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Dr. Mark Owen Fenstermacher A MESS OF JUDGES:

Watch Your Promises. June 24, 2012

Judges 11:29-40

First United Methodist Church

P.O. Box 936 Bloomington, IN 47402

After the scripture was read this morning the worship leader said, “The word of God for the people of God.” Those of us who could choke down our outrage at this story in the 11th chapter of Judges responded, “Thanks be to God.” How in the world can we be thankful for this story? How in the world can there be a reason to spend even a second looking at such an outrageous story? Why should we pause and consider this account of a man’s foolish choice and the daughter who pays the price? What could this story possibly have to say to us? The story of Jephthah and his daughter is in the book, and so we are going to deal with it. Not run away from it. Not ignore it. We are going to look for God’s word of truth in this story that is, in so many ways, outrageous…and sad. As I have said these last few weeks we come to this story with our Christian faith. We approach this story believing that in Jesus Christ we have come face to face with the living God. We come to this story with our faith that God is love, as 1st John tells us. We are careful about taking the 11th chapter of Judges as the final word about who God is and how God works, but we do trust that this story is a part

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of the word of God, and there is truth in this we need to hear. When you study a painting by an impressionist like Seurat or Monet, you can lose the “big picture” if you get so close to the painting that all you see are red, blue or green dots of paint. That is what can happen when we read the Bible literally and allow ourselves to get swallowed up by a particular verse or story. We need to step back, we need to take in the whole picture of God’s love for creation, and so that is the way we come to this story as God’s people. We study the details of the painting, but we don’t get so lost in the dots of paint, in the individual verses, that we miss the big picture of the steadfast love of the Lord that is from everlasting to everlasting. Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. Nothing comes easily in this world for Jephthah. He is the product of his father’s encounter with a prostitute. Gilead, his father, takes the boy in as a part of his family. If the fact that Gilead patronized prostitutes tells us he had an immoral, self-indulgent streak, the information that he claimed the boy as his son tells us there was a vein of courage running through the older man. The easiest thing would have been to have turned his back on the boy, but Gilead didn’t do that. The Bible doesn’t tell us how Gilead’s wife responded when her husband explained he was bringing home the son he had fathered with an unnamed prostitute. I suspect that

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conversation did not go well. Gilead’s wife, who had given her husband several sons, put up with the arrangement. Jephthah’s very presence in the family is an embarrassment. A living reminder of his father’s sinfulness and immorality. So when their father died, his half-brothers threw him out of the house. What they said was, “You are not going to get any inheritance in our family because you are the son of another woman.” Strange, isn’t it, how you see the buried hurts and resentments in a family come to the surface when people meet for weddings, or gather for baptisms, or start talking about the disposition of an estate after dad or mom dies? Surprising, sometimes, the heat, and venom, and pain you see at a wedding reception or during the meeting a family has with the executor of a parent’s estate. People are stressed and it all comes out. No one even pretends Jephthah belongs there. No one even bothers to pretend he is one of them. The rejection is brutal. Direct and brutal. So he runs away. The Bible (TNIV) tells us he “fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob, where a gang of scoundrels gathered around him and followed him.” Eugene Peterson, in The Message, describes them as “riff-raff.” The NIV says they were “adventurers.” A tribe from the east, the Ammonites, begin to cause trouble for the Gileadites, a small tribe that lives up in the hill country. No one can seem to figure out how to drive them back. People back in Gilead had been hearing things about the leadership skills of Jephthah. People back home had been hearing that he had turned a rag-tag band of

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“scoundrels” or “adventurers” into an effective, informal militia. So a delegation of elders from Gilead goes out into the wilderness to the east. They track down Jephthah. They swallow hard, these civic leaders, and beg Jephthah to come home. “Come,” they say, “be our commander, so we can fight the Ammonites.” Jepthah can’t believe this! He says, “Didn’t you hate me and drive me from my father’s house? Why do you come to me now, when you’re in trouble?” Notice the response of the leaders of this delegation from Gilead. They don’t apologize for making Jepthah’s life miserable. They don’t explain what possessed them to drive the boy out into the wilderness. They don’t say they were wrong to label him as damaged goods and run him off. They just shrug when he asks if they weren’t the same bunch that hated him just a few years back. They shrug and say, “Nevertheless, we are turning to you now; come with us to fight the Ammonites, and you will be head over all of us who live in Gilead.” The elders insist that they will follow Jepthah. They will do as he says even after the crisis passes. Everyone marches back to a cultic center at Mizpah, and there the people and Jepthah enter into an agreement. He will lead them and help them defeat this threat from the east, and they will be obedient to him as their king, or chief, or judge. When he steps into leadership the first thing Jepthah does isn’t fight. The first thing the commander does is

