Life Goes On

November 15, 2020 Judges 4:1-7 Life goes on 24th Sunday after Pentecost Year A Opening Song Welcome Call to Worship inspired by Psalm 123 O God, you have been our help in ages past. You’ve reminded us what was possible and pushed us beyond our fears. You’ve raised our eyes to higher groundand made our hearts soar with the hope of years to come. Be our guard while these troubles last and dare us to dream in this new day. Surprise us, O God, with good trouble in our worship this day. Stewardship Moment Offertory With great joy we receive our morning offering today. This is a vital reminder of the many ways in which we can serve God through the ministries and mission of this church. Let us joyfully receive this morning’s offering. Prayer of Dedication Lord of blessings and hope, we give to you these gifts as tokens of our lives. Use these gifts for healing and hope in your world. Use us as instruments of peace; for we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Scripture Judges 4:1-7 Deborah, Barak, and Jael 4 After Ehud had died, the Israelites again did things that the LORD saw as evil. 2 So the LORD gave them over to King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, and he was stationed in Harosheth-ha-goiim. 3 The Israelites cried out to the LORD because Sisera[a] had nine hundred iron chariots and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly for twenty years. 4 Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth,[b] was a leader of Israel at that time. 5 She would sit under Deborah’s palm tree between Ramah and Bethel in the Ephraim highlands, and the Israelites would come to her to settle disputes. 6 She sent word to Barak, Abinoam’s son, from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “Hasn’t the LORD, Israel’s God, issued you a command? ‘Go and assemble at Mount Tabor, taking ten thousand men from the people of Naphtali and Zebulun with you. 7 I’ll lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, to assemble with his chariots and troops against you at the Kishon River, and then I’ll help you overpower him.’” Sermon Life Goes On One of the challenges of preaching from the lectionary, is that after 3 years, you have already preached all of your sermons on the scriptures. And you have to strive to be come up with a new message every year. I have always worked to be creative and to come up with new messages every Sunday, so that I don’t get caught in a sermon rut. So today is very interesting. I have honestly never preached a sermon on the book of Judges. So this is truly a first. As I said before, this is the only time in the three year lectionary that Judges even comes up. The title of my sermon is Life Goes On. For the last weeks we have been following the history of the Israelites out of Egypt into forming an identity as a people. We heard about Moses leadership, and eventual death. Last week we heard the story of his predecessor Joshua. At the end of his rule, Joshua makes one last appeal to a generation that he did not understand to stay united and to follow God. The first chapter of Judges beings by saying that Joshua died, and there was no obvious leader to rise up and to keep the Isrealites united and focused. So they move away, they come in contact with other cultures, they are not as connected as a family. Each person kinda goes their own way and does what they think is best. A new form of leadership emerges – it is more democratic. When there is a dispute or disagreement – they go to a judge. The Book of Judges is a story of 12 judges, 6 major judges and 6 minor judges. We have all heard the story of Samson and Delilah – Samson was the last judge. Our Scripture for today – is the story of the 4th judge – Deborah. I had never heard Deborah’s story until seminary. Deborah was a married woman. But she has a huge reputation of being a fair judge. People came from miles around, to sit under the Deborah tree with her, as she make judgements and settled disputes. Interestingly, history does not make a big deal about the fact that she is a woman. Her story stands out because oppressors have been making the people miserable for years. And Deborah has a strategy to defeat them and to free the people. Chapters 4 and 5 are her story. Her leadership is important because she recognizes the gifts of others, and empowers them to be true heros. She leads by example. Ronald Sisk remembers his first pastorate in rural Kentucky. The church possessed an old-fashioned belfry with a bell that could be rung by pulling on a rope. This fascinated him. In his mind, he envisioned ringing that bell every Sunday morning, calling the faithful to worship, and announcing faithful witness to the community at large. However, when he asked about the bell, he was told the sad tale that the bell had not been rung in years. "That bell keeps rusting, pastor," one of the men of the church explained, "the roof is high and steep and we can't get anybody to crawl up there and grease it." Ron admits that he was both "young and stupid." One Saturday morning, he climbed the roof, crab crawling his way to the belfry with a can of grease. His wife stood on the ground thirty feet below holding a safety rope. He got it greased and made it down safely. Several church members saw their new, young pastor on the roof of the church that day. By the next day, the new pastor's stunt was the talk of the congregation. Before church was over that morning, at least two members of the building and grounds committee made a point of telling their pastor, "You don't have to worry about that bell next time, pastor. That's our job." Ron proudly claimed, "We rang the bell every Sunday for the rest of my tenure with that congregation."2 Deborah’s story is the story of how every day people became heroes because they were willing to do what is necessary. Barak goes into battle to destroy the oppressor. He fights diligently, but does not kill the leader. Deborah tells him that he is not intended for that role – Jalil a young women finds the leader in her tent and drives a stake into him. When Barak says that he must destroy the leader, Jalil says it is already taken care of - all in a days work. Its gory – but Jael becomes the hero of the story – just by doing what was necessary in a time of need. The story of how the Hebrews developed is the story of their relationship of God and also a story of leadership. A charismatic leader brought them out of Egypt. When he is gone, they are told not to have a strong leader, because they are supposed to put God first as their leader. Eventually, they would choose a king to lead them, but that is down the road. The form of leadership evolves with the needs of the community. Those who step up for leadership are responding to those needs? What are the needs of our church, our community our world? What