together here they form what’s called a hendiadys. An example in English would be if I were to say that I am “Good and angry”. I would not mean that I am good and by the way am also angry. It means that I am “goodly” angry or well and truly angry.

[22] This is one reason why we need men who value the leadership gifts of women to be more bold in challenging the line in the sand mentality of Sydney and calling for the ordination of women to all offices in the church. When women do this we can be perceived as grasping at authority that the Church has seen fit not to grant us.

[23] as an adjective

[24] It seems very likely that some of the theological speculations that were going around were connected to the creation stories in Genesis, so Paul is here correcting their mistakes. It would be helpful to know exactly what it was that he was correcting… but we can still make some headway into understanding what he is getting at.

[25] Paul shows that this is his understanding in 1 Corinthians 11.

First preached by Margaret Wesley at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill June 2,  2012.

To download or hear the audio version of this sermon click here.
To see the video version of this sermon click here.

Margaret Wesley 

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The Miracle of Inclusiveness (A sermon on Act 2:1-21)

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Father Dave

It’s Pentecost again – one of the great feast days of the Christian church!

No, it’s not the resurrection of Jesus that we are celebrating (which was last month) and it’s not even the birth of Jesus (which was last year). It’s the birthday of the church, and I appreciate that any number of people might want to question whether that is really something worth celebrating.

When we look at the history of the church there are plenty of chapters in that history that are nothing to be proud of, and when we look at the controversies surrounding the church today they do start to make Hinduism and Islam look a lot more attractive!

Why celebrate the birth of the church? It’s a good question, and behind it is an even more painful question: ‘Does the world really need the church?’

In as much as we love our little Christian community, we do need to recognise that the institution of the church is not viewed by most as God’s greatest gift to humanity! Did the world ever really need it? After all, what was wrong with the good ol’ synagogue?

It’s a fair question, but if you look at the story of Acts chapter 2 that marks the birth of the church, you get the impression that the disciples of Jesus felt that there was plenty to celebrate! It’s a story filled with excitement and passion and noise and carry-on and all sorts of wonderful miracles that indicate that God joined in that party too!

What went wrong? Did we forget something?

I think we did forget something. Perhaps we forgot a lot of things, and that’s why it’s so important that we hark back to the birthday of the church every now and then and take a good look at what we were created to be.  It’s all here in the Pentecost story, Indeed, I believe it’s all contained in the miracles!

Miracles play a very special role in the Bible. Yes, miracles play a special role for anyone who experiences them – giving us encouragement and strength and joy – but they play a very specific role in the New Testament as ‘signs’ – signs of things to come. Indeed, the word normally translated as ‘miracle’ in the New Testament is the Greek word ‘semeion’, meaning ‘sign’.

Miracles are signs. They point to something. They point to the identity of Jesus, the miracle worker, but more often than not they also point to the future – to what the Kingdom of God will be like when we one day reach it – a place without sickness or hunger, where ‘the earth is as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (Isaiah 11:9). The miracles of Jesus give us a glimpse of that future, and likewise the miracle of Pentecost – the miracle that takes place at the foundation of the church.  It gives us a glimpse of what the church is destined to become!

You can’t work it out in reverse unfortunately. I tried! It doesn’t work!

What I mean is, if you forget for the moment the story of Pentecost, and start with the church today, and then guess what miracles might have taken place that foretold what it was to become, you get very erroneous results!

Try it!

Let’s assume for a moment that the story of Pentecost was lost and that all we knew of the birth of the church was that the disciples were gathered together and that God came upon them and that wonderful miracles started taking place.

My reconstruction – projecting backwards from the church today – is that the Heavens must have opened and amazing gifts of administration must have fallen upon each of the disciples!

All of a sudden, a group of hapless fishermen who barely knew which way to hold up an abacus were turned into geniuses of accountancy, meticulous minute-takers, prodigious producers of protocols – persons who now had the nous to transform their poverty-stricken band into one of the most wealthy and powerful institutions ever known to humanity!

Indeed, if you project back from the Sydney Anglican Diocese specifically, you can almost see the beards dropping from the faces of the disciples as their humble clothes are miraculously transformed into suits, after which they come out speaking in languages that were previously unknown to them, such as legalese and realpolitik.

Sorry. I am being deliberately facetious but, in truth, it is hard to work out what miracles might have inaugurated the church if you start at this end of the process and, quite frankly, it would have been equally difficult to have anticipated what miracles might have taken place had you been there just before this ‘Day of Pentecost’ took place.

I think if I’d been one of the disciples I would have been hoping for gifts of healing!

Lots of people have been healed in and through the church, of course, and it is appropriate, I believe, to think of the church as a place of healing. Why didn’t an outpouring of miraculous healings mark the birth of the church?

Or what about a simple ‘gift of love’.

“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples”, said Jesus, “that you have love, one for another!” (John 13:35). In that case should not the miraculous gift that fell upon the disciples have been a great outpouring of compassion!

Perhaps St Peter could have been given the ‘gift of listening’ to balance out his constant chatter? Perhaps James and John – the ‘sons of thunder’ – could have been filled with the spirit of gentleness such that they might have become known as the ‘sons of tranquillity’.

None of the above happened, did it? Instead …

“When the day of Pentecost came, all of them were together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the roaring of a mighty windstorm came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated, and one rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:1-4)

The scene that follows is quite bizarre, and it makes clear to the reader that the strange ‘tongues’ that the disciples are speaking in are all human languages that were previously unknown to them!

The city where the disciples were was filled with pilgrims at the time – people from ‘every nation under Heaven’ (Acts 2:5) – and it seems that each of the cultures and language groups represented there had some disciple that spoke their language!

“How is it that each of us hears them in our native language?  Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,  Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome  (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (Acts 2:8-11)

This is the question that is posed by the pilgrims, and it receives no immediate answer from the disciples as they must have been just as surprised as the members of the crowd were! This was something that God was doing and it was entirely unexpected!

