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by Ken Sehested
Circle of Mercy Congregation
Text: Judges 19:1-30

      There have been two special occasions in my life when I have become agonizingly aware of the special fear women feel over the threat of sexual assault.

      The first happened when Nancy and I were counting the days before our 1973 wedding. Every couple weeks she came in from where she went to school in New Jersey to meet me in a chaplain’s office in New York City. We were doing a series of premarital counseling sessions.

      She was late that evening, and I was feeling a mixture of irritation and concern. When she finally arrived, her face—paler than ever—still bore the marks of terror. She had stopped along the highway to check what she thought might be a bad tire. And a stranger had assaulted her.

      She was lucky to get away without physical harm. But the psychic wound was deep. It’s hard—maybe impossible—for men to fully appreciate this kind of trauma unless it happens up close and personal, to someone you love as much as life itself.

      To get inside such an experience, we men have to have our hearts directed in intimate ways.

      My second such experience was more public than personal. In 1992 I was part of a group of Jews, Christians and Muslims visiting the war-torn Balkan region of southeast Europe, to the country formally known as Yugoslavia. War had previously broken out in the Slovenian and Croatian regions which were now declaring independence from Yugoslavia’s federated republic. Most of the shooting war now centered in Bosnia and Herzegovina, an ancient culture whose lands once formed the western boundary of the former Turkish Empire. Because of this, many Bosnians were Muslims. But many others were of Serbian ancestry, a culture dominated by one of the eastern Orthodox traditions of Christianity. Although their cultures had lived in relative harmony for many years, deep rivalries stretched back to the history of the Crusades a full millennium ago.

      The Franciscan Abbott of Croatia had invited the Fellowship of Reconciliation here to bring a group to his cathedral church in Zagreb to lead an interfaith service to unequivocally declare that God was neither a sponsor of nor a partisan for any side in this war.

      I was ill prepared for the testimonies of numerous Bosnian Muslim refugees and countless aid and human rights workers. Time after time we heard the confirmed stories of Serbian militias raping Bosnian women and then putting them on a bus for transport to Croatia, each with a hand-painted sign reading, “Here comes another busload of little Chetniks,” the nickname Bosnian Serb militias.

      Rape has always been part of the culture of warfare—by every side and in the service to every cause. (And I don’t mean to imply that Serbs committed all the atrocities of that conflict.) Apparently, though, this was the first time in history when rape of women by men became an intentional battle tactic.

      I came home from that trip very nearly stunned into speechlessness. Who can fathom such brutality?

      This same question comes to mind after hearing the earlier story from the book of Judges. I suspect many of you are hearing it for the first time. The narrative is monstrous, quite possibly the most visually brutal story in all the Bible.

      We could easily spend a week with this one chapter. Though it’s not easy to pick up in a first reading, the characters, plots and subplots, coded language and highly dramatized narratives are as elaborate as they are concise. You have to know some history and other biblical literature to catch all the nuances. The original author, the later editor, and the even-later compiler of this material all had interpretive points to make.

      And that doesn’t even get us to the question of why this violent and obscene material is in our Holy Book in the first place. To that question I will simply say: The Bible may be the original “reality” show. The mess we now get on TV is there in this ancient literature. If you happen to think the Bible is loaded with uniformly nice, sweet, “godly” characters, you haven’t done much reading. Misogyny, among other morally-debased activities, is all over the place. We’ll have to leave these large scale interpretive questions to a later time. Suffice it to say, I happen to think just such a body of literature is what helps us see and resist the violent and profligate culture in which we now live.

      Of course there are differences between now and then. Which is why this material requires some work if we are to comprehend and learn from it. But there are also profound points of convergence between this text and our context.

