How to Handle a Woman
Scripture: 2 Kings 22:14-20; Matthew 15:21-28
Sunday, February 22, 2012 ● The St. John’s Pulpit ● Martha Kearse, Associate Minister
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2 Kings 22:14-20; 14 Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Akbor, Shaphan and Asaiah went to speak to the prophet
Huldah, who was the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe. She lived in
Jerusalem, in the New Quarter.
15
She said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Tell the man who sent you to me, 16 ‘This
is what the LORD says: I am going to bring disaster on this place and its people, according to everything
written in the book the king of Judah has read. 17 Because they have forsaken me and burned incense to other
gods and aroused my anger by all the idols their hands have made,[a] my anger will burn against this place and
will not be quenched.’ 18 Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD, ‘This is what the LORD,
the God of Israel, says concerning the words you heard: 19 Because your heart was responsive and you humbled
yourself before the LORD when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people—that they
would become a curse[b] and be laid waste—and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also
have heard you, declares the LORD. 20 Therefore I will gather you to your ancestors, and you will be buried in
peace. Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place.’”
Matthew 15:21-28; The Faith of a Canaanite Woman
21
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity
came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and
suffering terribly.”
23
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps
crying out after us.”
24
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
25
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
26
He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
27
“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
28
Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was
healed at that moment.
Ephesians 5:22-33 22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband
is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the
church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy,
cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church,
without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their
own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his
body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will
become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However,
each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
How to handle a woman
There’s a way said the wise old man
A way known by every woman since the whole rigmarole began
Do I flatter her I begged him answer
Do I threaten or cajole or plead
Do I brood or play the gay romancer
Said he smiling No indeed
How to handle a woman
Mark me well, I will tell you sir
The way to handle a woman
Is to love her simply love her merely love her love her love her
You may be familiar with this song, which is from the Broadway play “Camelot.” It is sung by Arthur, the king
and main character, who is lamenting his inability to control his young wife, Guinevere. “Camelot,” a musical
based on T. H. White’s novel The Once and Future King, is focused on four characters: Arthur, whose
birthright has put him on the throne of England; Guinevere, sold to Arthur in marriage by a knight named Leon
de Grance in a peace negotiation; Lancelot, the arrogant but skillful knight with whom Guinevere falls in love;
and Mordred, Arthur’s accidental child by Morgan le Fey. Most theater goers would regard the love triangle as
the central story of the play—certainly that element, added in the Middle Ages to the tale of Arturius, the king
who unified England, is a compelling part of the story. But as with most stories which stand the test of time,
there is more going on in this story that just who loves who. At its core, this is a story about power, the use of
power, and the limits of power.
The story begins with Arthur and Guinevere both in the woods, but unseen by each other. Each is bemoaning
the fate they share—an arranged marriage for the good of the kingdom. Arthur sings, “You ask what the king is
doing tonight, he’s scared! He’s scared!” Moments later, Guinevere tells her patron saint, Genevieve, “ I won’t
be bid and bargained for like beads at a bazaar; St. Genevieve I’ve run away eluded them and fled and from
now on I intend to pray to someone else instead.” Arthur is king, and although he wears that powerful crown, he
is subject to the desires and needs of his people—and they need an heir; Guinevere is a woman, and as such has
but one role in her family’s life—to marry as well as she can and bring her family as much political or financial
advantage as she can.
So what does their story have to do with ours today? That question that Arthur asks, “How to handle a woman”
is one that many a man has asked—does Merlin provide the right answer? And what on earth does it have to do
with anything in the real world of living together today? Haven’t we solved that whole gender issue now, with
female doctors, female lawyers, female secretaries of state (although no president, yet), and even, God help us,
female ministers? Well, I have to admit, we’ve come a long way baby. When I was a little girl, Title 9 had not
happened yet—at least its effects had not reached Richmond, VA—and there wasn’t a baseball team for girls. I
stood on the sidelines at my brother’s games itching to touch the ball and playing bat girl when they’d let me. I
did not know a single female doctor or dentist—never saw one on TV. There had been women elected to
congress, but the idea of a female president was something that comedians talked about in their routines, not
something that came up on the evening news. When I was a little girl, young men were still being drafted and
sent off to Vietnam—and although there were young women serving in the military, even some who were
wounded or killed, there was no consciousness of them in the public—we never heard their stories. And there
were no women in ministry. Not paid ones, anyway.
