Apart from knowing Jesus Christ, a good wife is probably the greatest blessing a man can have.  A wife is far more than a partner.  We already have a word for that sort of relationship: partner.  A wife is far more than a companion, friend, or counselor.

At universities, you can hear a lot about patriarchy and misogyny.  These Greek words are straightforward: patriarchy—father rules; misogyny—hatred of women.  Patriarchy describes a society where men have the authority and women do not.  Misogyny refers to prejudice against women, but that Greek root is still, always there: hatred.  The politics of hate—always profitable.  For sounding so ancient, both terms are relatively recent: patriarchy in the sense of a society by and for men being first used in English around the 1630s, and misogyny shortly after, around the 1650s, when Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, was still a living memory.

There’s a line of reasoning that goes like this: to be patriarchal is to be misogynist.  The Bible was written in patriarchal society.  Thus, the Bible is misogynist.  Such reasoning omits the Holy Spirit, omits God.  I consider myself a feminist: someone who fully acknowledges the competence and capability of women for the callings to which God calls them.  A misogynist believes that women are neither competent nor capable, that God could not possibly call a woman to any work requiring competence and capability outside the home or outside of a highly restricted set of occupations.

Attitudes have changed from what they were one hundred years ago, and I continue to wonder whether the “official” story we are taught is a completely accurate description of the actual attitudes people held in their everyday interactions, everyday living with one another.  My sense is that it was as true then as now, and has always been true, that, apart from knowing Jesus Christ, a good wife is probably the greatest blessing a man can have in life.  A wife is much, much more than a domestic servant, a cook, a seamstress, a nurse.

The people about whom the Bible tells us lived in a patriarchal world: we refer to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the patriarchs.  In the Bible, we do see horrible violence against women.  We see horrible violence against men.  Genesis tells the story of the patriarchs.  Genesis also tells the story of their wives.  Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah are not only names.  The patriarchs could not be patriarchs without wives, without mothers.  Any society, community, requires men and women; families, churches take women and men.  Lord knows the church requires women!  God created men and women.  Eve may have been the first to taste the forbidden fruit, yet the old primer teaches that “In Adam’s fall we sinned all,” not in Eve’s fall.  We can’t pin all our woes on Eve, on women!  The Bible is full of impressive men: some impressive in their wickedness, many impressive in their faith and the goodness that faith nurtured.  The Bible is full of impressive women: some for evil and many for goodness, goodness born of faith.  For a patriarchal, misogynist text, the Bible is strangely even-handed!

When it comes to reading and understanding the Bible, I have found it helpful to allow it to speak for itself, rather than to force my own “structural” categories upon what I read.  If we can, for today, set aside the decryption key of midcentury Continental intellectuals like Simone de Beauvoir, set aside the products of Radcliffe, Wellesley, and Smith College, such as Betty Friedan, if, for a few minutes this morning, we can set aside the status-establishing derision of the middle class aspirations so maligned by culture makers since about 1965, when the baby boomers were entering upon their “high” rebellious years, we might be surprised to learn how rich and complex are the relations between women and men as we find them in the Bible: as complex, and as rich, as challenging, and as wonderful, as our own relationships with one another.

Today’s reading takes us to the wisdom writings, to Proverbs, to that very wonderful end of that book of wit and wisdom for daily living.  At the conclusion, almost the summation of this book, we are given a picture of a wife.  Interesting that the summation of wisdom should be a wife.  Translations differ about how to describe her.  She is capable (the NRSV), good (the RSV), excellent (the ESV), virtuous (the Geneva Bible [1599]); she is a woman of noble character (so the NIV).  The range suggests the Hebrew word is not so easy to express in English.  The word is Xhă-eel[1]: often used to name strength, efficiency, or wealth; it is also a word for army.  What do these have in common?  Perhaps the ability to get things done, achieve objectives; to have what it takes.  Ability is a good equivalent.  From the standpoint of living life well, the Hebrew word suggests moral worth.

          “A good wife who can find?” (31:10 RSV).  Such a woman is painted for us as though a particular woman were clearly in view.  Maybe it’s the biblical way of saying, with the Four Tops, “Ain’t No Woman Like the One I’ve Got” (1972).  Many of us husbands and fathers feel just that way about the woman we’ve got; the woman God gave us.  We may know a little bit about how Marty Robbins feels, when he sings “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife” (1970).  I haven’t yet figured out how Devon can live with me; I am not the easiest person to live with.  How about you?

