Parenting Lessons from a Hot Momma

       This morning I want to show you one of my artistic creations from the 6^th grade.  It’s kind of small.  So I’ve projected some pictures on the screens. 

       It’s an amazing volcano ash tray – or nowadays it would be an amazing volcano incense burner.  You put the incense in the side and the smoke comes out the top --- just like a real volcano. 

       It didn’t work well.  There wasn’t enough airflow to keep something lit.  But that didn’t matter to my mom.  My mom didn’t smoke. But I had made it so she kept it.  I found it when we were going through my parent’s home after they died.

       Moms keep things.  They keep bad pottery, hand prints in plaster and preschool report cards. 

       This Mother’s Day morning I want to introduce you to a mother who kept much more than a poem written in third grade.  She was a woman who did everything she could to keep her sons intact. Her name is Rizpah.

       I’ll be willing to bet that you have never heard a Mother’s Day sermon on Rizpah.  She’s not included in the usual Mother’s Day lineup.  For one thing, she is an unmarried mother.  She was one of King Saul's concubines.  This means she was an approved mistress -- approved by Mrs. Saul!  We know that having mistresses – even “approved” ones – is contrary to God’s will.  But it’s the way kings did things in those days.   

       The name Rizpah means "hot or glowing stone."  Rizpah is a hottie – a very beautiful woman.  That’s the chief requirement for a concubine.  She bears Saul two sons.

       Our text in 2 Samuel 21 has its historical setting after Saul has died and David is King. I’ll warn you that it’s not a pretty story.  It reads like one of those nasty stories that you find from time to time in the Old Testament.  But it’s also a very powerful story with a powerful message about parenting for both fathers and mothers.  

Read 2 Samuel 21:1-14

       As the story opens we learn that Israel has been going through a three year famine.  Things are bad.  David and the rest of the people conclude (correctly) that God is punishing them. So David finally goes to the Lord in prayer and asks what they are being punished for. God's tells David that the famine has come because of something that happened during the reign of Saul. The former King had attacked a group of people called the Gibeonites.

        In order to understand why this was bad you have to turn to the book of Joshua Chapter 9.  The Gibeonites pulled a scam on the children of Israel at the time of the conquest. The Israelites were clearing the land and the Gibeonites, seeing that they were in the path of destruction, sent a group of people to establish a treaty with Israel. They told the Israelites they were from a far away place and presented "evidence" to prove that they had journeyed a long way. The Israelites are taken in. In Joshua 9:15 we read, "Joshua made a treaty of peace with them to let them live, and the leaders of the Assembly ratified it by oath".  It was this promise that Saul breaks when he goes after the Gibeonites many years later.

       God takes our promises seriously. When we make a vow to the Lord, He expects us to keep our word! When we make marriage vows, God expects us to keep our promise to Him and to our mate. When we take an oath to tell the truth in court, He expects us to tell the truth. When we sign our name at the bottom of a document He expects us to meet the obligations we accept. It didn't matter that the Gibeonites had tricked Joshua.  It didn't matter that it was a foolish treaty. It didn't matter that decades have passed. They made the treaty under oath and God expects Israel to keep their promise -- not so much to the Gibeonites but to Him!

       Saul decides that the Gibeonites are unfinished business from the conquest and tries to exterminate them. God tells David that Saul’s oath breaking then is the reason for the famine now.  So David calls the Gibeonites together to ask how to repair the wrong Saul did to them. He asks, "What shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord?"  

       The Gibeonites refuse to take money. They want Saul’s family wiped out just as Saul wanted them wiped out.  They say, “Let seven of Saul’s sons be handed over to us, and we will impale them before the Lord at Gibeon on the mountain of the Lord."

        This is where Rizpah enters the story.  Two of the men impaled by the Gibeonites are her sons.  The other five men are the sons of Merab, daughter of Saul.

        Rizpah's response to the death of her sons is to guard their bodies.  She camps on the mountain for six months to keep the wild animals and carrion birds away. This is no small feat.  It is a long, hard, courageous vigil. Rizpah can’t bring her sons back to life but she will do what she can.   

