The Good Wife

One of the places in my life where I feel surely the presence of the Holy Spirit is in my sermon preparation. It is not as though the Holy Spirit speaks to me in a booming voice from the clouds telling me exactly the words I am to proclaim; nor do I feel my fingers guided over the keyboard to spell out some specific message. But I do often feel that I am given as gift, from completely beyond myself, occasional creative bursts. Maybe it is just the seed of an idea growing out of nowhere in my awareness. Or sometimes it may be a sudden focusing or clarifying of thoughts that had been random and scattered. Often it is an association, a link, which just comes to me between the propers of the day and some contemporary theme or illustration. Free association between the ancient words of Holy Scripture and experiences of contemporary life. Free association that is generated and guided, I am convinced, by the Holy Spirit.

Although when I tell you about today’s free association, you may wonder about the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Free association between the propers of the day and a (relatively) contemporary illustration or circumstance. Listen again to this morning’s collect, the Collect for this Sixth Sunday of Easter: "O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding…" Now the association. This past week I received an e-mail that included a piece from a magazine called Housekeeping Monthly, dated May 13, 1955. The piece was called "The good wife’s guide." Listen to some of the pointers that were offered to women who wished to be good wives in 1955:

• Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs.
• Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.
• Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper, etc. and then run a dust cloth over the tables.
• Be happy to see him. Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.
• Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first…
• Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.
  (To see the entire piece, click here.)

There were quite a few more instructions to the aspiring good wife. Some I just couldn’t bring myself to share. But I’m reminded (another free association) of a sermon one of my non-Episcopal colleagues gave at an ecumenical Thanksgiving service once in Houston. He was trying to stress how we are dependent upon God for everything in our lives. We are like, he said, a woman who without her husband is nothing. She has no name, no money, no credit cards, no identity…

That is not my point. Note that in the image inspired in me by the Holy Spirit, God fills the role of the wife. The wife who seeks so eagerly, so diligently, to prepare a place, a home, that is a place of peace, order and tranquility where we (the husband) can renew ourselves in body and spirit.

"O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding."

God has prepared for us good things, things that are so good they surpass our understanding. And God has done this simply out of love for us. The perfect wife of the 50’s might have had any number of motivations for seeking to fulfill the role laid out in this magazine article. A true love for her husband, certainly, moved many women, and a sincere desire to foster his happiness. But other pieces were undoubtedly mixed in: a sense of duty or obligation, a need to fulfill social expectation, or a desire to earn her husband’s affection or approval, especially if he hadn't already given it.

God acts purely and overwhelmingly out of love for us. God prepares good things for us beyond our understanding simply because God loves us. And even these extraordinary efforts of the perfect wife outlined in this homemaker's magazine are small and pale when compared to the preparations that God makes for us, the gifts that God offers to us.

The phrase that really struck me in the good wife’s guide was the one that articulated her overall goal. Your goal, the article said, is to make the home a place where body and spirit can be renewed. Surely that and more are what God offers us. Good things that are beyond our understanding, the collect says. Good things that are beyond our wildest expectations or imagining. A place of renewal. Renewal. New hope. New life. New peace. New vision. New health. New direction. New strength. New joy. Renewal. Beyond our expectation or understanding.

"O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire…"

This collect is wonderfully reassuring. Assuring us of God’s profound and loving preparations for us, so that we may obtain God’s promises exceeding all that we can even desire. And yet… Did you really listen? As powerfully reassuring as this collect is, it also catches me up short. "O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding." So there are conditions, the collect seems to imply. God may make these wonderful preparations for us out of God’s unconditional love, but there are conditions upon our receiving God’s bounty. Maybe it’s not such a good deal after all. The rewards are given only to some. Does this really mean that unless we have a certain love for God, we will not be given what God has prepared for us?

Well, yes, that is what it means.

In addition to reading a fifty-year-old homemaking magazine, I also did a little more scholarly reading this week as well. Today’s collect comes from the Middle Ages. Like so much in our Prayer Book, its roots are in Scripture. 1 Corinthians 2:9 – "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him – these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit." The collect itself would have been written originally in Latin. And Latin, like many other languages, is richer than English and has several different words that all get translated into "love" in English. There’s love, the feeling, the gushing warmth within the heart. There’s the altruistic sort of love. But the love in this collect, the love that we are asked to show towards God, has to do with will. It is not a feeling. It is an expression of will. It is a choice to act in a certain way.

We must choose to walk through the doorway of God’s household if we are to receive the promises that have been prepared for us. The place of renewal is all ready. God has made it ready. There are no conditions set on God’s offering. But we must choose to walk through the door. That’s all there is to it. But we must make that choice.

A lot of times that means choosing to turn away from other things. In this morning’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles Paul says to the Athenians, "I see how extremely religious you are in every way. I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship." Paul is probably talking about shrines to pagan gods that stood throughout Athens. But I like to imagine him walking about our streets today and looking carefully at the objects of our worship. People worship what they value. If Paul walked about our streets what evidence would he see of what we value, what would he imagine to be our objects of worship? Fast food. Shopping places where bigger is better, where having choices is more important than filling needs. Athletic venues where children can compete seven days a week. Human building projects displacing more and more soil and trees. But Paul would also see our churches, built prominently on hilltops, their crosses and spires reaching heavenwards. We walk, we drive these streets.  We may choose, we must choose, what to worship. We must choose whether to enter the household of God or to follow other paths, to worship other things. Obviously, we have all made the "right" choice this particular morning, but the choices lie before us throughout our lives, every day.  Not just on Sunday morning, but throughout our lives, we must choose what path to follow.

The household of God is prepared for us. A place of wondrous renewal for body and soul. And if we choose to come home, God will be very happy to see us.

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