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Superwife
Sermon preached by John Armes at Holy Communion on 24 September 2006, baptism of Emma
Proverbs 31.10-31 ; Mark 9.30-37
A good wife, who can find one?
Did you feel uncomfortable listening to that reading? Did you think that perhaps baby Emma should cover her ears? I was, I admit, tempted to choose a different reading because its gender stereotyping is so politically incorrect.
What really takes the biscuit is that her children ‘rise up’ and call this poor overworked woman 'happy'. Imagine it!
"Happy! Happy! I get up before dawn every day to feed you, I stay up late every night to clothe you, I don't have a minute to call my own - always out buying fields and being nice to the neighbours - I’ve got such big shoulders from planting vineyards that I can’t fit into size ten any more, and you call me happy? I'll give you happy!"
And as she beats her children out of the house with a broom her husband returns home after a long day sitting around with the (male) elders of the village. He props himself against the door and tells her "Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all... hic!"
I recently studied this passage in a mixed group of men and women. The men tended to emphasize the historical context of the passage, pointing out that this is no powerless woman - she is a paragon of home economics and small enterprise. The women, on the other hand, said it simply made them feel guilty and inadequate. What is presented here is an impossible ideal.
Many modern women already feel oppressed by the expectation that not only should they run the home and take the main burden of child care but that they should also hold down a job. Here is the bible telling them that they should feel blessed by this. It’s not so much that a woman's place is in the home but that a woman's place is to do everything, apart from go to war and make the important political and judicial decisions that occupy their men folk.
It’s hard to think what an equivalent reading might be for men. Rudyard Kipling perhaps. Imagine if our first reading this morning had been this:
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be [Superman], my son!
Wonderful stuff, inspirational! But does anyone find it just a tad unattainable?
We often yearn for a world where everyone knew their place, when women had a clear role and men did what men had to do; a time when the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate trusted that God had made things that way. As Karl Marx might have pointed out, that’s a sentiment that could only have been expressed by the rich man.
And looking at the Proverbs reading I’m afraid there’s a similar kind of self-delusion going on behind the scenes. Go back to the beginning of Chapter 31 and you’ll find that this description of ideal wifedom was taught to King Lemuel (some long-forgotten minor potentate) by his mother, in other words a queen or titled lady. Then return to our passage and look at verse 15, 'She rises while it is still night and provides food for her household and tasks for her servant-girls.' Hmmm! I wonder who really got the food in and planted the vineyards.
Let's not forget that the legal rights of women in those days were minimal. That even the powerful woman presupposed here, was defined by her husband and her status as his wife. And let’s also not forget that her homely duties are contrasted not with the possibility of women joining in the public life, but with women as dangerous seductresses, sapping men’s masculinity. In other words, the context for us is alien - it doesn’t fit with how we see things. But it's not just the context, it’s the content too that makes us squirm. For the passage is not merely describing a job (in the same way many of us have a job description) but prescribing an ideal role, based not on aptitude, vocation or choice, but solely on gender. If you are a woman this should be your ultimate aim.
We squirm because out attitudes and values are shaped by an age that aspires to be egalitarian, just as Lemuel and his mother were shaped by an age that had no such aspiration. And whilst Jesus lived in a world different again, it’s probably fair to say the values that surrounded him were closer to Lemuel's than ours. So how did he deal with them?
Let’s admit, firstly, that Jesus was not a 21st century liberal who happened to find himself living 2000 years before his time. He was a first century man with ideas that profoundly challenged his contemporaries just as they continue to challenge us.
So, we find he resisted other people’s labels for himself - he refused to accept the roles other people had assigned him. Messiah he may be, but this Messiah’s throne, he points out to Peter, will be a cross; Son of God too, but a Son whose greatness is realized through service. We find him resisting also the labelling of others - women, children, lepers, tax gatherers, prostitutes - anyone whom society pushed to the margins of power or respectability.
In the Gospel reading today we have a clear example of this. To illustrate his point that greatness comes from being willing to be unimportant and to serve others, Jesus takes one of the least important people, a child, and puts it amongst the disciples. 'Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me...' Christ’s greatness is that he is to be found most especially in an insignificant child. A good reason for baptizing Emma – by welcoming her we welcome Jesus, and in welcoming Jesus we welcome God.
Indeed, in the end that is the only role that we are entitled to foist on others, that of being a child of God and, as such, one in whom we are to find God. This is the only label Emma needs as she grows up - she is a child of God and to be a child of God is to be liberated to become the person God has made her.
Her life may well include becoming a wife and mother, it may include staying up late and getting up early, buying land and even planting vineyards - and if she does those things I hope she will do them with joy and receive credit for it. It will also include all sorts of other things that King Lemuel and his contemporaries instinctively reserved for men; being part of political decision-making, judging in the law courts, defending human rights, as well as the infinite number of other possibilities that were beyond their imagining; concerns to avoid ecological catastrophe amongst them.
But for Emma as for us, wherever our lives lead us, the crucial thing is to remain always conscious that we are daughters and sons of God and brothers and sisters to one another. Make that our guiding light and our children, and for that matter our parents and our godparents too, will have every reason to rise up and call us happy.
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