      Oddly enough, the central character in this story is one that remains nameless and never speaks. Her identity is always subsumed in collective references that include the accompanying servant and two donkeys. She is a concubine, something like we would think of as a mistress; only she is not “kept” in luxury. Her social status is actually less than that of the servant. Her owner is a Levite, a member of the professional religious class in ancient Israel. And there is no scandalous inference to his ownership of her. Just as today, generally speaking, there is no special significance assigned the scandalous rate of domestic abuse against women in our supposedly enlightened and advanced culture.

      Let me point out just a few of the points to consider.

      The first significant clue comes in the very first line of the story, where it says, “In those days, there was no king in Israel.” Calling attention to this fact is not an argument for monarchy, but simply an indication that the structures of public justice had collapsed. The text is implicitly tied to a related fact mentioned in the chapters surrounding this story, where this line is repeated: “every man did what was right in his own eyes.” This opening line is a clue about how we are to interpret what comes next.

      The second line of the narrative mentions what for the original audience was a startling turn of events. It’s something we pass over without noticing. The story says the unnamed woman fled her master’s house. A revolt is underway, and it is centered around a nameless nobody.

      Of course, the revolt is quickly quashed. Everyone in this Circle knows what it’s like to be involved in quashed revolts—revolts in our everyday lives against dehumanizing behavior in our neighborhoods and workplaces, in the formation of local economic policies, state and national funding priorities, political corruption and graft, even within the institutions we love and support . . . sometimes even into the church itself. People who are still grasped by a different vision—of affordable health care, of educational institutions devoted to genuine learning rather than propaganda and cultural assimilation, of genuinely equal opportunities for both women and men—we get beat down and quashed so often that we begin to think we’re crazy.

      One of the reasons worship is so central to our lives is because this is the place and time we get together to remind ourselves that we’re not crazy. That a different world is not only possible but is promised. Which is why one of the Bible’s most persistent themes is: don’t give up, stand firm, persevere, don’t be afraid. Part of our calling involves a kind of revolutionary patience (Dorothee Sölle).

      I don’t need to repeat the callously brutal facts of the rest of the story: of whole communities committed to rape; of men protecting their own status and safety by sacrificing the lives of women. In her book, Texts of Terror, Phyllis Trible offers this commentary:

      “Of all the characters in Scripture, she is the least. Appearing at the beginning and close of a story that rapes her, she is alone in a world of men. Neither the other characters nor the narrator recognizes her humanity. She is property, object, tool, and literary device. Without name, speech, or power, she has no friends to aid her in life or mourn her in death. Passing her back and forth among themselves, the men of Israel have obliterated her totally. Captured, betrayed, raped, tortured, murdered, dismembered and scattered—this woman is the most sinned against.” (pp. 80-81)

      The story closes, with the woman’s dismemberment and the scattering of her body parts to the far reaches of the land, the text’s final words are instruction for the whole population to hear and heed:

      “Has such a thing ever happened since the day that the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt? Consider it, take counsel, and speak out.”

      But as Trible reminds us, even the best English translations cannot do justice to the original Hebrew, where all of the verbal forms and the object in this statement are written in feminine gender. Literally, if awkwardly, translated it becomes “And all who saw Her said, ‘SHE was not, and SHE was not seen such as this from the day that the people came up out of the land of Egypt.’” In other words, the unnamed woman, the one with no status and object of unspeakable terror, is at the center of this story demanding our attention.

      The narrative closes with three imperatives: “Consider this, take counsel, and speak.” But again, the original is so much stronger: The first comment is not a suggestion; it is an imperative. And it’s not just “consider this” or “think about this.” It’s more like: “Direct your heart.” It is a NOW HEAR THIS! And not just in general, but “to her,” to this abused woman. God’s interest is tied up in, is synonymous with, the interests of this woman. Then, “take counsel,” let this horrible story instruct you. And finally, “speak.”

      The silence must end, sisters and brothers—but here especially I am speaking to my brothers. To find the wherewithal to do this, our hearts must be directed to the stories of forgotten and unnamed sisters. They have names, and we must learn them. They have histories and we must tell them. In the end, we must nurture a vision where our security and theirs are bound up together.

