The MP3 link for the sermon is here.
I thought that there was much good in the sermon…that is to say, I found myself in less disagreement than I had found with the first two sermons. I particularly liked what was said about sex (about the good it is in marriage, and the frequent disaster it brings when detached from a mutually serving marriage relationship) and the overall relationship between male and female. I was singularly impressed when we were told that the Bible does not set out ‘sex roles’, which of course it doesn’t, but shows how responsibility is distributed between relating men and women (refer to 1 Corinthians 7:4, 11:11, Eph 4:32 and 5:21 as guide on this matter). Pity that such views are not amplified and given public voice; but then, those outside the church are rarely willing to concede that it has anything to say, then self-fullfillingly accuse it of saying nothing!
It was very helpful for the sermon to touch on the damage between men and women that the fall brought, and how this is not normative, but aberrant, and for correction, not reinforcement.
There were some points of emphasis in the sermon that I would have preferred adjusted, but in the main, nothing major…except…
the topic of ‘headship;’ a notion invented in conservative denominations to foster their shameless adoption of a cultural imbalance in both marriage and ecclesiastical relationships between men and women.
There’s no denying that a number of relationships in the Bible have one of the parties as ‘head’ to the other. However, this simple statement of relational derivation cannot within the confines of the Bible be transformed into the state of ‘headship,’ particularly when this is defined in the Australian Oxford Dictionary as “the position of chief or leader…” As my blog on the related study to this sermon discusses, the concept is not in the Bible.
The very point of my disagreement with the sermon was that the relationship of the husband to the wife was labelled, after some reasonably helpful and biblical discussion on the operational dimensions of being ‘head,’ as that of “servant-leadership.”
This is a pretty popular phrase in Sydney (Diocese of) that attempts to soften the importation from the unredeemed culture of the exploitative and hierarchical aspects of ‘leadership’ as it is comprised in that culture.
To be a ‘leader’ is to be the more important; viz the recent popularity of ‘leadership’ in popular (junk?) business literature (although, I recommend the work of Ron Heifetz and James Collins on this subject). However, the softening, in my view is cynical, as it serves to allow the priority of ‘leader’ to be asserted in line with denominational structure, but in distinction from the Bible’s usage, against which it makes a poor fit. The concept of ‘leader’ in the Bible is very rarely employed in respect of church whereas the concept of ‘servant’ in isolation is far more extensively used. I would be much encouraged if the denomination de-emphasised its arbitrary structures in favour of a biblical approach and stopped using the faux humble term of ‘servant-leader’.
But in our immediate context, it fails completely! There is no ‘leader-led’ in the marriage relationship! Even if the pretence of ‘servant-leader’ is used. The Genesis passage excludes it completely.
Of course, this comes to us from the obdurate unbiblicality of the notion of ‘head’ as ‘authority over’ or ‘commander’ (or, one shudders to say ‘leader’, c.f. for instance Matt 20:25 and 23:10, Luke 22:26,27); careful regard for 1 Corinthians 11:3ff and Eph 4:15,16 can throw light here) which is a consequence of reading the structures of the Roman church (read, the Roman Empire) back into the church as the body of Christ. Simply not on!
On ‘head’ I refer to an article by Gilbert Bilezikian.
On the creation, I refer to an article by Carlson-Thies
But, all that aside, I found the sermon to be encouraging and to contain a number of helpful insights. It’s just a pity that the sermon ‘form’ doesn’t lend itself to the transformational benefits of discussion and reflection within the audience. See here, for a resource on this, and here for another.
Unfortunately, the sermon stopped short of the practical. What, for instance, does a man do as head of woman operationally; how do we put it into practice: take a job that demands less of family forbearance? Knock around the house instead of the golf course? The list could go on with dramatic and society changing consequences…are we brave enough?