In my church, I was surrounded by the ministries of women: my mother, whom you may have heard me
mention, taught the elementary Sunday School class and we by-God learned the books of the Bible; Betty
Morris taught our choir and we did “Cool in the Furnace” and “100% Chance of Rain;” there were some men
around in training union, but the women brought all the food on Wednesday night—I was always disturbed by
the many things women found around their houses to put in jello—marshmallows, raisins, nuts, coconut for
God’s sake—I always longed to tell them that if God had intended for jello to have nuts in them he would have
put them in the box! I went many times with my mother’s WMU circle to the reform school for girls there in
Richmond, where the women taught these teenaged girls, whose lives had led them to that troubled place, how
to crochet. But in worship, I saw the men. The ministers were men, the deacons were men—the accompanist
and the organist could be women, but the leaders, the speakers—basically all those who got to stand up—were
men. And sometime during my teenage years, when I actually began to listen to the sermons my father was
giving on Sunday mornings, I began to realize that I had a real understanding and appreciation for church, for
worship, for the crafting of sermons—but not for one instant did it occur to me to choose ministry as my
profession—I was much, much older before I had any vision of myself in that role.
Oh, we want to say, but it’s better now! Look look! We have female deacons! Look female ministers! It’s
better! That’s right—it is. Here’s my question—is it better because the men, sometime after the middle of the
last century, sat up together and said, “Hey, you guys—we’re really missing out on the skills of half of our
population! What do you say we open up our society and bring these women into positions of skill and
leadership and power?” Did the men at the board meetings across the world sit up and say, “What we need
around here is a little estrogen!” Is that what happened? The truth is, power is addictive. George Orwell made a
literary career out of showing the world just how addictive and how all-consuming the acquisition and
protection of power is for human beings. In the novel 1984, the party member who has captured and is torturing
Winston, the main character, explains the motivation of the party this way:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested
solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power…We are different from
all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled
ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites…We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the
intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end…The object of persecution is persecution. The
object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is written, not to his church or to the people in his
movement, but to the white ministers of Birmingham who have written him to tell him that, while they agree
with his goal, they don’t like his tactics and think that he should wait. It is a highly controlled, deeply angry
letter and in it, King says, “My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights
without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups
seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.” And when Mohandas Gandhi is describing the path one must take
when one is subject to a powerful oppressor, he says, “First they ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they
fight you; then you win.” If there is anything unquestionably clear in human nature, it is that it is in our nature
to fight with everything we have to gain as much power as we can; once we have it, it is in our nature to fight
with everything we have to keep as much power as we possibly can. Women got where they are today because
many, many of them stood up and said, “I will not settle for being a second class citizen with no access to the
advantages of my male counterparts; I will fight for my right to be treated equally.”
Ok ok—but we’re here now, right? What’s the point of going back into the past—we got what we wanted
right? What’s to discuss? Well, actually, the subject matter hasn’t changed, but fortunately for you guys, now
the women need to hear it just as badly as you did half a century ago. What’s the message? Just this—watch out
for power, because power corrupts; beware, especially of absolute power, because absolute power corrupts
absolutely. But if we’re a society that has erased its social barriers, that has made men and women, and all
races, equal in the eyes of the law, what do we need to worry about? Well, for one thing, we’re not all the way
there yet. We don’t have a female president—there are still those out there who worry that if the moment came
when decisive action had to be taken, a female president would explode in tears and run into the bathroom with
the newly appointed Secretary of Shoes. We haven’t figured out how to make our educational opportunities
truly equal for everyone, despite their race or economic status and we still have a thing about which two
consenting adults can get married and which two can’t. So how does this issue of power become an issue of
faith and how do we work on this as a people of faith?
As always, the best thing to do is to watch Jesus. Jesus models something entirely different—a completely
different way to use and think about power. This story that Lisa read today is one that has bothered me since I
first heard it when I was a child. Jesus acts like a jerk to this woman! He all but calls her a dog, something I’d
expect to hear from a rapper, but not from Jesus! When I began to think about this story seriously, I found that
there are only two possible explanations for what’s going on here: one—Jesus learns something during this
encounter which he did not already know; two—Jesus is using this as a teachable moment for his disciples and
the others around him. As I thought about it further, I realized that I don’t really care which one it is—we’re
told that Jesus learned—that he increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man. Unlike his
Greek counterparts, Jesus didn’t leap fully formed from his father’s head—he grew, he matured, he learned. So
if he learns something from this woman, it does not conflict in any way with my vision of him. And if he’s
using it as a teachable moment, that just makes him a good teacher. Either way, the result is the same—in the
course of this encounter, Jesus gives up some of his power in order to heal this woman’s daughter.
