Sunday November 16, 2008 - Pentecost 27, Proper 28, Year A (RCL)
Sermon for Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saint James Episcopal Church
The Rev. Dr Raewynne J. Whiteley
Today
we’re coming to the end of something. Next week
is the last week of the church year,
and on Thanksgiving weekend
we’ll celebrate the beginning of the new year at church with the season of Advent,
and with it,
we’ll begin on the gospel of Mark.
And along with Mark
a whole new range of readings from the Old Testament and the epistles.
And as we come to the end of this year of readings,
I started thinking back over what we have read.
You know, we’ve spent the last few months - June, July, August, September, October, November - the best part of six months -
listening to some of the greatest stories of the bible.
the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah.
And then there’s Joseph and his brothers,
and Moses
and Joshua,
and finally today, Deborah and Barak.
They’re stories that many of us know not just from the Bible,
but from the stage and screen as well -
Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat,
Charlton Heston as Moses,
and more recently, the Prince of Egypt.
And if we’re lucky, we remember them from Sunday School as well. There were others of course,
David
fighting Goliath,
Daniel in the lions den,
Jonah and the whale,
Noah and his ark,
and of course Jesus and his disciples.
They’re the stories of the great heroes of the bible,
and if you were anything like me
you wanted to grow up to be like one of them.
And I have to admit, that part of what got me thinking of bible heroes
is that today we finally get almost
to my favorite story.
You’ve heard me say it before, the story of Jael and Sisera. It actually comes
right after the reading we had today.
If you remember, last week we left the Israelites
proclaiming loudly,
that yes, they were going to serve the Lord, and no,
they absolutely wouldn't change their mind and turn away from God, in spite of the fact that time and time again in the past they had done exactly that,
and yes, they understood that God would be very angry at them if they reneged.
And so what happens?
They change their mind.
They turn away from God
and God gets mad,
and figures that
if they haven’t kept their promises
why should he?
And so God withdraws his protection
and the people end up losing their latest battle, and although they still get to live in the promised land,
they live there
under the oppression of a local king.
Its not as bad as slavery in Egypt,
but it’s not good.
And so eventually, after twenty years of this,
the people begin to pray again.
Twenty years it takes them,
but eventually they remember
that God was once their God,
and if only they hadn’t begun to ignore him and do whatever they wanted.
And they turn back to God
and begin to pray.
And God hears their prayer.
Now during those twenty years,
although they had been oppressed by the king, the people had basically
governed themselves.
This was way before democracy,
before even
they had kings - that was something that happened much later for the people of God.
What they had
was judges,
and one of those judges
was a wise woman, a woman who was used
to listening to God.
And the people were kind of used
to listening to her.
And so when God hears the people’s prayers, God decides to work through Deborah,
and has Deborah
call a man called Barak -
Barak in Hebrew
means blessing -
and tells Barak to get together an army of the Israelites
and go out to fight the local king’s army,
an army that is headed up by a general called Sisera.
And God promises
to give the Israelites
victory.
And that’s where our reading ends today.
But it’s not the end of the story.
Because
Barak does what he’s told - and that it itself is amazing. Imagine - you’ve been oppressed for twenty years, and you suddenly get told
to gather an army,
take up arms,
and go fight your oppressors.
But Barak does it,
and Sisera’s army is defeated.
And this is where Jael comes in.
Sisera’s army is defeated, but he’s on the run.
And Jael tricks him into thinking
she’s on his side,
and gets him feeling nice and safe in her tent,
and then kills him with a tent peg through his head.
Okay, I know it’s a gory story.
But that’s true of many of the stories of the Old Testament, because they come from a time
when violence was a way of life, and not just a way of life,
but a way of survival.
And it’s not so different
from David killing Goliath with his sling,
or countless other stories in the bible.
We all have favorite stories in the bible,
we all have heroes.
Often
it’s because we identify with them.
I always liked David,
but I could never quite identify with him
when I was a kid
because he was a boy…
and well, I’m not.
Jael, on the other hand, is not just a women,
but is strong
and courageous.
And of course she’s not the only hero in our reading today.
There’s Deborah,
the woman who dispenses wisdom to the people, and speaks on behalf of God.
And then there’s Barak, Barak whose name means blessing,
who’s willing to take the word of Deborah
and after twenty years of failure,
raise an army and go into battle.
All three of them trusting
that the God their people had rejected,
that God would hear them
and come to their help.
And they’re not alone. All through scripture
are the stories of heroes.
Some get whole books to themselves, like Moses and Joshua; others just a few lines.
Remember that summary in the book of Hebrews? The list of so many people of faith, beginning with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses,
and then going on to Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah,
David and Samuel and the prophets — who, in the words of Hebrews, through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.
Time and time again
God calls ordinary people,
God calls them and draws out faith
that they often didn’t even know they had,
to do God’s work in the world.
And so today I wonder
who are your bible heroes?
What is it about them
that attracts you?
And can you think maybe
of how your faith
connects with theirs,
how you might follow
in their footsteps?
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2008