“The God of Surprises” – June 16, 2013
Text: Judges 4:1-9, 18-21
Introduction: The book of Judges is
part of the historical material that was most likely collected into one book
during the time of Israel’s exile in Babylon – which was about 400-600 years after the events in the book of Judges were
supposed to have taken place. But this is not a history book as we might think
of it.
Biblical
historians have pointed out that in Judges there are inconsistencies in names,
dates, places and events that leave lots of question marks about what might
have really happened. Biblical archaeologists have also pointed out that there
is no definitive archaeological evidence for much of what is reported in the
book of Judges.
That’s
not meant to say that we therefore throw it out. But it does help us to realize that the book
of Judges is not meant to be read as an eyewitness news report.
Rather,
these traditions about Israel’s origins were important for the faith of Israel
during a time in Israel’s life when the question that was foremost on their
minds while they were in exile in Babylon was:
“Has God forsaken and forgotten us?”
So
to answer that question Israel turned to remember times when as God’s people
they had been faithful … as well as times when they were not. And then to remember how they had experienced
God in all of those moments.
That’s
where the book of Judges come in.
“Judge”
is a term used to describe individuals who were raised up by God to help lead
the people. Now this is all before the time of the kings.
Each
tribe is pretty much on its own, choosing their own local leaders, living
primarily as nomadic sheepherders.
But no matter which tribe it is,
somewhere along the way … and more than once … the people of Israel forget all about
God.
They forget about Egypt and the
parting of the Red Sea; they forget about the 10 Commandments and the manna in
the wilderness.
Instead, as the Book of Judges tells
it, the people end up “doing evil” in the sight of the Lord: that is,
forgetting God’s blessings, ignoring God’s promises, and especially, worshiping
other gods.
Lured
by the illusion of becoming like their neighbors who lived in the cities – the
tribes of Israel would pursue wealth and power and prestige. But instead of bringing them riches, time and
again, the tribes fell victim to the politics of the time, invaded by their enemies,
and betrayed by their own failures of morality and faith.
Disaster after disaster falls upon
Israel until the people repent of their sins and “cry out” in distress to the
Lord to be saved from their crisis.
God hears their cries and raises up
from the people a “judge” to deliver them and return them to a “righteous” way
of living – that is, a right relationship with God. Then, the people return to obeying God’s
commandments and faithfully worshiping God.
And they are faithful again … for a while… until they forget once again.
Now
before I read our passage, I want to say a few words about this text.
The
book of Judges is often why people give up on the Bible – or it’s why they
decide that they’ll have nothing to do with the Old Testament. And I admit – it
is challenging to read about so much violence, particularly when it seems to
attribute it to God or it seems to have God’s blessing.
What
are we supposed to do with all of that?
Well, I don’t believe the answer is
to throw the Bible out. Nor can it
become an excuse for our own use of violence, although throughout history it
has become that for some people who are convinced that God sanctions their violence, particularly against people it
sees as outsiders.
We also cannot simply pick and choose
which texts we like and which we don’t and ignore the ones we don’t like.
Rather, we should seek to understand
the context in which the texts are written.
In reading these texts we need to be
aware that we cannot assume that if there is violent action in it that somehow
that endorses violence in and of itself.
Some of these texts are written as religious explanations for what
people were experiencing in their lives.
We are called as people of faith not
to reject these parts we don’t like, but to struggle with these texts, to see
them in the context of the whole Bible, and sometimes to live with the
ambiguity of them, even as they might give us insights into our own time and
place. In our lifetime we have come through a century of violence that is
unprecedented in history. And we can ask what we can learn from the deeper
lessons of these texts.
Okay
– enough of the lecture! As chapter 4 in the Book of Judges begins, the judge
Ehud has died and Israel once again has strayed from their path of following
God’s commandments.
For
20 years they languish under the oppression and slavery of the Canaanite King
Jabin – but God hears the cries of Israel and raises up a judge to help them. This is the narrative account of the victory
that was celebrated in “The Song of Deborah” that Christina just read. Judges, chapter 4, verses 1 through 10, then
also verses 18 through 21.
READ verses 1 through 10.
Again the Israelites did evil in
the eyes of the Lord, now that Ehud was dead. 2 So the Lord sold
them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. Sisera, the
commander of his army, was based in Harosheth Haggoyim. 3 Because
he had nine hundred chariots fitted with iron and had cruelly oppressed the
Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the Lord for help.
4 Now Deborah, a
prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. 5 She
held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill
country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her to have their disputes
decided. 6 She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in
Naphtali and said to him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take
with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead them up to Mount
Tabor. 7 I will lead Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with
his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.’”
8 Barak said to her,
“If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.”
9 “Certainly I will go
with you,” said Deborah. “But because of the course you are taking, the honor
will not be yours, for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman.”
So Deborah went with Barak to Kedesh. 10 There Barak summoned
Zebulun and Naphtali, and ten thousand men went up under his command. Deborah
also went up with him.
In
between verses 10 and 18, there is a small note in verse 11 about Heber the
Kenite setting up his tent apart from
the rest of the tribe of Kenites (which is NOT one of the tribes of Israel). That will be important as we are about to
hear because Jael, the wife of Heber is in that tent. The other verses describe the battle that
results in the defeat of Sisera. His army is killed and Sisera runs away on
foot.
READ verses 18 through 22.
18 Jael went out to
meet Sisera and said to him, “Come, my lord, come right in. Don’t be afraid.”
So he entered her tent, and she covered him with a blanket.
19 “I’m thirsty,” he
said. “Please give me some water.” She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink,
and covered him up.
20 “Stand in the
doorway of the tent,” he told her. “If someone comes by and asks you, ‘Is
anyone in there?’ say ‘No.’”
