Cheryl Schatz

Kristen,
You said:

by shouldering in and taking over as rabbi, expecting Jesus to sit down and listen

It is my understanding that in Christianity there is to be no hierarchy among the brethren so that if a person had something to give out as God’s gift, the one who had been sharing should be willing to submit to God’s gifts among the brethren.

1 Corinthians 14:30 (NASB95)
30 But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first one must keep silent.

When I teach the Bible to my Bible study group, I stand in the position of teacher, but I willingly accept and listen to other people’s wisdom. My own pastor sits in my Bible study classes and he told us last week that he has learned a lot from me. Yet we all listen to his wisdom when he has something to share that I may have missed. It isn’t about one person being more important than another so that only one person can speak. We are commanded to submit “one to another”. The way that I see this working out is not that a person demands that other people listen to him (and thus acting as a ruler over others) but that those who are in the body willingly submit to learn from others. The injunction is never to take rulership over others but to submit to others. In this way there is never a need to “shouldering in and taking over” while the person may take leadership in a respectful way as the one leading takes a respectful place of submission to also receive God’s gifts through another.