Women in Ministry (10/06/24)

I don’t intend to spend a great deal of time on this topic because the passage does not.  Yet, it is clear that mention of these two women who shared Paul’s struggle for the gospel has led to much discussion on the matter.  They are among those pointed to by those who would hold that church offices should make no distinction between male and female.  Look!  Here were women, and it’s clear they were active in ministry.  They might even be called deaconesses, though Scripture does not in fact call them that.  Fair enough.  But we cannot establish doctrine on assumptions, not with any degree of safety as concerns being established on truth.

But let me add a few observations, some from the articles I read on these two women, and some just coming to mind.  First, there is the reality of the founding of the church in Philippi.  Going back to the account in Act 16, I might note, for example, that Paul’s trip to Macedonia hinged on the vision of a man calling for help (Ac 16:9).  Arriving at the riverside outside Philippi, he and his companions encountered not the men of the synagogue, but women assembled for prayer (Ac 16:13).  There are a number of interesting aspects to this.  First, there is the note that Paul fully expected to find such a situation.  Why?  It does not seem to have its roots in anything particular to Jewish practice as we see it depicted in Scripture.  I have read that in this particular season, with Claudius having expelled the Jews from Rome, Roman citizens were particularly disinclined to give the usual degree of liberty to the Jews to pursue their religious practices.  It wasn’t proper for a Roman!  And thus, quite likely, the notice that these were gathered outside the gates of the city.

But this still doesn’t explain the absence of men.  Where were they?  Perhaps too busy working to entertain such habits.  Doesn’t that sound like many a church today?  Come the time for prayer and who shows up?  The women.  Where are the men?  Who knows?  But this is the way things unfold in Philippi.  The first contacts are women.  The one to offer hospitality to this group of men is a woman of Lydia, and Lydia by name, a woman of wealth, and what the Jews would have called a God-fearer.  There were brethren, it would seem (Ac 16:40), but they get little more than passing notice.  Indeed, given the inclusive nature of that term one could question whether there were any men at all.  But I think that would be pushing the evidence too hard.  Suffice to say that women were involved in this ministry from the outset.

Add the supposition that Luke was from Philippi, and we begin to see, perhaps, why he shows so much greater interest in how women had been involved in the ministry of Jesus.  I could imagine that encounters with the patriarchal Jews would be somewhat strange for him, having grown up in a region far more inclined to the idea of powerful women.  Yet, I might note, there is no record of any woman serving, for instance, in the Roman senate, nor in the military.  They had their positions of power, but they tended to be veiled just a bit, behind the scenes, as it were.  Everybody knew, mind you, but still, official power was for men.  And it seems that was as much the case in Philippi as elsewhere.  What was somewhat distinct from life in Jerusalem was that women were on a more equal footing when it came to wealth and property, as witness Lydia.

So, is it possible that these two were indeed serving as deaconesses in the church there?  I don’t see anything that precludes the idea, though were it so, we should still need to hold that service in compliance with what is taught more clearly, and there, it seems to me that Paul’s perspective is clear.  And given that this is Scripture, I must further maintain that it isn’t just Paul’s perspective, but God’s.  So, we have that most blunt of declarations in his instruction to Timothy.  “Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness.  But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet” (1Ti 2:11-12).  Is this just Paul’s native patriarchal perspective coming out?  Well, I’m sure that has its part, but again, this is Scripture.  This is God-breathed.  And the added discussion of Adam and Eve which follows certainly attempts to move this well beyond mere personal perspective.

Then, too, we must consider the discussion of head coverings in his letter to the Corinthians.  To us, it comes across largely as a cultural consideration, something peculiar to Achaian society, perhaps.  But look at it.  “Christ is head of every man, and the man is head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ” (1Co 11:2).  It is on the basis of this that we proceed to consider the matter of whether men should cover their heads in prayer, and whether it is appropriate for women not to do so.  And some of this, yes, is a matter of setting aside what would have been cultic practices of the pagan religions more familiar to the people of that area.  Note the constraint here.  “Every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying, disgraces her head.  She might as well go about with head shaved” (1Co 11:5-6).  This was a matter of what was typical of the pagan prophetess.  Which, I might just observe, gives some significance to those women who shave their heads today.  Same spirit, same paganism.

But for our purposes, I must also observe that Paul does not forbid women from praying or prophesying.  And to be clear, we are discussing matters of gathered worship here, not private habit.  Though, it might well be the case that he would have given the same instruction as concerns private times of worship.  Man, he says, functions as the image and glory of God, but the woman as the glory of man (1Co 11:7).  But he also moves forward to say that neither is independent of the other (v11).  So, I would conclude that as to the specifics, yes, there is a cultural aspect to this instruction, but as to the fundamental point, no.  There is a hierarchy in the church, like it or not.  God is the head of Christ who is head of the Church, and He has appointed men to serve in leading that church.  Women have their role, to be sure, and may be very much active in the work of ministry.  They may, let it be admitted, even occupy such offices as continue to fit the strictures indicated.  After all, we do well to note that the wife of the elder or deacon is held to the same standard as the deacon or elder.  So, they, too, ought to be exemplary, and capable of teaching.  Yet, we have that boundary set:  Not over a man.