      Lord, hear our prayer. May it be so.

#  #  #

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested

“We’ll worship the hind legs off Jesus but never do a thing he says.” —Clarence Jordan

            Let’s be honest. Jesus’ command to “love your enemies” is likely the New Testament’s most memorable yet most effectively ignored directive.

            US presidential candidate Donald Trump hints at the disconnect in a recent interview.

            When asked on a radio talk show to name his favorite Bible verse or story that “informed” his thinking or character, Trump’s response was (and this is verbatim):

            “Well, I think many. I mean, when we get into the Bible, I think many, so many. And some people, look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that.” (Notice his characteristic way of saying something without quite saying it.)

            He continued, “That’s not a particularly nice thing.”

            “Not nice”? You mean there’s something “not nice” in the Bible? When asked to pick a text that informed his thinking, why go to the “not nice” part? One that Jesus contradicted.[1] Why not a “nice” verse or two?

            In the interview Trump continued, “If you look at what’s happening to our country, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us and how they scoff at us and laugh at us and laugh at our face. They’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our money, they’re taking the health of our country. We have to be very firm and we have to be very strong, and we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you.”[2]

            Meet Donald Trump, populist theologian and champion of street level exegesis.

            Trump was referencing the lex talionis tradition in Hebrew Scripture, popularly alluded to as the “eye for an eye” standard of justice.[3] As scholars point out, those teachings were established for the cause of justice rather than justification for vengeance. These stipulations undermine the kind of limitless revenge as typified in Lamech’s pledge, “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold" (Genesis 4:23a-24).

            Trump instinctively senses that revenge is “not nice,” but, hey, somebody has to do it, or otherwise people will take advantage of you. Which is why Jesus’ mandate about loving enemies—undeniably the hallmark of his teaching—is so thoroughly ignored, except as a tool for instructing children about playground fairness.

            Trump—along with most, even in the church—consider “loving enemies” utterly impractical and, for that matter, the reason we’re in the mess we’re in. Though criticizing Jesus isn’t something you want to do in public, especially during an election cycle. Majority opinion is closer to this bumper sticker sentiment accompanied with a Marine Corps insignia: “Pacifism is a luxury paid for by warriors.”

            “It is a rare society that tells exemplary stories of peacemaking,” Lance Morrow wrote in a Time Magazine essay, “except, say, for the Gospels of Christ, whose irenic grace may be admired from a distance, without much effect on daily behavior.”[4]

            Trump is hardly the only one who reveres the Bible while panning its substance. According to polls, 88% of US citizens own a Bible, 80% think it sacred, and more than half think it has too little influence in public life. Yet only 20% read it on a regular basis. More than three-fourths believe the Ten Commandments should be posted in public buildings, but nearly two-thirds of those can recall even five of those instructions.[5]

            When 82% of those polled believe “God helps those who help themselves” comes from the Bible,[6] Scripture’s function as cultural prop and national talisman is confirmed.

            In a quick search I found one online poster with a photo of the lethal Air Force A-10 “Warthog” fighter with the inscription:

            “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.”[7]

            But underneath the text, in smaller type is a subtext:

            “But he subcontracts.”

            That inventive interpretation also takes aim indirectly at the repeated insistence in the Bible against meeting evil with evil.[8]

            The notion of loving enemies is effectively reduced to humorous ridicule, as when Frank Sinatra quipped: “Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.” Mohandas Gandhi was right when he said “An eye for an eye ends up making the whole world blind.”

            The power to love enemies is both the evidence of salvation and its acclamation, taking on the Abba’s family resemblance, walking in the Way of Jesus, by the Spirit’s power conforming to the mind of Christ. For “while we were enemies [of God] we were reconciled” (Romans 5:10) by the Beloved’s unilaterally transforming initiative, baptizing into the same mission all who trust Resurrection’s promise, disarmed hearts rising to participate in the disarming of the nations.