God was founding a new spiritual community, and He was kicking it off with a miracle that pointed to the future of what this community was going to become, and God made it very clear that, from the first, this was to be a community for all peoples, races and language groups!

God did not inaugurate the church with gifts of healings, even though the church was to become a place of healing.

God did not bestow and extra gift of compassion on that special day, even though love was to be the life-blood of the Christian community.

God certainly didn’t pour out gifts of administration (and I’m guessing that the disciples themselves never experienced those gifts).

God gave them the gift of inclusiveness, such that everybody was welcome, everybody could be heard, everybody would be taken seriously, nobody would be excluded. God gave them the gift of inclusiveness.

If you read between the lines of the Acts 2 story, you can see that this strange miracle is actually the reversal of an ancient curse ancient curse spoken of in the book of Genesis – the curse of Babel!

If you’re familiar with the book of Genesis you know that the first eleven chapters of the book are a very ancient collection of stories that includes such favourites as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, and Noah and the great flood.

And those great stories culminate with a story in Genesis chapter eleven about the first time human beings ever really united together for a common purpose. And it turns out to be a sinister purpose – a quest for power and self-aggrandisement.  And so, we are told, God curses the people involved by confusing their language so that they can no longer understand one another, and so their community fragments, and they are not able to accomplish what they set out to accomplish.

And whether we take this story literally or not does not matter.  What is clear from the story is that the division of the nations into different races and language groups was always seen in the Bible as a curse, and as something that God would one day overcome.  And what is clear in the Pentecost experience, in the miracle of cross-cultural communication that takes place there, was that God, in the very formation of the church, was undoing this ancient curse!

Just as the human community had been confused and pulled apart way back at Babel, so now the Spirit of God was healing those divisions and bringing the races and language groups back together in the founding of the church as a truly multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic community!

No, the church was not founded on a great outpouring of healings, though healing is important. No, it wasn’t inaugurated with a special outpouring of love, though love is the absolute life-blood of the Christian community. The church was founded on the miracle of inclusiveness, because that was who we were uniquely destined to become!

So does the world really need the church? What was wrong with the synagogue?  Well … the synagogue was for Jews only! Not so with the church! Of course, over time, we have made the church an exclusive club – not for Jews only but for whites only, for men only, for middle-class educated people only, for straights only, and certainly for good people only! But we were founded on the miracle of inclusiveness!

I’ve just returned from Syria, as you know, and one of the enduring memories for me is the woman in black who grabbed my hand in the foyer of our hotel, telling me about her 12-year-old son who had been blown to pieces by the rebel soldiers. “They put the bomb in his pocket”, she told me, “and why? Because we are Shi’ite!”

These are the sectarian labels that fragment us and destroy us. I’m a Shi’ite, you’re a Sunni. You’re a Muslim, I’m a Christian. I’m the good guy. You’re one of the bad guys!

I had a friend write to me while I was in the middle of this, warning me not to forget what they (meaning ‘Muslims’) are like. I had to write back and say, ‘brother, I just don’t believe in ‘them’ any more. I only believe in ‘us’, for we’re all in this together.

And that, I think, could be a fitting tag-line for the church as a whole: ‘we’re all in this together!’

We’re all in this together – Jew and Greek, black and white, rich and poor, slave and free, straight and gay, male and female, the good, the bad and the ugly! We’re all in this together and together we are the church! The more inclusive we become, the more we are the church of Pentecost. The more exclusive we become, the more we move away from what is our destiny and our birth right!

Does the world really need the church? Well … the world badly needs an open and inclusive, loving community that can face up to the sectarian violence that so plagues our world and threatens to bring an end to human life as we know it. The world desperately needs that kind of church. As for the other one, I’m not sure any of us needs it.

We need to pray for a new outpouring of the Spirit of the God of Pentecost – a new outpouring of the spirit of inclusiveness that will bring people together with love and forgiveness, where every child of God will hear the Good News of the Gospel in their own language! For this is who we were destined to be! This is our birth right! This is what it means to be the church of Pentecost and the church of God.

First preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on May 19, 2013.

Rev. David B. Smith

Parish priest, community worker,
martial arts master, pro boxer,
author, father of four.

www.FatherDave.org


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Declaration of the Mussalaha Delegation to Syria on the Refugee Situation in Lebanon

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Father Dave

May 7th, 2013

The summary conclusion of the Mussalaha delegtion is that Syrian refugees in Lebanon are forced to rely mainly on their own resources and Lebanese hospitality, both of which are strained to the limit and portend a humanitarian tragedy when they are exhausted.  Lebanon hosts a disproportionate share of refugees in both absolute terms and relative to its population (4.3 million).  Reliable numbers are unavailable, but the most commonly quoted refugee figure is one million persons.

Since the cause of this crisis is the widespread violence in Syria, we call for an immediate end of all aid – lethal and nonlethal – to all combatants, an immediate and mutual ceasefire, and immediate negotiations among all the parties without preconditions.

With respect to the existing refugees, the lack of aid and support is disgraceful.  The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) claims that normal processing is 31 days, while in fact refugees wait up to four months, often without even tents for shelter.  UNHCR also charges a registration fee of $100.

UNHCR says that it is overwhelmed and has insufficient resources.  It should have facilities ready and waiting for new arrivals, and money should be flowing to the refugees, not from them to UNHCR.  In order to make this possible, donor nations should immediately live up to their obligations.  However, UNHCR also needs to be fully transparent, including an audit on the use and allocation of resources.

A lot of refugee care is happening at the individual level, as generous Lebanese and even Palestinian refugees in their camps open their doors with compassion to accommodate their Syrian brothers and sisters.  However, this support is often untenable over the long term and insufficient for the numbers of refugees, leading to makeshift camps that do not meet minimum international standards.  These camps often receive no supervision by UNHCR or any other agency for eight months or more.