So, again I might ask, where did Luke gain his interest in noting women in ministry?  Was it simply from being around Philippi in his youth, and being more familiar with a culture that let women exercise greater power?  That might have played into it.  But I would suggest that it has more to do with his experience of ministering with Paul.  You can’t escape what he says of these two women here.  They, “shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel.”  Or take the ESV’s rendition of this.  These women are those, “who have labored side by side with me in the gospel.”  Does that set them in leadership?  Hard to say.  I would note (with intent to return to the point later), that the request he makes of whomever it is he addresses in verse 3, is made as between equals, not as Apostolic command, if you will.  Likewise, this call to restore unity, addressed to these two women, comes not as command, but as an expression of deep concern and a desire to help in his own turn.  I beg of you.  I am concerned for you lest this continue as it is.

Now, we might look at the state of these two women and find it cause to question the wisdom of putting women in such places of leadership.  After all, there is some basis for the general perception that women are more inclined to be led by emotion than men.  That’s hardly a set rule, but as I have often observed, generalizations come about for a reason.  They aren’t just made up out of whole cloth.  They rest on common experience, and like our tendency not to simply walk blithely across the street assuming traffic will stop for us, that experience serves to develop in us certain cautions.  As a child, I might well have simply run out in traffic.  Our dog, back in the day, felt perfectly secure in simply walking down the middle of the road.  Experience, in his case, had taught him that indeed, most vehicles will stay clear.  Of course, experience had also come close to costing him his life, so he was cautious as to traffic, but not so cautious as to be bound by fear.  Where am I going with that?  I don’t know.  But I suspect perhaps it has application to these considerations.

Scripture, as near as I read it, gives space for women in ministry, and in some degree, at least, even in leadership.  We do have, for example, Deborah who was set as judge over all Israel.  No scruples about her commanding men in that case.  That, one might argue, was less of a matter of religious or moral leadership, but I think that might prove a hard argument to maintain.  Matters of governance and religion were a bit more close-coupled in that period.  But yes, I do think there’s a place for caution, and for deference.  Absolutely nothing wrong, it would seem, with a woman praying in the church setting, so long as it’s not done with what we used to speak of as a Jezebel spirit.  There’s nothing wrong with a woman prophesying to the church.  Isn’t that something?  Surely prophecy is instructive?  And this was so even in the context of the Jerusalem church, it would seem.  Philip, in Caesarea, had four daughters who were prophetesses (Ac 21:9).  There is at least some suggestion that this is the same Philip we meet as one of Jesus’ Twelve.  He is, after all, spoken of here as “Philip the evangelist.”

The issue is not the activity of ministry, nor, within proper scope, the exercise of authority.  The issue is one of orderliness, and one of observing the structures and strictures which God has determined for His church.  It is, after all, His church.  It is not ours to set up any which way we please.  It is His.  Worship is not ours to define, but His.  Governance is not ours to determine, but His.  That’s inherent in the fact that He is head of the church, not the church the head of Him.  He creates.  He positions.  He assigns.  Ours, men and women alike, is to submit to His leadership.  And when His leadership requires us to submit to others among our number, so be it.  Submit to them in submission to Him.

And there, my friends, is a message that men need to hear as clearly as women.  I grew up in an age when the prevailing wisdom, such as it was, consisted in, “Question authority.”  To be sure, recent history gives plentiful cause to do so.  But observe:  It is a call to question, not to reject on principle.  Somewhere along the way, this changed.  It became simply, “Reject authority,” or at the very least, “Ignore authority.”  After all, what use the question if you can’t change the result, or if the result doesn’t change fast enough to suit your tastes?  And so, we have the spirit of this current age arising rather directly from that precedent.  And it comes into the church, because we have come into the church.  We have come in, and, given our cultural background, we rather expect the church to cater to us.  We are used to having our say, choosing from the menu, having an array of options from which to select.  But this isn’t Amazon marketplace.  This is the church.  This is not the local restaurant.  It’s the Lord’s House, the Lord’s table.  It is very much for Him to decide what goes on here, and how.  Like it or not, He is Authority, and while He is not offended by your questioning of His ways, He will most certainly not tolerate you simply setting His ways aside in favor of your own.

I recall, in my young adult years, being given a bumper sticker by my father which, at the time, resonated with both my sense of ironic humor and with my mindset.  It read, “The moral majority is neither.”  Now, for the youngsters here, the moral majority was a handle applied to one phase of evangelically inclined political activism.  There was this assumption amongst this portion of Christendom that the Christian roots of the nation still held, that good men were simply staying quiet in the face of such an ungodly racket as arose out of the sixties and blossomed in the seventies.  It was kind of a warning of sorts to the politicians not to suppose they could ignore the moral aspects of governance, another variation on, “We’re here, and we vote.”  So, I might note, that at the time, my father was a minister in the UCC.  And that must, sadly, inform how this bumper sticker was intended.  Here was the UCC effectively denouncing the whole of Evangelicalism as Pharisaical, and this, as they pushed their social gospel.  Much like the call to question authority blossomed into a total disregard for authority, this focus on social issues over religious issues blossomed into a total disregard for religious issues, a redefining of religion to suit society.  And we see where that has brought us.  I’ve commented on it often enough.

Here, however, I’m calling a warning to those of us who still seek to remain true to the God of Scripture.  Watch out!  You have your own cultural assumptions.  You have your own blind spots, your own places at which your preferences are more important to you than God’s command.  If you don’t suppose yourself subject to this distortion of holiness, then I fear it does put you in the place of those Pharisees.  “If you were blind, you would have no sin.  But since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains” (Jn 9:41).  That’s no call to shake our heads in sorrowful wonder at their failure.  It’s a call to consider.  Where have I boldly proclaimed my wisdom while playing the fool?

