“WHO IS THE MOTHER?”

Rev. James Singleton

5/9/10
1 KINGS 3:16-28

The wise King of Israel, Solomon, has before him two women who both gave birth to sons within three days of one another. One woman’s son died in the night. When the woman whose son was still living awoke, she noticed that she had a dead son who wasn’t hers, and the other woman had her living son.

Desperate to reclaim her rightful son, the mother goes before the king to tell her story, but, of course, the other woman claims that her son is the living one and the first mother is lying. In a world before DNA tests, what is a wise king to do? It is the age-old problem of “she said, she said.” How is Solomon to determine the true mother?

He calls for a sword and orders that the living child be divided in two and half given to each woman. With a cry of compassion one of the women pleads: “Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not kill him!”  

But the other woman agrees with the settlement and says that if she can’t have it no one will have it, go ahead and divide it. With those words, Solomon’s eyes light up. He suddenly knows who the real mother is and so do we.

Whenever this story is told, it is the Wisdom of Solomon that takes center stage. But today it is not Solomon’s wisdom I want to feature. Rather, I want to lift up the action of the woman who proved to be the undisputed mother of the child in dispute. How did she prove it?

The Bible says that it was out of “compassion” that the real mother spoke up as she did. But what we see here is really more than even compassion. What we see is a mother willing to do the unthinkable—give her son up to another woman if that’s what it took to save his life.

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf and his wife had taken their adopted three-month-old son to visit his birth mother. Volf admits that even though he was deeply, profoundly grateful for the gift of his son, he still had a lingering negative view of a mother who would give up her baby, for any reason. It just didn’t seem right. But during that meeting his mind changed profoundly.

The child’s birth mother handed him a letter she had written and asked Professor Volf to read it to the boy later. “I did it for you,” she wrote to her child. “Someday you will understand.”

Volf reflects: “She loved him for his own sake and therefore she would rather have suffered his absence if he flourished than to have enjoyed his presence if he languished.” Like the mother in our story, she was willing to let him go, release him from her care—but not from her love—if that is what it took to save his life.

The other woman’s reaction was quite different. Her focus was solely upon herself, not this child. She didn’t care about what happened to this child. In fact, notice that she calls him an “it”: “divide it,” she says to the king. For her, the child was a thing to be used for her own gratification or thrown away if it became an inconvenience or a burden. She was unwilling to sacrifice anything for the sake of this child. She was not the Mom.

Did you know that there are websites devoted to selling “Hi Mom!” tee shirts and “Hi Mom!” bumper stickers? Recently, while campaigning in Texas, Sarah Palin showed the palm of her hand on which was written the words, “Hi Mom!”

Lebron James has tattooed on his right shoulder the name Gloria. That’s not his girlfriend—that’s his mom. People are often fiercely loyal to their mothers. Why?

Poet Billy Collins wrote a poem entitled The Lanyard. The poet recalls a craft project at summer camp years ago and writes:

…I sat at a workbench at a camp

by a deep Adirondack lake

learning to braid long thin plastic strips

into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,

lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,

and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,

and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,

and here is clothing and a good education.

And here is your lanyard, I replied,

which I made with a little help from a counselor. 

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

strong legs, bones and teeth,

and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

And here, I wish to say to her now,

is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,

but the rueful admission that when she took

the two-toned lanyard from my hand,

I was as sure as a boy could be

that this useless, worthless thing I wove

out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

A mother’s love is a love willing to give so much and ask for so little in return, and then cherishes the little given in return. It is a love that, as Paul says, bears all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” And, maybe most of all, it is a love willing to let go when letting go is the most loving thing to do.

From the first cutting of the umbilical cord, a mother experiences the pain of letting go so that her child may live. And then there’s the letting go of the hand so he can take the first hesitant steps; letting go of the bike handles so she can wobble down the street; letting go as they climb up the steps into the bus to go and have other adults teach them; letting go as she leaves her pride and joy behind at college; letting go as her little child stands before another to vow eternal love.

I saw a TV interview of a mother who had single-handedly raised a large family. In spite of all the frustrations, disappointments and obstacles, she had persevered and every one of her children had made remarkable achievements, not only in their schooling but also in their vocations.

During the interview, the mother was asked her secret by the reporter who said, “I suppose you loved all your children equally, making sure that all got the same treatment?”  

The mother replied, “I loved them. I loved them all, each one of them, but not equally. I loved the one the most that was down until she was up. I loved the one the most that was weak until she was strong. I loved the one the most that was hurt until he was healed. I loved the one the most that was lost until she was found.”

Do you hear what she is saying? She is saying that there were times when, in order for her to be a mother, she had to sacrifice and let go.

• She had to let go of them so that they might make their own mistakes and then she had to let go of the disappointment she felt because they made those mistakes.
• She had to let go of them and allow them to get lost, and then she had to let go of her hurt feelings in order to find them.
• She had to let go of them so that they might pursue their own dreams and she had to let go of her own dreams for them when they were not realized.
• She had to let go of her children’s sins and failures and the frustrations, anger, and heartache that they caused her over the years.

Letting go is never easy, but it is the way a mother loves her children. A mother’s love is sacrificial love.

In the 1985 film, “Eleni” (el LEE ni), based upon a true story, Eleni is a mother who lives in a Greek village that is being threatened by the communists in the 1940s. Her husband has immigrated to the United States where he plans to earn enough money to bring the family to live. When the communists demand that each family provide a child to be recruited into the “people’s army,” Eleni begins to devise a plan to get her children out of the country.

She talks one of the few men left in the village into taking the children over the mountains to safety, but she herself is unable to go right away. She has received an unexpected call to a work detail by the communists. If she doesn’t show up, she runs the risk of exposing that something is amiss.

She kisses her children goodbye, forcing herself to let them go so that they might live, while she herself will remain behind to create a diversion. The plan is carried out in darkness and is successful, but when it is uncovered, Eleni is arrested and accused of conspiring to defeat the revolution.

(SHOW PICTURE)

She is marched before a firing squad and as they aim their rifles, she lifts her arms in a crucifix form and triumphantly cries out, “MY CHILDREN!” And then she is killed.

Mother’s Day is a day in which we honor our mothers, those women in whom we have caught a glimpse of the love of Christ.

It is from the outstretched arms of the crucified Christ that we hear the voice of God cry out: “MY CHILDREN!” Like Christ, a real mother is the one willing to bear any burden, carry any pain, and take any risk if that is what it cost to give her children life.

And so Solomon knew which of the two women the real mother was. The woman who is willing to let go so that her child might live; the woman who is willing to bear and endure whatever she has to for the good of her child; the woman who loves as Christ loves: She is the mother.

Thank you, mothers, for loving us with God’s love; thank you God, for loving us with a mother’s love.  

REMOVE PICTURE

AMEN.