Are We Manly Enough? Reflections on Cornelius

Psalm 26

Acts 10:1-8

Men are in crisis.  We used to be the authority figures in marriage and family life, the breadwinners and primary actors in the economy, the more educated gender, and the ones more equipped for leadership in all spheres of life.  While that arrangement proved clearly defined, and comforting, for many men and women, it has come undone.

The world we have now is a world in which women and men share responsibilities in family life, share financial responsibilities for family life, and share leadership space in all kinds of organizations and businesses.  And quite frankly, this new freedom and power for women has thrown many men into confusion and panic.  If I’m not the authority figure and head of house and primary breadwinner and public leader and protector of my family – who am I?

 

And what does this new arrangement between women and men mean for congregations?

Conservative Baptist pastor John Piper has stirred up a nest of online responses to his argument that Biblical faith is “masculine” faith.  Piper argues for a faith described in terms like muscular, rugged, courageous, forceceful, confident, penetrating, strong, visionary, public, and protective.

David Murrow writes in Why Men Hate Going to Church (2004), that men are tired of singing love songs to Jesus and don't feel comfortable in a "safe environment" that caters to women, children, and older people. His critique is familiar to many: men don't like "conformity, control, and ceremony," so churches need to "adjust the thermostat" and orient their ministry toward giving men tasks (since they're "doers").  Don’t ask them to feel or express or communicate or love.  Just have them trim the hedges or fasten drywall.

Michael Horton points out that some want a Jesus “with callused hands and big biceps.”  And he goes on to mention Promise Keepers, Tim Tebow, and Ultimate Fighting as cultural attempts to keep manly men, well, manly.  They are cultural symbols that make sense only in a landscape where traditional masculinity seems under threat.

For more than fifty years now, some streams of the Christian tradition – denominations like ours – have been fighting for the rights of women to lead and serve just like men do in the life of the church.  Those efforts have been successful.  But not everyone is happy about what we’ve accomplished. 

One of the fastest growing networks of churches in the Northwest was led by pastor Mark Driscoll.  Driscoll preached many sermons, but most of them dealt with telling men to man up, to lead their women, and to recover their masculinity.  Driscoll was blustery and braggadocious.  He talked frequently about his sex life with his “hot” wife.  And this manly schtick won a large following.  There are lots of people who long for the clear boundaries of the 1950’s: men do these things, women do those.

There is a congregation just outside Joplin, MO that has grown quickly to an attendance of 800 for worship.  It is a church for manly men.  This congregation got lots of press last year for giving away assault rifles during Easter Services. 

I think it’s safe to say that lots of men, and maybe some women too, are confused.

The story about Cornelius is a good way to explore masculinity and faith.  It’s also a good way to talk about the variety of gifts of people in the congregation.

We’re talking together this Fall about our strengths.  What range of experiences and interests and skill sets has the Spirit given to you?  Are you aware of them at all?  Are you living and working from those unique skill sets to serve others with joy?  And do you express gratitude to God’s Spirit for gifting you in these ways, and others in different ways?  Those are the questions we’ve been tracking. 

Cornelius appears in the story of Acts as the first non-Jew (Gentile or Greek) to receive the good news about Jesus.  Cornelius – unaware that powerful, moving religious experiences are only for women – has a vision and is visited by an angel.  The angel instructs him to send for Simon Peter in nearby Joppa.  Peter too has just experienced a vision.  In his dream, all sorts of animals that were off-limits, unclean in Moses’ Law were lowered from heaven on a sheet.  And through the dream God instructs Peter to receive non-Jews into the good news story of Jesus’ way of life. 

So Peter travels to Cornelius’ house and tells them the story of Jesus.  Cornelius and his household receive baptism.  And to the continuing surprise of Peter, these non-circumcised Greeks, ignorant of what Moses’ teaches, they too receive God’s powerful Spirit.

But Cornelius also appears in the story as an influential and commanding military officer who learns to see his life in a new way.  Back behind the way Luke tells this story is a question that has hung around for a long time: can manly men belong to the church?  Can powerful men, military guys – be followers of Jesus?  Can manly men be good Christians? 

Congregations across the US are struggling because of powerful shifts in how men and women relate to each other, to family and work life.  Churches thrived when men worked and women stayed at home and tended children.  That was a nice division of labor, at least for congregations needing lots of volunteer help.  For congregations, men occupied the visible leadership roles of preaching and teaching, of strategic planning, decision making, and handling the finances.  Women tended to all matters relating to food, kids, Sunday School, and cleaning up.  You might laugh at the old fashioned nature of that picture, but that’s still the way work gets divided some times.

That might work.  But it’s not very faithful to the biblical witness.  It doesn’t seem to reflect Scripture’s emphasis on the many ways we’re gifted by God’s Spirit.  So what’s a 21^st century congregation going to look like?  I think congregations that thrive will do two things:

1.     They will support and encourage both men and women in the work of finding confident roles in a confusing cultural landscape.  Congregations can help both men and women understand that cultural expectations about gender are just made up and temporary.  They aren’t hooked in any deep way to reality.  This will be jarring and disorienting to some, especially those with traditional personalities, and those in traditional families and living in traditional places.  But it is part of the church’s work of helping people find freedom from the prisons of unhealthy expectations.  It is neither healthy nor freeing to expect all women to act one way, and all men to act another way.  There are a wide range of ways of being a woman.  And the same for men.  Congregations that thrive will support the tender and caregiving gifts of young women, but also help them make room for their natural risk-taking, aggressiveness, ambition, and leadership.  Thriving congregations will support young men in their physicality and their competitiveness, but also help them cultivate their creativity, their tenderness, and their emotional life.

2.     Thriving congregations will create a community in which women and men are connected to one another in healthy and life-giving ways.  Our congregation, for example, affirms the confessions of new identity in Scripture – that our new lives in Christ make gender less important.  Faith doesn’t erase gendered lives as male and female.  But gender isn’t ultimately important.  And so we can be led by women as well as men.  This is not true in many churches, in fact in most congregations here in our community.  In fact, we take care to have women and men equally represented on Session, Deacons, and committee work.  And only by continuing to read Scripture prayerfully together can we share leadership and learn to appreciate one another’s unique gifts and contributions.  I think the way we share leadership between women and men is one of the ways we confess the good news of Jesus Christ in our wider community.  Healthy congregations don’t ask whether you’re a man or a woman, they ask how God’s Spirit has gifted you, and then free you and empower you to do that work – both in the congregation and in the wider community. 

We celebrate the confession from Galatians 3:27-28: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Healthy communities of disciples will talk together about how cultural expectations often distort who we are and what we’re capable of.  God’s Spirit doesn’t bestow gifts that fall neatly within the range of culturally acceptable roles for you.  You might very well have a range of skills and capacities that extend beyond how your family expects you to behave.  You might make some others uncomfortable by receiving and practicing your gifts.  You might confuse some people in your life by connecting the different interests, passions, and skill sets that you have.  You might have to exercise your God-given powers to act in life-giving ways to the frowns and scowls of others.  Not everybody will like the surprising work of the Holy Spirit, scattering gifts here and there, to children, women, and men, in all kinds of unpredictable patterns!

But this is the joyful, always surprising, adventure of living by the power of the Holy Spirit.  This Spirit connects us to ourselves, connects us to others who are very different from us, and connects us all within the good news story that we’re loved by God in Jesus Christ, and called to serve others in his name.  Amen.