It is very appropriate that Margaret join me in bringing the message today… appropriate not only because she is a mother, but also because today’s message was inspired by both of our mothers … both hers and mine.
Several years ago my mother was sitting in her living room reading the newspaper with its usual dreary display of wars and rumors of war, with page after page of deceit, theft, muggings, and all the rest. She threw the paper down in disgust and snapped with an irritated air, "Why can’t we all just learn to love each other?" "Why can’t we all just learn to love each other?” And I, theologian that I am supposed to be, made some learned reply about the pervasiveness of human sin, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” and all that … but she just shook her head and said, "Well, I don’t see why we have to have all this fighting."
Then, more recently, when I was in Louisville just a few weeks ago, I spent one evening with Margaret’s parents. We watched the national news, which treated us to accounts of fighting in Israel, bombings in Ireland, and the beginning of a revolt in Poland. And immediately after that we subjected ourselves to a real blockbuster entertainment show... a documentary about Rommel’s Africa campaign during the Second World War. Real fun evening! But not without reward … for three or four times, every time we saw a battle scene, my mother-in-law pronounced "You men are all so silly ... fighting and killing. You don’t see women doing that."
Never mind that most nations do not draft women into combat roles. And never mind that the Israeli troops do include women. Again she pronounced the verdict, and it fell on my head and on my father-in-law like the last judgment had come; "You men are all so silly."
And so on this mother’s day, Margaret and I pay tribute to our mothers and their sage advice, couched in language that every political scientist in the world would call naïve: mothers who seem to have an answer that the rest of the world cannot buy; mothers who cut through all the rhetoric and call for peace and justice and reconciliation and love. "Why can’t we all just learn to love each other?" "You men are all so silly"
The truth is, I suppose, that those who labor to give life hold it too dearly to let it go. Those who have borne life at no little cost to themselves know what its value is. Those who have spent many years nurturing and caring and bringing us along want to preserve us and to preserve our lives and our meaning. Maybe we should hear from them. Maybe we should not dismiss what mothers feel about the way the world carries on its business ... for they have earned the right to be heard. They have to be heard, for, you see, those who bring life into the world in pain care deeply about its value and want to bring peace and love.
David had been king for some years, and he was growing old. After the terrible business with Bathsheba, repentant though he had been, it seemed he had learned very little. His kingdom was not in good shape, and his household was a real shambles. Too many wives competing for his attention, and, worst of all, too many children struggling for power. Too much intrigue in the palace and too much faction-building around the country.
David’s family suffered one crisis after another, brought on through his children, but sharpened and worsened by the old man. The most distasteful episode was the rape of one of David’s daughters, Tamar, by her own half-brother, Amnon. Imagine, in the royal palace a princess violated by a prince ... and what does the king do? How does David respond? With two years of silence, two years of brooding and hoping it will all go away.
But it will not go away. There is another player on the stage. Absalom .. Absalom, the brother of Tamar; Absalom, David’s son, headstrong, impatient, arrogant, handsome, ambitious. Absalom nurses a hatred and a grudge for what has happened to Tamar, and he takes it into his own hands to punish Amnon. In a terrible moment of deceit and trickery, but one which his father David had pioneered years before, Absalom arranges for Amnon his half-brother to be killed. And word comes to King David of the death of his son. His grief is terrible, and is made even worse by the fact that he keeps it inside ... he will not give expression to his grief. In silence he stews about what to with his wayward son. For three years Absalom stays away from Jerusalem, not knowing how his father will receive him, not sure what the penalty will be. Silence, standing off.
I hope you got the time sequence here … Amnon rapes Tamar, and two years go by with the king, David, doing nothing. Then Absalom takes justice into his own hands and waits for the king’s response, and three more years go by with the king, David, doing nothing. Five years of a peculiar peace that is not peace.
You might think that’s okay. You might suppose that’s all right. But I tell you the cause of peace is not served when justice is delayed. The cause of peace among nations does not benefit from the weakness that waits and waits and hopes the trouble will go away. And more to the point, the cause of harmony in the home and in the family is not served well by the weakness that refuses to address problems. You and I might suppose that when one of our children goes wrong we can deal with it by playing a waiting game, but more than likely we are waiting for nothing more than a time bomb to go off. David’s time bomb was Absalom. And the people knew it. David’ servants understood that something would have to be done to get him off dead center.
And so the story in the 14th chapter of II Samuel, in which a mother from Tekoa is enlisted to confront the king. A woman known for her wisdom and renowned for her ability to work the works of peace with her own sons is asked to play a little game with the king. She is to pretend to be the mother of sons who are at one another’s throats and is to ask the king’s counsel and decision about how to handle them. Today instead of reading the text we invite you to hear us recreate it and interpret it for you.
WOMAN: King David, I need your help. I need for you to help me see through what has happened in my family. Will you give me your judgment?
KING: Tell me what is wrong and I will help you.
WOMAN: I had two sons, but one of them became so angry, so violently angry with his brother. His anger led him to kill his brother. Oh, I tell you, it is an awful thing to see such hatred anywhere, but it is horrible beyond words to see hatred in your own household. There is something in us that makes anger among those of us who love each other, deep down, all the more terrifying.