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attempt to negotiate with the king of Ammon. He explains that Israel has had the land that is suddenly in dispute for hundreds of years, He goes back through the history of the Ammonites and Israel, and he asks, “If you haven’t tried to retake this land all these years, why go to war now? We didn’t wrong you. We don’t want to fight you. God gave us this land so let God decide who gets what. Your god gave you your land. Let’s leave it at that.” The king of Ammon, the Bible says, “paid no attention to the message Jephthah sent him.” We’re told “the Spirit of the Lord came on Jepthah.” Another way of saying that is God gave him the courage, the inner strength, to do what needed to be done. You and I may have had times when “the Spirit of the Lord” has come upon us. We find ourselves doing something big, or true, or risky that, on our own, we never could have done. I worked with a youth director years ago who was traveling across the American southwest with a bicycling group from Taylor University. They were going up the side of a steep hill in severe heat and he was nearly done. Rick told me, “I had the strangest feeling, the overwhelming sensation, that another rider was behind me and they were pushing me along…pushing on the center of my back.” Rick turned around to thank whoever was helping him up the hill, but there was no one behind him. We can be strong, but that doesn’t mean we are necessarily wise. As he leads the army of Israel into battle, Jepthah does a foolish thing. It isn’t enough for him that the Spirit of the Lord is with him. The warrior king has had experience with the people who love him most, the very people upon

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whom he has placed his trust, letting him down. Betraying him. So as he goes into battle, Jepthah bargains with God to insure his success on the battlefield. The commander, in a sense, bribes God with a promise: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” (11:30-31, TNIV) Don’t act like you’re surprised this morning. Most of us in this room, I hunch, know what it is like to bargain with God. We promise God all sorts of things if God will take care of what we are going through. We promise God we’ll go to church more, or we’ll give more or we’ll stop drinking, or we’ll get our life priorities squared away if God will get us through this crisis…take care of our child…make it so the biopsy comes back negative…delivers the job we are desperately hoping to get. We know what it is like to bargain with God, don’t we? We know what it is like to make promises to God so we can get God working on our side of things. As soon as you hear what Jepthah promises God, don’t you immediately have the feeling that this could go very, very badly? The armies of Israel defeat the Ammonites. The nation is saved. They throw a ticker tape parade for Jepthah in New York City. He goes on Charlie Rose and he gives a lecture at West Point. JP Chase and Proctor & Gamble both name him to their Board of Directors. IU dedicates a classroom building in his honor. TIME magazine puts him on the cover and says he is the “Man of the Year.”

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When the limo drops him off at his house the first person to come out is his teenage daughter. She comes out the front door with a homemade sign she has made in his honor. She is waving the sign like crazy and shouting, “You’re my hero!” Jepthah drops his travel bags to the ground. He feels the world spinning. The warrior king has no other children. This girl has been his sun and moon. She has owned her daddy’s heart in so many ways! He has loved her like he was never loved. He has let her know from the very beginning that he would always love her no matter what. The commander tears his jacket off, throws it to the ground, and cries out, “Oh! My daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.” Hearing those words, I thought, “No, your daughter didn’t bring you down, Jepthah: you have turned a blessing into a nightmare because you made a foolish promise. You had so little trust in God’s love, and grace, and power that you felt you needed to bribe the Lord God Jehovah. This is your doing, warrior king. Don’t even dare trying to lay this at the feet of that teenager running down the sidewalk to throw her arms around you!” As I read this story I immediately think, “I wouldn’t keep that vow to God. God help me, but I would break that promise.”

I’d break my promise for all sorts of reasons, but the most important reason is I know God would never want that kind of promise to be kept. I know God. Jesus has introduced me to God. The Bible, over and over again, says

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that the God of Israel -unlike other gods- does not want us to sacrifice our children to prove our faithfulness…or to win the favor of God.

God help me, but I would have broken that promise.

I’d rather go to hell than to destroy my own child…God’s child.

