To Love and to
Cherish
© by the Reverend Dr.
Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers, October 8, 2000; 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B)
Proverbs 31:10–31 (from 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time; OT, p. 681);
Mark 10:2–9 (truncated; NT, p. 46)
Let
us pray:
O
God, some of us are single; some of us have partners; some of us are divorced;
some of us are widowed. Some of us
have children; some of us have none. Some
of us appreciate listening to words about marriage; some of us do not. O God, remind each of us that You love and care for persons
of every condition in life, and that each of us has a place in Your community of
humankind. In the name of Christ,
we pray. Amen.
Well,
this morning’s scripture lessons sure do prove that using lectionary texts can
lead you into a whole lot of trouble. Both
the first lesson from Proverbs defining “the capable wife” and the question
about divorce that the rabbis ask of Jesus in the second lesson lead us straight
into the moral morass of patriarchy and its practice, straight into the
ethically untenable domain of male domination and female subordination.
When
I began my study of the passage in Proverbs 31, the first commentary to which I
turned offered this sage advice: “…the
best that a preacher may do with this…lection is to avoid it.”
[Texts for Preaching—B, W/JKP, p. 516, James D. Newsome]
The
commentator’s strategy of avoidance was indeed tempting to me.
But the more I thought about it, the more I came to believe that it’s
quite important for preachers to comment not only on those biblical texts that
are greatly beloved by the church and eternally inspiring to us, but also on
those texts that are upsettingly troublesome and problematically culture-bound.
[From
Dozeman, in Preaching the Revised Common
Lectionary: Year B, After Pentecost 2, p.
50: ]
Proverbs
31 teaches that the capable wife: “makes
her own clothes (v. 13[, 22]), does all the cooking (v. 14), [rises early to]
manage[] the household (v. 15), dabbles in real estate (v. 16), [frequents her
local health club (v. 17)], has an interest in commerce (v. 18), is involved in
manufacturing (vs. 19, 24), works in social services (v. 20), … handle[s]
unexpected tragedies[, like] snow in the desert (v. 21), [makes possible] her
husband's success (v. 2[3]), possesses prophetic clairvoyance (v. 25), provides
home [schooling] for her children (v. 26), never [stops to] watch[] television
(v. 27), is the perfect mother and wife (v. 28), and, [last but not least], goes
to church regularly (v. 30).”
Well,
you get the picture! This woman is
the original Eveready Energizer bunny—she keeps on going … and going … and
going … and going … !
And
Proverbs tells us that it's precisely because she keeps on going and because
she’s so productive and helpful to her
husband that her husband will have
no lack of gain (v. 11)!
Ah,
there’s the rub. There’s
what makes this text problematic for us. For
it's certainly not bad that a woman may be married.
And it's positively good that a woman may be industrious, and quick in
both mind and hand, and capable of supervising others (vs. 15, 27), and
compassionate toward the poor (v. 20), and a teacher of wisdom and kindness (v.
26), and possessed of an inner beauty—all of which this woman in Proverbs is.
But
although this text celebrates many positive, eternal virtues that are good for a
woman, or, for that matter, a man, to possess, our text celebrates this woman's
virtues not for their own sake, or
even for her own sake, but rather for his
sake—that is, for her husband's
sake.
The
many capacities of this extraordinary woman are viewed here only from the perspective of what they provide for her
man. And it is this
predominating frame of reference that renders the passage patriarchal, and, for
that reason, problematic.
So
how are we to deal with a culture-bound text from Scripture like this?
Well, one way is to highlight, by way of a stark and dramatic contrast,
an alternative scriptural image of marriage, one that’s based on an equality
of partners, rather than on patriarchy, one that envisions what God intended for
partnership to be. And that’s
what our second lesson ends up offering us.
Jesus
and his followers have traveled into the district of Perea, located east of
Jericho and the Jordan River. Perea
is ruled by Herod Antipas, the tetrarch who has put John the Baptist to death. John had
strongly criticized Herod for divorcing his wife and then marrying Herodias, his
own sister-in-law, the wife of his brother.
And that criticism had led to John’s imprisonment and, ultimately, to
his beheading.
A
group of rabbis hope to trap Jesus into angering Herod, much as John the Baptist
had angered him. So they ask Jesus
if it is lawful for a husband to divorce his wife, hoping that he will say,
“No!” Jesus avoids giving his
questioners a direct answer by doing what he often does—by turning the
question back on them. Jesus asks
the rabbis, “What did Moses command you?”
And they reply that in the Book of Deuteronomy (24:1–4)
Moses allows a husband to write a certificate of dismissal and thus to divorce
his wife.
Now,
it is Jesus’s response to that reply of theirs that lifts this story out of
patriarchy, out of the domain of men’s power over women, and into a quite
different realm, the realm of gender equality.
