Holding on and Letting Go
Mothers Day, May 8, 2011
Intro:
I have a suspicion that four words will be spoken more today than any other day of the year: I love you mom. It is a cultural holiday, not a Biblical one, but we’ve come to see it as part of our obedience to the 5th commandment, honor your father and mother. That would only be a negative thing if it was somehow exceptional – the rest of the time we were not honoring our parents, but for one day of the year we do. For most of us, though certainly not all of us, today will be a day of positives, remembering the good, affirming the ideas of self-sacrifice and care and unconditional love that mark the best of motherhood.
As I thought and prayed about what to speak about today, two stories from Scripture came to mind to share. They are stories of mothers, but I want to broaden the meaning so it applies to all of us, and so I want to frame them around one of my favorite themes which I’ll phrase today in the form of a question: as citizens of God’s Kingdom, what does it really mean to love? Obviously that is a huge question, and so today I’m only going to explore one small aspect of it in these two stories, and so I want to be clear about that up front: this is only one small part of what it means to love, but it is an important one.
Holding Tight and Letting Go:
What does it really mean to love? Let me pull one line out of Ecclesiastes 3, the famous passage that begins For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. The line I want to pull out is from verse 5, where Solomon writes time to embrace and a time to turn away. Put another way, a time to hold on and a time to let go.
There are obvious times to embrace – a mutual expression of affection, a way of demonstrating care and acceptance, a way to share a celebration. We need more of that! In answer to my question what does it really mean to love, the embracing is an easy one. But let’s go a step further: when is holding on a way of love? Again, there are times when holding on is very obviously the best thing: holding on as we walk through a crowd, holding on to hope during times of discouragement, holding on to our dedication to one another during seasons of stress and conflict, holding on to our commitments to one another when those start to get hard. Last week I was putting Joanne’s snow tires away in the rafters of my garage – I got the last one up and rested it on a board, and then shifted my weight on the ladder so I could push it to the right spot and the ladder twisted and then fell out from under me – holding on to the rafters was obviously the best thing for me (I dangled for a moment, then was able to shift along and swing to a place where I could safely jump down).
But then I went to Scripture, specifically to the examples of mothers in the Bible, and the stories I read were not of mothers holding on. The examples of love were not of clinging, of embracing, they were of letting go. Even as I wracked my brain to recall other stories, where this idea of holding on tightly in relationships was predominant, I couldn’t really remember any. The predominant stories were of letting go. Let me tell you two of those, simply by reading the extended story just as it appears in Scripture. First, the story of Hanna.
Hanna (1 Sam 1:1-28):
1 There was a man named Elkanah who lived in Ramah in the region of Zuph in the hill country of Ephraim. He was the son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, of Ephraim. 2 Elkanah had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah did not.
3 Each year Elkanah would travel to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of Heaven’s Armies at the Tabernacle. The priests of the Lord at that time were the two sons of Eli—Hophni and Phinehas. 4 On the days Elkanah presented his sacrifice, he would give portions of the meat to Peninnah and each of her children. 5 And though he loved Hannah, he would give her only one choice portion because the Lord had given her no children. 6 So Peninnah would taunt Hannah and make fun of her because the Lord had kept her from having children. 7 Year after year it was the same—Peninnah would taunt Hannah as they went to the Tabernacle. Each time, Hannah would be reduced to tears and would not even eat.
8 Why are you crying, Hannah? Elkanah would ask. Why aren’t you eating? Why be downhearted just because you have no children? You have me—isn’t that better than having ten sons?
9 Once after a sacrificial meal at Shiloh, Hannah got up and went to pray. Eli the priest was sitting at his customary place beside the entrance of the Tabernacle. 10 Hannah was in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord. 11 And she made this vow: O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, if you will look upon my sorrow and answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you. He will be yours for his entire lifetime, and as a sign that he has been dedicated to the Lord, his hair will never be cut.
12 As she was praying to the Lord, Eli watched her. 13 Seeing her lips moving but hearing no sound, he thought she had been drinking. 14 Must you come here drunk? he demanded. Throw away your wine!
15 Oh no, sir! she replied. I haven’t been drinking wine or anything stronger. But I am very discouraged, and I was pouring out my heart to the Lord. 16 Don’t think I am a wicked woman! For I have been praying out of great anguish and sorrow.
17 In that case, Eli said, go in peace! May the God of Israel grant the request you have asked of him.
18 Oh, thank you, sir! she exclaimed. Then she went back and began to eat again, and she was no longer sad.
19 The entire family got up early the next morning and went to worship the Lord once more. Then they returned home to Ramah. When Elkanah slept with Hannah, the Lord remembered her plea, 20 and in due time she gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, I asked the Lord for him.