21 But Jael, Heber’s
wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay
fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground,
and he died.
22 Just then Barak came
by in pursuit of Sisera, and Jael went out to meet him. “Come,” she said, “I
will show you the man you’re looking for.” So he went in with her, and there
lay Sisera with the tent peg through his temple—dead. And the
story ends: on that day God subdued
Jabin, the Canaanite king, before the Israelites.
I can’t quite bring myself to say
“This is the word of the Lord” after all that.
You may have noticed that I waited
to read this part of the lesson until after
all the children had left for Sunday School.
When I had listed this as one of
the options for a sermon in the “Summer Bible Challenge” one person wrote to me
in an email that they were voting for Deborah and Jael simply because they
could not even begin to imagine a sermon about driving a tent peg through
someone’s head.
To be honest, I’m not sure I can
imagine it either.
This is the only passage from the
book of Judges that appears in the lectionary (which is a 3-year cycle of
readings from Scripture). Not too
surprising, given that the book of Judges is filled with scenes of war and
atrocities, rape and genocide.
But even in the lectionary, the
suggested reading stops at verse 7 and completely skips over Barak’s hesitancy
in taking leadership, the battle itself, and of course, the ending. Or should I say, Sisera’s ending.
Without all of that, this simply becomes
the story of the heroine judge – Deborah. And given that many of our children
know all about Princess Leia from “Star Wars” or Disney princesses Mulan or
Merida – Deborah becomes a story that we can all recognize, even the
children. Deborah rises to the occasion
and protects the future of her people, saving them from the enemy.
Now that’s a sermon that can
preach! And a story we can tell our children.
But when you look at the whole
picture, there is more to it than that.
On the one hand it is the story of heroes – but there are
three of them, not just one. And one of
the ambiguities of the text is that it never really tells us which one saves
Israel.
Deborah of course is judge and
prophet – in some ways the “bearer of the word of God.”
But is Deborah, then, the one who saves
Israel? After all, she hints that in the
end a woman will defeat Sisera, not Barak.
Could it be her?
But then Barak, for all his
hesitation for heading off into battle, he is the one who is able to defeat the
superior forces of Sisera with their 900 iron chariots.
So could he be the one who saves Israel?
Except that Sisera escapes from
Barak.
So then there is Jael.
A non-Israelite woman (or at least
she is married to someone who is not an Israelite) who kills the enemy of
Israel.
In a book I have that is a biblical
“who’s who” there are sketches of some of the people named and the sketch for
Jael shows her looking like someone’s granny next door with an apron and a
flowered print dress, her hair pulled up in a bun, half-lens reading glasses
and sensible shoes – and a hammer in her hand.[i]
How ordinary can you get.
And maybe in part that is why we
tell this story.
All throughout Scripture we keep
being reminded that God is the one who ultimately saves us – who ultimately
saved Israel that day against the armies of Sisera. But we are always being reminded that God is a
God of surprises who does it through the most unlikely people in the most
unlikely ways.
Like Moses and Abraham and Sarah
and those fishermen by the sea of Galilee and countless others through the ages
whom God has called, many of them never seemed the likely candidates for
accomplishing great purposes.
And yet, God calls us and claims us
and stands by us, not because of what we can do on our own, but because of
what God can do through us.
I found a video clip on the
Internet from a Christian ministry for youth that has made Deborah and Jael two
of their “Action Heroes of the Faith.” In this animated video of different Bible
Heroes, there is Deborah clutching a copy of the Torah and Jael with a bloody
hammer and spike – both of them dressed in super-hero costumes.
I must admit I found it a little
over-the-top, particularly the bloody hammer and the spandex Wonder Woman
costumes.
I don’t think that somehow Deborah
and Jael had super-human abilities. And
I don’t believe that this text is commanding us to come out swinging and beat
our enemies into pulp in the name of God.
But what the “action hero” clip had
right was their reminder that heroes must face their greatest fear.
And in the end, maybe that is also
a lesson we need to hear.
We are a people raised on the “can-do” spirit of
America. There’s no job too big, no
challenge too difficult that can’t be overcome.
But real
life isn’t always clear-cut and straightforward, simply one more opportunity to
succeed. And sometimes life doesn’t just
depend on pulling yourself up by your boot-straps or being fearless.
Just ask anyone who is facing a
mountain of grief, or a marriage that’s failing. Talk to someone who is losing their job, or
who is battling cancer.
Fearlessness doesn’t always come
with a super-hero costume nor should
it come with a hammer and a spike.
But it does come with a willingness
to take a risk. That risk is to be willing to bear witness to God’s
faithfulness even when good seems like the least likely outcome and the last
thing we imagine.
But we bear that witness not
because we have any special abilities
or because we are bigger or stronger or have more weapons, but because we trust
in a God who will still be faithful, who cares about what happens to us, even in
spite of all evidence to the contrary.
We believe that God still hears us
when we pray, even if the answers are not what we want.
We believe that through the events
in our lives, small and great, momentous and insignificant, terrifying and
mundane and sometimes even senseless, in the mistakes we make and in our
stumbling efforts to do things right – God is at work in and through them all,
redeeming the moments – even redeeming
us.
God works through events and people,
through super heroes and reluctant heroes, through people who seem to have it
all together and through the rest of us who aren’t sure which way to go.
The witness of Deborah and Jael,
the testimony of faith that lies within this story is the unfolding testimony of
Scripture to God who is with us, who is always redeeming … from creation to the
cross and even now.
May it always be so. Amen and amen.
[i]
Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: a Biblical Who’s Who,
illustrations by Katherine A. Buechner (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p.
58.
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