#  #  #  End of part 1. Part 2 to come.

Notes

[1] Matthew 5:38-39. In his far-reaching exegesis of Jesus’ admonition, “Do not resist an evildoer,” Walter Wink demonstrates how poorly that text is rendered in English. “Jesus is not encouraging submission to evil; that would run counter to everything he did and said.  He is, rather, warning against responding to evil in kind by letting the oppressor set the terms of our opposition.  Perhaps most importantly, he cautions us against being made over into the very evil we oppose by adopting its methods and spirit.  He is saying, in effect, Do not mirror evil; do not become the very thing you hate.  The best translation is the Scholars Version: "Don't react violently against the one who is evil." “Beyond Just War and Pacifism: Jesus’ Nonviolent Way.”

[2] Listen to Trump’s comment from a radio talk show interview by Bob Lonsberry on Rochester, New York’s WHAM 1180AM station.

[3] See Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:17-22, Deuteronomy 19:15-21.

[4] “To Conquer the Past,” Time Magazine, 3 January 1994, italics added.

[5] “State of the Bible 2015," Barna Group 2015 poll for the American Bible Society; Albert L. Winseman, “Americans: Thou Shalt Not Remove the Ten Commandments,” Gallup, 12 April 2005 ; Caleb Bell, “Poll: Americans love the Bible but don’t read it much,” Washington Post, 4 April 2013

[6] Albert Mohler, “The Scandal of Biblical Illiteracy: It’s Our Problem,” Christianity.com.

[7] See Deuteronomy 32:35, Romans 12:19, among others.

[8] cf. Proverbs 20:22, Matthew 5:38-42; Luke 6:27-35; Romans 12:17-20; 1 Peter 3:8-9

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Text: 1 Kings 18:20-39
29 May 2016
Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville NC

by Ken Sehested

       A week ago I was coming up with ideas to share with Brian about music appropriate for today’s service. I sent a note to Larry Wilson who, as a life-long Mennonite pastor, would surely know the Mennonite hymnal and might have some Memorial Day music suggestions for worship.

       Larry wrote back and said, “Well, we never paid much attention to Memorial Day, so the truth is I don’t know of anything to recommend.”

       Here in this Circle we, too, enter Memorial Day weekend feeling a lot of ambiguity. On the one hand, we’re generally aware of the extraordinary sacrifice which veterans have endured. Since 1973 we’ve had an all-volunteer army here in the US. With a draft, the human costs of war are not widely felt throughout the population. But I suspect many know the unique ache of losing a loved one to the ravages of war.

       Although he almost never talked about it, my Dad was in the first wave landing at Omaha Beach in the 1945 D-Day invasion on the French coast of Europe. He carried to his grave a piece of shrapnel embedded in bone behind his right ear. Whenever I go to Washington, DC, I try to make time to visit the Vietnam War Memorial. My cousin Ron, whom I played with when our families gathered most summers at the Sehested clan house in Marlow, Oklahoma, has his name engraved on that wall.

       Years ago I daydreamed about taking a tour of war memorials around the globe, to experience them first-hand as a way of reflecting on what role they play in the life of a culture. Most, of course, glorify war. They function very much like religious altars, lifting up the memories of the dead as blood sacrifice and atonement for the nation and the penal cost of freedom. They are among the most sacred architecture in a nation’s liturgy. The flying of a nation’s flag, and the reciting of pledges of allegiance, point to these structures and the memories they store. Which brings to mind a couple of quotes:

       We believe “neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. We “repudiate the doctrine of Pacifism—born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and put the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it.”

       Then a second quote: “In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.”

       I can imagine any number of political leaders saying that first quote. But in fact it was written by Benito Mussolini, the World War II dictator of Italy. The second is from Adam Smith, the Scottish moral philosopher and political economist who is considered as the “father” of free-market capitalism. I think of it every year this weekend when the Indianapolis 500 car race happens, and the morning paper is more than twice its usual size due to the Memorial Day sales fliers.