Lord, it’s a dreadful prayer to pray, but yes, show me.  Clear my vision that I might see myself clearly, and seeing, be ready and willing to pursue the changes that are needed.  There is much about me, I know, that is unlovely, ungodly, and most unbecoming to one who would call himself a child of God.  And yet, I know, also, that I am in fact Your child, for You have said it quite clearly.  And Your Spirit within me reassures me over and over that it is so.  Still.  Too much of the old man remains, too much of what passes for godliness in me is a thin veneer over dead men’s bones.  Help me.  I have known a lot of anger and frustration, even in the last day or two, anger and frustration that ought not to be.  I have known a rising sense of disparity with the ways of my brothers and sisters, even with my wife, and it strains and stresses me that it is so.  Yet, I feel powerless to do anything meaningful towards reestablishing unity.  Indeed, in some cases, I can think of nothing less to be desired than to shift my ways nearer to theirs.  But is that piety or arrogance, Lord?  I am unfit to judge.  I need Your wisdom, both to assess and to address.  And I am powerless.  Apart from You I can do nothing.  Sadly, I must recognize that even with You, I most often do just that, nothing.  Oh, God!  Thank You that You don’t give up on me, and let me not give up on You.  But let me strive, as my brother Paul preaches, towards the goal of submitting to Your rule, heeding Your command and Your instruction, living the life that You call me to live.

Community (10/07/24)

What does it take to live in harmony?  The answer to this can be found in pursuing some of the other translations, for in this instance the NASB is being uncharacteristically paraphrastic.  The underlying phrase, to auto phronein, indicates literally the same mind.  It’s the idea of agreement one with the other.  But it’s more than mere agreement.  This matter of phronein is more than forming an opinion.  It’s directing one’s will and affections towards a particular goal.  As such, this same-mindedness consists in cherishing the same views.

Scripture has a great deal to say on the subject of unity, urging us to remain mindful that we serve one God in one Spirit with one body of doctrine shaping one way of life.  That’s not to say we march in lockstep.  That’s not to say that we must avoid thinking for ourselves.  Far from it!  One can’t have your will and affections focused on something about which you have not thought.  Or, given what we see around us, I suppose you can, but we would call that manipulation or propagandizing, and God’s not in the business of manipulation and propaganda.  He is God of Truth.  His Truth is well able to stand the inspection of reason, invites it, even.  “Come, let us reason together” (Isa 1:18).  Now, in that immediate setting, what’s invited is the rather simple reasoning of cause and effect.  Heed My orders and you will eat like kings.  Refuse My orders and you will be the victims of war.  Not really a hard call, stated that way, is it?  But that is ever the call, really.  Receive this gift, given as good news to lost souls, and you shall be found, you shall live, and live to the full.  Reject it, and you truly shall be lost, left to face trial alone with no hope of escaping the just sentence of eternal damnation – not death with its idea of surcease, but a never-ending contemplation of what could have been, surrounded by the company of those who, like yourself, have chosen your own way over God’s way.  It won’t be pleasant.  Far from it.  It is an eternity without hope, not even the nihilistic hope of release into nothingness.

But faith is reasonable.  It is the sensible response to such a body of evidence as should serve to convince the most skeptical doubter.  And having convinced, it should leave us largely agreeing one with another.  That being said, it is quite clear, from a few millennia of history, that this agreement is not entire.  We have our differences.  There are points of doctrine upon which people of like faith may yet find themselves in disagreement.  There are many such.  Why?  I suppose we shall have to wait, and ask God His purpose in that when we come to Him, if we still find such questions interesting at that point.  Suffice to say it is so.  But we, if indeed we cherish the same views as regard the King of heaven, must come to recognize that these differences do not constitute grounds for rejection.  Rather, though they remain unresolved, they indicate hearts and minds fully engaged in knowing God and loving Him fully.  It’s simply that his fulness is beyond our finite capacities to fully know.  And so, we do our best.  And, in the charity of wisdom, we recognize that those who have reached alternate conclusions are likewise doing their best.  And in the wisdom of humility, we recognize that we might just as readily be the ones in error, rather than they.

Isn’t it well, then, that we are joined together in community?  Where one may err, two together may find reasonable hope of correction.  Where the Spirit of Christ abides, it is possible that such disagreements as this might not lead to factionalism and infighting, but rather to introspection, mutual pursuit of greater understanding, and an appreciation for the differences of perspective each brings to the matter.  In all, as fellow believers, co-laborers in the gospel, we ought to be thankful for the variety that exists within our unity.  We are not bound by the conscience of our brother, nor he by ours.  But we are able to reason the better for our varied perceptions.  Is there one correct answer to these questions of doctrine?  I would insist that there is.  This idea of personal truth, particularly applied to matters of God and faith, is a concept foreign to the very idea of truth.  It’s a modern conceit, a means devised by which to readily deny any inconvenient truth with the ludicrous escape clause, “Well that may be true for you, but it’s not for me.”  That is really no different than simply saying, “That is not truth.”  It can’t be!  If it is truth, then there can be no, ‘for you,’ or, ‘for me.’  Truth is truth.  End of discussion.  We can seek to understand it, or we can seek to ignore it, but truth remains unchangingly true, and it is true for all.

