But not this Mother’s Day sermon, given by my friend James Walsh, an associate pastor at my church.

Seriously? You’ve got to love a sermon that begins with “Ladies of Mission Covenant Church, you are more than…”

This was a sermon that celebrated ALL women.

This was a sermon that affirmed ALL of women’s diverse, God-given gifts.

This was a sermon that encouraged women to grow and take great risks. Seriously, when was the last time you heard a sermon where the the pastor urged women to “take great risks”?

By the end, I wanted to stand up and cheer.

Really, the sermon was too good to keep to our little church. So I’m posting the audio here, my gift to everyone who endured a painful (or even mediocre) mothers day message.

You can listen to the streaming audio here, or on Mission Covenant Church‘s media page.

First of all, to wrap up my previous posts, I think most of our modern studies on Proverbs 31 miss the point. The woman of Proverbs 31 is the capstone of the book of Proverbs, a literary device that pulls the whole teaching of Proverbs together. She is NOT a real person (we all know that, right?)–she is, as Bartholomew said, a paradigm of a wise person–a person who fears the Lord. As such, she is an example for everyone–women and men.

We’ve tended to break down Proverbs 31 and turn it into a to-do list for Christian women. But to do so not only takes the passage out of its context, it completely misses the point. The point is NOT that Godly women should rise before dawn, or purchase property, or run cottage industries, or make attractive clothes and furnishings for her family (though there is nothing inherently wrong with those things). The point is that those who live wisely, in the fear of the Lord, will enjoy a life of abundant peace (although that is never guaranteed, as other wisdom literature points out).

Now, MY point, but first, a question. Why didn’t someone tell me this when I was a young mother crushed under expectations I couldn’t attain?

The answer: the women who were teaching me DIDN’T KNOW.

Let’s be honest for a minute. Most popular Christian books for women don’t have a lot of theological meat on the bone. Most female Bible teachers don’t have much, if any, theological education. Most of our Bible studies are topical, about issues we consider “relevant”; we study books ABOUT the Bible (again, usually by people with little to no theological training) instead of digging into the Bible to see what it says.

And that stinks.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking topical studies (which I love) or under-educated Sunday School teachers (which I am). I’m not saying that a person needs an MDiv to to present God’s word faithfully–far from it!

What DOES bother me is all the passionate, gifted female teachers who have never had a chance to follow their God-given passions and go deeper in their study of the Word, so they can communicate it to others. Seminary is expensive, and the employment outlook for female grads is still pretty dismal.

What DOES bother me is how hard it is for these gifted women to find mentors who can help them learn on their own, because most people with a theological education are men. We women can teach each other how to be good housekeepers–but can we teach each other Hebrew?

What DOES bother me is that we’re trying to feed ourselves off the theological crumbs of what the Bible has to say about women, when there’s a feast of sufficiency spread out on the table that we can’t seem to locate.

What DOES bother me is that many of us are starving, trying to clothe ourselves in shards of scripture that we sense, but don’t want to admit, are insufficient. Or at least our understanding of them is insufficient.

The new findings from Barna, that women, as a group, are leaving the church FASTER THAN MEN, bothers me too.

Do you think there’s a correlation?

I do.

We could blame a (negative) cultural shift for why women–most of whom still self-identify as born again Christians–are giving up on church attendance. Or, we could take a good, hard look inward and ask ourselves what we’re going to do about it.

Simple faith is a beautiful thing, but simple explanations just aren’t washing anymore. Nor should they. God has more for Christian women than most of our books express. He expects more from Christian women than most of our churches teach. God is not holding a checklist of things Christian women should do, or a ten-point manifesto of what women should be and believe. No, God wants nothing less than for us to love him with all of our HEART, SOUL, MIND, and STRENGTH, to take up our cross and follow him daily, wherever he leads.

That might look different from our traditional, culturally-informed version of Christian womanhood.

And perhaps, if we want to reach our changing world with the Good News Jesus Christ brought for both men AND women, it had better.

So what to do?

Excellent question.

What do you think?

A week or so ago, I was working on a paper about wisdom literature (Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes–perhaps Song of Songs and some of the Psalms) for my Biblical Theology class. As it turns out, there’s a lot more to the Proverbs 31 Woman than we give her credit for.

What I want to do is say “I’m not going to go into the theology of it right now,” go on with my story and make my point. But since that would be completely contrary to my point, I’m going to give a very brief overview of the theological implications of Proverbs 31. And since I’m terrified that the elementary grasp I have gained on wisdom literature from the two classes I’ve taken that dealt with the subject may only confuse the issue, you’re going to have to bear with me, okay? If what I’m saying seems unclear just ask me about it, and I can try to clarify and point you to books by people who know a lot more about wisdom literature than me. ;-D Okay? Okay.

