Episode 293: Head-Coverings. What? | Tim Henderson

Introduction

Alright. Has anybody noticed that I get all the weird ones? It's true, but it's okay. It's really fun.

Alright. You guys, we're gonna be looking at this passage that Eric read to us, and it is confounding, right? It is so weird. In fact, I was listening to hear if you guys would actually say, thanks be to God, or if you'd be like, right? In order, if we're gonna really teach this passage well, I need two things. Number one, I need an engaged, humble, curious audience. I think I have that. And number two, I need about ninety minutes. Okay? And I clearly don't have that.

So I'm gonna need you to stay with me here. This is complicated. There is an enormous amount of theology behind these, whatever it was, nine or ten verses, but I promise you there is treasure in here. And I hate it when people skip the hard stuff, and just move on, and then nobody ever learns what's really going on there. So we're gonna jump into this super weird, super difficult passage. It is gonna be complicated, I am gonna need you to focus, but beyond even the complexity, the theological weight that Paul in some ways is assuming we already have before we even get here, as if that's not enough, some of you are probably offended by what you've already heard. And it's possible when we're done that you'll still be offended. But I don't think so, right? I think I can help, I think I can unpack this for you.

But I know that if I'm already offended when the thing starts, don't listen that well, I don't reason that well, and I'm just kinda like grouchy about things. So I think if we can understand what Paul is saying here, that there's a treasure in here, we just have to do a little bit of work to figure it out. But I hope that you will do your best to like pay attention.

This is a calculus class this morning, okay? So sorry, but it's gonna take a little bit of work. But there's a payoff, and so if you will be more curious than cross, if you will be more interested than insulted, then I think there's something in here that you're gonna like when we're all done, okay?

You already heard Eric read it, we'll walk through it. But I don't wanna even look at the passage until we do a little bit of pregame work. So if you accept that you just came to a calculus class, before we can really do the calculus, I gotta do a little reminder on some algebra.

We gotta build a couple of blocks. If we get some.

There's three things I want you to know first. If you understand these three things that Paul thinks you already know, then we can kinda put it all together and see what's going on. Okay? So welcome to class. Three things.

The Foundations

Number one, God meant something specific when He made us male and female. We'll talk about what that is.

Number two, there is a tradition that Paul is referring to that says we can and do say something about our head, meaning our leader, with the head that sits on our shoulders.

And then number three, the veil that Moses wore, it talks about in Exodus 34, Paul alludes to it in 2 Corinthians 3. If we are reminded of Moses' veil, Moses' head covering, in the midst of the glory of God, that will really be helpful to us in unpacking what's going on here.

So we're gonna do those three things first. Once we have some of the ideas kinda locked into place there, then and only then will we actually turn to 2 Corinthians 11. You ready?

Okay. This church is very imbalanced. These people are on vacation. So I feel like I need to talk over here. All you guys are here. It's very... I don't know. Some of you should like move over to here next Sunday, we'll even it out a little bit.

Made with Purpose

Number one, first thing. God meant something specific when He made us male and female.

This permeates the scripture. The Bible teaches, and Paul believed, that God intentionally made us male and female. He meant something by maleness, he meant something by femaleness, that the fact that we exist in two different sexes is not arbitrary, but it was purposeful.

And there's probably a number of purposes. Right? Among other things, I think it's a lot more fun to make human beings to reproduce sexually than it would be to reproduce asexually. Right? So there's something joyful in that.

But I don't think it's even the chief idea. I think God's chief idea in making us male and female is this: He is supremely interested in having a relationship with us. He loves to have a relationship with the people that He made in His image.

And so He designed us in such a way that there would be two of us, and one of us would have the job to represent Him in a drama that depicts the relationship between Him and the people that He loves. One of us would represent Him, and one of us would represent the people that He loves.

And in His providence, His purpose is that men would be cast into the role of those that represent God, and that women would be cast in the role of those that God loves.

This is all over the place in the Bible. Probably the clearest, the most accessible, the most familiar example of that to you might be Ephesians 5, where Paul says that husbands are to love their wives like Christ loves the church. And that wives are to respond to their husbands the way that the church ought to respond to Christ.