In addition, the refugees become increasingly vulnerable to exploitation, including prostitution and human trafficking.  These conditions bring shame to the agencies and committees and their sponsors charged with refugee rights and support.  All refugees have a right to the basics of life and safety.  They must have immediate access to support services and adequate protection from abuse.

Lebanese citizens, Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, Lebanese charitable institutions and other Lebanese civil society institutions deserve much credit for providing support that the international society has not done.  However, a refugee influx of this magnitude is more than any society the size of Lebanon can accommodate without massive aid from the United Nations and its constituent members.  It is a matter of urgency for them to make their actions match their words of sympathy and compassion.

The Mussalaha Delegation to Syria was a group of 16 human-rights activists from seven countries who participated in a 10-day fact-finding mission across Syria and Lebanon:

  • Francesco CANDELARI (Italy) 
  • Marinella COREGGIA (Italy) 
  • Susan DIRGHAM (Australia)
  • Mel DUNCAN (USA) 
  • Tiffany EASTHOM (Canada) 
  • Denning ISLES (Australia) 
  • Alistair LAMB (USA)
  • Franklin LAMB (USA) 
  • Paul LARUDEE (USA)
  • Amir M. MAASOUMI (Canada) 
  • Mairead MAGUIRE (Northern Ireland) 
  • Michael MALOOF (USA) 
  • Ann PATTERSON (Ireland)
  • Antonio Carlos da Silva ROSA (Brasil) 
  • Father Dave SMITH (Australia) 
  • Professor William Stanley (USA)
  • Luke Waters (Australia)

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Mussalaha Peace Mission to Syria

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Father Dave

The Concluding Declaration of the Mussalaha Delegation to Syria – Friday, May 10th 2013

Syria exhibits a massive and terrible breakdown of human decency and respect. There are millions of innocent victims and many individual acts of heroism, but amongst the powerful we see an appalling degree of violence, hypocrisy and corruption. Tens of thousands have died, millions have been displaced, and nearly the entire population of 23 million lives in fear. The international community has stated and we confirm that the Syrian tragedy is possibly the worst since World War II.

States, political organisations and combatants are the primary causes of the misery, which they pursue for their own advantage, sewing terror and manipulating the suffering to reflect badly on their opponents while all too often refusing to compromise or even talk to each other.

These are the findings of our delegation, consisting of 16 human rights activists from seven countries. Over the course of nine days we visited refugee camps, affected communities, religious leaders, combatants, government representatives and many others – perpetrators and victims – in Syria and Lebanon.

We were already horrified by what we knew before coming, but what we have learned as a delegation brings shame to almost everyone involved.

We call on the international community to protect the territorial integrity of Syria and to respect the fundamental rights of Syria as a sovereign state. We deplore any intent to breach the integrity of Syria’s frontiers or to damage the unity and rich diversity of the Syrian people.

We recognise the legitimacy of the aspirations of the Syrian citizens for change, reforms, the eradication of State corruption and the implementation of a democratic life that respects and protects the fundamental rights of all citizens and minorities but we believe that effective and lasting reforms an only be achieved through non-violent means.

Our primary appeal is that all countries stop their interference in Syrian affairs – more specifically, that they halt the supply of arms and foreign combatants to both sides of the conflict. If foreign countries agree to eliminate the influx of arms and fighters, we are confident that Syrians can find their own solutions to their problems and achieve reconciliation.

We unequivocally oppose all aggression and foreign intervention against Syria under any justification. At the same time we appeal to all parties, including the government, to show restraint in response to the provocations that aim to escalate the violence and broaden the conflict.

We consider it beyond debate that the Syrian people have the right to determine their own government and their own future. Foreign interference is currently preventing the Syrian people from exercising their right to self-determination. We are concerned that such pernicious intervention is tearing apart the fabric of the country itself, with long-term consequences that can only be imagined.

The cautionary example of Iraq serves to remind us of the dire consequences of such international folly. This humanitarian crisis is already spilling into neighbouring countries. A collapse of Syrian society though will destabilise the entire region. We appeal to the international community to show that it can learn from history and make better choices in the case of Syria, which will spare further tragedy for the courageous Syrian people.

Secondly, we appeal to the international media to stop the flow of misinformation regarding the Syrian conflict. We believe that every Syrian, both in and outside the country, should be given the right to be heard and we do not see this reflected in the international coverage of this crisis.

Thirdly, while we entirely support the embargo on arms, we ask the international community to review and reconsider the crippling sanctions that are taking such a heavy toll on ordinary Syrian people.

Fourthly, we urge the international community to take seriously the vast number of refugees and persons who have been internally displaced by this conflict.

We look towards the cessation of all violence when these people might be allowed to return to their homes. In the meantime, however, humanitarian aid efforts must be expanded to meet the basic needs of such persons.

Our earlier report, the “Declaration of the Mussalaha Delegation to Syria on the Refugee Situation in Lebanon”, outlines the inadequacies of current refugee programmes. We appreciate that various government authorities have attempted to respond to the refugee crisis. We recognise though that the International Committee of the Red Cross and its affiliates, as well as other humanitarian agencies, must be allowed to set up centres inside Syria to care for internally displaced persons, so as to prevent these displaced persons from fleeing to foreign countries.

This work requires immediate and significant funding by the international community. While this will be a costly undertaking, we believe that the costs will in fact be only a fraction of the amount currently being spent on destroying Syria.

Finally, we appeal to all parties involved to put an end to all forms of violence and human rights violations – actions that target and terrorise innocent civilians and prisoners, indiscriminate terrorist attacks on the civilian population, the unjustified systematic targeting of vital state infrastructures, civilian installations, industrial zones, factories, communication facilities, agriculture reserves, health centres and hospitals, schools and universities, and religious and cultural landmarks – all of which results in the transformation of the residential areas into war zones, resulting in the flight of the civilian population.

