1 Kings 3:5-12
Today, even with DNA testing, it might be complicated by surrogacy and in vitro fertilization, no longer just birth mothers and adopted mothers but also womb mothers and egg mothers. And even if a court could sort it all out, there would be the four-part Netflix special, Dateline or 20/20, as well as thousands of YouTube videos and Instragram posts offering every conceivable conspiracy theory and even a few that are inconceivable, a word that may not mean what you think it means. This is Jerry Springer’s world. We just live in it.
None of that technology was available when King Solomon was confronted with two mothers, when he ordered that a baby be sliced in two, split evenly between the two claimants.
It is the tale that is meant to illustrate Solomon’s great wisdom, a tale many of us heard as children ourselves, not just a tale of wisdom, but a macabre depiction of deception, albeit without any of the critical cultural context.
Spoiler: the baby is not split in two. Solomon discerns that the real mother is the one who prefers that the baby live, even if in the care of a child abductor.
Our reading today precedes that classic illustration of the wisdom of Solomon. It reveals the source of that great wisdom, when God offers the newly crowned king a boon, like a genie from a lamp, but offering only one solitary wish.
We are told the things Solomon might have requested, but does not: longevity, wealth, the death of his enemies. What Solomon does request and receive is “an understanding mind” and the ability “to discern between good and evil,” that he might better govern the people of Israel.
As is so often the case, the biblical tale of Solomon is more complicated than we care to remember, and undermines itself. He is born of a union that begins with rape and murder. His mother is one of at least eight wives of King David, with more than a dozen sons senior to Solomon. More rape, more murder, a son leading an attempted coup d’etat, a son attempting to seize the throne before David is even dead, and the maneuvering of Nathan and Bathsheba to put Solomon on the throne, then his reign begins with an ancient equivalent of the Night of Long Knives, when anyone who might threaten Solomon’s power is murdered.
Which explains why he didn’t wish for the death of his enemies, since there are none left.
Coercion and murder are not actually an auspicious beginning for a reign characterized by great wisdom.
Historically, Solomon would continue the expansion of the kingdom that David had created, and Israel would know a time of economic prosperity. He would build the first great Temple on Mount Zion. But Solomon’s reputation would come under attack by later religious reformers. He was accused of breaking covenant with Yahweh by marrying foreign wives who brought worship of other gods into the royal household, though he appears to have done so for diplomatic reasons. His son and successor, Rehoboam, was a man of bad character who would fail to keep the kingdom whole. The ten northern tribes broke off and declared their independence, setting in motion a decline that would end centuries later with the destruction of Jerusalem.
But that is the biblical history, and we are interested in the biblical story, for the story is meant to teach us something about God and about ourselves. And it turns out that while the story of the two mothers gives us justice, Solomon choosing the right mother, this passage also provides a model for the other two pillars of a faithful life.
Solomon does not ask anything for himself. He asks for the gift he needs to serve others, to serve God’s chosen people. We can quibble about the chosen part, certainly about the rule part, but we have to agree that Solomon is depicted here as being selfless in a defining moment.
Selflessness is better than selfishness, though we do not want to make the mistake of equating selflessness with virtue in all instances. The kamikaze pilot dying for an Imperial Japan that was racist and expansionist, that was guilty of countless crimes against humanity, was selfless, naive, and misguided, not virtuous. In the Jesus tradition, we align with the Great Commandment, “love God above all things, and love your neighbor as you love yourself,” then apply the overlay of the Good Samaritan parable, the midrash Jesus provides that demonstrates that every human is our neighbor.
A member of the Nazi SS was selfless in support of the selfish notion that an imagined Aryan race, and specifically the culturally German expression of that imagined race, was superior and therefore, selfishly entitled to appropriate the land and property of inferior races like Jews and Slavs. It was selflessness over and against neighbor. Solomon’s is not. He has a responsibility, one understood as coming from God. “O LORD my God, you have made your servant king,” he says.
Please give me the gift to serve well this people I have been called to lead, people with less power and privilege than me. That’s love, right there, love for neighbor in the everyone is my neighbor sense. In the Mr. Rogers sense. There is a reason the Presbyterian minister kept asking us to be his neighbor. We’re not at Good Samaritan neighbor-level, but we’re getting there.
Solomon’s request is not only selfless. It is humble. He asks for an understanding mind, an ability to discern.
It is easy to parse selfishness and selflessness, the former a sin, the latter a virtue. But we tend to blur things when it comes to hubris and humility. I’d call it intellectual humility, but that makes it sound academic, and there are so many ways of knowing that deserve our respect, the knowing of a craft or an art, the knowing of the spiritual teacher, of the wise person who walks lightly on the earth, adjusting their way to the ways of nature.
The thing is, humility is not always lauded, not always fashionable. And it isn’t just the way we, and especially the we who identify as male, are coached by culture to bluff, to pretend to know what we do not know. We have come to celebrate cynicism, a belief that the other guy is dishonest, untrustworthy, sinful. It is an inability to see the goodness in creation and in humankind. It is the constant refrain that everyone is corrupt, everyone is a predator. It is deeply pessimistic, alarmingly Calvinist, and it is what passes for cleverness in the social media space.
I mean, sure, there is some pretty blatant corruption out there. There is some pretty blatant racism. We are seeing it every day. But there are also plenty of ordinary folks just trying to get through their day and get along, imperfect people in imperfect systems who get it wrong sometimes, and not necessarily out of malice.
Twenty years ago, Stephen Colbert spoke to young people graduating from a college in Illinois that shares our Abolitionist heritage. He said to the graduates:
“Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no.”
Cynicism is hubris of the lowest kind. It is an insult to the goodness of God. It is an accident of language that it starts with the word sin, but absolutely perfect, for cynicism is sin, full stop.
Another quote, a portion of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic” speech delivered at the Sorbonne in 1910:
“There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt.”
Roosevelt points to the hubris, called here pride, but also the lack of selfless service, for his speech is about service. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,” he says in the gendered language of his age.
I know there are some incredibly unhappy people who are drawn to cynicism. Bill Maher has made an entire career out of snark, since his comedy routine that started this century titled “Be More Cynical.” I say be less cynical, less sinful, less prone to judge, for as you judge, so you will be judged, as the sometimes good book says.
May we govern one another with the humility and selflessness of Solomon, with the love of a Creator who filled the world and the Word with always shocking beauty. Amen.
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE concluding with the Lord’s Prayer
Let us pray.
Divine Mystery we name God,
Source and Mother of all that is and will be,
Hear us as we lean into connection,
the connections we choose with one another,
the connections that make us
one moment in the recycled life of star stuff.
We pray for Spain and for France
as fires rage,
threatening people and their homes,
animals and their habitats,
the living planet itself,
the soil that is alive
with roots and fungi.
We pray for ourselves,
that in these moments of prayer
when we stop,
de-center ourselves,
we might see a path forward,
might disconnect from the false consciousness
of the cult of consumerism,
from the marketing and media
that tells us we never have enough,
are never enough.
Jesus dared to believe we could be better,
believed living in your just and caring realm
was a choice.
May we say “Yes!”
as we pray words he taught us, saying:
Our Father..