Steel Magnolias of the Bible

It is the scene that everyone remembers from the movie Steel Magnolias.  You remember the movie, the one with Sally Field and Julia Roberts.  At the end of the movie, the women are gathered in the cemetery and M’Lynn finally breaks down over the death of her daughter.  She stands there sobbing and then, with clenched fists, says, “I just want to hit somebody until they feel as bad as I do. I . . . just want to hit something . . . and hit it hard.”

And right at that moment, Clairee, played by Olympia Dukakis, pulls Ouiser in front of her, played by the incomparable Shirley MacLaine, and thrusts her at M’Lynn and says, “Here hit this.  We’ll sell t-shirts saying, ‘I slapped Ouiser Boudreaux.’”

When I was seventeen, I had the pleasure of playing M’Lynn in our high school’s production of Steel Magnolias.  The play is a little different than the movie.  The entire play takes place in Truvy’s hair salon.  And right before the scene that I just described to you, where M’Lynn breaks down, M’Lynn has another monologue, a deeply affecting monologue, where she describes what her final days were like with her comatose daughter in the hospital.

She describes sitting with her daughter, Shelby, every day and working on her arms and legs, moving them to keep the circulation going.  She would tell the nurses she and her daughter were doing their Jane Fonda.

And she describes her final moments with her daughter when they turned off life support.  She describes how, one by one, the men all left, first her husband and then her son-in-law.  “Men are supposed to be made of steel,” M’Lynn muses, but, in the end, it was just her and her daughter.

Hence the title, Steel Magnolias—all these women, as beautiful as a magnolia blossom, but not to be underestimated.  They were made of steel.

M’Lynn’s final moments with Shelby remind me of another mother, spending time with her son, in this case, during his final moments.

We are told in John 19:25 that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was standing at the cross as he died.  The word “standing” is very important here.

As Father Richard Rohr points out in his book Just This, “Standing would not be the normal posture of a Mediterranean woman, who is supposed to wail and lament in this situation.”

But here is Mary, standing, suffering in silence with her son.

I can imagine, as you might, that in this moment, Mary was reliving her life with her son.  That at the moment of her son’s death, it was her life with him that flashed before her eyes—his conception, the journey to Bethlehem, nine months pregnant, the birth, the flight to Egypt, the wedding in Cana, the times she sought him out again and again as he preached, all the times she feared for his life, and now this, standing at the foot of the cross.

All she sacrificed for her son, and I have no doubt that at that moment, as she watched him suffer and die, she would have traded her life for his, not because he was the Son of God, but because he was the son of Mary, not because he was God’s son, but because he was hers.

True love, true sacrifice.  Mary is the epitome of this.

The Bible is filled with mothers who show themselves to be of amazing strength and faith.

Remember, for a moment, Sarah’s slave, Hagar, pregnant with Abraham’s child, fleeing into the desert to escape Sarah’s harsh treatment, only to be told by God’s angel to turn around and go back to Sarah, with a promise that God would make a great nation from her son’s line.

Can you imagine the strength it took, the faith it took, for Hagar to go back to Sarah, to go back to a such a horrible situation with only the promise that at some time in the future, God would bless her son?

Or what about Jochebed, the mother of Moses, who, after attempting to hide her son for three months from the Pharaoh’s decree that all Hebrew newborn boys be drowned in the Nile, places her son in a basket and sets him adrift among the reeds of the Nile.

Honestly, it doesn’t seem like a very wise thing to do.  What does she think is going to happen to Moses, floating in the Nile?  In fact, her actions seem very irresponsible, don’t they?  Except when you consider this: she had no choice.  Her son was going to die.  She could watch that happen, or she could take a chance and hope that God would intervene.

We know where this story goes next.  Moses is discovered and taken in by Pharaoh’s daughter.  Moses’ sister Miriam, watching this all unfold, approaches Pharaoh’s daughter and offers to find a nursemaid for the baby.

And so Jochebed reenters her son’s life.

Or what about these nearly forgotten women of the Bible, Lois and Eunice.  We know very little about Lois and Eunice, only that they were important enough to be given a shout-out by Paul in 2 Timothy 1:5.  Paul writes, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” 

Lois and Eunice are Timothy’s grandmother and mother, respectively.  And what Paul says here is that if you have this incredible faith, Timothy, it’s because your mother and grandmother also had faith and they passed that onto you.

Now, it’s possible that Paul was just being kind here, that by mentioning Lois and Eunice, he was just getting the pleasantries out of the way, in the same way that we might ask a friend, “Hey, how’s your mom doing?”

But contextually, there may be a deeper meaning here.  In the time of Paul, to have faith in Jesus Christ, to proclaim that faith, was a very dangerous thing.  The Romans persecuted Christians.  The Romans tortured Christians, imprisoned Christians, and executed Christians. 

In fact, Paul is writing to Timothy from prison.

By mentioning Lois and Eunice to Timothy, Paul is reminding Timothy just how incredibly blessed he is to have had Lois and Eunice share their faith with him.  He reminds Timothy that they were not afraid to share their faith with him and he should not be afraid to share his faith with others.

And, in today’s Gospel reading, we see another mother, willing to do whatever it takes to save her daughter.

I have to say that I have read this particular story many times over the years and it has always troubled me.

The woman asks Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter and Jesus behaves in a way that, frankly, makes me uncomfortable.

He dismisses her.

She’s a Gentile.  He tells her he’s not there for her, but for others.

He dismisses her.

Doesn’t your heart break at that?

He dismisses her and in that second, suddenly we are a part of the story.  Suddenly we understand what that woman must have felt standing there.  We know, because we have all been there before.

How many times have you been dismissed in your life?

How many times have you cried to God in prayer and been met with silence?

How many times have you felt dismissed by God?

But like Hagar, like Jochebed, like Mary, this mother is willing to do whatever it takes to save her daughter.  She is not going to back down.  She is not going to be dismissed.

Jesus tells her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.”

Now, if Jesus had said those words to me, my first thought would have been, “Did Jesus just call me a dog?” and then my second thought would have been, “Run away, run away.”

But this woman stands firm.  She doesn’t run away.  She doesn’t even beg.  Instead, she uses his argument to make her own, saying, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.”

And just like that, Jesus tells her that her daughter has been healed, rewarding not just her faith, but her determination, her strength, and her perseverance. 

The surprise here is that we are so caught up in Jesus’ behavior with the woman that we lose sight of the fact that by dismissing her, he was giving her the opportunity to show him what she was really made of, her true character.  Jesus, in this instance, is not cold, but merely waiting, holding his breath and waiting for the woman to reveal her true nature to him and to herself.

And what is that nature?  That she would do anything for her daughter.  That she is smart, witty, and unafraid, that like Job, she has the strength of character to stand before God and question Him.

But more than that, the woman’s behavior with Jesus confirms what Paul would later tell us in Romans 5:5 … that is, “hope does not disappoint.”

Why does hope never disappoint?

Because, as the verse goes on to read, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”

We see evidence of that in Mary, in Hagar, in Jochebed, in Lois and Eunice.

Truly, if we want to see God’s love, we need only to look to our mothers.

Amen.