Sermon: Servant of All

Texts: Proverbs 31:10-31, Mark 9:30-37

Date: September 24, 2006

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, EagleHarbor Congregational Church

On a Trans-Atlantic flight, a plane passes through a severe storm. The turbulence is awful, and things go from bad to worse when one wing is struck by lightning.

One woman in particular loses it. Screaming, she stands up in the front of the plane. "I'm too young to die!" she wails. Then she yells, "Well, if I'm going to die, I want my last minutes on earth to be memorable! No one has ever made me really feel like a woman! Well I've had it! Is there ANYONE on this plane who can make me feel like a WOMAN??"

For a moment there is silence. Everyone has forgotten their own peril, and they all stare, riveted, at the desperate woman in the front of the plane. Then, a man stands up in the rear of the plane. "I can make you feel like a woman," he says. This tall, tanned and built guy with jet black eyes starts to walk slowly up the aisle, unbuttoning his shirt one button at a time.

No one moves. As this man approaches, the woman begins to get excited. He removes his shirt. Muscles ripple across his chest as he reaches her, and extends the arm holding his shirt to the trembling woman, and whispers: "Iron this."

             Ah, well, I thought it was funny.  Nothing like ironing to make you feel like a Real Woman.  A Capable woman, in the description in Proverbs.  Actually the poem in Proverbs doesn’t mention ironing, but it runs down a pretty comprehensive list of women’s work for an upper class wife in ancient Hebrew society.  She spins and weaves, buys the food, knits the scarves, makes the clothes, plants the vineyard, makes linen garments for sale, buys and sells land, cooks, and gives the servants their orders (that’s one way you can tell she’s not a garden variety peasant).  She’s involved in charity work.  She makes her husband, who is sitting around with the elders at the city gate, look good.   She “does not eat the bread of idleness.”  No kidding.  The one thing she doesn’t seem to do is sleep: “She rises while it is still night and provides food for her household;” and “Her lamp does not go out at night.” [Proverbs 31:15, 18] 

              I feel a little sorry for her, that capable wife.  But then, I always have liked sleeping.

              I feel sorry for her, but maybe a little envious as well.  The woman has skills.  I’d like to be a capable woman, a capable wife, who is considered “far more precious than jewels.”  Alas, I don’t think I’d win any prizes, being one of those people who breaks out in a sweat at the sight of a needle and thread or a large hunk of meat that needs to be, you know, prepared in some way.  I remember when John and I were getting married at the ripe old age of 22 overhearing his grandma despairing of his choice of wife by commenting that now he was going to have to do everything. 

              Frankly, that hurt.  I might have fallen short of her expectations, but maybe it was her expectations that were unreasonable.  That was back in the 80’s when it was still OK to call yourself a feminist, and by golly, I was one, and still am.  So what she said hurt a little and it also made me mad. Why shouldn’t he be expected to cook, especially if we were both going to work outside our home?   Why can’t he hem his own dang pants?  Was I really not a capable wife if I didn’t do those things for him and everyone else in the household? 

              I might not be the wife Grandma would have chosen, which didn’t bother me for long.  But a much more significant issue has to do with whether I am a wife in a way that is pleasing to God.  Looks like Grandma had the Bible on her side, eh?  Judging from this capable wife text and a variety of biblical texts that advise women to seen and not heard, be modest, submit, and so forth.  Not to mention teachings like the one in Mark this morning which promotes being the servant of all as a Christian vocation.  Is it un-Christian to resent the myriad expectations of a capable wife?  Should women gladly take on untiring, uncomplaining domestic service as a sign of devotion to God as well as their families? 

              John (my husband) is out of town on a business trip, but I can imagine that if he were here he’d be in the front row giggling and saying, “Yesss!”  Hey, who wouldn’t want somebody around the house who was religiously doing the housework and taking care of all your needs?  I’ve said to John on occasion, “What we need around here is a wife!”  Someone who will fix dinner not just because you want her to but because GOD wants her to—what could be better?

              But don’t you kind of smell a rat?  I mean, is this the Faith of our Fathers?  Well, yes, maybe it is the faith of our fathers, but is it what the life of faith was meant to be? 

