Rev. Brent L. White

So far, I am loving John Goldingay’s For Everyone commentary on the Old Testament. I just finished reading another disturbing episode from the Book of Judges, the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter in Judges 11:30-40. In exchange for military success against the Ammonites, Jepthah promises God that he will offer as a burnt offering “whoever comes out of my house to greet me” when he returns from battle. Naturally, he’s shocked to see his daughter, his only child, come out to greet him “with tambourine and dancing.” After a two-month reprieve, he kills his daughter.

Why does Jephthah make this vow? Why can’t he retract it? Why does he imagine that such a burnt offering would be acceptable to Yahweh when Yahweh has prohibited human sacrifice? Why does his daughter go along with it so easily? It’s senseless beyond belief. To make matters worse, the text itself offers no commentary on Jephthah’s actions. There is no judgment for or against it.

Again… why?

Of this troubling text, Goldingay writes:

Whereas modern readers can be appalled that he Old Testament tells stories like this, it is actually part of its greatness that it does so. It is not a book that provides us with a way of escaping the reality of how the world is but one that rubs our noses in the reality of how the world is. Its lack of explicit moral judgments (“Jephthah did evil in the eyes of the Lord”) focuses our attention on the story itself and the horror of its implications concerning the stupidity of Jephthah and the suffering of a girl. That might have the capacity to make a difference to our lives and to our concern about men like that and our concern for their victims.^†

This is exactly right. If there were an explicit moral judgment, it would distance us from the horror of Jephthah’s action. We say, “Yes, that’s horrifying,” shrug our shoulders, and move on. The text forces us to work through it ourselves—to spend more time than we’d prefer getting inside Jephthah’s head and feeling this unnamed daughter’s despair.

A couple of years ago, I made the same point (not remembering how it might apply to scripture) in a favorable review of the Jason Reitman film Up in the Air. If you recall, George Clooney plays a hired-gun consultant who fires people for a living. Clooney’s character briefly pursues deeper meaning in his life before abandoning the project by the end of the movie. There I wrote:

The movie catches up with characters we’ve seen earlier who were fired by Bingham. They’re still out of work, but each of them describes how their loved ones—spouses, children, and friends—give their lives meaning and strength.

This is an unnecessarily heavy-handed touch. Are the filmmakers afraid that by robbing us of the happy ending we want and expect, they approve of Bingham’s pessimistic outlook? Do they feel as if they need to tell us, “We really believe in love after all”? The movie is in too deep for such glibness. In other words, because the film has told its story so convincingly, the audience feels genuinely unsettled. A sop to sentimentality at the end won’t cut it. The film challenges us to see the world through Bingham’s eyes and wonder if he isn’t onto something.

† John Goldingay, Joshua, Judges & Ruth for Everyone (Louisville, KY: WJK, 2011), 130.

"I Am Second" is an online collection of personal testimonies of faith.

In an anecdote from my sermon yesterday, I told the congregation that I grew up in a Christian tradition (Southern Baptist) that emphasized the power of the personal testimony. Growing up, it was a common feature of youth camps, retreats, and Sunday night worship services. A testimony is a Christian’s story of what God has done and is doing in their life.

Even in our Methodist tradition, testimonies play an important role. For the eight years during which I sought ordination as a United Methodist clergy, I frequently had to tell (and write about) the story of how I became a Christian, what it’s meant to me, and how I knew God was calling me into pastoral ministry. We didn’t call it either a testimony or story, mind you—why use those words when a more pretentious seminary word like “narrative” is available?

Over time, I learned to tell my story in such a way that its sharp edges were smoothed over. It became more cohesive but also more stylized. My call into pastoral ministry did not unfold as neatly as I described in my account of it. This is no surprise: living life, as opposed to talking about living life, is always much more ambiguous.

But here’s the important point: my testimony is true, regardless whether a journalist or historian would describe it just this way. I believe in the power of testimonies.

With that in mind, you can imagine how pleased I was to find this website, “I Am Second” (there’s also now a book version). “I Am Second” is an online collection of personal testimonies from people (Americans only?) from different walks of life.

Aside from the distractingly modish way in which these testimonies are filmed, I like it. Like most people, I’m more curious about famous people’s testimonies. Aside from some star athletes, the celebrities are mostly B-listers, but that’s O.K. (On what planet does Michael W. Smith qualify as a rock star? The guy from Korn, sure, but why not Alice Cooper?)

