A Competent Wife, A Strong Woman

Epiphany UCC

Proverbs 31:10-17, 25-31

A competent wife, how does one find her? Her value is far above pearls. Her husband entrusts his heart to her, and with her he will have all he needs. She brings him good and not trouble all the days of her life. She seeks out wool and flax; she works joyfully with her hands. She is like a fleet of merchant ships, bringing food from a distance. She gets up while it is still night, providing food for her household, even some for her female servants. She surveys a field and acquires it; from her own resources, she plants a vineyard. She works energetically; her arms are powerful.

Strength and honor are her clothing; she is confident about the future. Her mouth is full of wisdom; kindly teaching is on her tongue. She is vigilant over the activities of her household; she doesn’t eat the food of laziness. Her children bless her; her husband praises her: “Many women act competently, but you surpass them all!” Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Let her share in the results of her work; let her deeds praise her in the city gates.

The one tasked with the preaching from the text of sacred Scripture every Sunday has a particular power, as you can imagine, and a lot of that has to do with her or his selection of what texts from the Bible they choose to preach on. The reality is that everyone, and even preachers, have a personal set of texts from the Bible they value more than other texts, favorite passages, favorite stories, favorite themes they pick out consciously and unconsciously as they decide what word to bring to a particular congregation. That truth struck me this week, as I chose to take on a text that is both beautiful in a way but not without problems, not without its issues, so to speak. Sometimes I like a challenge, one that invites me to engage a text I would normally avoid for fear of offending someone or not being able to contexualize it properly, or simply having to deal with the obvious harm it has caused believers and unbelievers over the centuries. For example, I have never dealt in the pulpit with the texts on genocide in the book of Joshua, which were often used to justify genocide later in history, including the genocide of Native Americans in this country. Yes, we’ve studied those horrible texts in Bible studies I’ve lead – but to speak of such things in detail from the pulpit…I don’t know if I have the courage, or maybe even the stomach to do so.

Now, to be clear the ancient lesson we heard today is really not like those Joshua texts I just mentioned but it is not without its own complications. And yet, I just want to say that after reading it after a long time of not doing so – again, we preachers have our favorite texts, after all – I have to admit that I was surprised by its tone, its praise of this “competent wife” and its praise for what this woman does. This text is probably the most familiar passage from Proverbs, a book that has beguiled scholars for a long time. The book itself is composed mostly of one-line wisdom sayings, pieces of good advice about honesty, integrity, and the best way to live one’s life. Interestingly though, the first 9 chapters are different from the rest of the book, and different from this last chapter from Proverbs we just heard a few minutes ago – you see, in those first 9 chapters, there is a call to live a wise life, to embrace what the writer calls Lady Wisdom, or Woman Wisdom, Wisdom being often personified here in the Bible as a Woman, sometimes to the point that Woman Wisdom is believed to be a co-creator of the world as you find in Proverbs 8. Now, the writer does set up a duality for his readers – and it was likely a “he” who wrote this book, as with all the books of the Bible – because there is Woman Wisdom, on the one hand, and the Mysterious Woman, the temptress who leads people astray, inviting them to make bad choices, unwise choices. You can see the virgin or whore dichotomy that has been imposed on women throughout the centuries in these first nine chapters, though it is not the focal point of the text, just the lens with which the male author is trying to make his point about choosing the right path. Of course, there is no similar virgin/whore dynamic for males in the Bible or in our culture, a reminder that the Bible, however much we value and love it, is still a patriarchal text, one written by males with the assumption that its primary readers would be fellow men.