Okay.  All that having been said, there are points, certainly, where the sharpness of disagreement, or the seeming gulf between divergent opinions would render it particularly difficult, even odious, to attempt to maintain any sense of accord, any degree of such contentment as this letter consistently urges.  How is there to be harmonious accord when we disagree so vehemently on matters of deep concern to us?  Personally, I find this a strong argument for the development of denominationalism.  I need not look down upon those who attend another church in another denomination.  Not on that basis alone, certainly.  We come to have this fundamental sense that there are core doctrines about which one cannot disagree and remain a Christian.  Certainly, there are those who do disagree and continue to apply that label to themselves, but they are false.  There’s no getting around that.  When your supposed church is exalting Gaia alongside Jesus, or can’t even bring themselves to mention Jesus by name, lest they offend some fellow member whose views lean more towards Buddha or whatever other idol, then, I ‘m sorry.  You are not a church any longer.  You are not in Christ.  But you have differing views as regards things like spiritual gifts, or free will?  You have a different sense of what baptism is or how it can be performed?  I may not be comfortable as part of your congregation, but that doesn’t mean I reject you as a fellow believer.  It is just better for Christian unity, in this case, that we remain apart.  We can come together, perhaps, for joint efforts of ministry, but as to the regular service of worship, perhaps it’s best we leave it as it is.

This leaves us, however, with the question of what to do when discord arises.  And here, I think the note I left myself applies.  Don’t lose sight of the main point of this whole section:  Safeguard the Gospel.  Where the matters of God’s supremacy, Christ’s deity, and the solas of grace are concerned, we must take our stand.  Upon such things there can be no reasonable disagreement.  Salvation is by grace alone, in Christ alone, and our conscience is bound by Scripture alone.  God alone is God, and God, though it defies us to arrive at a full and satisfactory definition of the matter, is Triune in His being.  I would argue, and probably have, that this was needful for Him to be perfect in fellowship.  If God is perfect, and free of any outside dependency, He must indeed have fellowship in Himself.  He cannot need us for fellowship.  He can, however, desire us for fellowship.  And He does.  This is amazing, isn’t it?

God doesn’t need followers.  I think of those artisans in Ephesus concerned that, should Christianity continue to displace the worshipers of Artemis, Artemis might even cease to exist altogether (Ac 19:27).  Why, she would be dethroned should enough of her followers defect!  And did it not occur to them that any god or goddess thus beholden to their followers was no god at all?  Indeed, it was stark evidence that the true gods in their thinking were themselves.  Watch out!  We can slip into playing the same game with God!  We cannot do so successfully, but we can do so to our own harm.  As we happened to be reading once again of Hezekiah’s failure last night, it’s rather fresh in mind.  God informed him of the plan.  Time’s up, you’re coming home.  But he was sure he had a better plan, that it simply wasn’t right that God should take him so soon.  And he heard the worst message possible from God: “Have it your way.”  You get fifteen more years.  But he failed to recognize the enormity of what he had just done.  He became proud, arrogant even, and boastful.  Look at all I have!  Oh, they did.  And then they went home and took counsel together how it might become theirs.  And in fifteen short years, Hezekiah turned his good record into a record of spiritual blindness and failure.  Just imagine!  Informed that these Babylonians to whom he’d boasted would come, take all his riches and even his children, Hezekiah took this as good news (Isa 39:5-8).  Well, it won’t happen in my lifetime, so great!  Wonderful!  This was a man whose blindness had settled in from the moment he told God his plan was better.  He did not direct his will and affections towards heaven, but towards his own dominion.  We often fall into the same trap, more interested in our personal benefits, of access to power, than about loving God.

And again the call comes.  Direct your will and affections towards this same goal, the goal towards which Paul himself stretches forward to reach.  That goal will bring contentment.  Indeed, even the pursuit of that goal brings contentment.  Oh, to be sure, there is the longing to be there, race completed and reward obtained.  But we work from a place of rest.  This has been very much a theme for me of late.  We don’t labor from anxious concern, but with assurance.  We don’t strive to gain God’s love.  We already have it!  He already directed His will and affections towards us.  By His choice.  Indeed, the attestation of Scripture is that He had already thus directed His will and affections towards us before even the first moments of Creation.  If we get this, if we come to understand just how secure we are in Christ, then harmonious accord flows naturally from that recognition.  And contentment naturally follows where harmonious accord is established.

So, what to do when disagreement arises?  Don’t ignore it.  But neither become consumed by it.  Lovingly seek to restore that harmonious accord.  Seek to reestablish peace.   That need not mean that one or the other of the parties involved must abandon their position and capitulate.  This isn’t about capitulation.  It’s about seeking the same end, loving the same God, even if we can’t quite reach the place of perfect agreement as to how that is to be achieved.  We love one God.  We have one Father.  This ought to move us deeply.  I do, however, want to reserve that aspect of the discussion for the next session.

Here, the call is to be content.  Contended believers will be harmonious, just as harmonious believers will be content.  I’m not sure I could say with certainty which is cause and which is effect, nor do I suppose it matters really.  They are twinned goals, equally yoked oxen of faith.  But such harmonious unity of thought and pursuit require cultivation.  It doesn’t just happen, nor will it persist untended.  The garden left to its own will turn to weeds.  Now, for a flower garden, that may be written off as simply a difference as to which flowers are growing, and one man’s weed may be another’s wildflower.  But in a productive garden?  In the matter of supplying one’s food?  Not so.  Weeds will choke out the edible crop, drain the soil of nutrients, and leave you with nothing to show but briars and brambles.  This is not desirable, and it won’t be corrected without concerted effort.

