There's a story in the Bible, in 1 Kings, that you're probably familiar with. It's the story of two women with two babies. One of the babies dies, and the women are left fighting over the living baby. They find themselves in front of King Solomon, who determines who the child's actual mother is and returns the living child to her. The story is meant to demonstrate Solomon's wisdom.
And it does.
But it also demonstrates something else.
Every time I have heard this story preached, I have heard about these women. About these mothers. When I think about this story, I think about these women. These mothers. Two mothers of two babies, one who unfortunately died. A wicked mother, even, perhaps, who is willing to cut a living baby in two, but mothers nonetheless.
Then, I read the story again.
At the very beginning of the story, the Bible tells us that "once, there were two prostitutes." Yup. You read that right. These two mothers are introduced to us first as two prostitutes.
You would think this would stick out to us. You would think we would remember this. You would think, as obsessed as we are in our culture with sexuality and sex, in general (and as judgmental as Christians tend to be on the subject), the fact that these women were prostitutes would always be part of the story.
But it's not.
Because the emphasis of the story is Solomon's wisdom, and we wouldn't want to take anything away from that. So they become mothers.
But do you see how easy that was?
We, who tend to be so judgmental about sex and about prostitutes, especially, choose to identify these women as mothers, and we seem to have forgotten entirely that they were prostitutes. It's not an important part of the story when we tell it. It's a detail that just...faded away.
This is an important reminder for us, for those of us who are tempted to make judgments about other persons based on things we think we understand. What if we identified those we are tempted to judge as something else? What if they were more than our stereotypes? What if we could push aside the words that seem to carry so much weight and see them as something else?
What if we saw every prostitute as a mother? Every gay man as a brother? Every drug addict as a sister?
We are, after all, the family of God, aren't we?
You forgot they were prostitutes. Admit it. You did.
What else could you forget about people?