Finding The Good Woman In Us All
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle B
Object:
A good woman is a superwoman, or so it appears to me as I read the list of things she can do. In this famous passage from Proverbs, we read that a good woman is precious and that her husband trusts her. A good woman is a good marketer and bargainer, buying fields, trading wool and flax, finding good food from far away. She makes her arms strong! There is certainly no picture of twenty-first-century "typical" femininity here. She is not just precious to her husband or a good businesswoman: she also opens her hands to the poor and needy. She protects both her own and those not her own. Because of her, her husband is known in the city gates. He takes his seat among the elders of the land -- "Strength and Dignity are her clothing" (v. 25).
We often hear this passage read at funerals of fine women. They often make the rest of us tremble. How can we be all those things? One way to go is to observe carefully what happened with the book and the movie The DaVinci Code.
In case some of you missed it, The DaVinci Code was a best-seller. How many have not read it? Are there those who do not know its story? The DaVinci Code is a story about a hidden woman, a woman hidden aggressively by the church so that she would not have religious power. Dan Brown, an unlikely agent of the Holy Spirit, but an agent nevertheless, has told Mary Magdalene's story in such a way that the poor woman has been on the cover of Time and Newsweek, is the subject of a movie, and I could go on. Despite the happy ending of Brown's book, women remain hidden. For years, I kept a tab on my refrigerator of how many women were on the front page of the New York Times. It wasn't pretty compared to the number of men.
The good woman in Proverbs is a striking contrast to all these roles. She is not hidden. She is valued and appreciated and public in her community. She is not a virgin but instead makes the clothes of all her household to be clothed in "crimson." Now she is a sexually complex woman: She is truly and deeply valued by her husband who benefits from the strength of her love for him.
I think many women want to be like the proverbial good woman. We often don't think we have the choices. We often work by a holy hidden thread or grail and feel like we are anything but valued or free in our communities. The time I knew the da Vinci dame the best was when Sigma Alpha Epsilon, a fraternity at my college, raped a waitress at the local diner. That night, some of us women took out our thread on the grail and organized a sit in on campus. Why? Because we were tired of being raped. Why? Because we were the ones locked up at 10:30 on weeknights and 11:30 on weekends. Why? Because we were women. We were Magdalenes. God only knew what we would do if we stayed out later. Our first demonstration at this particular college in 1968 was a combination of anti-rape and pro-freedom for women. Mary Magdalene would understand. The proverbial woman might not: She would not know what it meant not to be valued and free and useful and public in her community. What we then proposed is that the college let us free and lock the men up. That would keep the local waitresses safer. By the way, the other thing the men in this particular fraternity did regularly was uproot the tulips in Dwight Eisenhower's office, next door to the Gettysburg Campus. Our argument was lock tight: If women were out and men were in, we doubted the women would uproot the tulips as entertainment. Nor did we think women would rape the cooks or waitresses at the local restaurant.
Some of you are thinking, What's with her? Everybody knows things are better for women. Just a short while ago, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at Gettysburg College gang raped another local waitress. Sorry: Things are better. Title 9 is better. Women no longer have hours on college campuses while men go free and pull up tulips. There is even a woman running for president, which may or may not be a good thing. And more importantly to my message today, the Holy Grail of Mary Magdalene's blood (yes, it is about her blood) beats in my heart and yours today. It flows as strong as any river or any set of healthy veins. Sometimes if you lay still at night, you can just feel the blood flowing through your body. It is her, or so I think. You see, at Gettysburg, whenever the housemother locked the front door, so as to keep her girls safe, we slipped out the windows. That's how Mary Magdalene survived, too. She survived by trickery. She survived by being hidden in plain sight.
What a relief it is to hear about a full and generative woman as far back as the book of Proverbs, long before Mary Magdalene was hidden.
An old joke about Mother's Day tells the same story: "Mother's Day Special: Free Glass of Wine -- Whatever wine is open, so as not to be a bother."