leadership will respond to those needs? Judges is actually a pretty long book. It is 21 chapters. Many of the stories are pretty gory and even upsetting with its level of violence. But it teaches some very important lessons about leadership and in many cases lack of leadership. There is one overarching lesson in the book of Judges. It seems that over and over again in all circumstances, the people get sidetracked and forget to put God first. God gets mad at them and punishes them by sending an oppressor. They cry out to God, a leader emerges to lead them to freedom. Lives get better and life goes on. Debbie’s story is an important example of that. I think one reason that the lectionary designers left this story out of the 3 year cycle is because it is pretty gory. This is all that we know about Deborah. But it teaches us some important lessons as we look at our lives, our times and our leadership. • In tough times, When we cry out – God sends a leader to get us through • Salvation comes from unexpected places. No one would have expected a woman to be the leader in such an important battle. Even in its goriness, this is a powerful story. Barak, the general is afraid to go into battle, so he asks Deborah to go with him. Deborah tells him to destroy the oppressive leader. Barak kills all of his followers, but not the leader. Deborah tells him that it will be a woman who kills the leader. Barak just happens to talk to the oppressors wife telling her that her husband must be killed. It’s the wife that tells him – already done – killed him last night. No one would have expected that – but that was the one who God chose to the work. • When we battle the oppressor we don’t go out alone • Author Ann Lemott notices that when God wants to bring change – God starts the work in hardship and hardtimes • As a leader, Deborah did not do all of the work herself – she was able to empower others to be leaders on their own. • Deborah’s strength as a leader came from her willingness to be herself, and to do what she could. It is said that heroes are not those who stand apart. Heroes are just ordinary people who were willing to address the needs in their lives. Heroes are not the outspoken, but the humble. • Sometimes we may never know that names and stories of the heroes that saved us, but God calls us to be a nameless part of history in order to empower nameless others. Fred Craddock enjoys sharing the story of a time he returned to the little church of his childhood.3 He had not visited there in years, and walking into the sanctuary, he was surprised to discover that they had purchased new stained-glass windows. Inscribed at the bottom of each was the name of the donor, but to his dismay, Craddock was not familiar with any of them. "You must have had a good many folks join this congregation since I was a boy," Fred remarked to a woman after the worship service, "because I don't recognize a single name." "Oh, those people aren't members here," she said. "This town hasn't grown a bit since you were a child, and for that matter neither has our church." "Then how did you get these beautiful windows?" "Well, it's kind of an interesting story," she said with a smile. "You see, they were made by an Italian company for a church in St. Louis. Unfortunately, when they arrived, none of them fit. The company apologized, of course, and said they would make new windows. But they were too expensive to ship back, and so the company told the church in St. Louis to sell them wherever they could. We bought the windows from them." "But don't you want to remove these names?" asked Fred. "Well, we thought about it," the woman explained. "We even discussed it at the board meeting. We're just a little church, you know. Not many of us here, never any new people. So we finally decided that it was important for us to remember all these folks we'll never meet, through whom the Lord is working in ways we'll never know." I think that we all have to ask ourselves how is God calling us to be leaders? What are the needs in our lives that God is calling us to respond to? What are the obvious things in our world that we could easily do. Life Goes on in our actions. Let us pray…. Prayer Gracious and generous God, you are always with us, offering guidance, healing and hope. We know that with things seem dark or are dazzlingly bright; when troubled times assail or peace reigns; there you are with us. Continue to guide and challenge our lives. Lead us in pathways of service and away from trails of fear and anxiety. Open our hearts to receive your healing transforming love that we might serve you more faithfully; for we ask these things in Jesus’ name. AMEN. Lord’s Prayer Song for Reflection A Charge to Keep I Have UMH 413 Announcements Next week is the last Sunday of the Christian year before Advent. Instead of looking at Christ the King Scriptures, we will look at Thanksgiving scriptures. Our service will be based on Deuteronomy 8:7-18. The song for reflection will be Now Thank we all our God – hymnal 102 if you want to get the words. Will not meet, will look at the situation. Please stay safe We will decorate the church on November 28th – concentrate on outside decorations Benediction Community Time Benediction Closing Prayer/Sending Forth Go forth into God’s world as children of the light, offering ministries of hope and healing to a hurting world. Go forth filled with God’s abundant love. Go forth in peace. AMEN. Children’s Time – Do you know anyone names Deborah? Additional Illustrations Swimmy is just like all the other fish swimming in the large minnow school, except that while they are all reddish-gold, he is pure black. The school of little fish swims along peacefully until any larger predator fish comes along. Then whoosh all the little fish, including Swimmy, scatter. Swimmy begins to observe his watery neighbors and in each case, it seems that the big intimidate, bully and consume the small. What could one tiny little misfit fish do about that? Suddenly Swimmy got a brilliant idea. It is a plan that both celebrates his own unique style his solid black coloring and depends on the cooperative teamwork of all his minnow schoolmates. Swimmy organizes the school of all his little friends so that they are swimming in the shape of a large fish. Swimmy himself, his dark body flashing, creates the "eye" of this illusionary giant fish. In the last scene of the book, we see a huge would-be predator take one look at this intimidating mammoth and then turn tail and run (Frederick's Fables [New York: Pantheon Books, 1985], 71-79). Sometimes it only takes one problem, one barrier, to prevent us from claiming and keeping the "Promised Land" the Lord has intended us to inhabit. African-American preacher Buster Soaries likes to say that whatever the problem in your life it is your own personal "Goliath."