He is saying in this depiction that husbands represent God in this drama, and women, wives, represent the church, represent the people of God. Okay?

Now bear in mind that the church is comprised, of course, of men and women, both. Male and female are both present in the church, but they are represented uniquely by the bride, by a woman.

It shows up there in Ephesians 5, but it also shows up lots of places about marriage. There are numerous texts, maybe Hosea might be maybe the second most familiar, where God describes Himself as a heartbroken husband with a faithless bride.

Over and over again, He describes Himself as the groom and His people as the bride.

There are no instances where He flips it and represents Himself as a bride and His people as a groom.

Sometimes, it's not quite so favorable as husband and groom, sometimes He actually calls us a prostitute, but He's still using feminine language when He does that.

So we have lots of places where there's this husband and this groom.

The husband represents God, the bride represents the people of God. That shows up lots of places.

Not only that, but there are hundreds of times where God represents Himself using the language of father.

There are no instances in the Bible where God takes upon the name of Himself mother.

There's one at least where Jesus says that He is like a hen. He's like a hen gathering chicks. That’s feminine language, but he's not identifying Himself as a hen.

He never calls Himself mother.

He simply says, I possess some of the attributes of a mother: and that I'm kind and gentle and loving and good.

So we have lots of husband and lots of bride, always where God is cast in the role of the male. He's always described as a father. Jesus only ever calls Him father.

And then of course, maybe most potently, when God comes to the earth and becomes incarnated as a human being, He comes in the form of a man.

That it has been God's purpose, and He communicates this over and over in scripture, that in some sense, men have the job of representing God, and that women in some sense represent humanity.

Now, it's possible that that idea seems fanciful to you.

That you're like, I never would have figured that out walking around in the world.

I don't know. I'm not sure on what basis you claim that.

And I'd say, sure, no problem, no problem at all.

But notice this, guys, Christianity is filled with things that are not intuitive, but that are nevertheless true.

So C. S. Lewis, he has an essay, it's called Priestesses in the Church, and it is just so insightful, so brilliant.

You can get it for free, just Google Priestesses in the Church. I want to read you an excerpt of it that's gonna be—it’s a little bit complicated, but it's just so insightful, I want you to hear it.

When the excerpt begins, Lewis has just argued that men and women are not interchangeable, we're complementary. We're different. We have different roles. We're distinct.

And then he says this. Listen to this. He says, one of the ends for which sex was created—and here he means gender—one of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God.

One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the church.

We have no authority to take the living and summative figures, which God has painted on the canvas of our nature, and shift them about as if they were mere geometric figures.

He's describing again sex in the sense of gender, maleness and femaleness.

The fact that God made some of us male, some of us female was meaningful.

The word summative means symbolic. He's saying we symbolize things. We have—we have a message.

He's basically saying, like, men and women, in our maleness and in our femaleness, are messages. We have meanings. Like, there's a word written on us. And the letters written on us are not just geometric. It's not just random scratches, but they're meaningful. And we don't get to rearrange the letters. We don't get to change the meaning.

He describes what the meaning is. Lewis goes on to say, this is what common sense will call mystical. He's meaning that as an accusation. Like, why are you just making this up as mysterious? It's not obvious. He's like, yeah, I know. Exactly. The church claims to be the bearer of a revelation.

And if that claim is false, then we want not to make priestesses, but to abolish priests.

If it's true, then we should expect to find in the church an element which unbelievers will call irrational, and which believers will call suprarational.

There ought to be something in our faith that is opaque to our reason, though not contrary to it.

As the facts of sex and sense on the natural level are opaque. And that is the real issue.

The Church of England can remain a church only if she retains this opaque element.

What he's saying, this is very important, and it's more important even just on our topic today, he's saying that if we only allow ourselves to believe the things that are revealed, and that are obvious in nature, and we do not also depend on the special revelation that comes from things that God has revealed in His word, then we should give up the pretense of being Christians.

We believe that God has revealed to us things that He wants us to know, that we otherwise would not have figured out, and we therefore depend on the special knowledge that God has revealed in His word.

We believe that He meant something when He made us male and female, and that He has told us what He meant.

So, number one, God meant something when He made us male and female.