Nonetheless, despite the obvious patriarchal lens through which today’s text is written, there are some real surprises in terms of what this ideal wife or woman is praised for. But first, know this: the Hebrew word for “competent” can also be translated as “strong,” and the Hebrew word for “wife” can also be translated as “woman” though I think the translators simply go with the way that those words are usually translated in other parts of the Bible. Still, though, the possibility of that translation, a “strong woman” adds a different tone to the hearing of these words, especially as it relates to what this woman is being praised for. Not only is this woman given accolades for doing those things associated with her expected household duties, she is said to have surveyed a field and acquired it with her resources, her own funds. In a generally patriarchal system, you wouldn’t expect a woman to both make the decision to buy a piece of land AND does so with her own financial resources. Not only does she work joyfully with her own hands with wool and flax, she trades successfully with those goods, bringing in income through the sale of those items. And yes, it should also be clear to us that this woman being praised is clearly a woman of means – she has female servants after all, but she acts kindly to these other women, making sure they have food while they are employed with her – she is about generosity and mercy. She is kind with her tongue, this King Lemuel proclaims, this king of who we have no record of, either of him or his kingdom, and yet her arms, her arms are powerful – it reminds me of those Rosie Riveter posters from World War 2, with Rosie flexing her biceps!

Obviously, though, the writer, whomever he may be, still makes the assumptions of his time and place, which we all do, of course – we are all creatures of a time and place. He praises her for excellence within her “appropriate” domain, the household, and though, in another passage I didn’t include in today’s reading, he will praise this strong woman for running her household so well that the husband can join the other men at the city gates to adjudicate the conflicts of his day, the assumption being of course, that she will not or should not join him there in the practice of this civic duty – this is men’s work. Of course, there is Deborah in the book of judges who leads her people well but she is indeed a rare female leader in the Scriptures. The patriarchy dictates the rules and the duties of both men and women, this male dominance decides where and how men and women can function in a society, limiting women, certainly, but also limiting men and what they can be and how they should function in the society. The patriarchy, the assumption that men should dominate all strata of personal and public life, it has cost women so much over thousands of years in terms of dreams, hopes, and talent – so much has been lost to the evil of patriarchy, and women have paid a horrible price for men’s inability to see that these assigned roles for women and men have squashed so much talent, intelligence and leadership. Think of all that we could have accomplished if both men AND women had been able to equally tackle medicine and engineering and architecture and parenting and religion through the centuries. Sadly, our Bible has been a weapon used in patriarchy, either as perpetrator of it, or, perhaps, more realistically, a reflection of the worst of ancient cultures, and of human character, this need to control, dominate, and limit others for personal, economic and social reasons.

Not only does this description of a strong woman both surprise us in its historical context and yet also assumes the rightness of the patriarchy, it also puts an impossible burden on women. Even if one wishes to embrace the patriarchal world of the text with its assumptions of what a competent wife looks like, it just seems like an impossible list to actually do – and once again women are burdened with expectations that rarely can be met by anyone. I remember my lovely and wonderful and strong Baptist Aunt Linda, whose husband Jim would praise her using the words of Proverbs 31, our text – and she’d accepted the praise, though knowing Aunt Linda, she did with a raised eyebrow – you’ve got some pretty high and somewhat unrealistic expectations of what any woman, much less any person can possibly be. The haunting thing about this list of almost impossible traits to fulfill is there is no equivalent text in Scripture that names what a competent or strong husband or man looks like, no listing out of what is expected of a man – the list of expectations is largely a one-way street, sadly, falling most heavily on women. Again, though that doesn’t mean that men haven’t paid a price for the assumptions that the ancient Biblical writers wrote into texts that one day would be named as holy – the patriarchy destroys so much possibility in men, as Betty Strong wrote in words from our Modern Lesson, words she crafted for the World Council of Churches. “There is a woman tired of being called ‘an emotional female,’ and a there is a man who is denied the right to be weak and to be gentle, and “there is a woman who is tired of being a sex object and there is a man worried about his potency.” And then there is the unintended, unexpected victims of the patriarchy. Some have argued that the root of homophobia is actually to be found in sexism, since gay men have often been reviled for being like women, for denigrating themselves by acting like a woman in public, or even in the bedroom – the dismissal and sometimes hostility towards woman become transferred onto gay men, who are not fulfilling the gender role that the patriarchy has assigned them from birth. Lesbian women too have felt the effect of the patriarchy – to be non-stereotypically female, to carry traces of the stereotypical male within a female body, as with a male carrying traces of the stereotypical female within the male body, it causes such rage in some men that it sometimes comes out in violence. The horrific death toll that trans women have paid for trying to live their authentic selves is a testimony to the wreckage caused by the patriarchy.