The overriding theme of all wisdom literature is “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” C.G. Bartholomew writes in the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology “If wisdom is about knowing how to live a successful life in God’s world, the the fear of the Lord is an indispensable starting point. The route to true wisdom will not be found apart from the particularity of God’s salvation of Israel…Yahweh is the redeemer and creator; those who start with him are led to a right understanding of how his world works.”

Are we good so far? God created the world through his wisdom, God created the nation of Israel by saving them from slavery in Egypt, so if we want to understand how to live in this world, if we want to learn how to live as God’s saved people, we need to begin, always, by acknowledging and following God. That’s what the book of Proverbs is about. All of it.

Bartholomew continues “In Proverbs, underlying the metaphors of the two ways, the two houses and the two women, is an understanding of creation as ordered by God…The earth, according to Proverbs, was ‘founded by wisdom’ and Lady Wisdom was present throughout God’s creation and delighted in it.”

Whoa, hold up. Who is this lady? This is where things start to get confusing (but hang in here with me, okay ladies?).

Back to C.G. Bartholomew: “In Proverbs 8 (as elsewhere in Proverbs 1-9), wisdom is personified as Lady Wisdom, but it is unclear how this figure is to be understood. Some see her as a personification of Yahweh’s own wisdom by which he created the world. However, the poem distinguishes her from Yahweh, just as elsewhere in the OT the angel of the Lord, the word of the Lord and the name of the Lord are associated with but distinguished from Yahweh.”

Okay, I’m REALLY not going to go into all that right now! But suffice it to say, there’s some pretty hard-core female imagery and metaphors happening in the first third of Proverbs.

Bartholomew continues “The woman of Proverbs 31 is placed at the end of the book of Proverbs as a paradigm of a wise person.”

Okay, so we begin Proverbs with Lady Wisdom preaching in the streets, imploring people to commit to following her ways instead of the way of her opposite, the Adulteress Folly, which leads to death. We end Proverbs with a woman teaching her son to commit to a wise woman who fears the Lord, instead of chasing the deceptive charms of outward beauty that will wither and fade.

Anyone sense a literary theme?

There’s so much more that can and should be said, but this is already getting long, and I haven’t made my point yet.

Which leads us to Part 3 (coming tomorrow).

I’ve had an ambiguous relationship with the Proverbs 31 Woman over the years.

When I was a baby, my Auntie Lynn gave me a plaque that hung in my room until I left for college. It was beautiful, with a puffy, padded frame covered in peach calico and rimmed with lace. Inside, my name and its meaning (fair lady) were written in elegant letters, and beneath that was a Bible verse: “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness.” (Proverbs 31:26) It was one of the most treasured objects of my childhood–along with my Holly Hobbie mirror, my teddy bear, and a toss pillow my Auntie Lorrie made that had a place to hide books.

In the simple logic of a child, I thought that plaque described what I was supposed to be and do. I was named Jenny, therefore I was supposed to be a princess-ey girl who spoke with wisdom and taught people to be kind to each other. I am convinced that the plaque gave me a complex–albeit a good one, and probably exactly what my Auntie Lynn had in mind (princess-obsession aside).

It wasn’t until I was a young adult that my thoughts about Proverbs 31 started to sour. I married at 19, and had my first baby when I was not quite 21, so I was thrust into the adult world, and particularly the world of women’s Bible studies, earlier than most. I was in for a surprise.

Now, I had been used to Bible studies being–well–times when we studied the Bible. At my high school and college, groups of students would get together to read and discuss the Bible, often with the help of a slim booklet from IV Press that helped them think through what they were reading.

But this was not what I experienced in women’s Bible studies. Instead, we studied books by pastor’s wives and small celebrities, quite often having to do with the Proverbs 31 woman, and almost always offering prescriptive suggestions on how Christian women were to live in light of the handful of biblical passages that speak specifically to women. I don’t think I’m overstating it to say that many of these books were more about homemaking than holy living, more about being a wife and mother than about being a disciple of Christ. In fact, many of them didn’t seem to see any distinction.

There was nothing intrinsically wrong with most of these books, but my soul began to shrivel under the steady diet of “Better Homes and Gardens” Bible studies. The Proverbs 31 Woman was transformed from the wise instructor I understood her to be in my childhood, to a measuring stick for my homemaking skills, an airbrushed ideal of Christian womanhood.

