Tender Mercies
Romans 12: 1-2
Neil Dunnavant
First Presbyterian Church
Greensboro, North Carolina
July 14, 2013
The film Tender Mercies came out in 1983, thirty years ago. Over those years I have seen the
film numerous times and it never fails to move me. The film has a wonderful calming effect. It
puts me in a good place. It makes me feel grateful, hopeful, and appreciative of the life God has
given me – even though we know that life is not easy and not without its heartbreaks and misery.
The way I feel after watching Tender Mercies is just how I wish everyone could feel after a
worship service. Calm, hopeful, peaceful, appreciative, and ready to take on whatever comes
your way.
In 1984 the film won two Academy Awards, one by Robert Duvall for Best Lead Actor and one
by Horton Foote for Best Screenplay. Horton Foote died in 2009 at the age of ninety-three. He
also wrote the screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird as well as A Trip to Bountiful – the film I
will discuss on July 28th.
It will be impossible for me to capture the power of the film in the form of a sermon. But I will
give it my best effort.
Mac Sledge is a washed up country and western singer and songwriter. Once famous, he is now
flat broke and battling the bottle. He finds himself in a small motel and gas station four miles
outside of a town in central Texas. The landscape is bleak, miles of plowed dirt fields and only a
few trees. The wind is always blowing.
Running the motel and gas station and living in a tiny modest home on the premises is a young
widow named Rosa Lee. She was married at sixteen, had her boy Sonny at seventeen, and her
husband died in Vietnam when she was eighteen. Sonny is now about ten.
Mac, coming off a bad drunk, has to tell Rosa Lee that he is broke and wants to work to pay off
his motel bill. She agrees, and when that is done, Mac asks to stay and work. She needs the help
and Rosa Lee says she will give him room and board and two dollars an hour.
One of the many strengths of this film is that the viewer quickly cares deeply about what
happens to Mac, Sonny, and Rosa Lee. How many times we close a book or turn off a movie
because we don’t care about the characters. We find them unappealing or uninteresting or
unsympathetic.
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We care about Sonny, Rosa Lee, and Mac so much partly because the actors are so talented, but
also because all three of them – Sonny, Rosa Lee, and Mac – are quiet non-judgmental people
who don’t argue or bicker or run their mouths. They are not preachy. They are not loud. They are
not nags. But they are real. They are the kind of people you want to be around.
To an extent, this is a sermon by a preacher about the virtues of not preaching. An anti-sermonsermon. A sermon about not sermonizing . . . You will see what I mean . . .
Rosa Lee is the best of all. She quietly accepts Mac for who he is. When he tells her he is broke
and will have to work to pay his bill, all she said was, “There will be no drinking while you are
working here.” And Mac says – “Yes, Ma’am.” Then Rosa Lee asks, “Are you hungry?” And
Mac says, “Well, I – I could eat something, yeah.”
Later as time goes on, Mac asks Rosa Lee if she will think about marrying him and she says yes
she will. And then they do.
People in the community find out that Mac Sledge is living at the motel. His name is still very
well known. A reporter comes by for an interview but Mac doesn’t want to talk to him.
He tells people he is finished as a singer and songwriter but that is not really true. He is secretly
writing songs and playing them on his guitar at the motel.
In his old life Mac was married to Dixie Scott, who is still a successful entertainer, making her
living mostly singing Mac’s old songs. They have an eighteen year old daughter named Sue
Anne. Because of Mac’s drinking, the marriage ended badly and Mac is cut off from Sue Anne.
He hasn’t seen her in years.
One night Mac drove to another city to listen to his ex-wife Dixie sing but also hoping to see Sue
Anne as well as give Dixie’s manager Harry a song to sell.
At this point Mac would like to sell a few songs to make life better for Rosa Lee and Sonny.
Dixie sees Mac backstage and pitches a fit. She still does not want Mac to have any contact with
their daughter. Mac leaves in a huff, sorry he came, but he did leave the song with Harry the
manager.
A few days later Harry shows up at the motel to return the song.
Harry: “Mac, Dixie told me to bring the song back to you myself and to tell you it ain’t no good.
She told me to tell you even if it was any good, she wouldn’t sing it, and she don’t want nothing
more to do with you.”
Mac: “Now wait. I don’t want anything to do with her either. I wrote this song. I thought it was a
good song for her. I guess I was wrong. Now, did you get a look at it?”
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Harry: “Yeah, I looked at it.”
Mac: “Well, what do you think?”
Harry: “Well, I don’t think it’s no good either. It’s a different game now Mac.”
Mac: “Well, that’s fine.”
Mac asks about this daughter and Harry tells him she is grown up and that Dixie spoils her
rotten. Later we learn that Mac’s daughter lives very well on a trust fund derived from the
royalties to Mac’s songs that Dixie recorded.
When Harry leaves, Mac is very upset and Rosa Lee tries to comfort him.
Rosa Lee: “It’s got to be hard on you not being able to see your daughter. I love you, you know.
And every night when I say my prayers and I thank God for his blessings and his tender mercies
to me, you and Sonny lead the list.”
Mac: “Thank you.”
The expression Tender Mercies is from the King James Version. It appears ten times in the
Psalms and means compassion or loving kindness and always refers to God as the giver of tender
mercies. The modern translations do not use the expression tender mercies.
I think Rosa Lee means it as a loving or affectionate gift given to her by God. Sonny and Mac
are God’s tender mercies to her.