The girl listens. She loves her dad. She loves God even more. You can tell she has been well loved by her dad. She has grown up trusting God…her father…and the people in her life who love her. The girl tells Jepthah, “You need to do what you have promised to do. Grant me one request, though. Let me take a few of my friends away for two months to that cottage down in the Smokies. Let me deal with this, let me talk with God, let me drop a line in a mountain stream, let me build a fire under the stars, let me cry with my friends, let me weep for the parts of life I will never know…the man I will never love, the children I will never have…” She goes off with her friends for two months. They go up into the hills, and they weep with gladness for what has been and in grief over what will never be. Then, she returns to her father. The Bible says, “And he did to her as he had vowed.”

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What in the world could God be saying to us in this Hebrew story about a judge named Jepthah, his foolish promise, and the devotion of his daughter to God? God, I am convinced, has several important words for us this morning. I’d like to offer these to you in the form of questions. The first question God is asking is this: Do the men who lead faith communities understand the impact their statements, their language about God, and their decisions -whether in the church, the synagogue or the mosque- have on women? This is a story about a man who makes a foolish effort to bribe God, and because of this father’s foolish promise his daughter’s life is lost. It seems to me that within some conservative elements of Christianity, some orthodox parts of Judaism, and in reactionary corners of Islam there is an attitude of hostility towards women. There may not be a war against women, but it certainly seems that in some corners of the church there is a storm against women. I once read a first-person account of one woman’s spiritual journey. When she was a young teenager she had this overwhelming sense of God’s call on her life. God, she recalls, was calling her to preach Good News. So when she shared her call with the people in her home church she was told that God didn’t call women to lead and serve in that way. She was crushed. It took her years to find her way into a faith community where the spiritual and leadership gifts of women were not only welcomed, but celebrated. For years she felt unwanted by God. For years she felt rejected by God. All because of positions, and statements, and faith language used by men in leadership.

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So God’s first question is to men in the church, to the leaders of the Vatican, and the United Methodist Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Mormon Church, and Islam, and Judaism: do you understand how the hearts and souls of women can get crushed because of the things you say and the decisions you take? This isn’t the way it is supposed to be. I want you to notice the verses at the end of today’s scripture lesson. The writer of Judges explains the reason this story is included in the Bible by pointing to a seasonal time of mourning in Judaism: “From this comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.” The Jews realized how wrong Jephthah was in making the promise he did to God and ending the life of his daughter. Judaism realized that women should never be sacrificed, cast aside, hurt, because of misguided male views of God and how God works. Every year there was a four day time of mourning not only for the daughter of Jepthah, but for all those young women whose souls, and bodies, and dreams had been damaged because of unthinking males in positions of spiritual authority. Does what we say and do in the church bless and encourage young women, or are they being damaged by how we walk together with God? The second question God has for us is this: Are you allowing the earlier chapters of brokenness in your life to control your relationship with me?

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Jephthah had a terrible start in life. He was the child born out of a sexual encounter his father had with an unnamed prostitute. He was raised in a home where his siblings regarded him as a second-class citizen. When their father died, during that season of grief, the family he had looked to for love, and grace, and guidance turned him out. Ran him off. Rejected him. We’re told that one of the essential tasks of childhood is the development of basic trust. Jephthah grew up having been betrayed, having been loved in a very partial and limited way, and so that early experience shaped his view of God. He grew up thinking God was someone you had to bribe if you were to get what you needed. Some of us have been through seasons of betrayal. We have had to fight and scramble for everything we have gotten, it sometimes seems. So we come to our relationship with God letting those earlier encounters with rejection and betrayal color how we see God. I have a friend who was betrayed by the men in her family when she was growing up. So when we would talk about God as Father, as Abba, she would shrink back. When I would talk about love and how she was loved forever and always no matter what, she would shake her head, “I can’t believe that. I was never loved like that growing up.” Grace seemed impossible to her because of the kind of love she had experienced growing up. Take a moment and ask yourself, “Are earlier, broken chapters in my life being allowed to control how I see God and relate to God?”

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The third question is this: How have our children been sacrificed to our needs and priorities, our spiritual or work or life agendas, as parents? One of my best friends in the whole world had a son who showed promise as a soccer player. So Terry was, from an early age, not only on the school soccer team, but summer traveling soccer teams. Every weekend through the summer and fall, it seemed, Terry and his parents were driving from South Bend to Ann Arbor to Toledo to Cincinnati to Kansas City to Terre Haute for all star soccer camps and Midwest soccer tournaments. When my friend and I would get together for lunch or early morning coffee, my buddy would talk about his frustration with Terry. My friend told me Terry was doing okay, but that he wasn’t playing up to his potential. That he wasn’t taking soccer seriously enough. My friend told me that if Terry was going to get a scholarship offer he needed to pick up his game. I would look at my friend and say irritating things like, “It is a game, right?” Sometimes I would say, “Is he playing soccer because he loves playing the game, or is he playing soccer because it is important to you?” “I know, I know,” my friend would say. My buddy’s son went off to IU. I asked him, that first semester Terry was in Bloomington, “So is Terry playing soccer?” “No,” his dad said. “He never goes near the game.”