Still, the burden almost always most acutely falls upon women’s lives and bodies, as we can see in the recent Supreme Court controversy with Judge Kavanaugh and Professor Blasey Ford. It all reminded me of an incident that happened in the small town in Michigan I once pastored in, where a teenage girl accused one of the more popular boys, a star athlete, of raping her. It really divided the town in two, but it was so damning that the most concern voiced was for the young man who was being accused – what would these charges do to his future, his life, to be accused of this heinous deed by this young woman? There were rumors, of course, of her sexual prowess, which is almost always the typical way of trying to discredit women’s stories in these matters, hinting somehow, even if it was true, that for a woman to embrace and desire sex, getting raped is getting what she deserves. Not surprisingly, there was not much talk of his sexual past – it was the old virgin/whore dynamic coming into play once again. Whether or not you believe Professor Blasey Ford account about what happened so long ago, know that it will almost always be the female accuser of men that will pay the heavier costs – that’s what the patriarchy does, the patriarchy re-victimizes women, prioritizing men’s reputation over the witness and testimony of women who have often experienced sexual trauma at the hands of these very men.

So, what are we followers of Jesus, this One, who though steeped in a time and place where equality was far from the norm, followers of this One, who acknowledged his female disciples and seemed to embrace them in such surprising ways for his time – what are we followers of this Jesus to do with this text, the good of it, the bad of it, and the fact that so often our sacred texts seemingly support the patriarchy? We know that women dominated the pews of the early church, as they do now – remember that patriarchal slur hurled at the church by some of its earliest enemies, that Christianity was a women’s religion, centered around a man who challenged the patriarchy and the ancient assumptions of what a man should be and say, challenging it so often through his words, and his simple gentleness, his compassion, his love. And remember this, as I said a few weeks ago – when the church won’t listen to the still-speaking God, the Spirit of God will go outside the church to do a work of justice, and then that same Spirit will reach back inside the church to change the church from the outside in. God’s Spirit will not be thwarted, will not be denied, and though we so often get in the Spirit’s way, God wins, and God will do whatever it takes to get the Church, Christ’s own body, to do the right thing. If the church won’t listen, God’s spirit will speak elsewhere, until the church catches up – thank God for the women’s movement – and I mean it, thank God for the women’s movement. At the recent installation of the Rev. Kim Shelton of the Good News Community Church this past weekend, a speaker mentioned that she was once in a group of men, one of who told her that he didn’t believe in women preachers – and I kept thinking, well, I guess you don’t believe what’s clearly in front of you? I mean, why believe your lying eyes, because here she is, just being a woman preacher, and she’s doing a really good job at it, better than most men I know. What I’m grateful for is this: God is relentless, and though we humans resist, God eventually overcomes that resistance – and justice comes, eventually. I wish the justice was faster and more complete, but I also wish we weren’t so resistance to what God is doing in the world, I wish we humans didn’t resist God’s Spirit so much. I suppose that is the cost of having free will, the ability to say no to God’s yes’s, but this free will also puts such importance on us saying yes to God’s yes, choosing to stand with our sisters, honoring their stories, celebrating their truths, and for us men, resisting the patriarchy, the lies we’ve been fed with our own mother’s milk, to play off a line from an Audre Lorde poem. God’s doing a new thing, through the #Metoo movement, and even in the #churchtoo movement, a church version of the #metoo movement, and thankfully less of us are being resistant to those difficult truths about some men’s behavior. But men, myself included, need to do our work, which means unmasking our assumptions, challenging our sometimes warped instincts and biases, and opening ourselves up to voices that tell of women’s often very different experiences in the world, of struggles we’ve not known or have barely begun to acknowledge. What are we to do as followers of Jesus? We’re not to resist God’s movement in the world, and instead we are to embrace the difficult and yet liberating truth we have been forced to confront in ourselves and within the patriarchy that we all inhabit. I am grateful to women, and to men, and to all of us in-between, for listening to the still-speaking God, who loves us, and who will not let us stay in our sin and who asks us to listen to the still speaking God, and to voices we have denied for too long – voices that likely carry the words of the Still speaking God. Amen.