So, too, the church.  We can accept a variety of perspectives, but at the same time, the fruit of the Spirit will be choked out where weeds of pride and demanding one’s way arise.  The fruit of the Spirit will not abide where dissension is the rule.  Hear the heart of Paul in this.  This is not, after all, the first time he’s made this appeal in this epistle.  “Make my joy complete!  Be of one mind, with one shared love, united in one spirit, and intent on one purpose” (Php 2:2).  Same point:  to auto phronein.  Direct yourselves towards that one end towards which the one Holy Spirit is directing you.  And if it’s not you that is divided, but you are witness to those who are, then don’t just leave them to sort it out for themselves.  Blessed are the peacemakers (Mt 5:9).  Note well:  It’s not the peaceable, but the peace makers.  Get involved.  Help them.  These are your brothers, your sisters.  These are sons of the same Father.  This disharmony ought not to be, nor ought it to be accepted.  Safeguard the gospel!  Don’t let its gains be lost to this dissension.  Don’t compromise on Truth, but don’t compromise the truth by your infighting, either.  Don’t take sides, seek to cultivate understanding and mutual regard.  Remind them of who they are, and Whose they are.  Help them to see the damage being done.  “If your brother sins, go and reprove him in private.  If he listens, you have won your brother” (Mt 18:15).  Restoration is the goal.  Restoration is always the goal.  Seek unity and pursue it.  Love your brother enough to correct him when it is needful.  Be more than tolerant.  Be appreciative, even of those whose focus is different than yours.  We are being built together into one body for a purpose, for one purpose; and that is to glorify God who does the building.

Family (10/08/24-10/09/24)

The church is a community, but more, it is family.  We are children of one Father.  That may sound a little trite, too saccharine, but it’s true.  This is the reality into which we have been reborn.  Like our physical birth, this rebirth in the Spirit has come about not by our own actions and intentions, but through the will of another.  We have not been entirely passive in the process.  The baby ready to be brought out of the womb is active in that effort, if only minimally so, but we might speak of the end result as inevitable, already determined some time ago, and that, not by the baby.  In the same way, our spiritual birth is not a passive discovering one day that we are suddenly Christians.  And yet, in some ways, it is like that.  We discover a receptiveness that may have been most determinedly lacking before.  Something clicks in our thinking, that did not previously do so.  Arguments that may have left us cold in the past now reveal their truth to our mind’s eye, and we finally hear the welcome offer of grace and cannot help but respond, “Yes, Lord.”

The specific details of our rebirth may vary from one to another, but the fundamental reality of rebirth remains constant, and whatever our felt experience of the process may have been, I will maintain that per Scripture’s teaching, it finds its cause not in ourselves, but in God who chose, and that, as Paul says somewhere, from before the beginning.  This is the truth of the matter.  God chose and you are.  God spoke.  His word does not fail to accomplish all He purposes.  That goal towards which Paul has been urging us to aspire is already ours.  We race to win, but we have already been won.  The imagery, the analogies abound.  But I am striving towards a point here.

We are family.  This has got to inform our interactions, doesn’t it?  When I go to men’s study an hour or two from now, those who join me in that room are not just some collection of guys.  They are my brothers, sons of the same Father.  We may have our differences.  Indeed, there’s no may about it.  We do.  Some tend towards quietness, others towards talkativeness.  Some read one translation, others another.  Some will understand a passage one way, others another.  And, with all our differences, it is perhaps inevitable that there will be those with whom we naturally find an accord, and those with whom we struggle to keep fellowship.  That sounds awful, doesn’t it?  But it’s the reality of things.  It’s the reality of things in any situation.

Back when we were more likely to attend family functions on my wife’s side, well!  For one thing, that’s a huge gathering.  For somebody like me, with my two brothers and our childhood history of moving every few years, such a circle of acquaintances, let alone of family is just not within my experience.  And suddenly, family is a small village in its own right, too large to fit in any house, too many to know by name, or even by face.  Honestly, it’s large enough that pretty much every such gathering introduces new members.  And what happens?  Well, there are those with whom there is something of a natural affinity, and with whom I will be far more inclined to chat and such.  There are others whose character just doesn’t gel with me.  I’ll be polite, certainly, and I will admit that they are family, but I really don’t want much of anything to do with them.  If they weren’t family, it’s doubtful that there could come about any occasion that would lead me to choose such an association.

Okay, well, what about my own side of the family, then?  Our interactions are far more infrequent than many might expect.  Distance contributes, of course, but distance is not unique to our case.  It’s just who we are, I suppose, or the effects of whatever events in our history have led to a certain distancing.  Or, write it off to life circumstances.  We have gone our separate ways, grown in different directions, and simply don’t have so much in common anymore, nor any particular occasion to come together.  This, I suspect, is less unusual a situation than it may feel to me.  We all, as my former pastor used to say, come from dysfunctional families.  It’s as inevitable as birth, for we are of a fallen race, and fallen people will, by their nature, have fallen habits, fallen character.

