Having it All

Proverbs 31:10-31

A woman of strength 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 female servants.
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.

I pride myself on the fact that I don’t cherry-pick passages from the Bible. Sure, there might be some weeks when I just don’t have it in me to tackle a certain topic, so I’ll save it for another time— but I truly do my best to challenge myself with some of the more difficult or disturbing passages; or sometimes, passages that simply seem fully irrelevant to our modern minds. So for this final sermon in this Summer Sermon Series on the Proverbs, I decided to preach on the final part of Proverbs—which happens to be an acrostic (from the original Hebrew, of course) poem about the ideal wife. You might remember that the purpose of the Book of Proverbs was to be advice geared towards young men, probably middle and upper-middle class men, on how to acquire wisdom in the world, how to avoid folly and foolishness; and of course, in these days, finding a good wife was a part of that journey.

Now, in some ways, maybe we can try to sort of universalize this, we can read it as advice for qualities to look for in a spouse of any gender—someone who trusts their spouse and treats them well, someone who helps the poor, someone who is good with household money… but then we get to verses like 15, where it’s written, “She rises while it is still night…and provides tasks for her female servants.” Now… delegating tasks for domestic staff at all, much less before dawn is… certainly not a part of my day. This is where I think we can get sort of tripped up— we see here that this is very clearly referring to a wealthier family, an established family. It, at least for me, really takes me out of it— I certainly can’t relate to that kind of spouse this supposedly ideal woman is, and I also don’t really aspire to be this either. Honestly, it sounds exhausting. It sounds like burnout waiting to happen. This passage is calling for a wife to make all the meals while expediting other household tasks; it calls for her to be shrewd with money and make business deals, including buying land, apparently? It calls for her to buy and make fine clothes so that her household is always clothed in purple, the color of the elite; and all the while, while she’s taking care of the house, managing the household staff, becoming some sort of real estate and textile mogul on the side, helping the poor, she’s also always happy, always wise, always strong in both mind and body.

Church… it’s too much. It’s too much for any normal woman, any normal person to aspire to. It brought to mind this relatively modern concept of women “having it all.” I feel like this really hit its peak in 2012 when the former COO of Facebook, now Meta, Sheryl Sandberg, came out with her wildly popular book Lean In, about being a woman, a mother, and a successful career woman. But as the economy has gone up and down, as we’ve had wild pendulum swings politically, as the cultural zeitgeist changes so rapidly, plenty of holes have been made in this argument that women, that anyone, can have it all— that we can all can be present parents, a successful business people, generous philanthropists, as long as we “lean in” and believe in ourselves… but that’s just not true. It’s just not real.

I recently read Sarah Wynn-Williams’ book Careless People about her time working for Meta, and her close working relationship with Sandberg herself. The book is really an expose on the carelessness, greed, and amorality of those high up in the Metaverse. She makes it very clear the Sandberg had an army of nannies during her time as COO; she was cruel, abusive, and inappropriate to her employees; she  And at one point, Wynn-Williams, after the very traumatic birth of her child, a birth that nearly killed her, she was told she “wasn’t responsive enough” to work during her labor. Wynn-Williams writes, “In my defense, I was in a coma for some of it.”

And as I looked more into this idea of having it all, there’s been pushback for as long as the idea has existed. In an article from 2012, entitled Why Women Still Can’t Have it All, Anne Marie-Slaughter, an academic and former director of policy in the federal State Department, writes of the fact that for all the progress that’s been made, for all the lip-service privileged women and men alike give to the fact that women can do anything now, society just hasn’t caught up this idea of full equality. The article had a lot of buzz back in the day, and it seems not a lot has changed. The only people who are able to “have it all” all the wealthy, with assistants and nannies at their beck and call, and because of that, it’s really just a façade anyway.

So I wonder how a poor young man in post-exilic Judah would have felt reading this poem— wondering how he could ever possibly strive to follow this advice, could ever imagine making business deals at the city gates and singing the praises of his wife who makes delicious meals while delegating tasks to servants… maybe he would have been inspired, maybe he would have seen this as aspirational. But more likely, he would have known that this kind of life was nothing he could ever have. There was no upward mobility during this time. The class you were born in was the class you would be in your entire life. Most likely he would have scoffed at this poem and been on his way.

I sympathize. I scoff at articles about “having it all.” I roll my eyes at the idea that I, as a working mother, can give my daughter all the nurturing and time she needs while also tending to this congregation and giving everyone my whole pastoral self. I do my best, don’t get me wrong, but without knowing or understanding my limits on either end, burnout awaits. I can’t be the ideal pastor or mother without burning myself out, just as this fictional wife in this poem could not have existed in her world without running herself ragged, even with servants and a loving spouse.