One final thought: I watch Survivor. Last season featured a few outspoken Christians on the show. I appreciated their faith and witness. One of them—if you watched the show, you’ll know who I’m talking about—seemed annoying, if not like a mental case. (This is “reality TV,” which means, ironically, that what you see does not reflect reality very well; he may be completely normal in real life.) He talked about Jesus. A lot. Even as he acted, act times, like a jerk. My daughter complained that he wasn’t making us Christians look very good.

I got where she’s coming from, but I disagreed. I said, “Yes, but just think of what this person would be like if he didn’t have Jesus in his life!”

And that’s how we should view a person’s testimony—not so much who they are now, but who they are in relation to who they used to be.

One more bloggish thought before I get back to writing, or thinking about writing, my sermon. I read this profoundly good blog post over on Rachel Held Evans’s blog (written by guest blogger Margot Starbuck—what an awesome name! Is that real?). Starbuck describes a few heroic friends and/or saints who have dedicated a large portion of their lives to serving the poor. They are, as you’ll see from the following excerpt, unlike her (bolded words are from the original post).

I hope you see how terribly convenient all of this is for me. If “loving the poor” is something that only red-caped superheroes do—because they’re retired, or because they’re young and single and kid-free, or because they get paid a teeny tiny salary to do it—then I’m off the hook.  (Because I’m unprofessional, old, married, mothering and decidedly not retired, that’s why.)  If I make engaging with a world in need a really big thing, then it’s kind of like I’m no longer responsible for it.  Which really works for me.

On the other hand, if engaging with a world in need were to be a very small thing—like learning more about the bagboy who tirelessly bags my groceries every week, or shamelessly begging for a baby shower invite to celebrate my favorite waitress at my favorite restaurant, or stopping to help the teen whose car is broken down by the side of the road—then I’d become responsible for it.

My main reason for reflecting on it here is because I see a connection to this Sunday’s scripture and sermon. I’m sure that my sermon will include words about “answering God’s call,” just as Gideon answered the call. As a recently ordained pastor, I’ve been forced to think and write a lot about answering God’s call. The United Methodist Church is intensely interested in the subject when it evaluates candidates for ordination.

But the church also believes that everyone is called by God to Christian service, whether we’re clergy or laypeople. Answering God’s call, therefore, isn’t just for the chosen few. God doesn’t simply call big and important people to do big and important things. If that were so—as Starbuck says—that would be very convenient for most of us. Most of us would be off the hook. As she writes, “If I make engaging with a world in need a really big thing, then it’s kind of like I’m no longer responsible for it.  Which really works for me.”

This Sunday’s scripture doesn’t necessarily prove her point. God did call Gideon to do big things. But as I’ll make clear on Sunday, it certainly wasn’t because he had any special qualifications, talent, or aptitude for the job. He was no conventional hero. In fact, he was kind of a dork.

That should serve as some encouragement, I hope.

So I’m preaching this Sunday about no one’s favorite Bible hero, Gideon, from no one’s favorite book of the Bible, Judges. J. Clinton McCann Jr. was a master of understatement when he wrote the following in his introduction to the book in The Life with God Bible: “The book of Judges is not a source to which the People of God have readily turned for guidance in spiritual formation or instruction in the Spiritual Disciplines.”^†

Christians, in general, don’t like the book of Judges. It is at times disturbingly violent. (Judges 19:22-30 would earn any movie version an NC-17. Some of you are like, “I need to read that!”) Years ago, I stumbled upon something at a Christian bookstore called the Precious Moments Bible, whose stories were illustrated with depictions of those sappy, waif-ish figurines that used to be popular nicknacks. I thought, “What are they going to do with Judges?” Nothing about the book says “Precious Moments.”

We’re so squeamish about Judges that it rates exactly one appearance in the Revised Common Lectionary (concerning the prophetess Deborah), giving the lie to the oft-repeated claim that if we preachers follow the Lectionary we’ll somehow preach or at least hear the “whole Bible” in three years. Please! Not even close. The Lectionary, Protestant or Catholic, omits many of the most troublesome passages of scripture.

Preachers, in my opinion, have an obligation to preach these neglected passages from Judges, including Jael and Sisera, Samson, and, indeed, what I’m preaching this Sunday, the call of Gideon in Judges 6.

Not that I’ve ever done it before, lest you think I’m sitting too high in the saddle of my high horse! 😉

† J. Clinton McCann Jr., “Judges” in The Life with God Bible, NRSV, ed. Richard J. Foster (New York: HarperOne, 2005), 341.