But while these family connections are to be honored still, something new, something greater has come to be.  We have been born into a new family, and in this family, the dysfunction of fallenness is becoming a thing of the past.  It is not yet so, but there has been that rebirth.  There is a new spirit within us, and while the flesh may rise up on occasion, the spirit is stronger, and growing stronger.  Where offense may come, reconciliation will follow.  We need no longer assume the worst of each other, but can instead presume the best.  In that best known of chapters, Paul writes that, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Co 13:7).  We enjoy the idea of that, though we know ourselves hard-pressed to put it into practice.  It may not quite describe who we are moment by moment, but we sure hope it describes the rest of the family as they interact with us.  Does that sound cynical?  Sorry.  That seems to be my setting this morning.  But it’s the truth of the matter.  We struggle towards the ideal, but we also recognize that we, personally, are far from having reached it.  Yet, at the same time, as we look around this family, our greatest hope and desire is that those alongside whom we live might, perhaps, have made greater progress on this front.  We want the ideal, both for ourselves and for our brothers.  But somehow, it becomes more of a demand, a requirement, when we are considering our brothers.  You should be doing this, brother!

But God calls us to examine ourselves, and He will lead the examination.  He, the Father of us all, looks upon His children, and in those quiet moments of introspection and prayer, says, “You should be doing this, son.”  Stop worrying so much about him, and look to yourself!  Be the brother you would like to have.  That’s really a reasonable facsimile of the golden rule, isn’t it?  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Be a brother to your brother, even if he kind of rubs you the wrong way.  Receive others as you long to be received, foibles and all.

But it’s not just about relationship, as important as relationship is.  After all, who would not want to have that support which family, at least in its ideal, supplies?  Our daughter still calls us to talk of her difficulties, to share her victories, and just to maintain connection.  And it’s not just her who benefits.  Oh, as parents, we may feel somewhat put upon at times.  I thought we were done with this parenting business years ago!  But no.  Parenting is forever.  And praise God for it!  For He is the model Parent, the true Parent.  Has He grown tired of us pestering Him with our petty difficulties?  Has He grown weary of advising us when He perceives that we are heading towards a fall?  Has He given up hope for us?  No, no, and no!  Learn from it.

This applies on every front.  Go to work anymore, and I’m the seasoned voice, or at least I should be by this point.  I’ve been doing this stuff longer than most of my coworkers have been alive.  I can bring the wisdom of age to bear, or I can be a jerk.  There’s a choice to be made.  Do I sneer at their inexperience?  Do I allow their youthful habits to annoy me?  Or do I demonstrate godly character, seek to help wherever I can, seek to guide, to impart some of this wisdom I supposedly possess?

And in the setting of church life, this only becomes more important.  We are both family and coworkers, coworkers in the gospel.  This is our calling.  It is the family business.  Now, as it seems I am reviewing history a bit here, there was that time when I worked for a family business, though not my physical family.  Husband and wife owned and ran the place, and honestly, my experience with them was somewhat akin to being adopted into their family.  We, to borrow my pastor’s favorite phrase, shared life together.  We shared the challenges and the victories of the workplace.  We shared time together of an evening or a weekend.  Hey.  I was a young guy, far from home, and here was family on offer.  It was an attractive offer.  Here was a place to be on the holidays.  Here was caring help when I needed it.  Here was a family unit to which I could contribute whatever meager contribution I had to give.  And I would have to say that this had its own role to play in my eventual answering of Christ’s call.  They may have made for a most unlikely pair of evangelists, yet their example carried all the more weight for that being the case.  Christian is just who they were; imperfect certainly, as are we all, but Christian in character, Christian in their dealings.

And here we are.  A church.  We are in the family business together.  It’s more than some country club deal where we come hang out for an hour or two, and then go our separate ways.  It should be, anyway.  It’s more than maybe getting together every month or two for a party meal.  It’s more than the singing, more than the sitting under instruction.  It’s a business.  We are in the business of the gospel, and we each of us have some role to play in the family business.  As with any business, some will be more involved than others, some seemingly more committed than others.  We all know those who are gung-ho corporate fanboys.  And we all know those who have the mindset of the quiet quitter, as they are coming to be known – putting in the requisite minimum, and not a jot more.  But we are no ordinary business.  We are family.  And those who are gung-ho are not to be mocked or despised, but to be celebrated and honored.

Hear Paul’s example on this.  He points out those in the church, “who struggled along with me in the gospel.”  These two women he seeks to see reconciled are in that number.  Clement is named as another, and this gentleman referred to as, “a genuine yokefellow in deed as well as in name.”  I’m borrowing from a couple of different translations here, the Lexham, and Wuest.  He looks upon them not as subjects ruled, not as disciples of himself, but as equals working together.  Whereas he has appealed as one coming alongside to comfort and exhort when he addresses the two ladies, he turns to these others with a request made to equals.  This is not a lord commanding, but a brother asking.  I know you.  We have worked alongside one another in this family business of the gospel, and we have both of us worked alongside these two women.  They, too, are family, dear to us and dear to our Father.  Help them, brother.  I can’t be there just now to help them myself, so you do it.  And I know you will.