       By the way, 350,000 people were at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway today to watch that race. Another 7 million or so watched it on TV. By my rough estimate, over the past 15 years worship attendance at Circle of Mercy totals a bit less than 40,000. Assuming worship attendance remains about the same, it will take us another 100 years to equal today’s attendance at the Indy 500. And it will take 175,000 years for us to total the number than watch today’s race on TV.

       Does that make you feel small? I hope so, for it’s only when we learn to embrace our smallness will we discover the goodness of the Gospel and the secret to our power.

       Memorial Day cookouts and picnics draw family and friends together. That’s a good thing. Millions of people experience the raw horsepower of the Indy 500, where the average speed is more than 150 miles per hour. That’s a rush. Tens of millions will visit cemeteries this weekend to honor the dead, especially those killed in our nation’s wars. They should be remembered. For decades my uncle in Oklahoma goes to the Marlow cemetery to lay fresh flowers on the graves of the Sehested and Rowell clans. The reason I appreciate the Vietnam Memorial is because it is designed for grief. Whether you are or against any particular war, we all need to grieve the inevitable losses.

       Hundreds of millions of US flags will fly this weekend. Once upon a time that flag symbolized the overthrow of repressive government and militarized oppression—though I dare say what the flag symbolizes today is not as clear, especially in our time, when U.S. special forces are operating in 134 countries around the globe and are supported by more than 800 military bases outside our nation’s borders.

       No one should dispute the valor of soldiers and sailors and airmen and women, and I certainly don’t. In fact, I’m envious, envious over the fact that we have institutions capable of calling forth the willingness to go into harm’s way for reasons beyond self-preservation. Once upon a time, the church offered a similarly compelling story, inspiring similar levels of commitment.

       “Greater love hath none than this,” Jesus told his disciples, “than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Nowadays most adults can buy an assault rifle with that verse of Scripture inscribed on the barrel.

       Solemn oaths of allegiance and loyalty have long traditions in both the military and the church. My argument with military culture is not over morality. I’m pretty sure there are proportionately as many sincere, fair-minded members in the military as in the church. My argument, rather, is whose vision—the one in Scripture refined and focused in Jesus’ testimony, or the one in policies of national defense—whose vision about the exertion of power to order the Beloved Community is more compelling and, more importantly, more trustworthy in the long run?

       Does the Way of Jesus compete with the wont of the Pentagon?

       Is the Way of Jesus “an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice?”

       Is it true that “war alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and put the stamp of nobility upon the peoples”?

       Is it remotely possible that loving one’s enemies is not a silly notion but is, in fact, the way to peace?

       Part of the answer to that question is defining what “peace” is. In his history of ancient Rome’s conquests, the historian Tacitus recorded this comment from one military commander overwhelmed by Roman might: “They rob, butcher, plunder, and call it ‘empire’; and where they make a desolation, a wasteland, they call it ‘peace.’”

       What we should be asking ourselves is whether the peace of Christ is a reliable alternative to the peace of Rome. Pax Christi? Or Pax Romana? Or is the peace of Christ merely a “spiritual” thing, emptied of fleshly meaning, useful only as a preparation for the life hereafter, where the peace of Rome is the undisputed guarantor of human affairs this side of Heaven? In other words, is “just war-making” the most reasonable bet?

§  §  §

       Today’s text from 1 Kings is a doozy. One bit of background: a little earlier in chapter 18 Israel’s King Ahab refers to the prophet Elijah as “the troubler” of the nation. We need to ask ourselves when and how the Word of God is the “troubler of nations” and in what ways are we to be “troublers” of the nation.

       In this text a national debate is raging over which source of divine power is more reliable. Is it Ba’al, the most common name of the deity of that part of ancient semitic cultures in what we now call the Middle East; or is it Yahweh, the one who mobilized the Hebrew people’s escape from Egyptian bondage?