And I didn’t measure up.

I tried. Oh, I tried. And I always failed miserably. I just wan’t a good homemaker, and no amount of nagging or affirmation could make a dent in my messy, disorganized ways. I wince reading back through my prayer journals–page after page, for years and years, of me crying out to God to make me a better homemaker. Sure, I prayed for my family and friends, but the recurring theme was my failure as a housekeeper–which seemed to imply that I was a failure as a Christian woman, a failure as a disciple.

Crushing.

Looking back from my current vantage point, I’m miffed on behalf of my young self. I was in my early twenties, hundreds of miles from my family and support systems, trying to run a house and take care of an autistic toddler. (Were his crazy behaviors due to my failure as a mother as well??? It seemed likely.) I needed a heaping dose of grace and courage, and I was being given housekeeping tips, with a Bible verse thrown in here and there to remind me that I really SHOULD be doing things the author’s way.

I didn’t need people telling me to put on fresh lipstick and a squirt of perfume a couple minutes before my husband returned home from work.

I didn’t need people equating Proverbs 31:14 (“she is like a merchant ship, bringing her food from afar”) with the need to prepare interesting dinners for my family. (Little Caesars, anyone?)

I didn’t need people telling me how I should be getting up before the rest of my family to cook breakfast, make coffee, and prepare for the day. I was up half the nights taking care of a special needs child. I needed SLEEP, for pete’s sake!

I needed Jesus.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” – Jesus, in Matthew 11:28-30

Jesus seemed like such a better teacher, such a better model, than the Proverbs 31 Woman. And undoubtedly, he is.

But recently I discovered that the Proverbs 31 Woman has been falsely accused.

Which leads me to Part 2 of this discussion (coming tomorrow).

Here’s to a God who loves us even better than a mommy, weeds and all!

Abuse. Homosexuality. Bullying. Singleness. Disability. Abortion. Illness.  Addiction. Grief.

We tend to skim right over these topics, offering quick, carefully-crafted statements about our stance on the issue. It winds up feeling more like a presidential candidate’s stump speech than a conversation with a human being who actually cares about you.

In our discomfort, we search for something solid to hang onto, one hard nugget of truth, and offer it up whenever the topic arises–a Bible verse, a word of advice, something we read on the internet or heard from Dr. Phil. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it’s a bit like offering Tylenol to a person who tells you they’ve just been diagnosed with cancer. Understandable, but the person might think you either didn’t understand the scope of their struggle or were trying to get rid of them, brushing off their pain with a trite, easy answer.

They’re staring down dragons, and we’re saying, in effect, “Yeah, dragons are bad. Hey, did you know The Hobbit is coming out this year? There are dragons in that.”

Because we don’t want to talk about dragons. Just thinking about dragons starts our adrenaline rushing, makes our backs makes prickle with heat, fills our noses with the remembered or imagined stench of sulfer.

No, we don’t like talking about it, so we offer up our nugget like an appeasement to an angry god, then scurry, almost superstitiously, to the next topic, as if talking about the issue will make it manifest in our midst.

As if it already hasn’t.

But how does this help anybody? This pretentious, fragment-of-truth telling? This nervous acknowledgment (and implied dismissal) of life-altering hurts?

All it really does is get people to shut up and stop talking about it. To suffer and struggle in silence, alone, because we obviously don’t want to hear it, don’t care enough to even LOOK at the dragon they are facing, except maybe a quick, begrudging glance out of the corner of our eye.

When did we become such cowards? Are we afraid their dragons are going to devour us, too?

It’s hard to know what to say, how to respond, when people are hurting or struggling. I will be the first to admit that I can really stink at that.

But can I propose that perhaps we don’t have to say anything at all? That perhaps we can just listen, witholding judgement, praying silently, and offering hugs instead of advice?

Maybe people don’t need us to have the answers. Maybe people just need us to listen and love them.

It certainly beats trying to shove an emotional aspirin down their throat.

“In Which I’m No Angry Feminist” by Sarah Bessey. This post made me cry. When it comes to advocating for women, I’d say there are three primary motivators–intellectual integrity,  justice, and empathy. My swollen, weeping mommy-heart squeezes into the folding chair next to Sarah in the empathy section. Beautiful read.

“How to Win a Culture War and Lose a Generation” by Rachel Held Evans. Thoughtful, and searing. Consider yourself forewarned: if you tend to get worked up about politics, you might not want to read it. But I think all Christians should read the first few paragraphs and ponder them in their hearts. The research from the Barna Group is troubling, to say the least.

