“Let Their Works Be Seen—At the City Gate and the Political Sphere”
by Angela Valenzuela
Please read my tribute for Mother’s Day, based on a nuanced re-reading of Proverbs 31 and the writings of Episcopal priest, attorney, and theologian, and graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York, the Reverend Dr. Patrick Cheng, author of Radical love: Introduction to queer theology.
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| AI Generated by A. Valenzuela |
By Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
King Lemuel’s Mother giving advice to the King.
Proverbs 31 has too often been interpreted—and even weaponized—to confine women to narrow roles, uphold rigid gender norms, and sanctify domestic labor while ignoring the text’s deeper call to justice.
But when I revisited it last night, I didn’t just re-read it with a progressive lens—I reimagined it through the lens of queer theology, as Patrick Cheng invites us to do. What emerged was not a checklist for gendered virtue, but a bold and expansive vision of radical love in action.
The text begins with a mother’s warning to her son, a king: don’t waste your strength. Don’t lose yourself in privilege while the poor are denied justice. True leadership is rooted in moral clarity. It speaks up for those who cannot speak for themselves. It defends the vulnerable. It remembers the humanity of those our systems forget.
Then we are given a portrait—not of submissive womanhood—but of embodied wisdom: a person who leads with strength, builds economic independence, feeds others, uplifts workers, makes decisions, and extends hands to the poor. Their dignity is not performative. Their power is not inherited. It is created daily, through work, courage, and love.
Father Patrick Cheng writes that queer theology resists binaries-It belongs to anyone who labors in love and justice.
Patrick Cheng writes that queer theology resists binaries—it makes visible the divine in flesh and community, especially in the lives of those who defy the boxes they’ve been forced into. In that spirit, the “noble character” of Proverbs 31 is not confined to straight cisgender womanhood. It belongs to anyone who labors in love and justice—queer parents, nonbinary caregivers, trans organizers, radical kin-builders.
Let their works be praised at the city gate—and the Texas State Capitol, for our purposes, I might add.
Let us honor those who refuse invisibility. Who resist erasure. Who carry the weight of communities and still rise with wisdom on their tongues and fire in their hearts.
This is the vision we need now: Not one of narrow gender norms, but of liberatory embodiment. Not a gatekeeping morality, but a gospel of radical presence.
Because when we let the excluded lead, when we see divinity in every form of dignity—then, and only then, will justice roll down like waters (Amos 5:24).
Cheng, P. S. (2011). Radical love: Introduction to queer theology. Church Publishing, Inc.