Roger Ray, pastor
November 13, 2011 Proper 28
Judges 4:1-7
The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, after Ehud died. 2So the Lord sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim. 3Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help; for he had nine hundred chariots of iron, and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly twenty years.
4At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel. 5She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her for judgment. 6She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, "The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you, 'Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun. 7I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand.'"
Many Years ago, while sitting in a plenary session with our new dean at Vanderbilt Divinity School, some students were complaining that our graduate school of religion did not seem to be very tolerant of evangelical and conservative Christian thought. The students were insisting that the next faculty appointments be professors who affirmed their more conservative views. The dean thought for a moment, drew a deep breath and said, "Vanderbilt Divinity School is extremely inclusive and tolerant within the liberal religious tradition."
That didn't sound good to the dean's critics and it didn't even sound good to me and I had specifically chosen to go to Vanderbilt because of its reputation as a liberal divinity school. Part of the meaning of being "liberal" is to be "liberating" to be open minded, un-judging, accepting, and inclusive. And the dean affirmed that we were all of those things..... within the liberal religious tradition.
You have heard me say before that Jesus was tolerant of everything except intolerance. Jesus was willing to be seen in company with prostitutes and tax collectors, Samaritans and gentiles.
He seemed to be loving and forgiving of everyone except for the pious religious people who were judgmental of prostitutes, tax collectors, Samaritans and gentiles. It is logically impossible to be inclusive of people who are exclusive. We can certainly affirm their right to believe differently than we do but tolerance, by definition, cannot include intolerance.
When we started this church we made the decision that we were going to be a "Progressive Christian" church. Not simply "Progressive," though we certainly could have made that choice. We could be a progressive church that opens its arms in the way Unitarian churches try to, to be equally affirming of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism as well as all of the sisters, brothers and cousins of the big five. But we decided that even though we are respectful of all other religious traditions and we will borrow wisdom from their religious texts, songs and art, we decided to acknowledge that we interpret those other traditions from the perspective of our Christian heritage.
As Christians, we are wedded, for good or for ill, to the Bible. Because we are, in that sense, a people of the book, we share a great deal of commonality with the rest of the Christian world as well as with Jews and Muslims. But we have a much less dogmatic relationship with the Bible than most of our faith cousins.
Muslims will say that they believe the Quran, their holy book, to be perfect and, in fact, they say it is the primary miracle of Islam. We look at it and while we find much of it to be instructive and spiritually insightful, we also find parts of the Quran to be morally objectionable if not downright evil.
Many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians will say that their Bible is perfect and inerrant. Main stream Christians are less dogmatic and will often try to make the more objectionable passages seem to be less offensive by dismissing them as being either later intrusions into the text, or a bad translation or necessarily metaphorical in nature. And sometimes we can turn to that page of the hymnal and agree with them..... there are a lot of things in the Bible that suffer from bad interpretation or even from bad translation.
But where I think we differ from most of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith traditions is, while we love and cherish our scriptures and we read from them every single week when we gather in worship, we also give ourselves permission to read a passage and say, "I don't believe that," or "I disagree with that."
Because, men and women, when we are totally honest about it, the Bible says some things that are not just morally wrong. It says some things that are just downright evil. On the one hand, we are all familiar with the dramatic Genesis narrative in which God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and once both Abraham and Isaac have demonstrated their willingness to be obedient to God, an angel stays the hand of Abraham and the boy's life is spared. Yeah for the Bible!
We don't talk about it as often but there is also a story in the eleventh chapter of Judges that does not turn out quite so well. In that account, Jephthah makes a pledge to the Almighty that he will sacrifice the first person who steps out of his home if only God will give him victory on the battlefield.
Jephthah is wildly successful in battle and when she hears about it, his daughter comes running out of the house to greet him, dancing and playing a tambourine.
And so, the Bible tells us, with a brief vacation first, Jephthah makes good on his pledge and kills his daughter. Now, folks, that's a horrible story. There are no circumstances under which you should kill any one of your kids, even if it seems like a good idea at the moment. Nor should you sell any of your kids into slavery, which is provided for in Exodus chapter 21. Nor should you, as it says in Proverbs 13, beat your kids.... Even if it seems like a good idea at the moment..... you don't beat your kids, you don't sell them into slavery and you don't kill them.
With our apologies to our religious cousins who feel differently, as a progressive we can clearly say that God did not write the Bible. The Bible was written by the faith community. It is not God's word, it is our words about God and as such, the Bible contains a great deal of internal debate. The story of Jephthah is in contrast to the story of Abraham. Some parts of the Bible were written to correct other parts of the Bible. John was written to both illuminate and sometimes to correct Matthew, Mark and Luke. The letters of Peter were written, at least in part, to correct the letters of Paul. The story of Jonah is told, at least in part, to correct the social narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah.
