Saint
Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver
BC
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist on Sunday the 20th.
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist on Sunday the 20th.
About
three years ago or so a television series appeared entitled The Good Wife. The central character, Alicia, faces an uncertain
future when her husband, Peter, is sent to jail after a public scandal
involving sex and political corruption.
While her husband serves his time in prison, Alicia returns to her
former career as a defense attorney. In
this old but new role Alicia does more than take responsibility for her family;
she takes hold of her own future and, in some ways, discovers herself. One can only wonder what life is like when
her husband finishes his sentence.
I
wonder if the creators of this series had Proverbs 31.10-31 in mind when they
looked for a title for this series.
There are some differences. The
husband in Proverbs is not, at least as far as we know, a felon and adulterer. Nor is there any suggestion that the wife is
taking total control of the family’s life; she is her husband’s chief asset and
all her work goes to secure the good name and the well-being of the family ---
his family in the male-centred culture of the time. But there are also connections. The word in Hebrew translated as ‘capable’
can mean ‘courageous’ or ‘noble’ or ‘gifted’.
She is described as ‘rare’, not because there are few such wives, but
because she is priceless, invaluable, treasured.
This
poem about ‘the good wife’ comes at the very end of Proverbs, a book of the
Bible intended to provide young men and rulers with principles for wise
behaviour. By putting this hymn of
praise to ‘the good wife’ at the very end of the book, the editor or editors of
Proverbs are actually making a not so subtle point: wise men and wise women are God’s
intentions. Here we see a little crack
in male chauvinism. Wisdom cannot nor
should not be understood as a characteristic of one gender to the exclusion of
the other.
This
woman’s wisdom is described in very practical terms. Her skills range from the everyday needs of
the household to international shipping and finance. She has an eye for real estate and her
opinion matters. She understands the
importance of first impressions, so her family, whether in winter or summer, in
private or in public, wears clothing that announces their status to one and to
all. She is the embodiment of the old
saying, more recently revised, that behind every great man is an even greater
woman.
But
there is another message within this text that is easy to lose sight of. The message is this: all of us have treasures, concrete signs of
our labour, our wisdom, our own good fortune and the good fortune of those who
have come before us. The wise person,
the truly wise person, understands the importance of the stewardship of these
treasures.
Nowadays
we tend to think of treasure solely in the form of money, whether the hard coin
in our pockets, the polymer sheets in our wallets or the electronic accounts
accessible in various ways. In some of
the earliest Christian texts treasure has a wider meaning and included oil,
bread, cheese and other produce raised by the members of the congregation. I remember visiting my aunt and uncle who
live just outside Bristol and being taken to their parish church. Right next door to the church as a ‘tithe’
barn where the members of the parish, in generations past, would support the
ministry of the parish priest by bringing the hard goods, livestock and produce
of their lands. I wonder what that might
look like today.
Four
times during the year the Christian tradition sets aside three days for prayer,
prayer that focuses on the ministry of the Church. These ‘Ember Days’, as they are called, were
traditional days for ordinations, but I think they have a broader connotation
for us today. They are times for us to
focus on the ministry of the whole people of God, ordained and lay, and to
consider how we might be more effective and more faithful in the ministries
which God has entrusted to each one of us.
One of these special times for prayer and reflection follow the Feast of
the Holy Cross which falls on the 14th of September every year.
On
this Sunday following Holy Cross Day, a day when we remember God’s offering up
the treasure embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, it’s a useful exercise to ponder what
are the things we treasure. I really do
mean the ‘things’ we treasure, the concrete signs of what we value and who we
are. For example, one of the conundrums
Paula and I now face is what to do with our books. We had always intended to give them to
Vancouver School of Theology, but the School has recently ‘down-sized’ its
library. Both of us have accumulated a
valuable collection of both contemporary and classic resources on theology,
liturgy, spirituality, history and biblical studies. How can we be good stewards of these
treasures? If the School is no longer a
place for our treasures, where could they do the greatest good for the people
of God?
What
are your treasures? What are the visible
and tangible expressions of who you are and what you value? Like the good wife of Proverbs, God invites
you and me to make wise use of these concrete resources given into our charge. For we, like she, have a family to care for,
the family of God. May that family, in
generations to come, call us blessed and wise.
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