        A seminary student in Ft. Worth, Texas, was visiting a cemetery. He noticed a woman alone. She was weeping bitterly. He went over to her and learned she was the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of John F. Kennedy. She asked, "Does anybody care that my son is dead?" No one else was there but the mother.  But just like Rizpah, she was demonstrating her love. Even what her son had done didn’t end her love and pain.

        A mother has a special heart for her children. Death does not sever this tie. Women tell me that that once you have felt life in your womb there is a bond that is never broken. People sometimes don't understand that a child that dies before birth is almost as devastating a loss as losing an older child. The difference is that others don't seem to acknowledge the greatness of that loss.

        Mother's who have lost a child at any age (even as adults), never forget the pain. They deal with it but they don't forget. If you understand Rizpah's pain, you understand why she did what she did. She camps out by their bodies and determines that she is going to keep the vultures away. She was powerless to stop their execution.  But this is something she can, and will do. It is a mother continuing to show love -- even in death.

       Eventually David hears about Rizpah's vigil.  It’s clear that David is deeply shamed by Rizpah's faithfulness. He orders the removal of the bodies from the mountain and gives them the dignity of a proper burial.

       One of the most moving aspects of this passage is given almost in passing. When David orders the burial of the bodies of Saul's descendants, he also orders the proper burial of the bodies of Saul and Jonathan, which had been left hanging on the walls of Beth Shan by the Philistines before being removed by the men of Jabesh Gilead.  Saul and Jonathan had never received the burial proper due a king and a prince.

       This small detail tells us a great deal about the kind of person David has become since becoming king. Jonathan and David had bound themselves to each other formally with a covenant.  Yet David had allowed his friend's body to be dishonored by not providing a proper burial. Once David had been Jonathan's best friend.  Now he allows Jonathan's body to go unhonored.  Rizpah's action makes David wake up and see the kind of person he has become.

        But there is more here this morning than a message about David being moved.  Rizpah dramatically illustrates a call to parents about the need to keep vultures away from their children. This isn’t in this text but it’s certainly in the rest of scripture.  So I believe I can make this application of Rizpah’s story without doing violence to it or to the word of God as a whole.

       Our children face vultures every day. They face pressures to conform. They face the vultures of substance abuse. There is a wild beast of drugs. There are plenty of drugs in Moorpark.  We should fight that beast off. 

       Back in 2001 a survey was conducted by Columbia University's Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.  At that point almost one in five American teens said they lived with 'hands-off

adults who fail to consistently set rules and monitor their behavior. The survey showed that these

youth were at a four-times greater risk for smoking, drinking, and illegal drug use than their peers with 'hands-on' parents."   The survey of 1,000 12- to 17-years old, found that teens who believe their parents would "not be too upset" if they used marijuana are more than three times as likely to use drugs than those who believe their parents would be "extremely upset." 

       Your expectations as parents make a difference.  Teens with parents who are "very unaware" of their academic performance are almost three times more likely to engage in substance use than their peers whose parents are "very aware" of their school performance.

       Do you get the point?  How we parent matters.  What we expect matters.  I think the people of this congregation know that and demonstrate it. 

       That’s important because there are lots of vultures out there.

       Our children face or soon will face the vultures of immoral behavior.  What will we do with them?  Some parents actually encourage them.

       There are parents in this community who supply alcohol to their kids for parties.  That's not fighting vultures. It’s bringing them to the party.  I know a Presbyterian pastor in Northern California, a pastor, who actually provided his teenage sons and daughters with a sex room in his home so they would have a safe place to experiment.  That’s not fighting vultures. That’s providing them with a roost in your own home. 

        His vulture-sheltering behavior reminds me of a woman named Maureen Faibish in San Francisco a few years ago. Maureen Fabish is the ultimate un-Rizpah.  Her twelve year old son Nicky was killed in his own home by the family's two pit bulls.  Faibish told police that she was concerned about the dogs aggressiveness.  But rather than get rid of the dogs, she shut her son in the basement to protect him while she went out to do errands. She actually blocked the door with a shovel.  But Nicky got out and was killed.   Maureen Faibish returned to discover her son's lifeless body in a bedroom. Listen to what she said.  It’s an exact quote: "It was Nicky's time to go. When you're born you're destined to go and this was his time."

       She wanted to make it sound like she just couldn’t have done anything different – like maybe not keep dogs that make her so afraid that she had to try to lock her son in a basement.  

