September 20, 2009 - Proper 20, Year B (RCL)
I wonder who you would think of
if you were asked to name
one of the heroes of the Christian faith.
Perhaps the ones that first come to ming are people like Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King, people who have had enormous impacts on the world
in our lifetimes.
Or maybe its one of the biblical saint. Like the apostle Paul,
who after an early career persecuting Christians,
traveled throughout the Mediterranean
preaching the gospel of Christ, and wrote letter after letter
to encourage the brand new Christians in their faith.
Or Peter, that impetuous disciple
who leaped out of the boat and began to walk across the water to reach Jesus, only to begin to sink;
who promised to be faithful, only to deny his Lord three times,
who became one of the leaders of the early church.
Or Mary,
who was only a girl
when the angel came to her with the news
that she was to bear a child, Immanuel, God with us.
And then there’s the Old Testament:
Abraham and his wife Sarah,
who left everything they knew, their family and homeland
to begin a journey with God
that would lead them to a new life, a new home,
and more descendants than they could count.
Or King David,
who fought the giant Goliath
and his son Solomon who ruled the people with wisdom.
Or even my hero, not so well known, Jael, who lured the enemy general Sisera into her tent
and killed him with a tent peg through his temple.
There are so many great stories in the Bible, so many great people to look up to as heroes.
But sometimes it all seems kind of remote. It’s almost as if
they are just characters in a story book,
not really connected to us and our lives today.
After all, I don’t know how many of you plan to go out this afternoon
and slay a giant
with a slingshot,
or lure an enemy general to your tent
and stab him with a tent peg.
And most of us
aren’t expecting to see an angel come and tell us we’re pregnant,
or to have to stand by a cross and watch our Savior die.
They are heroes, but it’s kind of hard to imagine us
doing anything like they did.
It’s kind of hard to use them as a model
for how we should live our lives
today.
And that’s why today’s Old Testament reading
is so important for us.
Because it talks about, it provides an image
of the ideal woman.
She hasn’t left all to follow Jesus;
she isn’t the mother of a new nation.
She is just a woman
getting on with her daily life and work,
but doing it
in a way that reflects
the character of God.
When I was preparing this sermon,
I read some books that urged me not to preach on this reading.
It’s too sexist, they said.
It paints a picture of a woman
who does all the hard manual labor
while her husband, who is boss, does the thinking.
And that’s a model
that belongs
to an age that is past — thank God!
There’s a part of me
that agrees wholeheartedly with them. I am very glad
that our culture has changed so that, unlike many of my female ancestors, I could finish school, just like my brother,
so that I had a choice of career,
so that I can stand in this pulpit today.
But there is another part of me that says “hang on!” This is in the bible. It can’t be all bad. Surely there is something here for us?
And there is. Because the picture of the ideal woman in the book of Proverbs,
however much it might have been shaped by a culture that is different from ours, is still a picture of someone of great strength and dignity. It is a picture of someone who has taken their place in life, and made the very best of it, it is a picture of someone who we would do well to hold up
as a hero.
This woman, it seems, is in charge of a large household. She get up early in the morning
to begin making food for the day, and to set the servants about their tasks.
She works at household duties, makes clothing, plants a vineyard, runs a business from home. Her husband is free to take his place in society,
free of worries about the family’s health and wealth.
She is wise, she has a sense of humor, she is generous to those in need.
All in all
she is a paragon of virtue.
But
she belongs to a different world than ours.
A world where women were pretty much thought of in terms of property,
with no rights of her own,
a world where it was perfectly acceptable for a man to leave his wife at home to do all the work
while he went off to engage in long discussions with his friends,
and make a public name for himself
on the back of his wife’s work.
That’s no longer how our world works, at least for the most part.
And I’m not even convinced
that it is set up as any sort of ideal, even then.
Because the final words are,
“Give her a share
in the works of her hands,
and let her works praise her
in the city gates.”
The very place where he husband is held in such high esteem,
is the place where she will be honored.
The things she has worked so hard at, even though they belonged to her husband,
they
are to be given to her.
These last two verses
turn the whole passage on its head.
She is a strong, wise woman,
and she is to be rewarded.
These words come
at the very end of the book of Proverbs. It’s a book
that begins with these words:
“For learning about wisdom and instruction,
for understanding words of insight
for gaining instruction in wise dealing
righteousness, justice and equity,
to teach shrewdness to the simple,
knowledge and prudence
to the young.” (Prov. 1:2-4)
It’s a book about wisdom, the wisdom
that comes from God.
And what that wisdom looks like, in real life,
is, for example, this women.
A person who epitomises strength and dignity,
even when the society around her
undermines that.
A person who excels in every way
so that those who see her
cannot help but honor her . . .
and, in the context of the book of Proverbs it implies,
honor God.
She is nameless, but her wisdom and strength
makes her a model for us today.
So what might wisdom look like
in the world as it is now?
What might it be like
to take this woman
as our model?
If you do a search on Amazon.com
and looks for books about wisdom,
you come up with over half a million possibilities.
They include books on prosperity,
personal freedom,
high-performance organizations,
love,
philosophy,
and so on. The vast majority of these
seem to see wisdom as some sort of esoteric thing,
removed from everyday life.
But our picture from Proverbs
is the absolute reverse.
This is wisdom that is grounded,
that is expressed in the realities of everyday living.
It’s about taking life as it comes to you,
and doing your very best in spite of the circumstances.
It’s about taking even the menial parts of your everyday work —
the errands, the cleaning up, the stuff you’re not really paid to do —
and doing them graciously and effectively.
It’s about seeing caring for your kids as being as important as an executive job.
And, in the end,
it’s about claiming everything that you do
as something you do
for the glory of God
and the well being of those around you.
That’s where wisdom
is found.
It’s a lot more ordinary, isn’t it, than fighting giants or slaying enemies,
more ordinary than traveling around preaching or sitting at the foot of the cross.
But it’s what life is about, for the vast majority of us. The ordinary stuff. The everyday job and the cleaning and the errands and the crying kids,
all of that
is what human life is about.
At the back of the the Book of Common Prayer, there is a section called the catechism. It’s a series of questions and answers that explain our faith. It used to be a requirement for confirmation in many churches that you memorized it.
Our confirmtion classes now tend to focus more on understanding and living out our faith, rather than memorizing things, but the catechism is still important,
and is well worth reading
as an explanation of what the Episcopal version of the Christian faith
is all about.
And in the catechism, it asks the question,
What is our duty to our neighbors?
And the answer it gives
includes the words
“ To be honest and fair in our dealings; to seek
justice, freedom, and the necessities of life for all
people; and to use our talents and possessions
as ones who must answer for them to God”
It’s pretty close, when you think about it, to the description of the woman n Proverbs,
and pretty close
to what we promise in the Baptismal Covenant, that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, that we will strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human
being.
It’s ordinary stuff.
But it’s in the ordinary everyday stuff of our life
that we are called to live with wisdom,
it’s the ordinary everyday stuff of our life
where we live out our faith,
it’s in the ordinary everyday stuff of our life
that we are the people God has created us to be,
bearing God’s image
to our world.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009