One of the sickest jokes about clergy goes like this: Clergy are out of their place when they get involved in politics. (By the way, male clergy are often insulted as effeminate.) Go back to the stands with the women and children and there observe the real game being played on the real field by the only valid players, real men. Unpacking this joke would take me too long but it is actually what women and girls are told all the time. Stay off the real field where the real game is being played by the real people. Magdalene is the force that tramples out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Magdalene is about the new wine that women choose. We choose it in plain sight. We choose it by not believing the lies or following orders. We stay on the field. We don't move. We begin to be a bother. We begin to bother. Again the proverbial woman did not have to bother. She was on the field. She bought and sold fields!
Many men have helped many women get on to the field. Think of Ruth and Naomi. Ruth and Naomi get to Bethlehem. Naomi goes to her distant relative, Boaz. He is the third hero in this story. He permits the two women to glean his fields. When someone more justified in being in the fields objects and asks a great question, "To whom do these women belong?" Boaz says they are his. Not only does he protect and feed them, he goes one step further with Ruth. In chapter 2, verse 9 in the NRSV, Boaz tells Ruth, "I have directed my men not to bother you." In the New Jerusalem Bible, that verse reads, "not to molest you." In the King James Version, the verse is "not to touch you." The verb matters less than the protection being offered to women who were dangerously alone.
Magdalene traveled with Ruth and Naomi all the way. She was the blood stirring in the veins of women who ordered the wine their own way. I think the proverbial woman was traveling with them, too.
These issues of who gets to play on what court or what field are hardly over. I recently read the following article in the New York Times. "Critic of No Child Left Behind was Disinvited from Meeting -- Patricia Polacco, a popular author of children's books, was disinvited from her $5,000 gig at the International Reading Association annual meeting in Chicago because she would not agree in advance to stay away from her views on testing in her talks. McGraw-Hill canceled her contract, saying it only sought to stop an author whose political agenda might interfere with her book exhibit." Fascinating. I wonder what Mary Magdalene would think about the power of ideas. I wonder what Boaz would have done -- side with the men in his field and let them bother Ruth and Naomi? Is it possible that we have come to a world where a leading publishing house is suppressing free and artistic speech?
I am grateful for the strong and free picture of the proverbial woman. She is alive today. Amen.
We often hear this passage read at funerals of fine women. They often make the rest of us tremble. How can we be all those things? One way to go is to observe carefully what happened with the book and the movie The DaVinci Code.
In case some of you missed it, The DaVinci Code was a best-seller. How many have not read it? Are there those who do not know its story? The DaVinci Code is a story about a hidden woman, a woman hidden aggressively by the church so that she would not have religious power. Dan Brown, an unlikely agent of the Holy Spirit, but an agent nevertheless, has told Mary Magdalene's story in such a way that the poor woman has been on the cover of Time and Newsweek, is the subject of a movie, and I could go on. Despite the happy ending of Brown's book, women remain hidden. For years, I kept a tab on my refrigerator of how many women were on the front page of the New York Times. It wasn't pretty compared to the number of men.
The good woman in Proverbs is a striking contrast to all these roles. She is not hidden. She is valued and appreciated and public in her community. She is not a virgin but instead makes the clothes of all her household to be clothed in "crimson." Now she is a sexually complex woman: She is truly and deeply valued by her husband who benefits from the strength of her love for him.