We likewise oppose the use of religious decrees that encourage, trivialise and justify barbarity, rape and terrorism. We appeal to the entire religious community to call the faithful to nonviolence and peacemaking, and to reject all forms of violence and discrimination.  We express our admiration and respect for the many Syrian religious leaders who have refused to endorse the use of violence and have dedicated their lives to working for a peaceful solution to this conflict, and we appeal specifically for the immediate release of the two abducted Christian bishops, both of whom were dedicated to the work of peace and reconciliations, as we appeal for the release of all Christian and Muslim clerics and other abducted Syrian citizens.

We conclude by commending the work of Mother Agnes Mariam and the Musalaha initiative. We have witnessed their work inside diverse communities across Syria. We offer our unequivocal and ongoing support to these brave people, and we commit ourselves to continue to work alongside them until Syria is truly at peace.

We  thank the Patriarch, Gregorios III Laham, for his kind invitation and his ongoing support for Mussalaha. We likewise thank Mr. Jadallah Kaddour for his generosity that made our visit possible, and we express our gratitude  to all those who have facilitated our path, most especially the Organization Committee of the delegation’s visit and the Popular Council for the National Reconciliation.

Damascus, the 10/5/2013,

Mairead Corrigan Maguire in the name of the International Delegation to Syria for Mussalaha and Peace.

Mussalaha team members at Baalbek (Lebanon) preparing to cross into Syria

Mussalaha team members at Baalbek preparing to cross into Syria

Signatories from the Mussalaha Delegation to Syria:

Francesco CANDELARI (Italy) His current role is International Coordinator of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and he has held previous positions at the United Nations and as journalist covering the Arab Spring. He has been in close touch with people from Syria and interested in looking for possible nonviolent solutions to the conflict in Syria.

Marinella COREGGIA (Italy) Italian journalist and writer in the field of ecological justice; and an ecological farmer, Marinella Correggia, has been active for peace since 1991. Associated with the No War Network, she co-organised many demonstrations in Rome, petitions to the UN, sending information to some Un missions in Geneva, writing articles and conferences.

Mel DUNCAN (USA) is Director of Advocacy and Outreach, Nonviolent Peaceforce. Mel Duncan is the founding Executive Director and current Advocacy and Outreach Director of Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP). Modeled on the Gandhian concept of Shanti Sena, Nonviolent Peaceforce is composed of trained citizens from around the world. Mr. Duncan has 40 years of experience organizing and advocating nonviolently for peace, justice, and the environment. He currently focuses on advancing the recognition, policy and funding support for nonviolent peacekeeping at the UN.

Tiffany EASTHOM (Canada) She is Country Director for South Sudan for Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) which is an international non-governmental organization (INGO) engaged in the creation of a large-scale unarmed peacekeeping force, composed of specially trained civilians. Prior to becoming NP’s Country Director in South Sudan, Tiffany served as Country Director at NP’s Sri Lanka project as well as Country Director for Peace Brigades International in Indonesia.

Denning ISLES (Australia) is a graduate of Welsey Institute, majoring in Audio Technology (2008). He currently works for Fr. David Smith with Fighting Fathers Ministries, in which he supports various youth and community organisations such as Dulwich Hill’s Holy Trinity Youth Center, Binacrombi Camp Site and the Dulwich Hill Gym.

Alistair LAMB (USA)

Franklin LAMB (USA) is an international lawyer based in Beirut-Washington, DC. A former Assistant Counsel of the House Judiciary Committee of the US Congress, Lamb has written widely on Middle East issues as part of his commitment to the cause of Palestine.

Paul LARUDEE (USA)is a former Ford foundation project supervisor, and Fulbright-Hays lecturer in Lebanon, and a U.S. government advisor to Saudi Arabia. He has been a faculty member at several universities in the San Francisco Bay Area,an organizer with the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine and co-founder of the movement to break the Israeli siege of Gaza by sea, and was aboard the boats that succeeded in doing so in 2008 as well as the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was attacked by Israeli forces on May 31, 2010. He is a cofounder of the Global March to Jerusalem.

Amir M. MAASOUMI (Canada) is a sociologist, specialist of contemporary Islam, intercultural and interfaith relations, dialogue among cultures and civilizations. He is also a peace, social justice and human rights activist.

Mairead MAGUIRE (Northern Ireland) is Nobel Peace Laureate (l976) Hon. President, Co-Founder Peace People, Northern Ireland. Mairead (Corrigan) Maguire is a Nobel Peace Laureate (l976) Hon. President and Co-founder of the Peace People, Northern Ireland. Mairead was responsible for co-founding the Peace People. She has received many honours and awards, including an honorary doctorate from Yale University, the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award and the Nobel Peace Prize Award (l976).

Michael MALOOF (USA) is a senior writer for WND (WND.com), or World Net Daily, specializing in international political and economic reporting and analysis. He also writes a weekly column for subscribers only for WND’s G2Bulletin providing analysis in these areas. As part of his reporting, Maloof travels many times a year to Lebanon where he is expected to set up a bureau there for WND.

Ann PATTERSON (Ireland) is a family therapist at the Quaker Centre in Belfast, she works to provide counseling support for families from the divided communities. During the peace process in Northern Ireland, she worked with imprisoned paramilitaries from both sides, preparing them to enter into peace talks. She is founder member of the Peace People, a pacifist movement that played a critical role in promoting the Good Friday Agreement and advancing the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Antonio Carlos da Silva ROSA (Brasil) is the editor of TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS since its inception in 2008, he is also the Secretary of the Board of Conveners of TRANSCEND International-A Network for Peace, Development and Environment, founded by Johan Galtung in 1993.