We are meaningful. In some sense, there's a play, there's a drama going on, in which male persons represent God, and female persons represent those that He loves.

Number two, Paul believes in a tradition that says that our head, this thing, can reveal something about our head, meaning the leader.

He believes in this thing. What he's essentially saying is that we are somewhat living puns. We represent Him. There's symbolic meaning of the things that we do. That whatever is true of this head is suggestive or indicative about our other head.

This is somewhat similar to how men represent God and women represent women. Women represent the people that He loves. Our heads message something that is true about our heads.

There's some aspect, there's something about the way that men and women adorn or don't adorn or cover or don't cover our skulls that is indicative about the one that we represent.

There's something that men or husbands do that sends a message about Jesus.

There's something that women or wives do that sends a message about humankind.

That's what he's claiming. He's claiming that as a tradition. We're gonna pack more of that as we go.

But before I do, if the very idea that that could even be possible strikes you as strange, then I just want to like allude to a couple of things in our culture that maybe are equally strange.

So this one's a little bit archaic, but not so archaic that you don't know it.

Once upon a time, men would remove their hat in the presence of a lady. Can you see this like '19 pre Fifties maybe, late 1800s? Just see like men with their hat off their head? That is meant to convey a sense of honor and respect.

But if you think about it for five seconds, there's nothing intuitive, nothing inherent, nothing necessarily true about that.

It's like, we could take off our shoe. Like, what are we doing? I mean, it's just it's somewhat random that we're doing that. But as a culture, we just agree it's one sign of respect.

It's actually a little bit fallen out of favor, we don't do that so much. You might maybe see some men take their baseball cap off at the national anthem, right?

And that's it's the same sense of some physical gesture that has been imbued with meaning.

Or we could do this. Does this offend anybody? Anybody have a problem with this? How about you? Does this bother you? Okay. No, it doesn't.

But what if I were to lower this finger and raise its neighbor? Would I get letters about that? Okay, I probably would.

Why? I know that I would because I've done it before in this very room and I did get letters about it.

But look at these fingers. Is there anything inherently aggressive about this one, as opposed to this one? It's not, right? It's just you know the code, you speak the language, and we have arbitrarily assigned meaning here that we did not assign here.

We do this, we just assign meaning. So it's not inherent, but for those of you that speak the language, you would know exactly what I was saying to you.

But I'm not saying anything of this sort, okay? Physical things that we do with our body can contain messages, especially for those that speak the language.

Moses' Veil and the Symbolic Message

Number three, Moses' veil is a clue. This is obscure, you may not remember this, but maybe you do.

In Paul's other letter to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 3, he talks about Moses' veil.

And this was an event that happened, it's recorded in Exodus 34.

Does anybody recall what was going down with Moses and the veil in Exodus 34?

Glory of God is shown through. It's exactly right, Mary Beth.

So Moses was physically in the presence of God, and God's glory was so radiant that, like, literally Moses, like, picked up the radiation of some—in summary, he began to glow.

It freaked everybody out; it was all terrifying and strange, but then it also began to fade.

And what Paul says is Moses put on a veil, he put on a head covering to conceal the glory as it was fading away.

Look at this, it's 2 Corinthians 3, you can flip there, put it on screen. I think I have this for you maybe.

Yep. Okay. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away.

That will be helpful to have in the back of your mind as we finally get ready to turn to the text.

The Message of the Head

So here's a few things. We're almost algebra class is almost over, calculus begins in one more minute.

Here's a quick review. Paul is saying what he's— or Paul already believes, and he wants us to already know—that men, in some regard, represent God.

And women, in some regard, represent humanity.

He thinks that we know that how we live communicates something about the one that we represent.

We are messengers, we carry a message. And in particular, in this instance, what he's saying is that what we do with our head is suggestive, is indicative of the one that we represent.

It might be, per Moses, we'll see, we'll test this theory in a second, but it might be representing something about their glory. Not my glory, but men representing something about God's glory.

Women representing something about humanity's glory.

We'll see how that goes.

Okay? And with all that bouncing around your head, let's go to the text.

So go to 2 Corinthians 11, pick it up on verse 2. Look at what Paul says.

