Praise The Person Not Their Shadow
A Sermon by Andrew Colman based on Proverbs 31
This week, we conclude our very brief trip through the Book of Proverbs in the lectionary. In chapter 31, we see essentially the culmination of the person who heeds all of the advice that the Book of Proverbs offers.
Things like
the fear of the Lord is the Beginning of wisdom
do not be idle,
treat your servants well, be shrewd in your business dealings,
care for and be kind to your family, and take care of those who cannot care for themselves
and the fear of the Lord is the Beginning of wisdom.
It's worth saying here that the "Fear of the Lord" does not mean worrying that if we mess up, God is going to strike us down with lightning or anything like that.
Rather, it means holding a deep reverence for God that moves you.
One of my favourite images depicting the fear of the Lord comes from C.S. Lewis's Narnia, when the children are first learning about Aslan, the king of the wood, a lion.
Mrs. Beaver says to Susan, "If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, either they're braver than most or else just silly." Lucy asks, "Then he isn't quite safe?" Mr. Beaver responds, "Safe. Of course, he isn't safe, but he is Good."
The fear of the Lord is being moved by an encounter with God, the one who created the cosmos, known as a Good and yet untamed lion.
"I'm longing to see him," said Peter, "even if I do feel frightened when it comes to that point.
If there is one thing that the Book of Proverbs wants us to remember, it is that the fear of the Lord is the Beginning of wisdom.
In a book that is only 31 chapters, the phrase the fear of the Lord is mentioned almost 20 times in 14 of its chapters, including the first chapter within the first ten verses and its last as its second last verse.
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So, the person we met in our reading tonight has been pejoratively called "The Proverbs 31 Woman," or the woman who has set the bar so high that it makes the rest of us feel rather insufficient when we compare the efforts of our lives. I do include myself in that group of people. Though, it comes down particularly hard on women as the character is a woman. According to the text, she taken the book of proverbs seriously and from this portrayal - she's followed it perfectly.
Yet another example of an unattainable image to point to show how we're not working hard enough, or trying hard enough, or putting in enough hours or or or or...
Just look at the Proverbs 31 woman - she's the goal!
Now, I'm sure that there are multiple ways that this text has been misinterpreted and misused—I couldn't possibly begin to address them all here. So, if you've got one, I'd love to hear your particular take on it.
That said, we do need to offer some practical context on why making the pattern of this woman's life is impossible to attain, let alone the societal and justice contexts. We just don't have time for those.
Probably the most important part of this practical context is that she resides in a family of substantial wealth. We see that because she has servants, her husband hangs out with the city's elders/leaders, and she has enough money to just go out and buy a field and plant a vineyard—whether she earned that kind of money herself or she was born into it doesn't really matter in this tiny snapshot of this woman's life.
What matters is that even though she gets up to prepare breakfast for her servants because she wants to show care for them, she almost certainly does not clean up after breakfast, doesn't make her own lunch, coffee, dinner, or the dishes all of those meals create, doesn't go and pick up the groceries, doesn't spend her time homeschooling her children, doesn't wash the linens and clothing—no, that is why she has servants.
The people hearing this proverb at the time would have picked up on this fact simply at the mention of the husband with the leaders and the servants.
But they are two brief lines that are easy to dismiss, so we miss them and all the important information they contain.
So, this woman of wealth doesn't need to do all of the tasks around the house, which allows her to do all of the rest of her textiles and business dealings.
When misinterepretted, it comes at a cost to everyone, espeically women, who are at home taking care of a house; because all of those chores are taken for granted and the extraordinary feats of business and profit are piled on top like they are the real measure of sucess.
This is another one of those pieces of scripture that, when cherry-picked - taken out of its historical context
can and does cause so much damage.
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With that said, this poem is still here - it still stands in the place of culminating all of the wisdom that has been passed to us in the book of Proverbs.
When we put this story in context, in its place in wisdom, not prescription, we find something totally different than how to be the best keeper of a home.
First and foremost, the context is "The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom."
In verse 30, we find that the final thing the woman is to be praised for is her fear of the Lord—not all of her profits and her well-doing—no, her fear of the Lord.
What if she put it like this? How does this change the way her story sounds?
This woman Loved and Feared God.
And she was a woman in a position of privilege
And she did not waste it
She cared for her family as best she could
She cared for those she employed as best she could
She cared for the poor and the hungry as best she could
This woman Loved and Feared God
That essentially the heart of the poem
She looks very different from the flat character who is set up for us as the unattainable super-woman.
She is actually a woman who is doing the best she can, guided by the law set out for her by God, guided by her deep reverence, by her fear of the Lord.
And that is all any of us can do. All any of us can do is do the best we can on any given day.
I mean the fact that this woman reaches out her hands to the needy, not simply responding to their request for help but initiating the relationship, shows us that she understands each person's value and predicament.
She wouldn't reach out to them if she had a pull-up-your-bootstraps attitude. In this little action, even the Proverbs 31 Woman acknowledges that we can only do what we /can/ do. And it's part of God's law to help.
And we need to take at least one more step back here.
"The divinely inspired Solomon, in his instructive wisdom, I mean in his Proverbs, praises the woman who keeps her house and loves her husband." says St Gregory in a letter about his sister St. Gorgonia. “ she buys a field in season, and carefully provides food for her servants, and receives her friends at a bountiful table, and who exhibits all other qualities for which he extols in song the modest and industrious woman.
If I were to praise my sister on such counts, it would be like praising a statue for its shadow."
He is saying that even though stereotypes and caricatures usually contain small elements of truth, they are nothing but objects or shadows of real, beautiful people.
Gregory is saying that even the praise of the woman in Proverbs 31 is nothing compared to the beauty of his sister, who will undoubtedly not have been as perfect as our example here tonight.
No, like all human beings, she will have quirks and warts because she is human.
And it is only in our full humanity that any of us can live.
Doing the best we can,
from the context that we are in,
with as much fear of the Lord as we can muster that day.
Some days more, some days less.
That again
It is only in our full humanity that any of us can be.
Doing the best we can,
from within each of our given contexts,
with as much fear of the Lord as we can muster that day.
Some days more, some days less.
Because even if she were real, that's all our woman from tonight reading could do. Some days more, some days less.
On those lesser days, we can rest assured that God knows all of the struggles that keep us from attaining all of the good work we desire to do for the Kingdom.
God loves anyway. God stretched out his hand to us first in Jesus so that we might know, fear, and love him fully.
And in the end, knowing, fearing, and loving is the only thing that God wants from us. Everything else is just the fruit of that Love.
Amen