Judges 4:1-7

The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, after Ehud died. So the Lord sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim. Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help; for he had nine hundred chariots of iron, and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly twenty years. At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her for judgment. 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. I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand.’”

This Sunday before Thanksgiving we have this most unusual text, one I’ve never preached on, but I’m glad I’m able to, especially now, with its unexpected challenge, its unexpected gift. There is an obviousness to this text at this time in our collective history as a country – a strong, powerful woman being put before us here in this text, and yet also have the issue of sexual harassment and dangers that men have often poised to woman, now and perhaps forever. The “Me Too” movement, where woman and some men have been speaking up about the ways men have often assaulted them through their words, their hands, their threats of ruination, it has all been incredibly satisfying to some to see women’s voices finally being taken seriously, at least in some cases, but notably not in Alabama, of course. And yet, it’s been difficult to see some of our personal heroes fail to live up to our expectations of what is right and what is wrong, something I spoke with our confirmation class about this past week, in relation to Martin Luther, who was a deeply flawed hero. But perhaps some of us shouldn’t be surprised by the extent of this problem – I have no doubt that women are not surprised by the recent public revelations of this kind of behavior, having experienced it many times in their own lives. Even a few men that I know, including myself, have experienced being touched inappropriately by people who had some sort of power of them, wondering if saying “no” too forcefully would hurt their career, hurt their chances of a good recommendation. The good news is that more and more women and men are being believed, are being heard, are being supported, despite an array of forces that want to destroy them and their credibility, all in attempt to protect people from the consequences of their actions. We should expect certain kinds of just and good behavior from people, even if we know we and they can’t always live up to those standards.

But expectations are a funny thing, of course, because so often the unexpected is what we get in this world, from others, and even from a text like this one from the book of Judges. The expectation is that the people of Israel have always been ruled by men, being the patriarchal culture that it was, but here comes the unexpected – Deborah, the one who sits underneath the palm tree, and who hands out judgment for those in need of someone who can decide between two conflicting claims. But first, some background. The book of Judges comes after the book of Joshua, which tells the story of how Joshua and Israelites conquered the Promised Land, after spending 40 years wandering in the desert. After Judges, you find the book of Ruth, and then there are the stories of the kings of Israel, starting with Saul, continuing with David, and then come the stories of good and bad kings that ruled Israel over hundreds of years. The book of Judges tells the story of a time before there were these kings, when the 12 tribes of Israel essentially formed a loose confederation, but were almost independent of each other. But disputes arose, differences between the tribes that needed to be settled in other ways than through war – and it would eventually be war between the tribes that gave rise to a clamor for a king, a final authority. But before the king there were the judges, men and women who functioned as the ones who settled disputes between the tribes and often led the people into war – you’ve probably heard of Gideon and Samson, but there were others you’ve probably not heard of, people like Othniel, Ehud, Tola, Elon and others. Some scholars have said that these stories in Judges, whether history or not, have functioned as an ancient argument for the need for a strong king, both to bring peace between the tribes, and to lead the people in times of war against its often hostile neighbors. Though the book of Judges is replete with victories and times of peace, it also laid bare how the lack of cohesion caused trouble. God’s hope was that there would be no need for a king, since God would be their king, directly ruling them through people like Ehud, Gideon and Deborah. But the people clamored for a king, a strongman, a ruler who could somehow unite the country, and eventually, in the book of First Samuel, God reluctantly gives them what they want – and what they wanted, a kingdom ruled by a king, would eventually fall apart hundreds of years later.

But today we are still in the age of the Judges, the ones before the time of the kings, and Deborah is the one who sits under a palm tree, is the one who makes decisions, and who leads the people into war, though perhaps not into the battle itself. She is so unexpected in so many ways in such a male dominated world, a leader of men when women were not seen as leaders, of either men or women. She delivers justice to the tribes of Israel, and when the time comes for war, for the people to be released from the bondage they had brought upon themselves because of their disobedience, it is her that sends word to Barak to gather up armies from two tribes of Israel, and to wage war against the Canaanites. If you read the book of Judges as a whole, the narrative is replete with moments when women are horrifically violated, harmed, harassed, and victims of violence. But here is Deborah, in contrast, somehow breaking through the deep misogyny you find in these texts, even this one found in our beloved Bible. Deborah is unexpected, in her war planning, and in her later prediction that it will be woman who will slay the King of Canaan, and not Barak. The assumption by Barak is that it will be Deborah who does the deed, but no, it will not be her, but instead, it will be a woman who is not even an Israelite who will drive a stake through the head of the Canaanite king – again, all so unexpected both within the context of this particular story, and the even larger, patriarchal narrative of Judges.

And that sense of unexpectedness is what I want to explore today, especially as it connects to gratitude, to this season and to the challenges of today. Deborah is such an unexpected gift to the people of Israel from God, the person needed in that moment, in that time, despite all the expectations of what leaders should look like, the greatest of which is that they should always be male. The spiritual challenge for many of us is to expect the unexpected from God, to have faith, have trust, that God is going to show up in this world in some surprising way that we did not anticipate, that we did not imagine. We have ideas about what miracles look like, about what heroes and leaders look like, and then God shows us up, and shows us another way that heroes manifest themselves in this world, another way holiness is embodied in another person, in another moment that simply surprises us in its oddness, in its peculiarity. So much of the spiritual life is looking for traces of God, in unexpected moments, in the ordinariness of life and not just in those moments we hope and pray for God to appear, those moments when we want God to do a thing, and do that thing in a certain way. I’ve been in prayer for the last few weeks about a particular challenge, and no answer seemed to be forthcoming, not obvious one, anyway, and then a few days ago when I was at the Roscoe Village Speedway, a woman smiled at me, out of the blue, for no other reason than we caught each other’s eye, and I smiled back and it simply made my day, this trace of God in her, this woman who seemed to bring God into the room by her simple gesture of shared humanity. I wasn’t the answer I was looking for, nor am I sure it was even an answer from the divine about what I was praying for in particular – but it was so kind, so needed, so unexpected that I think it was God smiling back at me, reminding me that despite the lack of a clear answer, God was here, and God is here, and that God had heard my plea, even if God had not answered it in the way I had hoped for or expected.

