Some things I won't say in Sunday's sermon (Judges edition)
A mother in Israel, and all the mothers
The book of Judges only appears once, and glancingly, in our three-year lectionary cycle. On the 25th Sunday after Pentecost in year A, we read seven verses from chapter four, from the happiest portion of the book, its only story in which “a leader is portrayed as administering justice”1 — and we read only the part of her story that comes before the bloodshed. We see Deborah sitting under a palm tree dispensing wise decrees. We do not read about Jael driving a tent peg through Sisera’s head (and through his head, into the ground, the text says — she was serious!).2
I understand why the crafters of the lectionary might have made this choice: Judges is a bloody and uncomfortable set of stories, and perhaps some of them don’t need to be read aloud as part of our corporate worship. But this one is one I have always loved.
Here’s where we are, in Judges: God’s people have been led by Moses out of slavery in Egypt. They’ve wandered in the desert for forty years, and then Moses passed on the mantle of leadership to Joshua, and finally they entered the Promised Land. Now they live as one tribe amongst other warring tribes, and we see them falling into a new pattern of life in this new place. They worship other gods – find themselves conquered by a neighboring kingdom – cry out to God for help – and God raises up a judge to deliver them. There is peace, sometimes for 40 years, and then again they forget their God and begin to worship other gods, and the cycle repeats. It’s not just a cycle, but a downward spiral, and as the book of Judges continues, the violence and degradation worsen.
But here, near the beginning of the book, we have a good leader. Deborah sits under a palm tree, wisely guiding God’s people, and one day she summons Barak and tells him to ready his troops: God is going to deliver the enemy general, Sisera, into his hand.
8 Barak said to her, ‘If you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.’ 9 And she said, ‘I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.’ Then Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh.
Sisera hears that Barak is advancing, and goes to meet him.
15 And the Lord threw Sisera and all his chariots and all his army into a panic before Barak; Sisera got down from his chariot and fled away on foot, 16 while Barak pursued the chariots and the army… All the army of Sisera fell by the sword; no one was left.
17 Now Sisera had fled away on foot to the tent of Jael wife of Heber the Kenite; for there was peace between King Jabin of Hazor and the clan of Heber the Kenite. 18 Jael came out to meet Sisera, and said to him, ‘Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me; have no fear.’ So he turned aside to her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug.
19 Then he said to her, ‘Please give me a little water to drink; for I am thirsty.’ So she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. 20 He said to her, ‘Stand at the entrance of the tent, and if anybody comes and asks you, “Is anyone here?” say, “No.”’ 21 But Jael wife of Heber took a tent-peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, until it went down into the ground—he was lying fast asleep from weariness—and he died. 22 Then, as Barak came in pursuit of Sisera, Jael went out to meet him, and said to him, ‘Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.’ So he went into her tent; and there was Sisera lying dead, with the tent-peg in his temple.
As a child, I loved this story because for once women got to be the warriors and the heroes. I loved it the same way I loved spy novels or Nancy Drew mysteries. It was a good story. And just like the battles in fairy tales and fiction, the violence didn’t register as real violence to me.
It does now.
It does, particularly, this month, as I try to avoid the images of violence against Palestinian and Israeli citizens, new, unspeakable images every week.
In the next chapter of Judges, this same story is retold by Deborah and Barak in poetic form – in a song of victory they sing. But something strange happens near the end of the poem. The camera shifts, away from the battle and the “mother in Israel” (5:7) to a close-up, intimate scene with another mother. Listen:
She put her hand to the tent-peg
and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet;
she struck Sisera a blow,
she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.
He sank, he fell,
he lay still at her feet;
at her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he fell dead.
‘Out of the window she peered,
the mother of Sisera gazed through the lattice:
“Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why tarry the hoofbeats of his chariots?”
Suddenly, the poem’s scene shifts. The “she” isn’t Jael anymore; it’s Sisera’s mother, and she’s waiting for her son to come home from war. She’s wondering what’s taking so long.
Perhaps there is space for our hearts to twist with compassion here. To read into this shift an invitation to empathy, to imagine the “enemy” as also human, a son conscripted into military service whether he wants to be there or not, a mother trying to banish from her mind images of him dead on a field somewhere, telling herself the reason he’s late is that there are so many spoils of war to gather, that must be it.