But, Sir, everybody says I should write off this other son, too, and that I should see to it that he is severely punished. Everybody is in such a hurry for me to destroy him for what he has done. They say I should have him captured and put to death.
Sir, if I do that, I will have no sons. And if I do that, what will he learn? I know the law says an eye for an eye and a life for a life, but my heart tells me something else. What shall I do?
KING: Justice must be served. Just let me take it from here. I’ll do something … I’ll get around to it … but justice has to be served. That’s the law.
WOMAN: But, Sir, that may be justice, to let the executioner take his life. But that does not contribute to the future. Sir, let me take his punishment. Let me absorb his guilt. I am along in years and it will not matter if I go to prison or even if I die, if it must be. I ask only one thing – that no one destroy my son. He needs another chance. He needs to be turned around, not slaughtered for some abstract principle. If someone must suffer, let me be that someone.
KING: All right, all right, you don’t have to get dramatic on me. But I can promise that your son will not die. We’ll find some other way to deal with him. Stop your wailing, we will not execute this boy of yours.
WOMAN: Sir, now if that is what you really think, if that is now your best judgment, I am going to have to tell you something. But you aren’t going to like this much!
KING: What are you talking about? I’ve given you what you wanted. What else is there?
WOMAN: Well, to tell the truth, I’m not really talking about my sons. I’m talking about yours. It is not I who have a son who is running ahd hiding because of his guilt … it is you. And it it’s not I who would be torn by indecision and fear about my son … it is you, Sir. Whan are you going to see Absalom? And when will you get off dead center with your own son? We the people of the kingdom are afraid; we are afraid for you, Sir, because we see that your heart has no peace as long as you do not try to bring justice to this matter.
We are afraid for Absalom, because we see that he cannot live and grow as long as he knows he is not forgiven.
And we are afraid for ourselves, for this nation, for we know that when people who care deeply for each other refuse to acknowledge that, everybody around them gets hurt. Sir, if you and Absalom keep on pretending that nothing needs to be done, one of you will explode and you will bring us all to grief.
Sir, I beg you, go to your son, call him to your side; bring him to Jerusalem. It will hurt your pride, but do it, sir, for the sake of all of us.
KING: Woman, you have tricked me, but I hear you. I hear you. I hear you telling me that if we do not openly and honestly deal with one another, we will only let our hurts grow like cancers. I know that what you say is true. But to be honest about it, I just can’t let anybody know that a woman has persuaded me, tricked me, into doing something like this. I am too proud to do it … and so even though I know it’s the right thing to do, well, I am just going to sit here in the palace and nurse my pride some more. Just can’t look weak, you understand.
So I am going to let Absalom come back to Jerusalem. I’ll go that far. But he will not be welcome in my house, he will not be allowed in my presence, and I will never speak to him again. I mean, a king has to keep up his macho image someway, doesn’t he?
The Biblical story goes on from there to tell us that Absalom did in fact live in Jerusalem two more years without ever being invited to see his father, and every time he tried to visit his father, he was held off. No way could he enter the king’s presence. And so finally Absalom did what we today would call “acting out”: he set a field on fire to get attention, pure and simple, and at last got some time with David, who, when he saw his son for the first time, now in seven years, fell on him and kissed him.
Margaret, what do you make of the end of this story? What else do we learn from it?
MARGARET: I believe that we learn that in all human relationships there is pain. The best and the most intimate of relationships still involve some pain. And if we think we can solve that by keeping each other at arm’s length, well, we are mistaken. We only deepen and intensify the pain.
But when we reach out to forgive and to care for one another, when we do not delay this whole thing of struggling for understanding and reconciliation, then we can hasten the day when there is a sense of joy and fulfillment. And we may in fact prevent some terribly negative behavior in the process.
JOE: What does all this have to do with Mother’s Day?
MARGARET: At our best, we, like the mother of Tekoa, know that out of our pain, the pain of giving birth to children and the emotional pain of raising them, we don’t get hardened of toughened. Instead we are led to become compassionate. And we mothers might teach that to the rest of the world. You see, those who have endured pain in creating life and raising children want nothing more than to see life made complete and whole for everyone.
JOE: And what does all this have to do with the Gospel? Why should we talk like this in a Christian church?
MARGARET: Because the Gospel speaks of a God who is like a mother, preserving and protecting His own. And deeper yet, the Gospel speaks of a God who in Christ bore pain, infinite pain, in bringing us life and salvation. This God desires not the death of anyone. And as He has been willing to suffer in our place so that we might not have to die; as He has borne in the crucified Christ all the guilt and the pain of His wayward children in order to reach out to them and reconcile them to Himself – because a suffering Creator has done all this, we can understand how we are called to hurt for others, even our own children, in order to draw them close to us.
JOE: In other words, let’s turn the world over to the mothers. Let’s turn the world of straying children over to those who know compassion with justice. Let’s turn the world and those who need forgiveness over to mothers and to the God who comforts His world as a mother comforts her child. Let’s turn the world and ourselves over to the hope of reconciliation.
