A Sermon Delivered by
The Rev. Terrilisa Durham Bauknight
at Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
May 2, 2010 (Women’s Sunday)

Text: Proverbs 31:10-31

A capable wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life.
She seeks wool and flax,
and works with willing hands.
She is like the ships of the merchant,
she brings her food from far away.
She rises while it is still night
and provides food for her household
and tasks for her servant-girls.
She considers a field and buys it;
with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.

She girds herself with strength,
and makes her arms strong.
She perceives that her merchandise is profitable.
Her lamp does not go out at night.
She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her hands hold the spindle.
She opens her hand to the poor,
and reaches out her hands to the needy.
She is not afraid for her household when it snows,
for all her household are clothed in crimson.
She makes herself coverings;
her clothing is fine linen and purple.
Her husband is known in the city gates,
taking his seat among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them;
she supplies the merchant with sashes.
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.
She looks well to the ways of her household,
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and call her happy;
her husband too, and he praises her:
“Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her a share in the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the city gates. —Proverbs 31:10-31, NRSV

As a young woman growing up, and even today, I have continually turned to the Bible in or-der to find guidance as to what I was supposed to be as a woman, as a child of God and as a ‘minister of the gospel.’ The last one, being a minister, was and sometimes remains the most difficult because I only found the example in men for so many years, and the women, early on, were not what I wanted to be – but the calling would not leave me alone. I was happy, but then maybe I should not have been so excited, when I learned from Lillian Klein, that I was not alone as she, like many other scholars and common women alike, struggled the same way with the very same issue! Women, we all agreed, were in the Bible, but many were on the perimeter of the sto-ries and events and there were far too many in number who were nameless and worse yet, engag-ing them was next to impossible! Yet, when I constantly heard a woman being praised, it was not with the words of the actions or events that surrounded Mary, Eve, Esther, or Naomi and Ruth, but it was always with the words of the Proverbs 31 Woman. The words seemed more like a rid-dle to me than those that of praise or recognition. What most of us do not read, hear or focus on is that which comes before and at the end of this portion of scripture or ‘wise saying.’ In the first several verses of Proverbs 31 it is an oracle or learned words of King Lemuel from his mother. It is verse 3 that catches our attention for it says, “do not spend your strength on women, your vigor on those who ruin kings.” Then it moves into verses 10-31, which in its original form is an acros-tic poem or writing – each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Then after the wonderful words of description and praise, verse 31 makes a quick remark about, “charm is beautiful and beauty is vain or fleeting.” I thought to myself, in order to be successful a woman must have some charm and beauty that comes from her confidence. It is this verse that gave me a quick flashback to the women of ministry early on who were sour, single and sad – the way that they were supposed to be as they tried to fit into a man’s world. So you can imagine that after hearing the verses over and over and over again, I thought to myself, “there is no sense in reading this one or even thinking that someone will ever use them in their description of me – I’ll never be like her!” And I thought even more so, how many other women read this and thought the same thing? From the stand point of far too many women, this set of verses, these words of praise, might set women up to think more that they cannot be like this woman, never in a million years – for this woman of Proverbs 31 can not only multitask better than the rest, but she can manager those areas which were often seen outside of the right and realm of women both then and now. Think about it, women are still challenged in the working world today, where as then, this woman is described as not only able to purchase the land, but to organize the usage of it. There is money and power with this woman, and few still have it. And those who have it are working tirelessly to balance the scales of success and acceptance. Or give in to one or the other – we have yet to apply a truly favorable label to a successful woman who is feminine, a mother and an executive. Somewhere someone finds a reason to criticize and correct her. Frustrated, and I do mean frustrated, I picked up a mirror recently while looking for something while I was working on a project in the post midnight hours, and I thought as I looked in the mirror – there she is!!!! I FOUND HER!!! Anyone watching me would have thought I was tired or just plain nuts as I walked around the house talking to myself and saying – Yes, Yes, Yes, I have found her and she is right here in ME!!!

You see the discovery was much easier than I thought – here’s why. The courageous woman in me came from Esther, her predecessor Queen Vashti and the unlikely woman of the prostitute Rahab! Esther comes to stand tall and be prepared to die for her people when she becomes queen and must foil the plot by Haman to kill the Jews. When Queen Vashti is cast aside for refusing to show herself before her husband and his drunken partying buddies – I applauded. Although she risked her position, she refused to be ogled at by men. The prostitute Rahab will be one who risks her life and the life of her family, as she helps spies over the wall and into the city of Jeri-cho. I found myself in the woman of 1 Kings, Chapter 3, who is willing to give up her child to a woman whose own had died understanding what it is to be needy in being complete as a woman and mother. She would rather see her child live than be cut-in-two and die leaving both women alone and empty. I found her in Lydia who made purple dye for cloth; a task that made her indus-trious and never idle. Purple, the color of royalty, was a luxury, a show of richness that others might not have had. I found the woman of Proverbs 31 in Leah and Rebekkah, Dinah, Tamar, the Virgin Mary, Eve, Elisabeth, Martha and Mary, in the woman with the issue of blood, with the wife of a king who knew better to present herself clothed in humility and grace before David than to wait for her husband to get it together (of which he never does). This woman is in Hagar and Sara pitted against each other to prove their worthiness. This woman is found in the women at the foot of the cross, the nameless wives of David and Solomon, in Hannah who prayed silent-ly and after receiving favor gave up her son to be a servant of God. This woman of Proverbs 31 is found in Bathsheba who is summonsed to the king and made a widow and bride by the same without an ability to say ‘no.’ This woman of Proverbs 31 is found is so many more named and unnamed of the Word of God. But more important, you must see, the woman of Proverb 31 ex-ists in so many different forms with us – she lives, in you and in me. She is a capable woman who knows how to produce, to fight, to give life and love and most important of all to survive not by her own strength but because of the faith in God that is set deep within her and cannot be moved, shaken, diminished or destroyed. Now, it’s not like that 1972 song by Helen Reddy “I am woman here me roar in numbers too big to ignore. And I know too much to go back an’ pre-tend!” So many people disliked that song and felt that women were trying to bully their way into the many arenas that we did not belong. But the song spoke of the pain and struggle that women were going through in order to be recognized. Instead, it’s the Whitney Houston song that people sang with ease and listened to with a smile as the lyrics said – “I’m every woman, it’s all in me…anything you want done baby, I’ll do it naturally…!”

It was my realization that night in the early hours, that in my late night, but wide-eyed dis-covery I not only found her, this important woman of Proverbs 31, but had received the respon-sibility of passing her on – not to just my sisters in Christ, but to those who kept ignoring her. But more important, I needed to pass this great woman who was made up of the spirits of so many other women onto the young women who were coming behind me – to the women who knew nothing about her because they could not see her many characteristics in themselves. I might not reach hundreds, but if I simply reached one and she passed her on and she reached one and passed her on, and another and another, before you know it – hundreds of us would know her, this woman of Proverbs 31, and instead of shrinking in the shadows of the lines when the next woman the lifting up of the words, “Who Can Find A Virtuous Woman?” as if it was a chal-lenge, we can hear the words and prepare to celebrate as we stand up on our feet or simply raise our hands and answer the question by calling out the names of the women in our own lives who fit the bill or standing up and saying, I FOUND HER! and she’s right here! in me! Amen