Reading scripture is like watching a Republican presidential debate, you over hear the statements, contradictions and arguments and you hope that by the end of the night something makes sense, but you certainly choose one over the other. Our evangelical sisters and brothers will tell us that we cannot pick and choose our way through the Bible, we either accepted as a whole or we have no business laying claim to it at all. That is, of course, utter nonsense and even the evangelicals have never taken the whole thing literally either..... they wear blended fabrics, eat shrimp and they don't sacrifice their kids or applaud polygamy.
Nor do they, greet one another with a holy kiss as Paul tells them to do in four of his letters and that is the one thing that Peter agrees with Paul on because in 1 Peter he tells them the same thing. I've met a lot of evangelicals in my time and most of them won't even shake my hand, let alone kiss me!
We have to read scripture critically. We engage it in debate, finding astonishing insights in some passages and insulting prejudice in others. This prejudice is most prevalent when it comes to talking about gender. The Bible, taken on the whole, is a misogynistic document. It is patriarchal. Scripture has been used for most of modern history to deny women basic liberties and rights and has justified sexual, financial and physical abuse of women. And we need to look at those passages and say in a very clear voice that we are Christian who do not accept those parts of the Bible as being either from God or even remotely morally acceptable.
Let me hasten to say that the Bible is not universally anti-women. There are exceptions. Our reading from Judges today is one of those exceptions. In the times before there were kings in Judah, in those days long after Moses and Joshua were dead, the loosely associated tribes of Israel looked to certain powerful wise leaders to give them direction. They were men.... Usually military men who probably had large land holdings and therefore had the resources to command respect.
But our text today is about a woman named Deborah whom the text describes as being a prophetess who used to just sit under a tree in Ephraim and people would come to her for guidance and judgments because she was generally recognized as being wise. As a female leader in an ancient patriarchal society, she is certainly an exception to the rule but as such she is a very significant figure.
Even in a society that tended to favor men over women by huge odds.... In a society that tended to keep women covered up and separated from society.... In a culture that did not even allow women to attend to their most sacred religious ceremonies or to interpret or even to hear their sacred texts being read, this woman rose to leadership.
And if you remember Deborah from your elementary Sunday School literature, you may remember her as having been portrayed as being about 22 years old, tall, slender with a creamy white complexion and long flowing brown hair. Esther, a thousand years later, saved the Jews from destruction by winning a beauty contest but that's not how Deborah became a national leader. She got there because she was smart..... and that's just not something that most of our tradition churches have been able to deal with in the Biblical narrative.
I think that it is much more reasonable to think of Deborah as having looked more like Golda Meir than like Sarah Palin but that points up one of the enduring prejudices we experience in America. Male dominance has gone unchallenged in national leadership for most of human history with relatively few exceptions outside of inherited monarchies. It is 2011 and we have yet to elect a female head of state in this nation even though some have come closer in recent history but we continue to treat women very differently in politics.
Those who have been recently candidates are judged harshly on their appearance. Palin and Bachman are relative beauty queens. When Hillary Clinton was first lady she was sharply criticized for having thick ankles..... have you ever heard comments about a male politician's ankles?
In a recent interview, our senior Senator from Missouri, Claire McCaskill, was being complimented for having lost over 50 lbs recently. She replied that her diet was a part of preparing for her re-election campaign next year. And it is just true, Claire will stand a much better chance of being re-elected as a 140 lbs woman than she will as a 200 lbs woman and that in a state that just elected a congressman from our district who is so large that he has smaller congressmen in geosynchronous orbit around his waistline. Do you agree that no woman who was as over weight as Billy Long is could ever have been elected?
And you cannot say that our lingering gender prejudice is based solely on the Bible because Golda Meir was elected as prime minister of Israel in 1969. And not long after, Indira Gandhi serverd terms as prime minister of India in the 70's and 80's. Margaret Thatcher was elected in Great Britain in 1979. Thirty and forty years ago there have been female heads of state in China, Argentina, Iceland, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Switzerland and the Philippines. Needless to say, we have issues.
On the whole, religion has not been very helpful. The largest Christian sect, the Roman Catholic Church, still defends and exclusively male priesthood. And even churches that have unlocked the doors to the possibility, the preponderance of church leadership is still male while the preponderance of the people who attend church, contribute, volunteer, cook, clean, teach and evangelize are not men.
And so, as progressive Christians, it is our job to be the exception to the rule. We need to bear witness to the majority that discrimination based on gender is no longer morally defensible and it is a form of oppression that must come to an end in both religion and politics. We, as progressives, need to accept that it is our roll to be a religious fruit loop in world filled with Cheerios.
