"I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar"

I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar"
Proverbs 31:10-31


This summer, using the book of Proverbs, I’ve tried to highlight some of the very practical, moral issues we face as believers.  That’s one of the reasons I like the book of Proverbs--because of their down-to-earth practicality.  If our faith is going to make sense, it has to make sense in real time, and in real life situations.  That’s what we’ve looked at over the past couple of months.

This morning I end the series with the final chapter of Proverbs.  Though I have talked with some experience about the issues we’ve looked at so far in the book, coming to this last chapter of Proverbs, I confess I will be demonstrating my stunning ignorance.  We close out this sermon series with a topic so profound, so mysterious, so much of an enigma, that I am, even now, totally over my head before I even get started.  I will be talking about women, this morning.  And even though I have no idea what I’m talking about, yet I charge on.

There was once a guy who really pleased God.  God was just so happy with this guy, God went to him and said, “I just want you to know how proud I am of you.  You are an exemplary and faithful man.  You have demonstrated your faith and trust in me beyond measure.”

Then God went on to say to this guy, “I don’t usually do this; but I am so pleased with you, I am going to grant you one wish.  Anything.  You just name it.”
The guy stood there a little overwhelmed.  But after a moment, he said, “You know, God, I love going to Hawaii.  But flying is such a hassle, and kind of expensive.  So, if I could have anything, I’d like a bridge from California to Hawaii.”
God looked at the guy and said, “You’ve got to be kidding!  That’s your wish?  Do you know what you’re asking?  We’re talking about building a bridge across an ocean!  Certainly you can come up with a different request.
So they guy stood there a little while longer, and said, “OK, God.  Here’s what I want.  I really want to understand women.  I want to be able to get inside their heads and hearts and know how they think, and how they feel.  That’s what I want--to be able to really understand women.”
There was a long pause of silence from God, and then God said, “Do you want that bridge to be two lanes or four?”

So, in talking about women this morning, I understand I’m going to a place that even God fears to go.  I’m trying to help us understand something that even God doesn’t understand.  And Solomon, who is thought to have been the compiler of this book of Proverbs, had rooms full of wives and concubines.  Maybe he thought that the more women he had, the better he’d understand them.  Evidently, having one or a thousand women around, he still was baffled by the mystery.  So here I go, over the edge of that mystery.


I’m thinking it must be hard to be a woman.  There are so many instances where I pause, after hearing another lament from a woman, that I think to myself, “It’s good to be a guy.”

We need look no further than the presidential campaign.  Michele Bachman, Republican candidate for president is also a fundamentalist Christian.  She was asked, during the Republican debate in Iowa, prior to the straw poll, if she would be obedient and subservient to her husband, according to her beliefs.  What was behind the question was, if she really believed that as a Christian, who would really be president if she was elected, she or her husband?  What if her husband said, “You need to order troops into Somalia and take care of the civil unrest there.”  Would she “honor” her husband, as a subservient Christian wife, and obey what he told her?

No guy, running for president would be asked that question, except for maybe Bill Clinton.  It’s a weird tension, in which a woman like Michele Bachman can run for the most authoritative position in our country, but in her own church is not allowed to speak or vote because she’s a woman.  That she can have power over every citizen in the land, but is not allowed to teach men in her church.  That she could aspire to be the ruler of the greatest and most powerful nation on the globe, but in her church she can’t be an elder, or serve on a church board.  She’d be the number one citizen for her country as President, but a second class person in her church.  There’s got to be a weird disconnect in her mind as a woman.  As a Christian woman.

“A good woman is hard to find, and worth far more than diamonds,” Solomon starts out in his ode to women, in Proverbs 31.  But as you heard read, the rest of the chapter is not talking about the good woman.  It’s talking about the super good woman.  Good, according to this description, is a Herculean sized assignment.  It makes womanhood equal to carrying the whole world on her back.

The late Erma Bombeck was great at understanding the impossible expectations on women.  The perfect ideal of womanhood is always held up, but Bombeck, in a humorous way helped us understand this super woman doesn’t really exist.  And if she does, Bombeck perceptively noted, no one wants to be around her.  The really interesting people are the ones who are imperfect.

This is how Erma Bombeck described the super woman:
Super woman:
--knows, without turning her head, who’s making faces at who in the back seat of the car;
--has a homing device for all lost items build into her brain;
--gives three weeks notice before dying and interviews suitable applicants for her replacement;
--knows how to talk to auto mechanics about her car;
--is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than maximum strength Tylenol, and is able to leap six shopping carts on double coupon day;
--polishes the garden hoses;
--goes to the doctor and he tells her to put on some weight;
--washes and reuses aluminum foil and zip lock bags;
--keeps all her houseplants alive and thriving.

But the real woman, is more like this, says Bombeck:
--She can’t remember her kids names, even though she spent months before each birth coming up with a name that would be easy to remember;
--She’s afraid that after she dies no one will know how to replace the toilet tissue on those spring loaded holders;
--She defrosts the pot roast with a blow dryer;
--She gets lonely enough to talk to the full length cardboard figure of John Madden at the True Value Hardware store;
--She hides candy under the dish towel knowing the kids will never find it;
--She sometimes puts her pantyhose on backwards;
--She never reads Hints From Heloise.

That’s part of the dilemma of being a woman in our society today.  You have to be strong, but not too strong, or you’re looked down on as pushy, bossy or domineering.  At the same time you have to be sensitive, but not too sensitive.  No one wants to be around the woman who’s crying all the time.  Even House Speaker Boehner found that out, and he’s a guy.  A woman has to be ideal and real at the same time.  She has to be perfect, but not too perfect, because we all know--don’t we--that super perfectionism is really boring.  It’s some of the lesser traits that make for interesting and attractive people.