Father Dave SMITH (Australia) started Fighting Fathers Ministries in 2002 – a company that aims to offer an alternative culture to young people, based on values of courage, integrity and teamwork. This work has been the subject of numerous TV documentaries and one short film. Particularly well-known for our use of boxing-training as a means to help young men overcome anger-management issues. He was twice nominated for Australian of the Year on the basis of this work. He is known for his friendship with Mordechai Vanunu (the Israeli ‘nuclear whistle-blower’), which started in Sydney in 1986, started my involvement in social justice work in the Middle East and has subsequently developed a strong profile in Australia as a Palestinian human rights activist.

Professor William Stanley (USA)


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Church Hall Firebug – Daily Telegraph.

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Father Dave

The rector of an Anglican church gutted by fire in Sydney’s inner west yesterday believes he knows who started the blaze and it has given a suspect “shortlist” to police.

Reverend Dave Smith said he believed a disgruntled youth was likely to be behind the fire, which destroyed a celebrated parish hall adjoining his Holy Trinity Church in Herbert St, Dulwich Hill.

The blaze broke out about 3:45am and demolished the structure, used as a youth drop-in center and boxing “fighting club” for many years.

“I think it’s probably some disgruntled kid in the area – you can’t run a facility like this without someone getting pissed at you,” said Reverend Smith, who lives across the road and watched as the blaze unfolded.

“It’s a community facility that people have been using for a lot of years, it’s been a youth drop-in center. I mean there are hundreds of people who use it so it’s a real slap in the face.”

Asked weather he has passed any names of suspects to authorities, he said: “It’s quite possible – I’ve got a shortlist. Things like this don’t just happen by themselves.” He praised the work of emergency services, including the fire brigade and police, who rushed to the scene within minutes of thiple-0 calls being places.

“The dog was barking like crazy and there was a flash of light and I got up and opened the door and got hit by the heat from across the road.” He said.

The Fire was contained to the building and did not spread to a home next door where six people were sleeping.

The historic hall was built in the 1870s and was recently used by Reverenced Smith for a charity event that broke a world record for most continuous boxing rounds.

During the event the 50-year-old “fighting father” took on 66 opponents, including Anthony Mundine, to complete 120 three-minute rounds. The officer in charge of the investigation, Marrickville detective Russell Newitt, had previously assisted Reverend Smith with a number of church investigations, so he was optimistic the case was off to a good start he said.

Article by Yoni Bashan.

I Know Who You Are, Firebug – Daily Telegraph 

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Church Fire Suspects – Sydney Morning Herald

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Father Dave

An Anglican minister whose historic church in the Inner West was gutted by fire at the weekend said he suspected the blaze had been deliberately lit.

The Holy Trinity Anglican Church building in Dulwich Hill was found well alight when fire crews responded to multiple 000 calls at 3:45am on Sunday.

The severely damaged structure, built in 1886 and used to house a youth center with a gym, boxing ring a playgroup, faces demolition.

The parish priest, Father DaveSmith, said he suspected the fire to be a deliberate act of vandalism.

“There’s CCTV footage which is suggesting that already, but also the next door neighbor heard something, saw some people scurrying around there starting a little fire or something,” he said.

The Anglican minister said he had not noticed anything amiss while working on his Sunday sermon in his office overlooking the building until about 3am.

“I’m just thankful that no one was hurt. It could have been far, far worse,” he said.

Inspector Chris Sedgwick, of Fire and Rescue NSW, said the cause of the fire was yet known.

“It was a fierce fire and well alight when the brigades got there,” he said.

About 30 firefighters battled the blaze, which crews stopped from spreading to a neighboring house.

A police spokeswoman said inquiries were continuing.

Father Dave, a former professional boxer, said the parish would consider options for the site, such as rebuilding a community center.

“As we say in the game, we’re on the ropes but we’re not on the canvas,” he said.

Article by Leesha McKenny.

Priest Suspects Church Fire was Lit Delibertaly – SMH

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Dreaming and Killing! (A sermon on Acts 11:1-18)

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Father Dave

When I was a young Christian attending an evangelical youth group, we were expected to read our Bible every day, and we were encouraged to read it as if it was a direct message from God to us.

I don’t know if that was the advice most others received who attended Christian youth groups, but the idea was that we shouldn’t get bogged down in trying to analyse the text too deeply but simply accept it as a personal message from the Creator, spoken directly to us as individuals.

Sometimes that’s a very natural way to read the Bible: “Come to me, all ye who labour and are heavy laden” … hey, that’s me!

Some passages do feel like a direct personal word from the Almighty but others do not, and today’s reading from Acts chapter eleven is surely one of the ‘not’ passages.

So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”

Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’ “I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ “The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ (Acts 11:2-9)

Now I’m cutting off the reading there because Peter’s full story is a long story, and the story told in chapter eleven is actually a retelling of the story of chapter ten. Even so, at the heart of both stories is this dream, and in terms of the Bible being a personal message to me, it has to be said that this is not the sort of dream I can remotely identify with!

Peter dreams of all sorts of animals being lowered down on some sort of giant picnic rug and is told to “kill and eat”. While I like food, I can’t imagine having to personally kill things that I eat. Moreover, I don’t have a problem with pork, and that’s the real issue here!

“Kill and eat” the voice says, to which Peter replies “Surely not, Lord! Nothing unclean has every entered my mouth!” In other words “Lord, I don’t eat pork” (or crustaceans or birds of prey or other animals with uncloven hoof, etc., etc.)

If this is supposed to be God’s personal word to me for today I’ve got to say, “Lord, this is not my issue!” I already eat pork, I’ve always eaten it and most other people I know eat it without reservation too!

Now I’m not saying that I don’t find this passage interesting and I’m not even suggesting that there aren’t aspects of this story that I don’t find confronting, but what has the lifting of the prohibition regarding pork got to do with me?