The Bible tells us of ways this army of a woman puts her strength, her efficiency, her wealth, her ability to use and to work, to good purposes, to care and nurture, to concern and compassion, to profitable use, materially and spiritually.  We’ve seen such women in action.  It’s not as if this woman is a stranger!  To name only a few whom we have known here at Bethel within the last generation: Viola Klinkovsky and Fay Alexander, of blessed memory; Anne Wagner, Ethel Cloudt, Annie Mae Wallis, and, brothers and sisters, if I may mention just two here today, without meaning or wanting to leave anyone out, and without meaning to embarrass them: Delores and Anna.

All these blessings of ability, all these blessings these women put to work in their lives and so apply to our lives, all these blessings are an expression of eminent wisdom: the quiet wisdom of the humble, of those who live in the fear of The Lord.  Near the end of our reading, we are told that “a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (31:30).  Scripture is quite clear about where and how wisdom begins, and grows, and matures, and blesses: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord” (Ps 111:10, Pr 1:7, 9:10).

We get so confused about what it means to fear the Lord.  It doesn’t sound very inviting.  Jesus, after all, is always telling us not to be afraid; as it happens, God frequently says the same thing: don’t be afraid.  Fear, hold in awe, revere, respect, honor, worship—all that we do, all that we say, all that we think, imagine, and dream, we do in the presence of God.  Knowing God’s eye is upon us, how would we not want to try to do our best, give our best?  Not from fear of chastisement (although there can be that!) but from a desire to please, to share in God’s happiness, to hear words of praise: “Well done.”  All that we have, we have from God.  All that we can do for good, we can do thanks to God.  How do we use the gifts God has given us?  This woman is busy!  It’s good to rest—sometimes it seems we have to learn how to do that, too!  Do you know God gives us a school for rest?  He calls it the Sabbath!  It’s also good to be occupied, occupied for good, occupied with service, just like this capable, this good, this virtuous, wife.

          She is productive, fruitful.  She has an eye, a heart to the needs of others, while very capably looking after her own affairs, too.  She has good character.  Good character is always grounded in the teaching of God, who educates us in integrity, honesty, hope, love, and faith.  The woman Scripture shows us is not a groveling nonentity, such as the Radcliffe set would have us believe “The Patriarchy” molds our girls into: Stepford Wives (novel 1972, film 1975).  This woman we encounter at the end of Proverbs is strong, resourceful, and caring.  She is a model, and not only for our sisters in the faith, men!  Guys, if you learned nothing from your mother, if you’ve taken none of her good qualities and tried to make them part of your character, too, you are incomplete.

This woman seems to be able to do it all.  Grandma!  Let this be a cause for admiration and praise, rather than envy or sorrow.  We will never be the cook, the baler, the gardener, the friend, the wise counselor, the nurturer, that our mothers and grandmothers were.  Scripture shows us this woman not to shame us, but to encourage us to seek the wisdom from God, just as this woman has: wisdom that empowers and enables her to live and to bless so abundantly.  We do not have to live and bless in exactly the way she does.  Only let us, like her, live to bless.

Many of us lived through the second wave of feminism, the women’s lib years from about 1965 to 1985, or so.  One major message during those years was that, as a woman, you could not possibly be a fulfilled human being if you did not have a career.  To stay at home was to be stultified, stunted, was to die—who would choose that?!  My mother worked.  We would have been rather poor if she hadn’t.  One of her greatest regrets was not that she was never a career woman—she worked her way up over twenty-five years to be secretary to the chief credit officer of one of the biggest banks in the Pacific Northwest: that thirty-first floor office was nice!  One of her greatest regrets was that she wasn’t able to be a stay at home mother, a homemaker.

Not every woman is called to that work—and it is work, isn’t it?  Don’t tell me raising children and keeping the house a home, and tolerating a husband, is not work!  God calls all of us, women and men, to seek wisdom.  Seek God, and you will find wisdom.  Obtain wisdom, and you will live well; you will discover what the true priorities are, and you will get them ordered properly, too.  When we live to honor the Lord, we learn how blessed we truly are.

We honor the Lord when we live by faith and not by sight.  Faith, hope, and love are a powerful combination!  Our reading today wisely reminds us, “Charm is deceptive and beauty disappears, but a woman who honors The Lord should be praised” (31:30).  God tells Samuel not to look on the outward appearance, for this is not what God notices; rather, “The Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).  Together with this eminently wise woman, this woman of noble character, this army of a woman, let us honor the Lord.  Honor Him in your heart.  Honor Him in your mind.  Honor Him in your living, your actions, your words, in your hopes.  Honor Him, and you will live, well.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

                [1] Not a properly phonetic spelling, but only meant for my pronunciation.