As Erma Bombeck said, in writing about one super woman she knew:
Sharon was a super woman.
Her gynecologist said it.
Her butcher said it.
Her tennis partner said it.
Her children…Her children never said it.
They spent a lot of time with Rick’s mom who ate cookies out of a box and taught them how to play poker.

It’s not our perfection that makes us likable and interesting people, but our quirks and imperfections.

There’s a couple of things that bug me about this list in Proverbs 31 about the good woman.  She’s expected to do everything as a provider.  I’m wondering what a guy’s supposed to do.  Maybe that’s why Solomon wrote this list up the way he did.  Maybe he sat down, and was thinking, “Man, this is going to be in the Bible some day, so I’ve got to make it good, so that guys are off the hook for being responsible for anything.”  Forever after, women have their backs loaded with all kinds of tasks and responsibilities that defines them as good.  As long as they are doing all this stuff, they’re good women.  There’s very little here in this list about a woman’s character, person, or personality.  And there’s only one, cursory comment at the very end about her relationship with God.

There’s the dilemma isn’t it?  Are women good because of simply who they are as unique human beings, with their inherent differences from men as God created them?  Or is a woman good because of all the stuff she accomplishes?  And the more stuff the better?  What is it that women have to prove?  I’m wondering if the answers to that question would be widely different between women and men.

This is not just a personal problem. Women are finding themselves trying to play the  roles of warrior, heroine and martyr.  Such roles are fairly intense when women are trying to be wife and mother.  But these roles can be even more intense at work. While more and more women are assuming roles as managers a new study reveals that rather than using what should come more easily to them like empathy and compassion, these women are increasingly turning to the stereotypically more 'male' traits, such as aggression, to get results.

A study by Professor Paula Nicolson, from the Department of Health and Social Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, says that instead of fighting their 'natural instincts' women should embrace them because displaying emotional intelligence is the key to being a better leader.

That’s why there are only two verses that caught my eye, in this long list of stuff a good woman is supposed to pull off.  It’s verse 25 and 26:
Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.

I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but these are the qualities that are attractive to me about a woman.  It doesn’t have anything to do with how much she sews, how much food she grows and prepares, or how economically profitable she makes her family’s life.

To me it’s about character.  Individual strength and dignity.  Having a sense of humor about life, helping find positive ways around possible hardships.  Speaking out of wisdom rather than pseudo-knowledge or arrogance.  Being a person of kindness toward others--which means to me that she doesn’t see life as being all about her.

I like the term dignity, here in this verse.  Dignity has to do with the sense that you are seen, heard, and acknowledged for who you are and treated as if you matter.  Not matter because you can accomplish a long list of stuff, like Solomon puts here at the end of Proverbs.  But you matter because you are you.

Probably most of us know what it’s like to be treated with less than dignity:  to be treated as inferior, discriminated against, ignored, misunderstood, criticized and excluded. There is little worse than being in a situation where you are treated unfairly and can do nothing about it, or being excluded from something that means a lot to you.

The first beatitude in Jesus’ sermon on the mount is, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”  It isn’t about being financially poor, but “poor in spirit.”  That is, those who have had their dignity stripped from them.

In Matthew 11, Jesus is talking to a group of people when some of John’s disciples ask if Jesus is the one they’re waiting for.  In his reply, Jesus tells them to tell John, that “...the Good News is preached to the poor.”  Again, this word doesn’t mean the financially poor, but those who have been treated with indignity, who have been made spiritually poor by life, or by their own choices.

When I think of those whom Jesus talked to who had their dignity stripped--both by themselves and by others--it was women.  The woman at the well, who had several husbands, and still hadn’t gotten the relationship thing right.  She had done enough to taint her own female dignity, but that was compounded by the way she was treated.  To her Jesus revealed in no uncertain terms that he was the Messiah, the Christ of God.  By doing that, he helped upgrade her sense of dignity, because he didn’t do that with anyone else, except the disciples.

There was the woman caught in adultery.  She also tainted her own dignity by her actions.  But those who caught her were trying to literally strip her naked of any dignity she may have had left.  To her Jesus said, “I do not condemn you either.  Go, but do not sin again.”  He restored her dignity by a total absence of being judgmental, and a gave her, instead, a grace-filled second chance at life.

There was the woman with the 12 year issue of blood, who wasn’t even supposed to be out in public.  Part of her indignity was being barred from worship and public life for her condition.  She touched Jesus’ clothes and was healed.  To her Jesus said, “My daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your trouble.”  Her trouble wasn’t just her medical condition.  It was also her indignity, which Jesus restored.

And there was Mary Magdalene whose life, before she met Jesus, was characterized and captivated by evil.  But Jesus cast out all that evil from her life, restored her dignity, and made her one of his closest disciples.  There has even been some conjecture, lately, that the Gospel of John was really written by her.


Solomon’s kind of right.  It’s nice to have a woman around the house, who wears a tool belt, can fix anything, and do anything.  Maybe a woman can try to earn her dignity in that way.  In these verses, Solomon has kind of set you women up to try to do that.  But for the way I see things, as a follower of Jesus, dignity is something you are given by Christ, no matter what your past has been, or no matter how good you think you are.  Then you live into that grace-full dignity conferred by Jesus.  That’s the Good News, not just for women, but also for we men.