25 September 2011

“Outsiders on the inside”
Judges series – “The Lord raised up deliverers”
Deborah, Barak, Jael / Judges 4:1-10, 12-23; 5:1-2, 10-11 // Matthew 21:23-32
OT 26A / Season of Pentecost
25 September 2011


It’s now the third week into our fall exploration of the book of Judges – for many of us, one of the most unfamiliar books of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. So what have we seen – and heard – so far?
First – that the book of Judges is made up of a series of cycles, one following the next, which lay out the “why and wherefore” of each judge’s story …


• People forget about God;
• People start worshipping other gods, primarily the gods of their neighbors;
• People start to suffer at the hands of their enemies (plunderers who plundered them);
• People lift up their voices and weep at their misfortune;
• God sends a judge to deliver them from their enemies;
• Judge dies and people go back to their stubborn, disobedient ways;
• Repeat steps 2-6.

We’ve seen how the misfortune that the people suffer is not “because God is punishing you” but rather, “because of your sins.” The people behave as if they don’t want God around, and so God obliges … God leaves them to their own devices … for a while … and things soon enough go bad. But God always sends a judge, a human deliverer, to rescue them from the “fine mess they’ve gotten themselves into.”

In last week’s story … as you may recall … the cunning left-handed Ehud did a number on fat King Eglon of the mean captor Moabites, while Eglon was, ahem, sitting on the throne. It was a humorous story … highlighting that God is most often with those who we would not expect (Ehud, a left handed man in a right handed tribe (for that is what Benjamin means) in a right handed world, stands for all those who may not seem like the wisest choice for God’s work … by human standards … but God thinks otherwise. In other words … don’t trust in your birthright, your earthly position or place … to get you in good place with God. God’s standards of fairness and justice are different than ours … a point which our Gospel parable, of the workers being paid the same wage no matter what time of the day they were hired … a point that story reinforced.
Recall too that the story of Ehud was meant to give some cheer to the original readers of this compilation, stories most likely told for hundreds of years earlier by the Israelites but only written down by those we now call the Deuteronomist authors, Israelites who had a particular theological stance … a Word about God, a Word of explanation and also a word of comfort, to the Israelites as they suffered under their Babylonian captors in exile. These stories of the Judges … superheroes, if you will, of Israel’s primeval history … the authors wrote these stories down in such a way that the captive Israelites of that much later time and place would hear these words both as a conviction via the Law (you are here in exile because of your sins … it really is your own fault, for you rejected God) but also, as a word of Gospel hope (despite your rejecting God, God has not rejected you; God’s story for you has always been one of deliverance, back then and … we trust in God’s promise … now, and in the future as well).

