Transcript
From the Book of Judges, “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. “I’m thirsty,” he said. “Please give me some water.” She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him up. . . Jael .. picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to Sisera while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died.” I speak in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Deborah is a towering figure. She really is a second Moses. All of the judges are in their way, but she really is. She’s called a prophet for one. So was Moses, a prophet. She’s called a judge. So was Moses, a judge. She sits judging. That’s what’s said in Exodus (18) about Moses, the same vocabulary. We could look at over a dozen verbal parallels between the story of Moses and what we learn of Deborah in the 4th and 5th chapters of Judges, and the parallels to our own experience. Think quickly of a few big ones with me.
First, the genre or kind of literature. Chapter 4 of Judges is prose and chapter 5 is a song, telling the same story in a different way. That’s exactly what you get in Exodus chapters 14 and 15. In Exodus 14 we hear the story of how God defeated the Egyptians at the Red Sea, and in 15 Moses and Miriam sing a song. In Judges 5 a man and a woman sing a song together.
There are many verbal parallels between the song of Moses and the song of Deborah. We see all kinds of links between them. Deborah herself perceives that. In her song she calls God “the One of Sinai.”
Second, the battle. The enemy has 900 iron chariots. When’s the last time in the Bible you heard of chariots? Egypt. Pharaoh had his 600 elite chariots plus all his ordinary chariots barreling down on an unarmed Hebrew people. He pinned them against the Red Sea and God made the sea into a highway and his people got through on dry ground and the Egyptians were drowned.
You know what it’s like to be up against it. To feel there’s no way out; to feel like Dickens’ David Copperfield. You look around and it seems the whole world is marshaled against you. Does that ring any bells in your mind?
You’ve been there. Maybe you are there now. The chariots that the Egyptians were going to use to cream us become the deathtraps by which they are defeated as they get stuck into the mud.
The same thing happens in the fourth chapter of Judges. The Canaanites with their chariots are barreling down on unarmed people. There’s not a shield or spear to be found among us, 40,000 Israelites. We’re sitting ducks. The Canaanites come in with their chariots. What does God do?
God defeats them with water. The enemy gathers at a wadi called Kishon. It’s a dry river bed normally. But the Most High called an unseasonable rain to come. God likes to talk to and through water. Remember your baptism. Remember Jesus on the Sea of Galilee talking to water, telling the storm to knock it off. So here, except the Lord says to water, bring it on. With the clay soil the way it is in the Jezreel Valley, that wadi becomes a raging torrent and the chariots become deathtraps.
But let’s back up and look at Barak. What’s his problem? It isn’t that he lacked faith. He’s listed in chapter 11 of the book of Hebrews as one of the great men of faith alongside Gideon (whom we’ll hear about next week), Samson, Jepthah, David, Samuel, and so on. You say, wait a minute, why is Deborah not in that list? Well lots of people are missing there including the prophets by name and Deborah was a prophet. Elijah and Elisha are pretty significant. They’re not there because they’re prophets. The author of Hebrews is focusing on the non-prophets. And Barak, though he’s not a prophet, is a man of great faith.
You know what it’s like to operate the Barak does. I do. I misplace my faith as often as I brush my teeth, at least twice a day. With faith it’s not how much faith I have; it’s where am I putting it? Trusting God is like buying a house. The three most important things are location, location, and location.
What did Jesus just say in the gospel we heard last Sunday, from Luke 17? “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’ And Jesus replied, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, Be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you.’”
What’s critical isn’t size. It isn’t how much faith we have, but where to put it. Where do you locate your soul—your nephesh in Hebrew, your neck, your throat? Where do you stick your neck out? For a political party? Do you stick it out for nursing a grudge? The psalmist (Psalm 121) says, “I lift up mine eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come?”
From the hills? No, though they may, as creatures of God, help point you to where you need to go. “From the Lord who made the heavens and the earth.” You and I struggle spiritually not because we don’t have enough faith but because we misplace it. We put it where it doesn’t belong, in penultimate things.
Barak’s problem is my problem. It’s not that we don’t trust enough, it’s that we place our trust somewhere other than in whoever rescued Israel from bondage to slavery in Egypt and raised Jesus from the dead.