I think many women want to be like the proverbial good woman. We often don't think we have the choices. We often work by a holy hidden thread or grail and feel like we are anything but valued or free in our communities. The time I knew the da Vinci dame the best was when Sigma Alpha Epsilon, a fraternity at my college, raped a waitress at the local diner. That night, some of us women took out our thread on the grail and organized a sit in on campus. Why? Because we were tired of being raped. Why? Because we were the ones locked up at 10:30 on weeknights and 11:30 on weekends. Why? Because we were women. We were Magdalenes. God only knew what we would do if we stayed out later. Our first demonstration at this particular college in 1968 was a combination of anti-rape and pro-freedom for women. Mary Magdalene would understand. The proverbial woman might not: She would not know what it meant not to be valued and free and useful and public in her community. What we then proposed is that the college let us free and lock the men up. That would keep the local waitresses safer. By the way, the other thing the men in this particular fraternity did regularly was uproot the tulips in Dwight Eisenhower's office, next door to the Gettysburg Campus. Our argument was lock tight: If women were out and men were in, we doubted the women would uproot the tulips as entertainment. Nor did we think women would rape the cooks or waitresses at the local restaurant.
Some of you are thinking, What's with her? Everybody knows things are better for women. Just a short while ago, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at Gettysburg College gang raped another local waitress. Sorry: Things are better. Title 9 is better. Women no longer have hours on college campuses while men go free and pull up tulips. There is even a woman running for president, which may or may not be a good thing. And more importantly to my message today, the Holy Grail of Mary Magdalene's blood (yes, it is about her blood) beats in my heart and yours today. It flows as strong as any river or any set of healthy veins. Sometimes if you lay still at night, you can just feel the blood flowing through your body. It is her, or so I think. You see, at Gettysburg, whenever the housemother locked the front door, so as to keep her girls safe, we slipped out the windows. That's how Mary Magdalene survived, too. She survived by trickery. She survived by being hidden in plain sight.
What a relief it is to hear about a full and generative woman as far back as the book of Proverbs, long before Mary Magdalene was hidden.
An old joke about Mother's Day tells the same story: "Mother's Day Special: Free Glass of Wine -- Whatever wine is open, so as not to be a bother."
One of the sickest jokes about clergy goes like this: Clergy are out of their place when they get involved in politics. (By the way, male clergy are often insulted as effeminate.) Go back to the stands with the women and children and there observe the real game being played on the real field by the only valid players, real men. Unpacking this joke would take me too long but it is actually what women and girls are told all the time. Stay off the real field where the real game is being played by the real people. Magdalene is the force that tramples out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Magdalene is about the new wine that women choose. We choose it in plain sight. We choose it by not believing the lies or following orders. We stay on the field. We don't move. We begin to be a bother. We begin to bother. Again the proverbial woman did not have to bother. She was on the field. She bought and sold fields!
Many men have helped many women get on to the field. Think of Ruth and Naomi. Ruth and Naomi get to Bethlehem. Naomi goes to her distant relative, Boaz. He is the third hero in this story. He permits the two women to glean his fields. When someone more justified in being in the fields objects and asks a great question, "To whom do these women belong?" Boaz says they are his. Not only does he protect and feed them, he goes one step further with Ruth. In chapter 2, verse 9 in the NRSV, Boaz tells Ruth, "I have directed my men not to bother you." In the New Jerusalem Bible, that verse reads, "not to molest you." In the King James Version, the verse is "not to touch you." The verb matters less than the protection being offered to women who were dangerously alone.
Magdalene traveled with Ruth and Naomi all the way. She was the blood stirring in the veins of women who ordered the wine their own way. I think the proverbial woman was traveling with them, too.
These issues of who gets to play on what court or what field are hardly over. I recently read the following article in the New York Times. "Critic of No Child Left Behind was Disinvited from Meeting -- Patricia Polacco, a popular author of children's books, was disinvited from her $5,000 gig at the International Reading Association annual meeting in Chicago because she would not agree in advance to stay away from her views on testing in her talks. McGraw-Hill canceled her contract, saying it only sought to stop an author whose political agenda might interfere with her book exhibit." Fascinating. I wonder what Mary Magdalene would think about the power of ideas. I wonder what Boaz would have done -- side with the men in his field and let them bother Ruth and Naomi? Is it possible that we have come to a world where a leading publishing house is suppressing free and artistic speech?
I am grateful for the strong and free picture of the proverbial woman. She is alive today. Amen.