Jesus’ disciples want him to shoo her away—they expect him to. That is what any other good Jewish leader
would do. They don’t want him to pelt her with rocks, but they do expect Jesus to get rid of her and not expose
himself to her non-Jewishness, her uncleanliness, her femaleness. Instead, he listens to her—he talks to her—he
argues with her—and then, he concedes the argument. First he ignores her, then he laughs at her, then he fights
her, then he lets her win. In front of everyone, he lets her win! She gets her way! Unbelievable! And, if you start
from this story and start looking for what Jesus is doing with power during his whole ministry, an incredible
pattern occurs.
Let me ask you a question—why does Jesus need disciples? Jesus could have had an army! What if he had said,
“Pick up your sword and follow me!” ? How different would his life have been? With his charisma and his
powers of healing, Jesus could have taken the throne from spoiled brat Herod in a heartbeat! He might even
have created an empire that gave the Romans a run for their money! But instead, what does he do when he’s
ready to start his ministry? Well, the very first thing he does is that he obeys his mother. “Jesus—they are out
of wine for the wedding! Take care of it!” “Yes mother.” I think it’s entirely possible that, when he mentioned
to her that he wanted to get baptized she said, “Well, be sure and let John do it—he’s your cousin, after all, and
it would mean so much to his mother.” And then, he takes all that power given to him as the charismatic leader
of a new reform movement and he parcels it out to 12 other guys—12 kind of sketchy guys, none of whom has
any status to give to the movement. And he says to them, “I’m not the only one who can heal—try it. If you
have the faith the size of a mustard seed you could make that mountain over there do the watusi.” Don’t get me
wrong—Jesus did not hand away ALL his power—he did NOT say to his disciples, “Hey! You can take this
movement wherever you want! We’ll do it your way!” He had the self esteem required of us in scriptures that
made him their true leader—one they looked up to and respected. Jesus knew how to find the place of a leader,
who leads instead of bullying.
Paul understands this handing out of power as well. Look at how much space in his letters he devotes to people
in the church getting along and sharing power. “Does the eye say to the nose ‘I don’t need you any more?’ That
would be ridiculous! You each bring something special, something wonderful to the body of Christ! Don’t miss
out on each other because you want to be the big toe!” Now, if we didn’t know from his saying so in his
writings that he wasn’t married, we would figure that he was a single male out from this passage in Ephesians.
If Paul had been married and had shown this letter to his wife before mailing it, she would have told him that
you can’t put the part about the wives first. “Look, Mr. Paul of Tarsus,” she would say, “If you start with,
“Wives, be subject to your husbands,” the men will stop reading there!” (Which is, based on the first 2000 years
of Christianity, precisely what happened). My father—who didn’t ask for much when he did my wedding—did
ask that this passage be one that we read. He explained to me and my good-looking fiancé that this passage asks
the women to submit, but asks the men to do for their wives what Christ did for the church—which would be
that Jesus died for her. I didn’t tell him so at the time, but I still had and have some issues with this passage.
But the basic message is very clear—you are not to lord your power over each other. Jesus chose death over
power—he could have been like Alexander the Great, and by the time he was 33 begin to cry because there
were no more worlds left to conquer. But he chose to distribute his power as a precious gift and, in the end, his
integrity required that he allow himself to be killed rather than begin the uprising that his followers desperately
wanted to have.
Well, you may be saying to yourself, but I don’t have that kind of power. I’m just a regular person—who would
I possibly oppress? Let me ask you to do this. Think of the places where you live your life—your home, your
work, your clubs, your PTA, your church. Ask yourself this question—in each of those places, is there someone
present who can say “No” to me, and I have to listen? When I want something at home, is there someone who
has the power to tell me I cannot have it? When I plan to do something at work, is there someone who has the
power to tell me I cannot do things that way? Is there anyone I have to obey? In my positions of leadership here
at church or elsewhere, do I pretty much do the things I want to do? These are hard questions—particularly hard
for those of us who like to get our way pretty much all the time. How do you give up power in your areas of
expertise? I remember when my children were small talking to women who would not leave their husbands
alone with the children. “He’ll just feed them garbage,” they’d say, or “He’ll let them jump on the furniture” or
something like this. The children were their area of power and they had no intention of ceding that power to the
lower order. Here is the thing, though—how does a person learn to be a parent unless the other parent lets them
try things their own way? How does an intern improve on the job if he or she is never making any decisions and
learning from the failures? And, just as importantly, how will the one in power ever grow, ever learn, if he or
she never gives those in lower positions and chance to teach?