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All that tension, all that pressure, all that pushing: what was that about? Was it because my buddy loved his son, or was it because my buddy had a need for his son to achieve something great on the soccer pitch? What kind of price do our children pay because of our priorities, or agendas, or promises? There is a kind of virus running through achievement-oriented, middle class American families right now: we want our children to be so successful, so well rounded, that we have them scheduled from morning to night, season after season. It never seems to stop! My fear is that we are raising a generation of frantic, anxious children who will grow up to be frantic, anxious, achievement-oriented adults who are rich in things and poor in soul. Do we ever, as parents, say “No” to the never ending merry-go-round of sports and school activities? I know a family that tells their children they can play one sport each season…be on one team only. And that is it. The family does everything it can to make sure everyone is at the dinner table, with the tv off and the cell phones put away, at least four or five nights a week. Two weeks ago I ran into a buddy in Indianapolis. He told me his youngest daughter is in an elite, national gymnastics program. I said, “Cool!” He told me his oldest daughter was ranked 18th academically in her senior high school class of 434 students. I said, “Cool!”

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He told me the family rarely eats an evening meal together, and that he and his wife take turns driving through fast food restaurants with one of the kids to pick up something on the way to practice. I said, “That’s too bad.” How have our children been sacrificed to our needs and priorities, our spiritual, or work, or life agendas, as parents? Jephthah attempts to bribe God to be sure of a victory on the battlefield and his agenda, his plan, his needs, end up costing his daughter her life. So what is the cost in the lives of our children of our plan, our priorities, our needs? The fourth question God has for us is this: Why do you think you have to bribe me for me to love you, and bless you, and work for good in your life? Judges 11:29 tells us “the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah.” God was with him. God was at work in his life. That was a given. Jephthah thought, however, that God was like some pay plan cell phone where you have to keep paying for more minutes for God to carry on a conversation with you. We’re horrified by the foolish and thoughtless promise Jephthah makes to God in Judges 11:30-31, but the truth is I hear people bargaining with God. A man in one church came into the office with a $25,000 check and said,

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“What will this buy me in heaven?” A baseball player, before stepping into the batter’s box, looks to the sky and makes the sign of a cross. A woman waits for the biopsy results and says, “I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I have told God things will be different if I get through this.” People have this idea that God’s grace, God’s love for us, God’s involvement in our lives, is conditional. That it has to be deserved, or bought, or earned. Jesus shows us we don’t have to bribe God. God is always at work for good in our lives, Paul says in Romans 8. Do you know you don’t have to bribe God to get God to love you, and forgive you, and speak truth into your life and work for good in your life? That is one of the things the runaway son discovers, in the Parable of the Waiting Father in Luke 15, when the foolish son returns home. The youngest son asks for his share of the family estate before his father has died. He takes his money and runs off. Spends it all foolishly. Makes a mess of things. Then, finally, when he is starving and all his friends have left him, he goes home. He tries to explain to his dad how sorry he is. He tries to explain that all he expects is to be able to live in one of the sheds out by the barn and be treated like a hired hand -not a son. But his father stops him. His father interrupts the explanation. His father wraps him up in a hug and puts a robe around his shoulders and a family ring on his hand and new shoes on his feet. “I loved you when you were here before you left,” the father is saying.

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“I loved you when you ran off, and I didn’t know where you are,” the father is saying. “And I love you now. That has never changed. Never wavered. Never been a question.” So how do you see God? Do you see God as some divine dealmaker with whom you need to bargain, making promises, dropping enough in the offering plate, so that this God will love you and be at work for good in your life? Or do you understand, because of the life, and teachings, and death, and resurrection of Jesus, that you are loved…always loved? This is a God whose love is not bought with a promise or a gift, but we have a God whose love must be received as a gift…always a gift. Interesting, isn’t it, how God speaks with grace through stories that seem, at first glance, empty of grace?