Now … this week … we continue in this theme of God going “outside the box” in choosing judge-deliverers … but this time … God’s really going out there … in this story of Deborah, Barak, and Jael.
The story of Deborah and Barak … the next two judges in sequence … is the only one which appears regularly in our Sunday lectionary reading cycle … every three years in mid-November … but only if we’re using the alternate readings … and we only get the first seven verses of chapter 4.
That’s hardly enough to understand what’s going on here; thus our selection today spans a couple of chapters and a whole alphabet soup of difficult ancient Israelite place names.
This is a story of “outsiders on the inside,” to be sure … the theme we heard last week continues and is reinforced here … in that God is blatantly doing something against the grain of what we humans would say is “proper.”
Deborah is a woman … the only female judge … and although to someone with purely a late 20th / early 21st century world view, this probably doesn’t sound like a big deal … to any of us born before 1970 we know what a big deal this is. Just imagine what it was like for those in a highly patriarchal … male-dominated … religion and society … to hear, to read these words about a woman chosen to lead her people, not just women, BUT MEN TOO … lead them out of desperation, into deliverance. This was a radical word … an outsider, chosen to be the ultimate insider of the time … the one who would bring God’s good news of rescue to her people.
Barak is a man … yes … but he is put into – and puts himself into - what would have been considered a dishonorable place for a man of his time … let alone, a military leader of the Israelites. Barak must take orders from a woman. Deborah calls Barak … she summons him and tells him in no uncertain terms, what he is supposed to do. And Barak … he ups the ante by telling Deborah that he will not make a move without Deborah accompanying him.
This would have been seen as a sign of weakness by the people of this time … of the time of the writers of this text … and, I daresay, even today … at least, in this country. In most professions … including mine … a man who acknowledges women as equals, or, indeed, has one superior to him in any way … well, let’s just say that the societal voice about that … from both men and women … sounds a lot like that old Saturday Night Live routine, “look who’s the girly man.”
And yet … yet Barak doesn’t care. He knows, he sees, how God is at work here, through Deborah. He deliberately makes himself an “outsider” for the sake of God’s Word … and through that, he becomes an “insider” in this story, in the lives of the Israelites.
Those first two stories would have “pushed some buttons” for the original hearers and readers of these words. But the third one would have definitely sent them over the edge. And … perhaps … it does the same for you.
Jael is an outsider in two senses of the word. First, she’s a woman, and we have already heard about that. But second … and more important … she is not an Israelite. She is the wife of Heber the Kenite … the Kenites being one of the aboriginal tribes living in the land of Canaan, traditionally descended from Cain … yes, that’s right, Cain, the bad son of Adam and Eve.
Jael has much to overcome … a real outsider, outside the world-rule of men, outside the salvation of God promised to the Israelites. And yet … and yet … she is the one who strikes the fatal blow for salvation of the Israelite people, when she kills General Sisera of the oppressing Canaanites.
In effect, Jael conquers two men … Sisera, with the tent peg … and Barak … by taking away his due right of killing Sisera himself.
Outsiders on the inside. Once again … God’s Word, God’s plan, God’s justice and fairness, they are not as ours … indeed, in these cases, they are the exact opposite of what would be seen as the worldly-right decisions.
Outsiders on the inside. And once again this week, our assigned Gospel reading echoes, reinforces this point precisely … as Jesus tells another parable, pointing out how far the religious establishment of his time … and, I daresay, ours as well … how far off the mark the religious establishment can be, when it comes to the justice and fairness of God.
It’s a two part story, these verses from Matthew, but they interrelate and interconnect.
The first half has to do with authority … that old saw, when someone new comes into human systems … whether that’s a business or corporation, a school or political venue, a church or religious establishment … whenever someone new comes in, and starts to make changes, the question always arises, Who or what gives you the right to behave as you are?
Last week’s Gospel, the parable Jesus tells before this passage, before his entry into Jerusalem for that final week’s world-shattering events of his Passion … last week’s Gospel began this theme … in God’s kingdom, Jesus says, there is no place for human ‘place,’ length of time, service, membership … those have no place in the Kingdom of God … you might get a certificate or a pin here, but in God’s kingdom those who have lived and served faithfully for thirty or forty years get the same reward as those who showed up at five minutes to five … well done, good and faithful servant. To our cries of “It’s just not fair!” Jesus responds … hey, don’t make something bad out of something good. In God’s eyes, you’re all sinners … it’s my forgiveness and grace alone that makes you right with God, don’t you ever forget that … and don’t you ever forget to pass it along, just as generously as I have given it to you.
It’s kind of a backhanded Gospel word … but Gospel, just the same.
Here this week, Jesus’ authority is in question by the religious leadership because he’s not one of them … to them, he’s an outsider … not part of their club, their social gathering and business they call “religion.” But Jesus traps them in their own political web, and points out that the only “authority” these leaders have, comes from what people have ceded to them … in other words, it’s only human authority. So strangled by the politics of it all, the chief priests and elders fall silent … in the face of real authority, Jesus’ authority, which comes from God.
But it is the second half of the story, another parable of Jesus, which makes this point clear, and ties it together so well with our Judges text.
“Which of the two sons did the will of his father?” “The first,” the chief priests and elders answer, and thus seal their deal. For this is precisely the point of the Judges text … of the parable last week … and, truly, of the Gospel … those who do the “will of the Father” are the ones who go into the Kingdom of God first.
Here, Jesus points out, the tax collectors and prostitutes … two groups of people, on the outside of human society of their time (and most certainly, ours too) … these outsiders … in God’s Kingdom … as they turn, and hear the Gospel word for them, repent, and believe … in they go … into the Kingdom of God where justice and fairness come through God’s grace alone … in they go first, ahead of you religious establishment folks, who only give lip service to God.
Had Jesus been putting things into the context of our Judges reading, he might well have put it like this: Deborah, Barak, and Jael … in they go, into the Kingdom of God, ahead of you. Deborah … a woman! … Barak … one who treats women as equals… and Jael … a non-Israelite!!! ... in they go, ahead of you, religious leadership, establishment … in they go.
Now, note carefully what Jesus does … and doesn’t … say here.
He does say, in the Kingdom of God, those who hear the Word, who repent and believe, they get in … for the Word of God is the only criteria here … again, no place, rank, status … these count for nothing in the Kingdom of God.
But he does not say, and you religious leaders, you’re out.
He says, truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.
Ahead of you. You’ll still get in, insiders, but these outsiders get in first.
Or, to put it in Jesus’ words from our Gospel reading last week, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

So what do we do with such a word, for us here, today?

Well, first of all, we need to ask the question, who are our outsiders? Who do we “in” the church treat like those who are “out?” And why? Who are our “tax collectors and prostitutes?”
In some cases, it is truly the tax collectors and prostitutes.
But more.
It’s people who don’t look like, or talk like, or live like us.
People who are new … strangers … with a different background than us.
People who didn’t grow up Lutheran, or even Christian.
This text convicts us, when we realize that part of being “insiders” in any organization, including this one, means that we bring our own stuff to the gathering and we do, we will most certainly impose that same stuff on others who show up new … or, more important, on those who are on the outside, who Jesus is calling us to go to and share the Good News of forgiveness, grace, peace, and new life … this text convicts us when we put our agenda on that calling … well, only if they seem like they’d fit in with us.
It’s natural. It’s human. And it’s full, through and through, of stinking rotten sinfulness.
And Jesus is calling, pleading with us, to repent of this … to set it aside, and welcome as he welcomes.
Because where Jesus is … is out there … out there, with those on the outside, who are doing his will, living his will, in spite of and despite what “the church” or “the faithful” or “the religious” have to say.
The tax collectors. The prostitutes. Deborah. Barak. And Jael.
He calls us to repent, and change.
Not because we’re going to lose our salvation if we don’t.
Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.

But why wouldn’t we want to be there from the beginning … from the start … to work with and rejoice alongside of all these brothers and sisters who the world has rejected … why wouldn’t we want to be there, right there, right now, with them … to strengthen them, to encourage them, so that we can be encouraged, with and for each other … to be there NOW, as the world starts to turn … turn to and for Christ, his way, his truth, his life … his cross, his forgiveness, his salvation.

Indeed. Why would we not?

And so we pray …
Come, Holy Spirit, come and fill us, fill us your church, to be your vision-filled people, your agents of change, change toward God in Jesus Christ, in this world. Remove us from our politics, our envy and jealously, our grasping and clawing after the sinfulness of place and status … forgive us, heal us, and make us whole, and one … one so that there would be no more “outside” and “inside” but only Your Side … which is with and for the world … in Christ Jesus. Amen