Of course I appreciate that there are persons in our church community who refrain from eating pork but I don’t think that’s for especially religious reasons.

I know, for instance, that Ange (my wife) is concerned about inhumane treatment of farm animals that are used for meat, and I know she gets in a lot of arguments on Facebook over this. She tells me that there is a fair degree of hostility between on Facebook between some of her vegan friends and the Evangelical Christians that she’s ‘befriended’.

Ange showed me a picture of a dog and a pig, side by side, that one of her vegan friends had posted recently. The caption underneath it read “what’s the difference?” In other words, ‘why do we kill and eat one and not the other?’

Ange says she didn’t appreciate it when a certain well-known Evangelical clergyman said ‘but the dog isn’t full of tasty bacon!’ (or something like that) as she felt it trivialised the issue, as indeed it does.

I appreciate that there are genuine issues there involved with animal cruelty, but I also recognise that this is an entirely different issue from the one that bothered Peter and the other Apostles. Peter wasn’t concerned about killing pigs because it was cruel. He didn’t want to touch them because they were ‘unclean’ and hence forbidden creatures!

Of course the real issue on view in Acts chapter eleven isn’t about food but about people. The breaking down of the food barriers is just the leading edge of a far more comprehensive breaking-down of barriers between the people of different racial and religious backgrounds who eat these different foods,  but even then, accepting gentiles into our midst is not my issue either!

For who are ‘the gentiles’ on view in Acts eleven – the people that the twelve Apostles feared were going to pollute their religious community? They are us!

This is one of the jarring things that I got stuck on when I read through this story again this year.

I always tend to think of the Apostles (particularly Peter, James and John perhaps) as being my kinda guys! I’d always imagined that if I could transport myself back into the first century that I’d get on really well with those boys. Reading this passage again made me realise that if I were coming towards Jesus’ disciples on the road, they’d most likely cross to the other side of the street to avoid being contaminated by me!

That’s hard to accept for an upright middle-class white boy like me, of course. We righteous middle-class white people are used to being the ones who show the prejudice – not the ones on the receiving end!

Of course we good church people don’t do that, do we – and certainly not us progressive Australian church-going people? We would never show prejudice towards people because of their skin colour or country of origin, would we … unless they’re refugees of course, or Arabs (Muslim Arabs, at any rate), or perhaps Chechens!

I don’t know if you’ve been following the propaganda closely of late but I get the feeling that Chechens are the new group of people that we’re now supposed to hate!

The ‘Boston Bombers’ were Chechens, we’ve been told, and all of a sudden I’m hearing about Chechens in Syria, and I’m getting the feeling that the way is being paved for some violent targeting of a lot of Chechen people.

Or maybe we’re just supposed to hate them because they’re Muslims? I’m not sure but I must say that it’s hard sometimes to keep up with where you are supposed to be focusing your prejudices!

I know that we in Australia often like to think of ourselves as a model of tolerance and harmonious multiculturalism but in many ways we have one of the worst records in the world!

Let’s take a quick quiz here:

  • When was the slavery of African people banned in Britain?William Wilberforce and his friends saw slave-trading made illegal in 1807 and they went on to pass the ‘Slavery Abolition Act’ in 1833.
  • When was slavery abolished in the United States?December 1865 with the passing of the ‘Thirteenth Amendment’.
  • When did Australia officially recognise its Indigenous people as being genuine human beings?May 27, 1967! Before that Australian Aboriginal people were dealt with under the ‘Flora and Fauna act’!

1967 wasn’t that long ago! I was certainly alive then! I was five years old. I don’t remember that day any more but I’d bet that some of the Indigenous kids who were my playmates in Kindergarten at the time will still remember!

I recall Irish comedian Dave Allen speaking of his experience of our country. He said that the Australian people he’d met were amongst the most generous and open-hearted people he’d met anywhere in the world and that it was only the white bastards that he couldn’t stand!

It is confronting, this passage, as it’s all about shifting prejudices but, in truth, what I find most confronting in this passage is not the shift the disciples had to make in their thinking but the way they got there!

What unnerves me in this story is the fact that these people changed their minds about what God required of them with regards to what they should eat and who they should mix with on the basis of what? …

  • A piece of Scripture that they had never read before?
  • An ex-cathedra statement of an early Pope (or his equivalent)?
  • A direct word from Jesus Himself?

They shifted their entire understanding of their faith based on a dream that Peter had, and on their intuitions about what the Holy Spirit was telling them! This is really quite bizarre, as these people were over-turning stuff that was written in the Scriptures that was completely unambiguous.

In the book of Leviticus, chapter eleven, it is written: don’t eat pork!

“The pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.” (Leviticus 11:7-8)

There it is, in black and white! You can’t argue with that, can you?

On the one hand you have the Word of God in all its unambiguity. On the other hand you have Peter’s latest dream. Which one would you consider authoritative? The disciples go with the dream!

This doesn’t sit comfortably with me! As a good Evangelical with a high regard for the Scriptures I know how you argue for something new and innovative.  You do what Keith does in his latest article about Gay marriage (found on www.arestlessfaith.com.au).

  • You do a deep exegetical analysis of the wording of the law in question
  • You compare this Biblical law with other Biblical laws.
  • You look at the way in which the Biblical writers themselves might have adapted laws similar to this one?

Peter and the other Apostles of Jesus do absolutely none of these things. They just accept Peter’s dream and apparently disregard everything else!

That’s painful, as it’s actually this method of Biblical scholarship that allows us Evangelical Christians to draw our line around who are the legitimate interpreters of God’s word and who are not!

This is how we judge who can be taken seriously as a spiritual teacher. We look for this sort of scholarship and we listen to those who practice it and we engage in intelligent conversation according to the rules of that game, and those who do not play that game (such as those who wake up and want to tell us all the things that God has taught them in their sleep) get written off!