For me, a moment like that is a reminder that God does show up so unexpectedly in this life, in ways we had not anticipated, as it was the case with Deborah, in the patriarchal context of her time, a woman rising to power so unexpectedly. But today I also want us to think about not just the unexpected, but its twin as well, that is the expected, about those moments when what was expected from each of us, from God, was actually done by us, and done by God. At least a couple of times a year on the news program 60 Minutes there is some child prodigy in violin or piano, some incredibly gifted person who took to piano at 3 years old and who is now writing concertos at 8, and for whom it all seemed to come so easily, because of this good gift from God they’re manifesting in their lives, in their fingers. I love those stories, but I wonder about the rest of us, who have spent countless hours trying to master an instrument, and whose best is pulling off a simple song with a bit of competence after years and years of diligent practice. Now, I know the argument you and I hear about our participation trophy culture, about how we in America tend to hand trophies off to kids who simply show up to play the sport, do the work, etc. People complain that we are rewarding young people and even ourselves for simple ordinariness, for what is just simply expected of people, expected of good decent people. You join a baseball team, you go to practices, you participate in the games, in whatever forms, and some are held up for their great batting averages, or great pitching, and they receive a special trophy, but everyone else gets at trophy as well, because they too contributed to the team as well, they did what was expected of them, they showed up and did their jobs, however imperfectly. Again, the backlash is by those who say that we are celebrating the expected, the lowest common denominator, and that we instead should celebrate those who achieve the remarkable, the extraordinary, so that we can push kids to do and be better than just ordinary, to do and be more than what we simply just expect of them.

Now, look I do get that idea, that simply celebrating the ordinary and the expected might somehow diminish the extraordinary and the special – but there are times lately when I’ve come to appreciate the expected, and the ordinary, and all those who just simply meet our expectations, who show up in this world, and simply do their jobs, who practice the piano and don’t get anywhere of significance with it, those who chose to be on the team despite being on the 2nd or 3rd string, knowing they won’t get much playing time. On my alma mater football teams, there a group of running backs who will probably have long careers in the NFL, but then there is a Ronnie Clark, from some small town in Alabama who is now a senior and has had numerous injuries, and is so far down the depth chart people haven’t even heard of him – I certainly hadn’t. But he stayed, he remained, he showed up and didn’t quit, and a few weeks ago, in what was already a blow-out win over Ole Miss, late in the fourth quarter he came into the game, and scored a touchdown, the first one of his career. Half of the Alabama football team ran out to the end zone to greet him, as if he had just scored the game winning touchdown in the last minute of the game. The world is composed of those who do the unexpected, who are just extraordinary, and thank God for them, and then there are those who just show up, who do the work, who just do the right thing, to no accolades to no extraordinary applause or even effect. The recent and needed exposure of the ways men have sexually harassed women, something we men have known happens, but whose recent revelation through stories of women telling their truth, has made us aware that even some of our heroes will fail our expectations of them, of what we had hoped and believed about who they were as human beings. I guess I’ve grown more thankful for the people who do meet our expectations, who don’t sexually harass women or men, who do the right thing, day in and day out, who just simply show up and do the right thing. I get that you could argue that my expectations of others are too low, but my cynicism about human nature has sadly been confirmed of late. And no, I don’t buy into the idea of the soft bigotry of low expectations – what contributes to low expectations is not low expectations, but our actual low behavior, behavior that has recently been exposed in this country over the last few years.

And so I want to invite you to celebrate the Deborah’s of this world, the unexpected gifts we are given by God, and I want to invite you to celebrate the anonymous soldier from the tribe of Zebulan who answered the call to help set free his people, as everyone expected him to. And this Thanksgiving I invite you to say thank you to all those people that tend to just get participation trophies in our lives, the ones who clean up our messes, the ones who cook our dinners, and the ones who clean us up afterwards, literally and emotionally, and who fold your laundry, and the person at work who does his work quietly, and the ones who can just be counted on to be there. And I invite you to show gratitude in some unexpected way to those whom you expect to do the right thing, and who actually do it, day in and day out – your friends, your spouse, your children, your co-worker, the guy at Speedway, the woman who lets you into traffic, the ones who don’t cut into the line, the ones who holds the door for us, the ones who do the right thing, day in and day out, so often unnoticed by us, we who admire extraordinary miracles and long for them so much, when, in fact, it is the ordinary miracles that happen to us all the time. Thank you, dear God, for being the God who meets us in the unexpected, who sends us unexpected people, unexpected gifts, but also thank you for meeting us in the expected, in the people, places and spaces where we expect to find you, and you are actually there, in the ones who show up and do the right thing, the kind thing, the good thing, day after day, year after year.