And so what do we do with such an archaic poem about a perfect wife that found its way into our sacred text? What do we do with this aspirational life of wealth and wisdom that is essentially impossible to achieve in our day? What was practically impossible to achieve in the days it was written?

I think, I believe, that we can, indeed, use this as inspiration. Not as inspiration to create a world of binary gender roles and nearly-impossible standards—but rather, as inspiration to create a world in which a comfortable and fulfilling life is possible for anyone—a world where we don’t need servants, where we don’t need armies of nannies… but, a world in which we are all taken care of.

Rather than think of this in terms of “how can I get this life?” let’s think of it in terms of, “how can a life like this be possible for everyone?” Because right now, in spite of what some people will claim, it is simply not. To use my generation, for example, statistics show that not only are millennial mothers working more than any previous generation, which isn’t surprising—but we’re also still spending more time parenting our kids than male spouses, the “village” or close knit family doesn’t exist to help anymore as it did in previous generations— grandparents or aunts or uncles able to step in and help—and of course to remedy that last issue is daycare, the prices of which are out of this world, and out of reach for many. [i] This is why topics of burnout and self-care and boundaries are such hot topics—because we’re all trying to figure out how to have it all—the fulfilling career, the family, the comfort, without suffering.

I say all this to show that this perfect life isn’t possible the way things are now. And I don’t actually believe this perfect life was really possible even in the time our passage today was written. I think in some ways, you can even argue that it was, perhaps, slightly more realistic to have a life like this thanks to more lenient laws when it came to debts and forgiveness of debts, but of course—that’s a whole other can of worms.

In theologian and Hebrew expert Robert Alter’s translation and interpretation of this poem, he writes that the line about the wife’s entire household being clothed in crimson was likely a hyperbole, an over-the-top way to say that her household never had to worry about being cold, for they always had comfortable, warm garments. I wonder if we could, perhaps, think of this whole poem as a sort of hyperbole? That, for its time, this would be the perfect way of life, if it were possible. I wonder if we could look at it, not as something specific and literal to aspire to, but rather, a level of comfort and peace and security that all people deserve to have?

“She laughs at the time to come,” says the second half of verse 25. This means she has no worries about the future. She trusts that everything will continue to be perfect, will continue to be full of love, security, and peace. Imagine being able to feel so secure about the future. Imagine being able to think about the future and not be filled with existential dread! But this is what we should be striving for—a future. A future that we can feel secure in. A future that we can all feel safe in. A future worthy of our kids, our grandkids, our great-grandkids, and so on and so on, and so on.  This, sadly, absolutely sounds hyperbolic to me—it’s really hard to imagine not worrying about the future these days. I would venture a guess that it would have been tough for the people of its time, even the wealthier and more privileged folks, to imagine a world this idyllic too—it was a time of so much back and forth, from exile to tenuous freedom, to occupation—laughing at the time to come seems downright irresponsible for anyone, whether they be a servant, a wealthy wife and mother, or some kind of royalty.

So maybe we look at this passage as hyperbolic aspiration—no woman, no person, can be everything. But we should be working for a world where someone can realistically have the energy to wake up before dawn if they choose to get food ready for their family, if that’s what brings them joy. We should be working for a world in which, a mother, if she chooses, can easily have a career or a vocation they’re passionate about, without sacrificing time with family, or becoming a part of a toxic workplace. We should be working for a world in which no one is “afraid for [their] household when it snows” because paying for heat or warm clothes isn’t a worry for them. Ultimately, we should be working for a world in which this perfect woman of our passage no longer needs to “open her hand to the poor” because there are no more poor… a world in which all can laugh at the time to come, because all that is coming will be joy.

Right now, I don’t believe it’s possible for anyone to truly “have it all.” Like we talked about last week, we live in a world where scarcity is manufactured to support an unjust status quo—our capitalistic society makes it so having it all is truly impossible; but that doesn’t mean I believe it will never be possible. If we believe in the world our God wants for us, the world Jesus was sent to usher in, there is hope. We can work for a world, in which everyone, regardless of their gender identity, their marital status, the class they were born into, can have a loving, comfortable, and fulfilling life—because we’re working towards a world in which gender identity, class, race, will no longer be used to hold people back… because we’re working for an earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

[i] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/millennial-mom-work-burnout-goog_l_688bd88fe4b041333e5b83ff