But we can’t write off the Apostles, and we can’t write off this dream, as we know that this dream did come from God. And I don’t know why God could not have revealed all this to the Apostles in a Bible Study, but He did not!

And where do we go with that? What principles for Biblical interpretation can we draw from that? What template of divine communication can we put in place on the basis of this account? How can we use this experience to be able to better predict the will and the activities of God in the future? So far as I can see, there are absolutely no satisfactory answers to any of these questions!

What we Evangelicals tend to forget is that God is God, and that God will do whatever God chooses to do. God will communicate with us in whatever way He deems to be appropriate, and in the end there is absolutely no way of predicting what God is going to do next.

And that’s all very difficult to take on board! I’m having enough trouble trying to find room in my heart for the homeless and refugees without having to make room at the top for a God whose movements I cannot anticipate and whose mind and being I will never truly understand!

And so maybe there is a personal message in this passage for me after all? The personal word for me today seems to be this: expect the unexpected, let God be God, and dream the dreams He gives you!

May God add his blessing (and his own personal message to you) to the reading of His word.

First preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on April 28, 2013.

  • To watch or share the video version of the sermon click here.
  • To hear the audio or download version of the sermon click here.

Rev. David B. Smith

Parish priest, community worker,
martial arts master, pro boxer,
author, father of four.

www.FatherDave.org


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My Sheep Hear My Voice! (A sermon on John 10:22-30)

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Father Dave

22At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. 24So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” 25Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; 26but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. 30The Father and I are one.”

I’ve spent a bit of time on Keith’s blog this week (www. arestlessfaith.com.au) and I must say that it was encouraging to engage in some of the online debate that’s taking place in that little corner of the virtual world.

Keith (in case you missed it) recently published an article in support of gay marriage. More specifically, he wrote about how we might respond to the Biblical injunctions that appear to prohibit gay marriage, and his article has generated a healthy amount of discussion in the comment section that follows his article.

I was thoroughly convinced by Keith’s article (of course) so my comments were friendly and supportive. Not everybody who commented was quite as supportive but I must say that I was encouraged by the fact that nobody was openly hostile either!

This is not my normal experience in online debate, and I do get involved in online arguments quite a lot. I publish just about every day to www.israelandpalestine.org. We generally add at least one new sermon per week to www.fatherdave.com.au, and I also manage an online forum on www.fighting-fathers.com where we have had some vibrant discussions of late – probably the longest and most painful of which was on the topic of gun-control in the USA.

I did not start out as an expert on issues of global gun control, but after many hours on our forum I feel that I have become one! Certainly I (along with many others) have managed to pull out statistics from this country and from around the world about the effectiveness of gun-control laws and their correlation with reduction of gun-crime.

What I found remarkable though, when I eventually stood back and looked over the lengthy forum thread in which so many people had participated, was that not a single participant had actually changed their mind! Those who had started out as being in favour of restrictions on gun ownership (like myself) were still adamantly despising firearms. Those who had started out beating the drum for the ‘right to bear arms’ were still sticking to their guns (so to speak).

And so I thought I should look more carefully at the way Keith manages his blog, as he seems to be bringing people around on there! Moreover, I thought it might be worth going one step higher and looking at the way that Jesus handled those he debated with, to see if He might help me master the art of persuasion.

Today’s Gospel reading seems tailor-made for that purpose, for in today’s Gospel reading we find Jesus debating with some of his religious opponents, and so we get a direct window on Jesus in debate!

He was in the temple, we are told. More specifically, He’s in the ‘Portico of Solomon’, which is on the outskirts of the temple. Apparently the ‘Portico of Solomon’ was on the outer perimeter of the temple and was walled on the outside, to the east, which would stop the cold east wind from coming in. The Gospel writer is quite explicit in telling us that it was winter, which helps make sense of the whole scene.

Jesus was in the most user-friendly part of the temple if he was looking for a debate. He wasn’t in the inner part of the temple, reserved for prayer and sacrifice, but he hadn’t left the temple either. He was in the ‘Portico of Solomon’ where, even on a winter’s day, you could still stroll and converse comfortably.

And as we might have expected, a number of worshippers do approach Jesus with a question, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly” to which Jesus replies “I did tell you, but you do not believe!” (John 10:24-25)

This is exactly the sort of question we might have expected from members of the temple community. Jesus’ response though is probably not what we might have expected, and it was almost certainly not what His questioners expected!

We assume it is a sincere question – “tell us plainly if you are the Messiah”. Jesus says “I told you already” which suggests that either Jesus hadn’t told them very clearly the first time round or that his listeners were too stupid to grasp what He was saying, and I think that, being good Christians, we’re going to lean towards the latter option – that the problem didn’t lie with Jesus but with them.

These people must have been just too stupid to work out what Jesus was saying. Perhaps Jesus hadn’t used the actual word ‘Messiah’ and explicitly applied it to Himself but, so far as He was concerned, He had said enough to communicate His hidden identity to them, and if they couldn’t work that out they were just ignorant!

That’s a comfortably Sydney Anglican take on the passage, certainly! We Sydney Anglicans do tend to believe that if someone fails to embrace the Gospel it’s because of some kind of failing at an intellectual level. That’s why our diocese invests so much energy in educating our clergy and why all our Archbishops have to have doctorates and why our iconic leaders are people who are master debaters rather than people with a history of caring for the poor. We know that the encounter with God takes place first and foremost in the mind and that there’s nothing that turns a person’s life around better than a good argument!

We’re at the end of a ten-year mission in this diocese, and the vision, if I remember, was to see tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of new members added to the church over that time, and the method for achieving this was to communicate the Gospel message clearly and compellingly to our neighbours!

The assumption is that if you communicate the Gospel clearly enough to someone, the compelling logic of that presentation will overwhelm them to the point where they will suddenly ask for baptism! That’s how it works, isn’t it?

