One of the more enjoyable things I have done so far was to go back to my roots and family in Ohio and just spend a week not worrying about sermons and programs and crises and just be with folk who are going about quietly living and working and being family. I remained convinced that the pace of life out in the Midwest is much more slower and friendlier than here in hectic New England. To just be concerned about the weather and whether it was good hunting weather, sit up all night and argue politics and religion with my brother-in-law/Reagan conservative/atheist and not be concerned with what my schedule would be tomorrow was as refreshing as anything I have done so far.
The trip also accorded me an opportunity to spend time with my father. He is 72 and just recovering from surgery and doing well. I was quickly reminded that even at 48, whenever I go home, my father and I go right back to the relationship and rituals of father and son we have been doing for lo these 48 years. A sure reminder was the dominance of television in my father's life. It came on when he got up in the morning and was turned off when he went to bed. So even when we would talk, or read the newspapers or eat, we did it to the noise and pictures of the television.
That meant that I got to watch the opening of the OJ Simpson trial. My father is a big Perry Mason fan and to him this is just one great lawyer show. I tried to read or otherwise listen to my headphones, but I must confess I got caught up in watching the legal beagle goings on. I even found myself arguing with the analysts who were giving their John Madden-type analysis to everything being said. Only when I started driving back home did I begin to recover from my ALL OJ ALL THE TIME phobia.
But being the preacher/writer/thinker that I am, I got to musing about our system of justice. Like everything else from sports to politics, it has become big time entertainment. From what prosecutor Marcia Clark wears to how many egos the defense team has to if Judge Lance Ito is in control of his courtroom is grist for the news/entertainment mill. Innocence and guilt and justice gets lost in the competition for an interview with Connie or Barbara or Dan or Susie and whether you can make it to the cover of People or USA Today.
Will justice prevail for OJ? Good question. I recently read a commentary on the Biblical story of when King Solomon showed his wisdom in deciding who would get a disputed child. For those of you who have forgotten your Bible stories, two women came to the King both claiming to be the child's mother. Unable to determine whose child it was, the King ordered the child to be cut in half. As the sword was raised over the child, one woman cried out, "No, don't kill it, let the other woman have the child." The other woman said, "Cut him up. He shall belong to neither of us." The king stopped the sword and ordered the boy to be given to the mother who was willing to give up the boy, believing that her compassion proved her to be the true mother.
The writer of the commentary on this story said that maybe the King had judged wrong. Perhaps the other woman was challenging the King's violent system of justice and confronting his seemingly willingness to kill the boy. Perhaps she was confronting the violent ways women face from men all the time. The author writes, "women are expected to back down, negotiate, settle and accept the arbitrary assaults of men at home, on the street, and in the workplace. They are expected to respond with self-sacrifice... And when they do not, when they defiantly transgress the laws of men, women must endure." (Out of the Garden: Women writers on the Bible, ed. by Buchanan and Spiegel, 1994)
Maybe King Solomon should have listened more and not have rushed to judgment. Maybe the right woman got the child, maybe not. Maybe OJ will get justice and maybe he won't. I do know that I can never read that story the same way again. And I begin to think that the more male egos are involved in pursuing order, the less justice and peace there is for women.