Earlier this week I was on a zoom call with 900 clergy from around the world. We listened to a rabbi in Jerusalem tell us what her experience of the last month has been like, and we listened to a Jewish woman in New York tell us what it’s been like for her. There’s been a dramatic rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia in the United States. Bias incidents against Jewish and Muslim Americans have spiked. As the zoom call ended, the facilitator encouraged us to listen to Palestinian voices and perspectives too, and to reach out with compassion to all the groups who are hurting as a result of this conflict.
There are not two sides here: there are humans who want to live, and who mostly want each other to live.
Chaim Gouri was an Israeli soldier and poet in the mid 20th century. His poem “His Mother” is about this scene where Sisera’s mother looks out the window waiting for him to come home.
It was years ago, at the end of Deborah’s Song,
I heard the silence of Sisera’s chariot so long in coming,
I watch Sisera’s mother captured in the window,
a woman with a silver streak in her hair.
A spoil of multi-hued embroideries,
two for the throat of each despoiler.
This is what the maidens saw.
That very hour he lay in the tent as one asleep.
His hands quite empty.
On his chin traces of milk, butter, blood.
The silence was not broken by the horses and chariots.
The maidens, too, fell silent one by one.
My silence reached out to theirs.
After awhile sunset.
After awhile the afterglow is gone.
Forty years the land knew peace. Forty years
no horses galloped, no dead horsemen stared glassily.
But her death came soon after her son’s.
Gouri says “my silence reached out to theirs.”
And I hope that’s possible. That in the echoing voids of our individual and collective griefs, we are able to meet. And beyond the silences, too. Because we are often living lives far from a poem, we can also reach out with words and actions, to let our Jewish and Muslim neighbors know that we too are feeling grief and are here to support them in theirs. We can allow our griefs to bind our hearts to each other.
On that zoom call, we prayed a prayer that was written by a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim Palestinian who work together for peace in the Middle East. I hope you’ll take it with you, and keep praying it this week, and that you’ll reach out to your Jewish and Palestinian and Muslim friends and let them know they’re not alone.
Prayer of Mothers for Life and Peace
by Sheikha Ibtisam Maḥameed & Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum
God of Life
Who heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds
May it be your will to hear the prayer of mothers
For you did not create us to kill each other
Nor to live in fear, anger or hatred in your world
But rather you have created us so we can grant permission to one another to sanctify
Your name of Life, your name of Peace in this world.
For these things I weep, my eye, my eye runs down with water
For our children crying at nights,
For parents holding their children with despair and darkness in their hearts
For a gate that is closing, and who will open it before the day has ended?[1]
And with my tears and prayers which I pray
And with the tears of all women who deeply feel the pain of these difficult days
I raise my hands to you please God have mercy on us
Hear our voice that we shall not despair
That we shall see life in each other,
That we shall have mercy for each other,
That we shall have pity on each other,
That we shall hope for each other
And we shall write our lives in the book of Life
For your sake God of Life
Let us choose Life.
For you are Peace, your world is Peace and all that is yours is Peace,
And so shall be your will and let us say Amen.3
Three Things:4
What is Touching by Emily Bernard at Image
A Murder at the End of the World on Hulu (it’s Veronica Mars meets The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo)
Blue Bell peppermint bark ice cream, and maybe add a little chocolate shell on top (make it yourself: 1/3-1/2 cup chocolate chips melted with 1 tablespoon or so of refined coconut oil)
Lauren Winner on the connection between Thanksgiving and Lent
At 5:30 on Sunday, you can join the livestream to hear what I WILL say in church about Judges (I wrote two sermons this week and couldn’t decide which belonged where!)
Where Goodness Still Grows is available wherever books are sold. Dangerous Territory is now available in an updated second edition: buy it in paperback or ebook at Bookshop, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. (Audiobook coming soon!)
so says the New Interpreter’s Bible, a good one to have on hand for basic study notes
If you’re going to read any further in the book of Judges, please first order yourself a copy of Phyllis Trible’s Texts of Terror.
Thanks to Ellen, Lauren, and Jessica (as well as our Tuesday Bible study women!) for working through these ideas with me. Ellen pointed me to the poem via Opening Israel’s Scriptures and in conversation noted that Deborah is a “mother in Israel”
Please understand this is not a literal section title
So good.
Maybe it was an error cherry-picking from Judges for the lectionary???