The Unsung Warrior: A Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Unsung Warrior: A Homily on the Good Wife of Proverbs

Preached at All Saints, King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 19 September, 2021, the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost.

Lessons for Proper 25 (B): Proverbs 31:10-31; Ps 1; Jas 3.13-4.3; Mk 9.30-37

“A capable wife, who can find?”  (Pro 31.10)

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction“  (Pro 1.7).  That quote from the opening lines of Proverbs sums up the theme of this book of the Bible.  Proverbs, as is often said, is folksy, everyday advice for those who want to live a life that is pleasing to God.  One might even say that every piece of Christian self-help literature ever written, including Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life, owes something to the Book of Proverbs.

But then we might ask, how much does folksy, everyday wisdom that thousands of years old apply to my life in the 21^st century, particularly when that wisdom is so gendered and so specific, as today’s reading is?   In the King James version, the woman is introduced as “a virtuous woman”,  and for that reason there’s a long tradition of reading Proverbs 31 as supporting Puritan stereotypes of traditional femininity.  According to the stereotype, a good woman raises a family, is modest, hardworking, chaste and loyal to her husband, whereas her opposite, the loose and adulterous woman of Proverbs 5, is a gossipy seducer who brings men to a bad end.  To be fair, these stereotypes are still deployed today in some Christian circles, and they are often seen as being the same kind of narrow view that the Taliban wants to impose on women today.  So what can we get out of Proverbs 31?

First, we need to remember that stereotypes are just that, caricatures that convey value judgements.   Yes, the ancient world had clearly defined roles for men and women, within which some (excluding slaves and the very poor) could lead meaningful and fulfilling lives by the standards of their day.    Two women in the New Testament, Chloe (1 Cor 1.11-12) and Lydia (Acts 26.14-15) were, like the wife of Proverbs, had were women of means  (Lydia was a cloth merchant) with servants.  Evangelists like Paul owed their success to women like Chloe and Lydia, because their households were the nuclei and base camps of the early church.   Countless other women, without the wealth and status of the wife of Proverbs, nevertheless found purpose and dignity in the ancient world, engaged in the countless manual tasks (making clothes as well as meals) that kept a humble family going.    The simple family that Jesus would have grown up in would have been a lot more like Coronation Street than the Downton Abbey-style world of the wife of Proverbs, but perhaps still a good life.    Almost certainly Mary, the Mother of Jesus, would have known this passage from Proverbs, and might well have drawn comfort from patterning her life on it, as best she could. 

Something else Mary would have drawn strength and comfort from is the word first used to describe the wife of Proverbs.  As I said, in King James it is “virtuous”, which conveys morality, and here it is “capable”, which suggests she is to be admire because she is good at her jobs.  But as several Bible scholars note, the word in Hebrew us chayill¸ meaning “brave” or “courageous”.  In the Hebrew scriptures, it is often used to describe warriors, who of course were men.   So how does seeing her as a “courageous” wife change our view of things?  

Let me conclude by suggesting that it’s through the idea of the courage of the faithful life that we can recover the Good Wife of Proverbs as an exemplar for women and men.  Think of how brave anyone like her would have to be to get through a typical day.   Think of the courage it would take to trust in the vagaries of ancient agriculture, to raise a family in an age of conflict and wars between petty kings, to trust the promises and faithfulness of the God of Israel in the hard working, daily grind of a world where all labour was done by hand.

Beyond those matters of historical context, think of the courage it would take to try and be the person that the wife of Provebs is.  Think of the courage to be the kind of person that one’s children truly admire.  Think of the bravery to not worry about the future, knowing that one has done enough for the day.  Think of the everyday faithfulness to give to those less fortunate, without worrying that the generosity will detract from what you have?   Think about the everyday determination required to choose only words that are kind and wise.  Think about the struggle to take to set aside those lesser qualities in one’s self that would prevent you from reaching these goals?  That sounds like a struggle for which one would indeed have to gird one’s self with strength.

Seen in this light, this passage suddenly seems like a goal that anyone of us would want to aspire to.   Suddenly the wife of Proverbs embodies a whole raft of virtues that we are all called to in our discipleship, no matter how poorly or partially we attain them. No longer an ancient feminine stereotype, this reading from Proverbs suddenly seems to point to the kind of transformation that a Jesus follower could grow into if they had the strength, and the courage, to do as Jesus said and take up one’s cross, and follow, man and woman alike.  And isn’t taking up one’s cross, in its own humble way, the way of the warrior?