Now, I commend you because you remember me in everything, and you maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. That’s a really interesting, and in some sense, a very helpful term. Apparently, there are some traditions that Paul has passed on. And a tradition is not binding. A tradition is simply telling us, this is how we've always done it, and you can do it too.

It links us to the past.

So traditions aren't laws, they're not rules.

We have all kinds of traditions. What are some—what are some of our traditions in our culture that we do? Just give me a couple of more obvious ones. Tradition.

And you don't even think Christianity. Just think like American traditions. Thanksgiving. Okay. So Thanksgiving's tradition. Right? You don't have to eat turkey, but we like to eat turkey, and we like to eat way more than just the turkey, and it reminds us to be grateful.

It's a script that we follow as a way to say, oh yeah, yeah, this is a good thing to stop and to say, I'm grateful for all of God's many blessings in my life, right?

And your family no doubt has particularities on that tradition.

Give me another one. Fourth of July, it's right now, this weekend, right? So we're Americans, we blow things up on the July 4.

Right? It's a way to remind the British that we beat you.

Okay? And so we love that stuff. Now you don't have to, but it's fun to, right?

Paul is referencing traditions. There's something that we have done in the past, it's a script, it has a message, and if you speak the language, then we know what it means.

Now, let's go on to verse three. It's gonna start getting harder from here.

It's gonna start getting harder from here.

Verse three, I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

Now he's using head in the non-skull sense. He's talking about this divine order.

And the first step is that we are all followers of Christ. We are under His leadership, His rule, His gracious reign.

And in a marriage, he says that wives are to follow their husbands' servant leadership as he imitates Christ and as they imitate an obedient church.

And then finally, and notice this, this one's very important to help us understand the rest of it, Jesus who is himself as equal to the Father, as a wife is equal to her husband, nevertheless submits to His Father's will.

This is really important because Jesus is the model for husbands who are to love their wives as Christ loves the church, sacrificially.

And Jesus is the model for wives who, as perfect equals, submit their will to another, just as Christ did to the Father.

Jesus is the key that holds this whole thing together.

Everybody doing alright? Everybody losing their mind yet? Okay.

It's coming. It's that’s coming.

This is where it gets weird.

Verse four. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven.

For if a wife will not cover her head, she should cut her hair short.

But since it's disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair to shave her head, let her cover her head.

To which, it would be very reasonable for you to be like, why? What are you talking about? Like, what what does what does one thing have to do to another?

But try to remember everything we just said, all these prereqs that Paul is bringing to the party. Okay?

And then Paul is gonna he's gonna give us one more really important clue that's still a little bit obscure, I think we can unpack.

He’s saying there is something about a man's head that tells a story, and there is something about a woman's head that tells a different story.

And he's exhorting us to be mindful of the stories that we tell.

Here's his explanation. Look at verse seven.

He says, for a man, a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and the glory of God.

I'm gonna pause for just a second and let your gears turn.

It's not obvious.

Man should not cover his head.

There should be some sense of revelation, some sense of exposure, some sense of look at this.

Because men are in particular telling a story about the glory of God.

And women shouldn't, should keep their heads covered according to this tradition, because in some sense, they are telling a story about the glory of humanity.

Here's I think what Paul is doing.

Men say something about their head with their head.

Meaning, men say something about Christ with their skull.

And in particular, what they're saying by revealing their head is that the glory of Christ has been revealed.

For Christ's glory is revealed.

He has died on a cross as an atonement for our sins. He has risen from the dead and reigns over all.

Paul is saying men can broadcast this via this tradition that your head reveals something about your head, that Christ's glory has been uncovered.

I suspect that this might be why the most godly among us are going bald at a distressing pace.

We're just so excited that Christ's glory has been made plain.

And women are saying something with their head about their head.

Meaning, women are symbolically saying something about humanity with their skull.

And their message is this: mankind's glory is not yet revealed.

It's coming.

It's coming, but it's not here yet.

Women cover their heads because humanity's glory is still covered.

Have you noticed that we are not that glorious? At least not yet.

The glory of mankind is diminished, it is checkered by failure, it is quite immature, but it will not always be so.

Glory is coming.

There is a revelation yet to come.