And there is a message for the church at large in this as well.  These two are having their struggles, yes, but they are family!  Love them through it.  Love them out of it.  They have struggled for the work of the gospel.  You struggle now for the work of reconciliation which is, after all, the work of the gospel.  Don’t start tearing them down because you see a weakness in them.  I know, I know.  You can feel better about yourself if you take them down a peg or two.  But that’s not the way!  No!  They are deserving of honor and respect.  All of those who are giving their effort to the work of the gospel are deserving of honor and respect.  And ideally, let us recognize, that ought to include all of us.  Their names are in the book of life.  Your names are in the book of life.

It’s hardly an original thought of mine, but you know, we’re going to be spending eternity together.  We might want to get used to the idea now.  We might want to start learning how to not merely tolerate one another, but truly to love one another even now.  It would be well for our peace of mind.  And it is one of the greatest advertisements of the gospel, honestly.  Look around you!  Who would expect such an unlikely group of people to be joined together so fully in the pursuit of life together?

There remains the question.  When is it right to dissolve our association?  When is it right to revoke our place in one body to be joined to another?  One might look at those terms and simply conclude that the answer is never.  At what point would it make sense for your hand to remove itself to some other person?  But a bit of thought would bring us to recognize that there are occasions where we might find it right to donate an organ of ours to another in need, even while we remain yet alive.  It might even be accounted one of the most selfless acts we can contemplate in this life, that we would do so.  It is an act undertaken in support of life, and as such, we must surely find that our devotion to the God Who is Life supports such a decision.  He who gave Himself entire that we might live must surely bless one who would give a part of himself to preserve the life of another.  Now, we are fallen creatures, and I’m just as sure that we could find a way to make such a self-sacrificial act a matter of sin rather than godliness, but leave that aside for now.  I’m not looking to explore every possible facet of this matter, only seeking to gain a reasonable perspective on the question of harmonious unity.

I make much of this opting for harmony over the idea of absolute unity.  There is, as I have already observed, room for variation within the confines of unity.  Having one mind and one purpose in pursuit of one God and one Truth does not leave us with precisely one option to pursue in every circumstance, nor precisely one possible understanding of a given passage of Scripture.  There is variety within the unity, but as we are pursuing the same God, the same goal, that variety produces harmony rather than discord.  So, then, if we find our pursuit of God and His truth leaves us at a point where being harmonious with our brethren is no longer really possible, is there sufficient reason to seek a family more attuned to our own understanding?  Maybe.  There are other life circumstances that would make it abundantly necessary to make such a change, for instance when relocation becomes necessary due to career or what have you.  Obviously, if you are now beyond sensible distance from your church, it might be reasonable to seek another, and that distance need not be a matter of hours.  The church was designed to be a local body, and that, so as to encourage the familial fellowship we have been considering.  How deeply can you share life with those who live at distance from you?  Even a half-hour’s drive will tend to have impact on how much we associate, at least on a New England scale of life.  Perhaps on the Southwest scale, the range might increase somewhat, but I don’t really think so.  Consider how much you know of your immediate neighborhood.  Then consider how little you know of even the next cul-de-sac down the street, let alone some neighborhood on the other side of the highway.

But come back to that question of what I would construe to be doctrinal differences.  It is possible, though I don’t know as it’s ever comfortable, for those of disparate opinions on various lesser matters of doctrine to peacefully abide together and remain as one body.  But sometimes, the depths of one’s convictions must leave you at odds with those whose convictions are equally deep, but entirely at odds with yours.  For whatever reason, it seems those questions that mark the divide between a Calvinist and an Arminian view of doctrines such as predestination and free will, eternal security versus the possibility of salvation lost, and so on, tend toward such fierceness in the defense of whichever side of the question one might be on.  And where the body at large holds to one perspective, and you hold another, it may become exceedingly difficult to maintain harmonious unity.  It comes to feel as if one’s understanding and godliness are under attack.  Is it time to leave?  It may be.

I would offer a few cautions, though.  First, there is cause for great humility, for recognizing that maybe, just maybe, we have it wrong.  There ought to be prayerful deliberation and consideration of the matter of dispute, with an eye towards allowing God to correct whichever party may be in error.  I would hold this much:  In most of these dividing issues, it is not really possible that we are both right.  It is quite possible that we are both wrong.  But what is reasonably certain is that we both, in spite of our differences, are desirous of worshiping God in spirit and in truth.  We are both just as devoted to knowing Him truly, loving Him fully, and serving Him well.  This, I think, has to be the defining point for our question.

If, after prayerful consideration and seeking of greater unity the divide persists, then it may very well be that our best course is to seek to leave this family behind for another.  But not, I have to stress, as rejecting their familial connection.  Here we hit the limits of denominationalism.  I go back to when I was teaching the Baptist Confession, something of a root document for the whole array of Baptist denominations.  These can be compared with the Westminster Confession, which has a similar place in the origins of Presbyterianism, or that third document, whose name escapes me at the moment, which gives the basis for Congregationalism.  These three documents, written at about the same time, gave definition to the distinctions that led to three branches of Protestant faith, but they also focused very much on making clear the unity between them.  This was quite intentional.  They weren’t denouncing one another as heretics.  They were declaring a harmonious unity between denominations.  It’s just that there were certain aspects of things, not salvific matters, but matters of practice still, which would render it challenging if not impossible to continue as one body.