       But we can do things differently.  We can help drive away the vultures and ward off the beasts simply by staying involved and aware and having high expectations.

       I know this is a Mother’s Day sermon but let me talk for a moment to the ones who make the mothers mothers. You teenagers and close to teenagers, what kind of parents will you be? What kind of example are you giving to your friends? Maybe your parents aren't much of an example. Are you using this as an excuse or are you determining that the slide away from God is going to stop with you? If your parents are setting boundaries stop complaining and thank God. Don't envy those who have parents who don't care! You have been granted a great gift. Be grateful.

       I like the story shared by Earl Palmer when he was pastor in Berkeley.   He said, “When Fiddler on the Roof came out, I remember a teenage girl coming in to talk to me. In the film the father has arguments with each of his daughters about the boys they want to marry.  He  struggles with his children. Palmer writes: “The girl came in and said, ‘I wish I had a father like him -- a father who cared that much about the boy I am going out with that he wanted to struggle with me over it. Instead, my parents say, Oh! Whatever you want is fine. Now don't bother us. We are watching TV.’”

        Parents, are you in the struggle?  Are you diligently guarding your children from the vultures of life? Or do you need to take more of a "hands on" approach? Have you abdicated your position of influence to the television or the school, or the community? What are your children learning from you? Are they learning to take responsibility or make excuses? Are they learning to walk faithfully or to always take the course of least resistance?

       Let me also address the issue in other ways – apart from sex, drugs, alcohol.

       We must also guard our kids from the vulture of a materialistic life. We need to teach our kids how to appreciate what they have and to realize that what they have cannot determine who they are.

       I know it’s hard to be the only parents around who say “no” when all the other parents seem to be saying “yes.”  That’s may be a benefit – perhaps the only benefit – of economic recession.  There is more healthy no saying going on.

       We live in a financially well-off area – at least normally.  People here tend to have what it takes to meet needs and quite a few desires.  But this puts parents here in a difficult dilemma. We must say no to kids for abstract rather than concrete reasons. We can afford to buy what our kids want, yet most know that too much consumption is not good. It spoils kids. We must explain our decisions to kids, who have been primed to consume.  When we say, "You don't really need that" or "That isn't good for you," these explanations naturally cause more arguments and resentment than saying, "We can’t afford it."  So thank God for the recession.

        We also need to guard our children from the vultures of a godless life. We live in a day when our kids are being taught that all faiths are the same. Do you understand that when we say that all faiths are the same, even though they teach contradictory truth, we are really telling our children that faith is nonsense? We live in a religious world -- but it is a world of man made religions. We must guard our children from this! We can best guard our children from godlessness by introducing them to the true and living God. We guard them by demonstrating our own faith. We do combat with the vultures when we are involved in a Bible believing church that has a quality Sunday School and youth ministry. We do combat when we wrestle in prayer for the souls of our kids.

       This can’t be done routinely.  There’s nothing routine about fighting vultures.  Day after day Rizpah stayed at her task. I'm sure there were days she was tired, overheated, maybe even sick. But she kept at it.   

       Are you as diligent in battling for the soul of your kids? Are you surrounding your kids with prayer? Are you persevering or do you only become intense in a crisis?

       Choose diligence. Refuse to surrender what is good and right for what is easy.  It is worth the effort. You are fighting for your children's future happiness today.  The reward of diligent parenting is children who are intact adults.  It is a reward that doesn't come easily.  But is worth whatever it costs. 

       I think most everyone here knows that and lives it.  And that makes a difference.

       Martin Luther commented that every twenty years or so God builds Himself a new church out of little children. And no one helps God more with this building than the mothers who have been working quietly in the background.

      A woman may have no place in the headlines. She may live what many people consider to be an uneventful life -- a life spent doing her duty to God through caring for her children. She does what she can to teach them to know and love God and to serve Him. She teaches them consideration for others and how to be both strong and gentle. 

       All Rizpah could do was delay the inevitable.  Decay was going to happen no matter how faithfully she kept watch.  But we have a lot more incentive to keep at it because our children actually have a future.  God wants them to have a great future.  And God gives us a great role in helping that future happen. 

       So, to you vulture fighting mommas, happy Mother’s Day.  And keep up the good work!