21 The next year Elkanah and his family went on their annual trip to offer a sacrifice to the Lord. 22 But Hannah did not go. She told her husband, Wait until the boy is weaned. Then I will take him to the Tabernacle and leave him there with the Lord permanently.
23 Whatever you think is best, Elkanah agreed. Stay here for now, and may the Lord help you keep your promise. So she stayed home and nursed the boy until he was weaned.
24 When the child was weaned, Hannah took him to the Tabernacle in Shiloh. They brought along a three-year-old bull for the sacrifice and a basket of flour and some wine. 25 After sacrificing the bull, they brought the boy to Eli. 26 Sir, do you remember me? Hannah asked. I am the woman who stood here several years ago praying to the Lord. 27 I asked the Lord to give me this boy, and he has granted my request. 28 Now I am giving him to the Lord, and he will belong to the Lord his whole life. And they worshiped the Lord there.
How could she do it? After the years of agony and mocking, she finally gives birth to a son and is restored to a place of honor, the shame is ended, she could now go back to Penninah and get back at her for the abuse, she finally got what she’d always wanted. But she didn’t hold on. How could she take her newly-weaned child and give him to the Lord, leave him in the temple with Eli, and let go?
At least Hanna was able to let go of her son and leave him in a place of safety. This second story goes even further – this next mother has to let go of her son into danger.
Jochebed (Exodus 2:1-10)
The second mother whose story I want to tell is a woman named Jochebed – a name you won’t recognize but you’ll recognize the name of her son. I’m going to read the story from Exodus 2 in a moment, but first let me set the stage by summarizing Exodus 1. God’s people had fled famine in the Promised Land and settled in Egypt, and after a couple of generations they had grown so large as to become a potential threat to the existing Pharaoh. So the Pharaoh made a plan – he would enslave the Israelites, force them into hard labour, hoping to wear them down and weaken them. But it didn’t work, so he got more drastic – he ordered the killing of all newborn Hebrew boys. First he commanded the mid-wives to kill them at childbirth, but they disobeyed, so then the Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: Throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River. But you may let the girls live.
1 About this time, a man and woman from the tribe of Levi got married. 2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She saw that he was a special baby and kept him hidden for three months. 3 But when she could no longer hide him, she got a basket made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile River. 4 The baby’s sister then stood at a distance, watching to see what would happen to him.
5 Soon Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the river, and her attendants walked along the riverbank. When the princess saw the basket among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it for her. 6 When the princess opened it, she saw the baby. The little boy was crying, and she felt sorry for him. This must be one of the Hebrew children, she said.
7 Then the baby’s sister approached the princess. Should I go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you? she asked.
8 Yes, do! the princess replied. So the girl went and called the baby’s mother.
9 Take this baby and nurse him for me, the princess told the baby’s mother. I will pay you for your help. So the woman took her baby home and nursed him.
10 Later, when the boy was older, his mother brought him back to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her own son. The princess named him Moses, for she explained, I lifted him out of the water.
How could she do it? She took a 3 month old down to the river, put him in a basket, and floated him away. I love the sly obedience to the Pharaoh’s order, that every boy had to be thrown in the river. And then the miracle – saved by the Pharaoh’s daughter and returned to his mother to be nursed (with the added bonus of being paid!). But it is a medium-term arrangement – Jochebed has to take her son and let him go a second time, to be adopted by another woman and raised as her son. How hard would that have been?
So what’s the point?
These two stories are two of the most prominent stories of mothers in Scripture, and the main element in both stories that of letting go. So what is the point for us today, especially as we broaden from looking at motherhood to the overall question of what does it really mean to love? It is not that we should take our kids down to the North Saskatchewan river or drop them off outside my office door, as appealing as that may be at difficult moments in parenthood.
I think the message is this: one of the hardest, yet most necessary, parts of loving (and now I’m speaking of more than just motherhood or even parenthood) is letting go. Ecclesiastes says a time to embrace and a time to turn away, Hanna took Samuel and left him at the temple, Zochebed floated Moses down the Nile and then took him back to the Pharaoh’s daughter. And that must have been incredibly hard. So why do we have to?
It is because of this: in our sinful world, holding on often does more harm than letting go. Love, which is the goal of all of this in the first place, cannot grow where it is forced. The embrace must be mutual – a one-sided hug that doesn’t let go is not welcome or beautiful.