One day, He will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.

It's coming. Not yet, but it's coming.

We will receive praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

We will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.

We will share in the glory to be revealed.

All of that is coming, but it's all future tense.

None of it is here yet.

And Paul is saying in the symbolic dance that we are partakers of, fallen men uncover their heads as emblems that Christ's glory has been uncovered, and women cover their heads as emblems that the glory of humanity is still covered but forthcoming.

And he frames all of this, not as a law, but as a tradition.

It's culturally conditioned. It's optional.

But the message that it conveys is transcendent.

That's what's going on here in 1 Corinthians 11.

It's a little bit like the fingers.

Right? You could make a gesture that you know is offensive, and you mean it to be offensive, and other people that speak the language should know exactly what you mean.

But the assignment of the fingers was arbitrary in the first place; it doesn't actually convey—it's not—I mean, it conveys a message, but it's not an inherent message.

I think wearing or not wearing a head covering is the same kind of a thing.

For those that speak the language, which today is basically no one, then it means that, right?

But whether you speak the language or not, there is a transcendent message.

So, by way of application, do we need to do this? Do we have people at the back doors passing out bonnets for all the women?

And if I see you downtown, gentlemen, am I gonna knock your baseball cap off your head? No.

We're not gonna do either one of those things, right?

Men are welcome to wear hats, women are welcome to not wear hats. Live your life, can do whatever you wanna do.

But if you do choose to enter into this practice of head covering or not head covering specifically, then I would just suggest that you explain to people what you mean, because nobody knows what this means. Right?

We have to explain this language.

Okay?

Paul categorizes it as a tradition. It's a particular culturally conditioned phenomena.

It's a non-binding expression of a transcendent truth.

And if you're not going to use it, then I would just suggest, perhaps find another way to convey this message.

So I wonder, are you aware of, and do you tell people regularly, that the glory of Christ has been revealed?

That His majesty is on display, that He is the glorious one, that He is majestic, wonderful, supreme, and beautiful, that He has done all that is needed to redeem us, and that He is worthy of our adoration and our praise.

And are you aware? Do you tell others in a language that they actually speak that we are not yet what we will be, but that better days are coming?

That He has destined us for a glory that far outweighs all of the pain and suffering of this present moment.

We do not live in it at the moment, but it is coming for sure.

Though our present lives are peppered with sin and suffering, it won't always be so.

If you choose to let your head tell a message about the sin, great, game on, just make sure you explain it.

But if not, find another way to describe the glory of Christ that's been revealed, and the glory of mankind that is coming.

And this morning as you come in, I doubt that very many of you are thinking about this passage. And those of you that were, it's a pretty thin chance that you had any idea what it meant because it's just so weird.

And because we avoid weird things, we never talk about them, so we all stay unaware.

But I think that's what it means. Okay?

And maybe that's helpful to you right now, but it's probably a little more likely on a message like this that whatever you entered the room with is still what you're carrying.

Right? Life is hard.

Right? We live pre-glory. Amen?

Whatever you're carrying this morning, I hope you might come down front. We'd invite you to come and to offer it to Him.

There is a resurrection that follows this world, and we're longing for that.

But right now, as we seek to be faithful people, whatever burden you carry, whatever things that He's got on your life, come. He loves you, He cares for you, and He invites you to come.

We'll have folks at the straight rails that'll pray with you. You can just pray all by yourself here at the front, and Christ will meet you there.

And then in a few minutes, we're gonna go to the, we'll pray together, then we'll go to the table, and we'll celebrate not just the revelation of Christ's glory present, but His coming again when everything is gonna get so much better.

Conclusion

Lord Jesus, we love You.

Would You let our lives pictures and portraits of how great You are?

Would You give us the grace, the wisdom, the humility to represent You well?

Lord, I pray the men in particular would live lives as where You have placed us in certain positions.

Would You help us yield or wield that as You wish that we would, that we would not lie with our lives about what You are like?

And let her pray for the ladies that You would help them as they depict what we ought to be like in reference to You.

Would You let us live, all of us, as men and women in Your church, as people that know what it is to be loved, deeply loved, known, deeply known, to honor You with our lives.

We lift You up. Amen.