Now, I have seen occasions where Baptist and Congregationalist bodies came together, somewhat of necessity, and have in fact managed to coexist.  The differences are not, after all, particularly great, primarily concerned with questions as to the time and mode of baptism.  And so long as room is left for both perspectives, fine.  But picture the case if the Baptists, say, began denouncing infant baptism as not merely insufficient to mark membership in the body, but downright heretical.  Or take the obverse.  What if the Congregationalist began to accuse his Baptist brother of lesser standing in God’s sight for not having been baptized as an infant?  Or, what if we simply cannot get beyond which way the Lord’s Prayer is to be phrased?  Is it sins or debts?  It sounds silly, and it is, but such minor things can rankle, and the degree of upset they cause may very well make it needful to divide into our separate camps.

But I’m going to draw a line here:  If you cannot separate without feeling the need to denounce your prior family as no longer accounted Christian at all in your view, then something is very wrong.  To be sure, there are those so-called congregations whose views have long since departed anything that could be held to represent true faith in the true God.  That’s a different story.  By all means flee.  And perhaps, ask yourself how you could have been so foolish as to be part of that in the first place.  But we are talking a departure from family, from those who are truly children of the same Father.  And here, if we must part, it ought to be on the best of terms, recognizing that while they will now be at some distance from us, they remain family.  I’m taking rather a long time to reach my destination, but the point is simply this.  Sometimes, the preserving of harmonious unity may require such distancing of the parts.  It may be that such a departure is undertaken in the pursuit not merely of my way, but of peace.

Yet, I will have to acknowledge that no such option is presented in this passage, nor, given realities on the ground, was any such option even a possibility.  There wasn’t the choice, as there is today, of simply moving to a different church down the block.  There was but the one.  You were either part of it or you weren’t.  In some ways, I think that made things much easier.  On the other hand, when differences arose, it certainly made things harder, for the only real choice was between letting it fester or being reconciled.  Perhaps it’s best that, even with our wider array of choices, we looked at our situation as still offering only those two options.  Fester or heal.

And so, we have this call to help.  These two women, for whatever reason, over whatever matter, are at odds and can’t seem to find their way to reconciliation on their own.  They have become too invested in their positions.  Left as it is, their disagreement might well blossom from being merely an argument between the two into some serious factionalism in the church, even schism.  And such schismatic division rarely leaves either part healthy.  It is an angry affair, a rending apart, and it leaves scars that may take years, even generations to heal, if they ever do.  Of course, all things are possible with God, and He can heal where healing seems entirely beyond hope.  So, nothing is hopeless, but it is often the case that we make matters far worse than they had need of being.

What’s our call, then?  If we can’t simply leave them to sort things out for themselves, what?  Help them.  Love them enough to get involved.  Bring some perspective.  I have to say, given the nature of the issue, don’t take sides.  That just leads to festering.  But seek to remind them of exactly the sort of thing Paul is reminding them of here.  Hey!  You are both daughters of God.  You have both served hard duty in the cause of the gospel.  You have worked side by side with us, and side by side with each other.  Is it worth destroying such a legacy to maintain your battle?  Is it serving the Gospel at all that you do so?  Whatever it is you find to be cause for debate, do you not see that your sister is just that, your sister?  Her name is written in the Lamb’s book of life just as your own is.  Comes the day, you will both be presented before the Lord.  Comes the day, you will both hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  At the very least, it is eminently to be hoped that you will, is it not?  Would you throw that away just to hear your sister concede the point?  Are you ready to toss the gospel if it means you can maintain your own position?  Far be it from you!  Come!  Be reconciled.  Come, seek understanding both of God’s truth, and of your sister’s perspective.  Come and be an agent of peace together with us.

This is perhaps our highest calling.  We are called to be agents of peace.  It seems to me the hardest place to go about this is in the church, and it seems to get harder the longer you have been a believer.  Some of that is that our beliefs deepen, our positions harden, and with age, I think, comes a lessened tolerance for other views.  It’s not wisdom, though.  It’s pride.  I have given this much thought.  I have spent a great deal of time studying and praying.  Surely, therefore, my views are the right views.  There can be no doubt!  But then, the one in disagreement with you has the self-same thoughts in regard to his position.  Humility must rule.  Hey!  I might still be wrong in spite of my certainty.  My brother has wisdom on offer that is not the same as mine.  I might perhaps just learn something from him, and he from me, that we might both grow.  Wouldn’t that be grand?  It need not lead to disavowing one another.  It might just lead to edifying one another.  And that, dear ones, is at it should be.  So, help these two.  Be an agent of peace.

That, I think, is my takeaway from this brief passage.  Be an agent of peace.  Seek harmony, not validation.  Seek reconciliation, not infighting.  If a brother or sister rubs you the wrong way, maybe look for the positive aspect.  Look for those places where they excel you, demonstrate aspects of Christian character worthy of emulation, and get yourself off that one little matter that’s bugging you.  And face it, there is almost assuredly one little matter of your own habit and manner that’s bugging somebody else.  We are none of us perfect, not by a long shot.  Best, then, that we should follow instruction, and love our brother as ourself, that we should walk humbly with our God, recognizing our own fallibility.  There, I think, we shall find the seeds of peace taking root and growing.  Look at your family and rejoice.  All of us, in spite of our peculiarities, are sons of one Father.  All of us are recorded in the Lamb’s book of life.  All of us are going to be in eternity together.  So, let’s start practicing that harmonious unity now.  And, if there have been divisions in the past, let us seek, as best we are able, to heal those divisions, to remain mindful that while we are now separate, yet we are family, and we, too, shall be together for eternity, come that day.