Think of another story – the prodigal son – where God is represented as the father whose younger son demands his share of the cash and takes off to waste it, and very nearly comes to the point of death. The father in the story doesn’t try to stop him. He doesn’t command, restrict, punish, manipulate, or build walls and fences. He lets him go. He (the Father) suffers rejection, humiliation, and deep personal anguish. The father takes the pain on the chin, accepts the worry and anxiety, and watches his son walk away from the place of love and safety and into an adventure that nearly kills him. Because his love for his son is so strong that he does not force it, but lets him go.
And then waits for him to come back.
In all these stories – Hanna’s, Jochebed’s, the prodigal, the best comes after the letting go. Samuel grows to become one of the great prophets of Israel, Moses leads God’s people out of slavery, the prodigal comes to his senses and returns home eager to have a relationship again.
I say none of this lightly. I sat this week across the table from my brother, and heard and felt his anguish as he talked of saying goodbye to his daughters. It is a long and painful story which I won’t get into now, but I watched as he described having to do exactly what I’m talking about, love enough to let his 16 and 18 year-old daughters go. It is one of those things I don’t even want to imagine going through personally. But what is the alternative? It would be to build cages, to do anything and everything to try to hold on and control and contain. And love cannot grow in a cage. Love cannot exist where there is no free choice to embrace or not to embrace – that is why God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the perfect garden of Eden, so that love could be a real possibility instead of forced through control and lack of choice.
Conclusion:
I wish it were easier. I wish there was another way. But when I ask the question, as citizens of the Kingdom of God, what does it mean to love?, one important part of the answer is that it means we let go. We make it not about us. What if Hanna or Jochebed or the Father of the prodigal had made it about themselves? Hanna would not have taken Samuel to the temple, Jochebed would not have taken Moses back to Pharaoh’s daughter, the Father would have refused to give the inheritance, put a lock on the son’s door, and hired a private investigator to follow him everywhere he went. I really think that this idea of letting go is part of a much bigger part of loving, which is about it being self-less. About making sure that our relationships are striving for the best for others and not for ourselves, about not forcing things out of fear of how this will reflect on us or how it might make us look like bad people or bad parents, but rather having the courage to love enough to let those we love be free to choose for themselves. God does that for us. And we often blow it, make a mess, hurt ourselves and hurt others in the process; those we love will most likely do the same.
And then God loves us more deeply. Instead of condemnation and punishment, He offers us forgiveness and an incredibly costly reconciliation. The Father waits at the end of the path and throws a party when the son comes home.
That is what the Kingdom of God is supposed to be – a place where people want to be, where they choose to be, where they come freely because of how much they are loved rather than feeling like they were caged and forced to be there. I think there is application in this to us as we parent, but my point is far broader. Can we create, by the power of the Holy Spirit, a reflection of the Kingdom of God that is all about celebrating the choice to return and join the party, and not about trying to force a good thing on others? Can we adjust our understanding of Christianity so that it no longer is that of a people who don’t do this and don’t do that and who condemn this and condemn that, and make it instead about a Kingdom where freedom and love are so attractive that all the temporary pleasures of sin absolutely pale in comparison, so that our message is truly one of love first, which stands as a clear example of a better way of living than the sinful and destructive ways of living in the culture of our world. I think we can. I think we must. That’s what I want to be a part of, that is what I want to build.
Jesus taught us to pray for the coming of His Kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven. That Kingdom is one where we are freely welcomed, freely forgiven, freely restored, and freely celebrated. And a natural thing happens, often out of a good desire for others to also experience this great love – we try to pressure people into it. We try to force. We try to hold on tightly, because we know how good it is for them. But that never works – it is back to the cage. Its back to the one-sided hug. Instead, we must model and invite. Demonstrate and tell. But never arm twist or manipulate. Love must be freely chosen.
One of the early lessons I learned as a dad still holds true. When Thomas was young I used to take him by the hand, or pull him close in a hug, and I still do. But I notice something: if I tried to hold his hand more tightly, his instinct was to pull away. If I tried to hold him in a hug tightly, he’d start to struggle to get free. Now he is older, and the same thing happens. If he doesn’t choose to hold my hand or give me a hug, it is not a good experience. But when he does, and we share it together, it is beautiful. Jesus does the same to us – He holds out His hands, He opens His arms, and then invites us in. He doesn’t cling or grab and He never forces, He just invites. And when we pull away, as hard as it is on Him, He lets us go.
And then He waits for us to return, and when we choose to come back, we choose to embrace, the party welcomes us again.