In order to grow, we must understand what power is and how it works. Power is what a boss or a manager has
over his or her employees; power is what a teacher has over his or her students; power is what a parent has over
his or her children; more than that—teenagers, even children, are not exempt from this struggle: power is also
what the girl at school who understands all the social rules has over the girl who doesn’t; power is what they
guy who is the best basketball player or the greatest guitar player has over the guy who hasn’t figured his talents
out yet; power is what the one wearing Prada has over the one wearing Wal-Mart. And we all struggle with it—
at some point, each and every day, we are either wielding our power or struggling to get more. Even
organizations, businesses, and institutions are not free from this struggle. No organization grows when it
believes it has already figured out the way things ought to be done. Out there in the world right now, there are
young people completely revamping the way church works—and if the Church, with its buildings and
seminaries and retirement funds—if that church never listens to those young voices, how will it grow?
The thing is that if no one ever tells us “no,” if the people around us are consistently asked to bend to our way
of doing things, then both sides are losing out. Those without power are unable to reach their full potential—
they must concede and concede and get along and live without the things they want. They must defer their
dreams because they do not have the power to bring them about. But if we are holding onto that power, then we
are losing out as well because the first requirement of learning, the first step in the path to growth is humility—
no person learns who thinks he or she already has all the answers.
Now, don’t hear me wrong and don’t misquote me—I am not advocating, nor does the Bible advocate, a world
where no one has power over another. I have given you Jesus as the model and Jesus was not one to toss the
baby out with the bathwater. Jesus was the unquestionable leader of his disciples and he went regularly to the
tabernacles to read scriptures and teach. Bosses are meant to boss—parents are meant to parent—leaders are
meant to lead. The point is not to give away every bit of power so that we are rendered useless—the point is to
be open to what those around us have to offer.
As with most of the teachings of Jesus and of the Bible as a whole, this idea of sharing our power with each
other has little to do with pleasing God, except in the sense that it pleases God for us to be our best selves. The
truth is, that we are not meant to function alone—everything, every single thing about our existence screams to
us that we are utterly dependent on each other. I’ve heard women talk from time to time about a world with no
men. I have to tell you that it is my belief that a world with no men would have 7 billion sororities—each with
one member who had blackballed the other 6 billion +. And when we begin to understand this, we begin to have
some concept of what the word “love” actually means—it isn’t a mere feeling, a sensation that comes because a
guy is cute or a girl has great legs. Love is the act of giving up power over the things we care about most so that
someone else can thrive—and if I love you and you love me and we are looking out for each other, then I don’t
have to fight for my rights and you don’t have to fight for yours. I recognize in you something I want access
to—and I’m willing to give up being in charge in order to get it.
You might wonder about that song from “Camelot,” with its cheesy, romantic ending and why it fits with this
message. Well, if it were just about romantic love, it wouldn’t. But here’s the thing—when Arthur is forced to
face the public knowledge of Guinevere’s love for Lancelot—a treasonable offense, since she is the king’s wife,
for which she can be burned at the stake—he has to make a choice. Will he sacrifice his wife for his kingdom’s
sake—will he let her burn at the stake so that he can go forward with the movement he has created there at
Camelot? In the end, he resolves that the dream of Camelot must die, and Lancelot must be sent word so that he
can save Guinevere, even though this will inevitably lead to war. Despite the fact that everyone will know that
he warned Lancelot, that they will see it as a sign of weakness and Arthur’s reputation and power will be
destroyed, Arthur cannot sacrifice the one he loves on that altar. How to handle a woman or a man? A boss or
an employee? A child or a parent? A chairperson or a council member? Well, if you will define love as Jesus
did, as a word which means being ready to give something up in service of that love, then mark me well, I will
tell you all—the way to handle a person, is to love her, love him, love her.