              This Proverbs poem, and a few other choice passages instructing women on womanly virtues, serve to highlight what may be as much a cultural bias on the part of the biblical writers as it is inspired, holy teaching.  This is the moment where we pause and give thanks that we are part of a denomination that teaches that we take the Bible seriously, not literally.  Yes, we are in a free church.  We are free to use our brains, male and female, to sniff out human institutions like cultural traditions that got wound up in the scriptures.  Traditions like patriarchy.  I remember Rebecca Parker saying once that patriarchy is Original Sin.   Do you understand what I mean by that?  Patriarchy is a human hierarchical system that recognizes Father God on the top of the pinnacle of creation, with angels and archangels under Him, men under them, women under them, children under them, and all the other creatures at the bottom of the heap.  Patriarchy has infused (Western) civilization since most of the matriarchies were violently overthrown long about 3000 years ago.  Patriarchy is alive and well.  Its fingerprints are all over the biblical narrative.  And it is sinful. 

              Squillions of believers are convinced that patriarchy is God’s design and we ought not mess with it.  I am not one of them.  I don’t think Jesus thought patriarchy was God’s idea, either.  Take today’s gospel reading, for example.  The disciples had been arguing about who was the greatest.  Jesus sits these guys down, these twelve men who had been on the top of the cultural heap since they came of age.  He says to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  Then he takes a kid—let’s imagine it’s a little girl—and puts her down right in the middle of them.  “Whoever welcomes one such child welcomes me, and the one who sent me.”  Remember where kids belong on the patriarchal scale?  They are at the bottom of the human pyramid, no rights, no social status.  Jesus is upending the patriarchal pyramid right in front of their eyes. 

              And he does it over and over again in the gospel stories.  Jesus is nothing short of revolutionary in his relationships with women according to the customs of his day.  He talks to women in public, he heals them, he teaches them, he eats with them, he defends them, he befriends them.  Not the sorts of things a manly man would have done back then.  I believe he was trying to free humanity from the self-imposed shackles of patriarchal hierarchies.  He was a reformer and a liberator.  The hymn we sang a couple of Sundays ago says it well: “Walls that divide are broken down; Christ is our unity.  Chains that enslave are thrown aside; Christ is our liberty.”

              One of the skills required of thoughtful Christians these days is to read biblical texts through the lens of biblical principles.  Some of the Bible is limited, violent, even hateful.  We are free to evaluate texts according to biblical principles which liberate people and include everyone in the circle of God’s grace. 

              So—liberty, a key principle.  Love, a key principle.  And let’s not forget servanthood---a key principle taught and demonstrated by Jesus.  “Whoever wants to be first of all must be last of all and servant of all.”  I am sure that many faithful women who have lived as Capable Wives, who have for their era fit that description to a T, did it out of a deep understanding of the biblical principle of servanthood.  They are not to be disrespected.  It is completely honorable for a woman to give herself unstintingly to her family out of love for them and a vocation of servanthood in Christ’s model.

              It just seems essential to me to lift up the difference between servanthood that is imposed on someone whether they want it or not and servanthood that is entered into with a free will, voluntarily.  Servanthood that is imposed on a person because of their gender or their social status is the sort of chain Christ throws aside.  Servanthood that is freely chosen is “the yoke that is easy and the burden that’s light.”  It’s the difference between hafta and wanna.  It makes a difference. 

              Theologian Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, writing in Men, Women, and the Bible offers this description of Christian equality: “It is vital to remember that Christian equality is never a matter of jockeying for the dominant position.  Christian equality is the result of mutual compassion, mutual concern, and mutual and voluntary loving service.  The Christian way of relating achieves male-female equality through mutual submission.”[1]  She cites a proposal of the Evangelicals for Social Action which reads, “We acknowledge that we have encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity.  So we call both men and women  to mutual submission and active discipleship.”  This is the New World, the New Creation.  As New Creatures in Christ Jesus, Mollenkott writes, “we can resist the worldly principle of dominance and submission, with love serving one another.  In this way we can embody the Good News…”[2]

              Meanwhile, capable wives, capable husbands, capable singles, you are indeed more precious than jewels.  And any capable cooks are welcome at my house, anytime.                    

[1] Mollenkott, Virginia Ramey  Men, Women, and the Bible  Nashville: Abingdon, 1977, p. 33

[2] Ibid, p. 138