That’s how it worked for you! That’s how it worked for me! We – all of us – were overwhelmed by the logic of the Gospel, weren’t we?

That’s how the Biblical figures themselves were converted, wasn’t it?  St Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus happened like that, didn’t it?  There was Paul, travelling on the road to Damascus – all ready to imprison and persecute Christians, and then he stopped at a roadside café for a coffee and got into a long, detailed conversation about the Bible with a travelling Sydney Anglican academic!  Lo and behold, four hours later Paul emerged and had changed his mind about everything!

No, that’s not how it worked!  God didn’t convince St Paul with a good argument. He convinced him by throwing him off his horse, shouting at him from the Heavens and blinding him until he came to his sense!

Paul’s conversion experience was more like being in a boxing ring than a classroom, and the issue in Solomon’s Portico wasn’t an academic one either. According to Jesus’ own analysis, the problem with the people with whom he was conversing was not an intellectual problem but a spiritual one!

The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; 26but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:26-27)

This issue was not that they couldn’t understand what Jesus was saying. The issue was that they weren’t Jesus’ sheep and so they weren’t listening!

Now I have to admit that I know almost nothing about sheep and shepherding, but I know enough to know that the relationship on view runs entirely parallel to the relationship between a boxer and her trainer who works her corner.

Above all the noise and the chaos of the ring-fight, the fighter hears the voice of her corner-man, and then follows what she’s told.

I worked the corner for a young girl on Friday. She had a tough time. She twisted her knee in the first round. She went on to fight two more rounds but couldn’t finish the bout. She couldn’t move properly and so she couldn’t perform. I did ask her though afterwards “did you hear my voice” and she said “yes”.

You have to have a relationship with your trainer in order to hear your trainer’s voice and to understand what your trainer is saying to you. That’s the way it works. Likewise, you have to have a relationship with Jesus in order to hear the voice of Jesus and to understand what He is saying.

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27). These people in the temple, on the other hand – they are not His sheep and so they don’t hear His voice and so they don’t follow!

I appreciate that it’s a bit circular. You can’t understand Jesus until you have a relationship with Jesus. But how can you build a relationship with Jesus if you don’t understand what Jesus is saying? It’s a bit of a conundrum!

The Spirit of God solves that conundrum for us, of course, because the Spirit of God works within our hearts to bring us to Jesus, and so we understand the words of Jesus because we already have the Spirit of God working within our hearts. But if we don’t have that Spirit then we won’t understand, and no amount of solid argument is going to make any difference.

Those who know me well know that before I ever put on boxing gloves, I spent many years training traditional martial arts, most particularly in the Korean art of Hapkido.

Hapkido is a mixed martial art that teaches a bit of punching, a bit of kicking, a bit of grappling, and a lot of door techniques, by which I mean techniques that you would use if you are working a door (in a pub or a night-club). These are techniques whereby you get someone in a wrist-lock or a headlock or an arm-lock or a finger-lock, such that you’re then able to use that lock to lead them back out the door.

I studied Hapkido for more than ten years and ended up with two black belts and a lot of door techniques, such that I was ready to work the door of just about any pub or night-club in the country and could even have worked the door at the annual Sydney Anglican Synod! And yet I reached the conclusion some years ago that almost all door techniques, through which you use the mechanism of pain to lead someone where you want them to go, work really well so long as the person you’re trying to move more or less wanted to go with you anyway!

As I say, a good door technique generally uses pain (such as a hyper-extension of a few fingers) to persuade someone to go where you want them to go, but these really only work if the other person sort of wanted to go there anyway. They weren’t really looking for trouble, so the technique works. On the other hand, if they are frantically trying to kill you, they won’t care if you break a few fingers or break all of them, they’ll still kill you (with the other hand or with a weapon).

Good arguments are like that, I think. A good argument can be very persuasive in moving someone to a new position, but only if they sort of already wanted to go that way anyway!

I think that’s what I see operating in the comments section at the end of Keith’s blog. Keith’s gentle arguments are indeed shifting people in their thinking and taking them to new places, but I sense that they are being taken to places that (courtesy of the Spirit of God) they were already wanting to go to anyway!

Conversely, I assume that’s why a lot of people are impossible to shift in their thinking!  They don’t want to move so they don’t.

As I’ve often said, ‘why do we expect rationality to shift someone in their thinking when rationality didn’t lead them to adopt their position in the first place?’ People hold to their beliefs – especially religious beliefs – for a variety of reasons, and no good argument is going to change someone’s life unless that person wants to change and unless the Spirit of God is at work within that person’s heart!

This is all a bit depressing really, as I would really like to be an agent for change!       I would love to be able to turn people around and set them on new courses in life by the power of my words, my skilful rhetoric and my outstanding homiletical prowess!

I would love to help turn this church around with my sermons – stop the almost inevitable drift into middle-class captivity wherein we shift from being a radical outpost of apostolic activism to becoming just another Christianised golf-club!

We are in that process, I think! I’m not suggesting that there aren’t individuals and families within this church community who are still pouring themselves out for Christ and for the Gospel, but I do think that on the whole we are giving less, caring less and doing less.

And what can I do to stop that? Absolutely nothing! No amount of powerful, pithty, pulpit-pounding preaching is going to make a single bit of difference!  I cannot hope to do any more with my skilful rhetoric than entertain! Not unless the Spirit of God is at work. Not unless the Spirit of God is at work, convicting and convincing people from within! Not unless His sheep hear His voice, know Him and follow!

27My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. 30The Father and I are one.” (John 10:27-30)
First preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on April 21, 2013.

  • To watch or share the video version of the sermon click here.
  • To hear the audio or download version of the sermon click here.

Rev. David B. Smith

Parish priest, community worker,
martial arts master, pro boxer,
author, father of four.

www.FatherDave.org


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