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November 13, 2005
Sitting Under the Palm Tree
Judges 4:1-24
Is God a God for a time like ours, and for people such as we? So many things trouble us. Wars. Disasters. Messy elections. The deaths of friends and family. Is God mixed up in all this? Is God somehow part of all this mess? Or is God standing apart from it all, aloof, watching us struggle and flounder, judging our failures, blessing our best efforts?
Deborah had no doubts. She was quite clear and quite precise and quite persuasive in her certainties. Deborah, a brilliant, prophetic woman was the one who spoke up for the deliverance
or people oppressed and outgunned. "She 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" (Judges 4:6, NRSV). Barak, on the other hand, has his doubts. '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."' Deborah overwhelmed Barak's doubts with her larger than life presence. 'And she said, "I will surely go with you . . . ." And to let him know that his wavering has cost him, she says: "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." Having delivered that message: ". . . Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh" (Judges 4:8-9, NRSV).
Then Jael, a woman fearless and cunning, enters the picture to finish what Barak did not, taking out the enemy general with a bold and bloody stroke. Mighty Sisera, his army slaughtered, retreats in dismay, is welcomed by Jael and enters her tent. His last mistake. Sisera is a man on the run. Desperate. He really ought not to have gone to her tent; he should have gone to her husband's. Maybe Jael's warm welcome signaled the prospect of more to come. Here's Jael, faced with a man with who knows what on his mind, asking for water now, but then . . . ? Just how far does hospitality go? She gives him, not water, but milk. Sisera sleeps. She kills him. And announces her kill to Barak. That did it. "So on that day," our storyteller exults, "God subdued King Jabin of Canaan before the Israelites" (Judges 4:23, NRSV).
All of this seems eerily familiar. Did we not go into our current war fully assured that this was the right thing to do; that we were doing good in the face of evil, faced with an enemy possessing weapons of mass destruction, working deliverance where there was oppression, bringing democracy in place of tyranny? Did we not go into this current war with the misgivings of those who doubted overwhelmed by the confidence of those who urged us on and led us into it? And now, we have what seems an endless torrent of terrible slaughter of civilians and combatants alike. Hear the echo of Deborah's unwavering certainty overwhelming Barak's doubts, coupling with the murderous deception of Jael?
So I wonder: Where is God in all that? Was it not Deborah's certainty of God's order that set it all in motion? Did she get it right? Makes me wonder if God is any less awash in the blood of our times. Is God any less implicated as we go about executing our bloody wartime certainties? Any less complicit in the slaughters that abound and surround us? If God was God for the time of Deborah and Barak and Jael, then is not God the God for our time, as well? A time no less violent and bloody, and full of raging certainties and scorned doubts. We complain that God does nothing to stop it all.
God is not unacquainted with our violence and our misplaced certainties and our deceptions. How should God answer our complaint? How should God intervene to bring all this misery to an end? Most anything, but do something. But whatever you do, Lord, just don't touch our precious human freedom. Never mind that our misuse and abuse it is the source of much of the violence that besets us. Don't take that away, just make things better.
Some years ago Lester Maddox, then governor of Georgia, was faced with mounting complaints within the state and from the federal level about the terrible conditions in the Georgia state prisons. Maddox, a racist to the core, assured everyone that everything that could be done to make the prisons better had been done. Still there was no improvement. His closing argument was that there really could be no improvement in Georgia's prisons until there was a better class of prisoner to put in them.
While it's hard for me to imagine the Lord taking the part of Lester Maddox, let's follow the logic. Do conditions make people? Or do people make conditions? Does violence foster violence? Or do people make violence? Would less violence lead to fewer violent people? Would fewer violent people lead to less violence? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And Yes. So, to take care of our violence, should God make better conditions, or make people better? Well, if God's God why not do both? Why not make conditions better and people good enough to live in them?
When the showdown finally comes, and God is faced with our murderous violence, what did God actually do? Jesus got crucified. God laid down and worked out a way to change conditions and to change people. God's resurrection of Jesus in the face of our violence is God's way of saying, "No matter what you do, I'm going to keep creating life. There's nothing you can do to stop me." From that point on the world's no longer about death, but about life, life anew, life eternal. Still, we see violence and death all around us.
Some years ago I was part of a bridge foursome with Bill and Hubby Ball in their living room in Monticello, Arkansas. Between hands, Hubby was telling us about her friend who had gone to one of these weight loss centers. Her friend was all full of details about how nice the facilities were, what great exercise equipment they had, how wonderfully tasty the diet regimen was, how hard she was going at her daily workouts. All this had been going on for several weeks, and at some expense. Hubby, who was plainspoken if not always tactful, looked her friend up and down, and then asked: "When do you expect results?"
"When do you expect results?" is a question a reasonable person might be tempted to put to the Lord. What's your time table here, Lord? The same kind of stuff we read about in Judges--the same kind of stuff that was going on more than 3,000 years ago—is still going on. We still have people telling us we need to keep it up, else we'll be even worse off than we are. Take care of it over there, or we'll have to deal with it over here. When are we going to have better conditions and better people?
A Texan had arranged an audience with the then king of Morocco to discuss some "awl bidness." The appointment was for what he believed was a time certain. The time came and passed, and no king appeared. The Texan continued to wait. One hour. Two hours. Growing impatient and restless, the "awl man" turns to one of the attendants and asks, "What's keepin' the king? How come he's so late?" The attendant, assuming his full height, turns with eyebrow arched, and replies: "The king is never late."
Who's keeping the clock on God? Sometimes God does seem as arbitrary as the tardy king. But the question for us is not God's timing. Rather the question for us is: do we know what time it is?
Deborah believed it was time for something to be done about the Israelite's oppression. She believed God had given her a giant clue about how to go about it. Sometimes we hear clearly. Sometimes, well, sometimes, we hear what we want to hear. Sometimes we all think the Lord's will is the same thing as we want. That day between Ramah and Bethel, as she sat under the palm tree, Deborah spoke what she believed she heard the Lord speak to her. It should not necessarily amaze us that what she heard also suited the interests of her people. She and her people had long believed there was something special going on between them and the Lord. Deborah believed that the Lord had a plan for the liberation of Israel from the hands of their oppressor. That's what happened while she sat under the palm tree.
Deborah the prophet and judge sat under a palm tree. There she met with people seeking guidance from the Lord. There she waited on the Lord to give her what she needed to know. The Palm of Deborah it was known. Where do we find the palm tree and who's sitting under it? Where do we get our clues about what God wants with us, and what God would have us do, and how God would have us be? Where is that palm tree? Is it in Washington? Is it at the UN in New York? Is it the church? Is church where we come to get clues about God's will for us.
God stood with the people of Israel in all the mess that made up their lives. How God stands it when we're doing what we're doing to each other is hard to consider. Sometimes we think we're doing what God wants. Lots of times it's hard to know. God knows how to hang in there until we get it right. I wouldn't want to say that the Lord likes the messes we get into, and all the things we say we're doing in the name of the Lord. But they don't keep the Lord from keeping faith with us.
The writer of this story ends by saying that the victory won over the Canaanites was the Lord's victory. Not Deborah's, not Barak's, not Jael's, not Israel's. But the Lord's. I believe I've heard of the Lord's victory. The Lord keeps making life. And no one can stop him.
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