You
see, in Jesus’s response, he goes behind the issue of a man’s legal right to
divorce his wife, in order to address instead the issue of God’s intention for
marriage. Jesus shifts his
audience’s attention from divorce to marriage.
And rather than affirming that divorce is a legal right that a man has
over a woman, Jesus affirms that God’s intention for marriage is that it
should be a lifelong joining of two persons in a profound and equal union. Jesus states that it’s a lifelong marriage between equals
that fulfills God’s intention for persons, not a divorce issued by a
patriarchal husband.
Jesus,
you see, re-envisions the union between a man and a woman as one in which the
patriarchal chain of command is broken and the values of mutuality and
interdependence prevail.
To
accomplish this re-envisioning, Jesus leads his questioners back to the stories
of creation found in the Book of Genesis. In
the first chapter (v. 27),
God creates humankind male and
female, one species with two equal and mutually dependent genders.
Then, in the second chapter, God proclaims to the man and woman in the
Garden of Eden that a husband “shall leave his father and mother and be joined
to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” (v. 24)
Now,
in the patriarchal society of ancient Israel typified by Proverbs, the expected
living arrangement for a man and a woman was that the woman should leave her
father and mother and pass into the power of her husband and of his family so
that she might help him continue his
house and lineage.
But
Genesis 2 envisions a different order of things, an order in which it is the man
who severs his connections to father and mother in order to be united with the
woman outside his household, in the
kind of egalitarian partnership intended for them by their Creator.
“What God has joined together [in an equal partnership], let no one
separate,” concludes Jesus, in his remarks to the rabbis. (Mark 10:9)
And
so it has come to be that in a time-honored and venerable version of the vow
taken by couples during a Christian wedding ceremony we hear these words spoken
by each partner to the other:
“I
take thee to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for
richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death
do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance.”
This
vow captures so beautifully Jesus’s understanding that God intends for
marriage to be a lifelong relationship between equals, in which society’s
patriarchal chain of command is broken and the values of mutuality and
interdependence prevail. And it is
this extraordinary vow that so many ordinary persons dare to take—a vow of
equality, a vow of permanence, a vow “to love and to cherish, till death do us
part.”
A
book entitled The Good Marriage: How and
Why Love Lasts was written by Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee and
published recently, in 1995. It studies fifty couples who have succeeded in
building long-lasting, happy marriages and who offer us a modern image of “the
capable spouse,” an image, I note, that is far different from the one found in
Proverbs 31.
Wallerstein
and Blakeslee observe, along the lines of the previously cited wedding vow, that
happy marriages are not perpetually carefree.
There are good times and bad times.
There can be illness, depression, fights, struggles, crises, sexual
problems, financial setbacks. Yet
these 50 couples have remained happily married “for better for worse,” that
is, through bad times and good. So
how have they done it?
Because
of the following attributes, report Wallerstein and Blakeslee:
First,
each couple has been successful in separating emotionally from the families of
their childhood and in investing fully in their own marriage.
And each partner has been helpful to the other in completing that
transition to mature adulthood. A good marriage is transformative.
Partners come to adulthood unfinished, and over the course of a marriage
they change each other profoundly as they grow and as they influence each
other’s thoughts, and values, and self-image, and self-esteem.As Genesis says:
a husband “shall leave his father and motherand be joined to his wife, and the
two shall become one flesh.” (2:24)
Second,
each couple holds their marriage to be a work in progress needing continuing
attention, lest it fall into disrepair. Among
the tasks on which they keep mutually working are: maintaining the strength of
their bond in the face of adversity, constantly nurturing and comforting each
other; creating a safe haven for the expression of differences, anger, and
conflict—a place without exploitation, subservience, violence; sharing
laughter, and keeping mutual interests alive; sustaining over a lifetime a
joyful, romantic glow and a rich, pleasurable sexual relationship protected from
the incursions of workplace and family obligations.Seeing marriage as a work in
progress.
A
third attribute making for good marriages that last is that each partner
respects and cherishes the other. Each
believes that the other is central to their world.
Each believes that the task of building their marriage together is the
major commitment of their adult life. Each
believes that their partner is special in some important regard and that their
marriage enhances each of them as individuals.
And
fourth, the couple’s relationship is founded on sound moral qualities:
honesty, compassion, generosity of spirit, decency, loyalty, fairness.
As
I said earlier, I believe this book by Wallerstein and Blakeslee offers us an
appropriate modern image of “the capable spouse,” an image far more faithful
to Jesus’s teaching about marriage than Proverbs 31 offers us.
Marriage—a
partnership of equals growing together in mutuality and interdependence, in
integrity and fidelity, in maturity and playfulness,through good times and bad,
loving and cherishing each other forever.
Let us pray:
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