Rosa Lee herself is a tender mercy to Mac. Even with her comforting words. Mac still upset that
they didn’t like his song, jumps in the pick-up and drives off angry. He stays gone a long time
and of course Rosa Lee is very worried. Exhausted from waiting, she lies on her bed and prays.
Show me thy ways, O Lord, and teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth and teach me: for thou
art the God of my salvation. On thee do I wait all the day. Quoting Psalm 25 and reminding us
that a few good memorized Bible verses can be a great source of comfort in difficult moments.
Finally she hears the truck pull up outside.
Rosa Lee: “Mac? Is that you?”
Mac: “I’m not drunk. I bought a bottle but I poured it all out and I’m not drunk.”
Rosa Lee: “Did you have anything to eat?”
Mac: “No.”
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Rosa Lee: “Are you hungry?”
Mac: “I guess so.”
Rosa Lee: “Let me get you something. What do you want to eat? I made some soup today. You
want me to heat it up?”
Mac: “A little soup will do me.”
I know if I drove off all mad like that and stayed gone a long time and worried my wife sick, and
all she said when I finally came back was, “Did you have anything to eat?” I sure would consider
that a tender mercy.
I guess there are times to harangue and bless people out and give them the full going over and
chewing out, the fire and brimstone sermon, and then there is a time to give a tender mercy and
just say, “Did you have anything to eat?”
Maybe if there is one thing you can remember later about this sermon is Rosa Lee asking Mac if
he had anything to eat. I think that’s what would please me most for you to remember.
Life is tough and we all mess up and do stupid things. There’s a Greg Alllman song Kate and I
love that goes, Don’t comfort me with my failures. I’m aware of them.
Every now and then we need our loved ones to let it slide, cut us a break, show us some tender
mercy. And when we walk through the door late, just say to us, “Did you have anything to eat?”
As the story moves along – some young men in a local band befriend Mac and eventually
convince him to sing his new song with the band. So at a club one night Mac sings his song, If
You’ll Just Hold the Ladder.
It goes like this:
Baby, you’re the only dream I’ve ever had that’s come true.
There’s so much more to reach for thanks to you.
But I see what we’ve got
And if you’ll just hold the ladder,
Baby, I’ll climb to the top.
If you’ll just stand beside me
All the way
I’ll do the things
That didn’t matter yesterday.
And I’ll be everything this
Man can be before I stop.
If you’ll just hold the ladder,
Baby, I’ll climb to the top.
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The song gets recorded and played on the radio.
Rosa Lee asks about other songs he has written. One is called, God Can Forgive Me, So Why
Can’t You? Which reminds me of an old Lyle Lovett song that goes,
God will but I won’t.
God does but I don’t.
And that’s the difference
Between God and me.
Probably the most famous and most quoted line in the movie is when a woman on the street sees
Mac getting into his old pick-up truck and says, “Hey mister, were you really Mac Sledge?” And
he says, “Yes ma’am I guess I was.”
There is a lot of Christian symbolism in that exchange about being born again and the new life in
Christ and the baptismal symbolism of dying to the old and living in the new.
There is a wonderful scene where Mac and Sonny are baptized by full immersion in the local
Baptist church where Rosa Lee sings in the choir.
Driving home from church, they talk the three of them in the pick-up truck.
Sonny: “Well, we’ve done it, Mac. We’re baptized.”
Mac: “Yeah, we are.”
Sonny: “Everybody said I was going to feel like a changed person. I guess I do feel a little
different. But I don’t feel a whole lot different. Do you”
Mac: “Not yet.”
Sonny: “You don’t look any different. (Then Sonny sits up to look at himself in the driving
mirror) Do you think I look any different?”
Mac: “Not yet.”
The motel where they live is called the Mariposa – which is butterfly in Spanish and a symbol of
resurrection.
Mac’s daughter Sue Anne comes to see Mac and starts a relationship with her father. She tells
Mac that she remembers him singing to her when she was a little girl a song about a dove – On
the Wings of a Dove.
Mac acts like he can’t remember it. But he does and when she leaves he sings –
On the wings of a snow white dove,
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He sends his pure sweet love.
A sign from above,
On the wings of a dove.
A song you may know – made popular by Ferlin Husky and Dolly Parton.
Sue Anne elopes with a thirty year old man in his mother’s band, an alcoholic married three
times before, and he crashes their car driving drunk and kills Sue Anne. Mac finds out about Sue
Anne’s death on the day his song is released. Rosa Lee waits in the truck listening to If You Just
Hold the Ladder Baby on the radio while Mac hears the bad news on the phone.
Later weeding the garden, Mac says to Rosa Lee, “I was almost killed once in a car accident. I
was drunk and I ran off the side of the road and I turned over four times. They took me out of the
car for dead, but I lived. And I prayed last night to know why I lived and she died, but I got no
answer to my prayers. I still don’t know why she died and I lived. I don’t know the answer to
nothing. Not a blessed thing. I don’t know why I wandered out to this part of Texas drunk and
you took me in and pitied me and help me to straighten out and married me. Why, why did this
happen? Is there a reason that happened? And Sonny’s daddy died in the war. My daughter killed
in an automobile accident. Why? You see, I don’t trust happiness. I never did, and I never will.”
But that’s life isn’t it? Happiness is not one long stretch of time without any problems or sadness
or suffering. Happiness is moments. Happiness is the tender mercies in our lives that help us
through the rough spots.
The person holding the ladder so
we can climb to the top.
The wings of a snow white dove sending
His pure sweet love.
The memorized Bible verse while we’re waiting for someone to come home.
And the wife who says as we walk in the door, “Did you have anything to eat?”
Amen.