That’s why it’s critically important to practice the faith in the company of the faithful. No one of us is ever a master at this, and sometimes we’re really bad at it. It takes the whole church to know the whole truth. That’s why we talk about faith as a practice. You’re going to misplace your faith as easily as you misplace your keys. I do it every day. Why do you think Good Samaritan makes the Rector live on the church campus?
If you keep in communion with the Church, even when you’re not up to it, when you’ve lost your way, the Body of Christ will remind you where to put your trust. Location, location, location. Where is God? Where can you meet God? Where does Jesus promise to meet with you? In the Sacrament. He gives you himself, his very body and blood, there.
So the Canaanites bearing down with 900 iron chariots.
And Deborah says to Barak, Here’s the plan. You don’t have any weapons, right?
Barak: That’s right.
Deborah: Perfect. That’s what we want.
You come up to Mount Tabor in the Jezreel Valley where you’ll be sitting ducks. You’re going to all gather there at this one mountain. The Canaanite army will surround it with their 900 chariots so no one can escape.
You and the ten thousand won’t be able to eat any more and will be dying of thirst and you’ll finally give up so that the Canaanites will close in on you for the kill.
That’s the plan.
And Barak said, “Are you nuts! You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m not going to do that! If you’re not with me, I’m not going. But if you go with me, I’ll go!”
“Very well,” Deborah said. “I’ll go with you. But because of the way you’re going about this, the honor will not be yours. For the Lord will hand Sisera over to a woman.”
Now, where’s the faith?
Think about it. Are you kidding? We’re going to go up there as sitting ducks with ten thousand men without any weapons to speak of? I’m not going to do that. But if you go, count me in. Make it a ‘plus one’ . . ten thousand men plus one woman, I’m in. In that case, let’s go.
That is astonishing faith! I’ll put my life at risk if just one woman joins the ten thousand men, a woman who doesn’t have any weapons with her either.
So what’s the problem? What’s with Deborah saying because of the way you’re going about this?
Barak is a man of faith. He’s a go and do likewise dude. You probably don’t think of yourself this way, and that’s perfect. God knows that his strength is made perfect in weakness. And like many men and women whom the Lord wants to use, we forget where the power lies. We forget which side of the matzoh the butter’s on.
We take our eyes off of the Most High. Oh we know God’s there, we don’t lose sight of him entirely, but we get fixated on something else. In this case, Barak fixates not on God but on Deborah. He looks at Deborah and knows God is with her, and he takes confidence in her. I give him credit for seeing how important she is in his life.
But Deborah doesn’t. Why? Because it’s not her style. “Because of the way you’re going about this,” she says, “the honor of the battle, the one who’ll take out the commander of the enemy, Sisera, the honor will not be yours but a woman’s.”
We make a mistake when we believe more in the vessel than in the God who makes the vessel work. That’s not Deborah’s style.
We see this repeated throughout the book of Judges. Just before this there’s Shamgar. His name means sword. So he destroys a whole contingent of Philistines with a sword? No. With an ox goad, a long stick with a metal point to it. Now is that a story about how you should make sure your men have ox goads? Of course not. God uses weak instruments so we’ll know who wins the fight.
(That’s why at Good Samaritan we provide you with sticks to volunteer. Because the Lord in Exodus chapter 4 said to Moses, “What is in your hand?” “A stick,” he said. And God said, I’m going to use that stick in your hand to save people. So get a stick and write your name on it and what it is you want to help the Lord get done in this place. We’re growing, which means we’re creating more work for ourselves. You want to sing in the worship band or in the choir? You want to join the altar guild? You want to learn how to teach Godly Play? Say with your stick Lord, use me. Let me be useful in your hand.)
Deborah is a second Moses. All the judges are but she really is. She’s amazing. As a woman she may be physically weaker, but so what? God makes his strength perfect in weakness.
Barak should not have said, “If you go with me I will go.” He should have said, “If God goes with me I will go, and you’re welcome to come along if you want.”
If you have a mankind-centered view of how faith works, you’re picking up the stick from the wrong end. You won’t know which end is up. And when God uses you and you get the victory you’ll be patting yourself on the back. You’ll be saying the words Praise be to God! but deep down you’ll think it was your strength that pulled it off, your cleverness, your strategizing.
And finally, how does Jael do the honors? How does she take out Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army? She gives him a cup of milk, a blankie, and a tent peg. In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