“A Different Sort of Mother’s Day Prayer” by Michelle Van Loon. For all the people out there who will NOT be celebrating a Hallmark-style Mother’s Day. HUGE blessings to you!

What have you been reading?

I know, I know–there’s that whole “brood of vipers,” “conspiring to kill Jesus” thing. Not their brightest moments. But did you know that several of Jesus’ followers, and many, many members of the early church, were Pharisees? At the crucifixion, all but one of Jesus’ male disciples ran off–it was left to two soft-hearted Pharisees to collect and bury Jesus’ body while young John and The Women looked on and mourned.

Before we write Pharisees off as small-minded legalists, we should probably try to understand where they were coming from. Because they have something important to teach us. Even Jesus admitted that.

Pharisaism, and rabbinic Judaism in general, began to develop after Judah was taken into captivity. The exiled Jews couldn’t travel to the temple to worship anymore, so the local synagogues took on great importance, not only as a place to worship, but as a place to learn about their history and customs, and preserve the unique heritage God had given them.

Repentant Jews began to think about what had caused the downfall of their beloved land. The answer was clear–the people had turned away from God, had failed to keep the Covenant he had given them through Moses. The Book of Dueteronomy was written, a fresh Chronicle of their history set down to show where they had gone wrong. The people were looking back, mourning the sins of their nation, and mapping out a better course for the future.

The exile had a purging effect, and the remaining Jews vowed not to repeat the mistakes of their forefathers. The best, the brightest, the most zealous, well-educated and orthodox among them, set themselves to understanding and interpreting the law.

The studied the scriptures inside and out, determined to understand God’s word, so they could live lives that were holy and pleasing to Him.

They faithfully taught what they had learned to their fellow Jews and anyone else who would listen, in the synagogues and the town squares.

They wrote volumes and volumes of commentary, books about their understanding and interpretation of biblical concepts.

They held meetings and conventions to discuss areas of controversy among their peers.

They worked hard to pass laws and legislation that would prevent people from breaking the Covenant. They had been down that road, and weren’t going there again. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD.

They even sent out missionaries to preach the Good News of God’s Covenant to the gentiles, so they could share their hope of glory, and live lives that were holy and pleasing to God as well.

Do these people sound familiar to you?

These were the Pharisees. You know, the ones Jesus was always getting so all-fired frustrated with.

I can’t help but think this might have some application for modern evangelicalism.

I was reading Philemon this weekend, and many things stood out to me.

Paul’s tone with Philemon, acknowledging Philemon’s friendship, fidelity, and good heart.

Paul’s audacious, unapoologetic request, challenging Philemon to go above and beyond what society, and even religious respectability, required of him. In fact, in a shame-based society obsessed with social and familial order, Philemon would probably have “lost face” for refusing to enforce societal norms and punish his runaway slave.

But mostly, I was impressed with how Paul prayed about Philemon’s hoped-for behavior: “And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ.”

Philemon was Paul’s friend, but he was also a very real threat to another one of Paul’s friends. Philemon was a good man, but he was also a man who made use of the advantages his priveleged standing in society afforded him, at others’ expense. Philemon had been set free in Christ, but Onesimus, Philemon’s slave, apparently felt he had to flee Philemon to find freedom for himself.

Paul gushed about Philemon’s glowing qualities, but I wonder if Onesimus would have? From the pressure Paul applied, it seems even he acknowledged that a little redemptive arm-twisting may be necessary in order to save Onesimus from Philemon’s “right” to inflict cruel punishment on his “property.”

But look at how Paul does it.

He acknowledges Philemon’s heart, not calling him an oppressor, but a brother with good intentions.

He appeals to Philemon’s higher nature, giving him the opportunity to act generously, and go above and beyond religious expectations.

And he expects that Philemon will do this, will act generously, as he understands and experiences all the good things he has in Christ. 

How often does our material, social and spiritual stinginess, our judgmental legalism (whether we’re acting as an “oppressor” or “activist”), spring from a deep-seated sense of spiritual poverty–of fear, inadequacy, of lack? How can we offer others abundant, grace-drenched, freeing love if we have never received or experienced it ourselves?

Perhaps, instead of yelling at our brothers and sisters in Christ to change, instead of manipulating them into doing things the way we think they should be done, or wielding shame and intimidation as steely “spiritual” weapons, we should be praying Paul’s prayer: that we would ALL understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ, and that it would compel us to spiritual, material, and social generosity.