       Elijah challenges the priest of Ba’al to a showdown. All the people met at Mount Carmel. Then Elijah made his famous indictment of the people’s divided loyalties, in the form of an accusatory question: “When will you stop sitting on the fence?” Another translator uses a different metaphor: “How long will you go limping with two different opinions?”

       When will you stop sitting on the fence? How long will you go limping with two different opinions?

       I hope you loved Nancy’s children’s story about Hedy Epstein[1] as much as I did—though none of us love it was much as Bill Ramsey [one of our members], who was like a son to Hedy. Remember these three things, Hedy told countless number of school children over the course of her lifetime: (1) remember your past; (2) don’t hate; and (3) don’t be a bystander. Get off the fence; quit limping along with two different opinions. Make up your mind and put your assets in the game.

       There’s not enough time now to survey the entire narrative of Elijah’s confrontation with 450 priests of Ba’al. That number, by the way, is key to the sarcasm of this story: Elijah is outnumbered 450-to-1. Needless to say it was a fiery showdown. The priests of Ba’al are hapless. Despite parading around their altar all day long, nothing happened. (The text repeated the word “limped” in describing the priests’ desperate efforts.) All in vain. Elijah mocked them, saying “Cry aloud! It’s shoutin’ time. Surely your god is a true God. But maybe he’s immersed in transcendental meditation, doing some centering prayer, lost in a mystical trance, holed up somewhere in a sweat lodge. Or maybe he wandered off, out of cellphone reach in a no wi-fi wilderness. Or maybe just catching up on some zzzz’s, taking a power nap.

       Then to underscore the drama, Elijah had his altar soaked in water; and then soaked again; and then a third time. He was taunting his opponents, almost like fighting them with one hand tied behind his back.

       That’s when the fireworks began.

§ § §

       And so we, too, are faced with our own Memorial Day choice. How long will we sit on the fence? How long will we go about limping with unresolved, contradictory commitments?

§ § §

       Let me be clear about this. The world is not a harmless place. It can be dangerous, even deadly. Jesus’ call to faith is not a recommendation of naiveté, as if we could just sing “Kumbaya” enough and threats would go away. The question that dogs us is the question about which vision of the future is more reliable? Which god deserves our trust and obedience? Does violence, in the end, play a necessary redemptive function—God, being occasionally distracted, needing a little nudge from us to make history come out right? Or is there a reliable power beyond the weapons of war and retaliation and emotional manipulation and harsh and bitter language? And if so, what does that power require of us? What does it look like? How do we access it and learn it and practice it and teach it? How do we shape individuals and families and economic institutions and whole cultures that cooperate in building a culture of peace? As a start, we should revisit our own “Peace Church” statement approved in 2012.[2]

       Let me be clear about this. There is no Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, telling Dorothy that in order to escape the dangerous land of Oz she only need click the heels of her ruby slippers three times, repeating the phrase “There’s no place like home.”

       This, sisters and brothers—this is home, right here in our often-threatening land of Oz. This is the arena of God’s redemptive plan. This, not some distant horizon, some place in what’s behind the clouds, is where we must pitch our tents. This is where the drama of salvation is being played out. This is the geography of our faith. This is the reference point of our marching orders and our mustering in the God Movement.

       The really uncomfortable news, however, is that we really cannot know this alternative source of power until we actually commit ourselves to it. Details of the Way only opens up as we walk. Nothing important can be known short of the risk of commitment.

       Remember your history; don’t hate; and by all means get off the fence, don’t be a bystander.

# # #

[P.S. The lectionary editors ended today’s 1 Kings reading at v. 39, just short of v. 40 where the priests of Ba’al are massacred at Elijah’s demand. We cannot simply whiteout that part of the story—but that’s another sermon.]

Endnotes

[1] See “Hedy Epstein, Rights Activist and Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 91,” The New York Times.

[2] “Circle of Mercy is a Peace Church.”