A Lenten Letter from Bishop Hassanally

To the People of God in the Southeastern Minnesota Synod,

In the story from 1 Kings chapter 3, two women come before King Solomon, asking him to settle their dispute. They are both new mothers. Their children were born only three days apart. In the middle of the night, one of the infants unexpectedly died. Both women claim it is their child who lives and the other woman’s who died. They have come before King Solomon looking for him to determine whose child had survived.

Solomon’s response to their tragedy is jolting: “Cut the living child in two!” he cries, “Give half to one woman and half to the other.”

Immediately, one of the women responds, “Please, Your Majesty, give her the living child; please don’t kill him.”

The second woman replies, “If I can’t have him, neither will you. Cut the child in half.”

Solomon responds, “Give the first woman the living newborn. Don’t kill him. She is his mother.”

The first woman, the one willing to give up her son so he could live, is the one to whom Solomon entrusts the child.

I have been living with this story for weeks. I am fixated by the first mother’s deep love and how love springs to action in a moment of peril.

Throughout the Bible, love is demonstrated not as passive or merely emotive, but as action. In the Bible, love operates like a verb; it is always doing something.

In that famed passage from 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the apostle Paul gives us a list of all the ways love shows up in the world: in patience, in kindness, in perseverance, and in telling the truth. Love, Paul writes, “doesn’t seek its own advantage.”

What I find so striking about the mother’s love in 1 Kings is how self-sacrificing it is. The women in 1 Kings, both mothers, are also prostitutes, which is to say they are vulnerable. These women have little standing on their own, but to be the mother of a son… that would shift each woman’s social standing.

When the first mother is willing to give up her son so that he might live, she is willing to give up everything. Her son, yes, but also, in many ways, herself.

It is a startling moment of self-emptying love. Her action of love is so deep and profound that it is a preform for the kind of love we see between God and Jesus. It is a love that is self-sacrificing and self-emptying for the sake of those who are loved.

In the story from 1 Kings, the mother’s love compels her to act even in a way that will cost her much.

We are entering the forty days of Lent. It is a season for preparation, repentance, and reflection. It is also a season traditionally marked with almsgiving, tangible ways of caring for the poor.

In this Lenten season, I want to invite us into a discipline of love. Not emotive love or passive love, but the kind of robust love that compels us to act. The kind of love that does not relent even when it costs us something.

While the story from 1 Kings is often used as an illustration of Solomon’s wisdom, it is also a stunning example of holy love.

It is, perhaps, the kind of love some of us might expect to see expressed by a mother toward her child. And yet, that depth of love ought not to be contained only to parent-child relationships.

In the gospel of Mark, when Jesus is asked to state in simplest terms the commandments of God, Jesus says: “’ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength…you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no greater commandment than these.” (Mark 12:30-31).

The kind of self-emptying, self-sacrificing love we see in 1 Kings, in the gospels, and throughout the story of God’s work in the world is the kind of love Christ calls us to possess and exhibit toward all creation. It is a love that compels us to act, speak up, and interrupt injustice. It is a love that compels us to release what we cling to for our sake in order that others might live.

We have forty days. Forty days to practice love, to examine our hearts, and to consider who and what we love with the kind of love demonstrated in 1 Kings. We have forty days to wonder where our love falls short and to look for opportunities to take action compelled by deep love.

In 1 Corinthians 15:3, Paul writes, “I am passing on to you what I first received…” He goes on to write of the resurrection and promises of Christ. Paul tells the story of the unrestrained, self-emptying love of God.

We, too, have received this great love. What we have received we must also pass on.

Dear friends, immersed in the depths of God’s love in this Lenten season, what will that love compel you to do?

I am with you on the journey.

In Christ,
Bishop Regina Hassanally
Southeastern Minnesota Synod, ELCA