Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to comm.church for more information.

So we've started our second series of the summer, stories of light, which is about God's commitment to our empowerment. Through a new set of biblical figures, we look for a fresh perspective on what it means that God's light finds us and shines in dark times. And Scott opened the series with the biblical figures of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, and he pointed out themes of liminality and in between spaces, the way places leave this incredible impression on us. And he encouraged us to live across our dual identities, whether they be cultural, familial, or geographical. Also and I'm so glad that Scott did this.

He traced the theme of masculinity through Boaz's story. It was a new hot take. And I love talking with Scott about masculinity. I really do. Is so thoughtful, truly one of my favorite dudes to bring such a careful and fresh perspective.

So check out that sermon on YouTube or the podcast if you missed it. Today, our story of light comes from the book of Judges, notably one of the bleakest, most shadowy books in the Bible, but still, we will find light. We're spending time with a judge named Deborah, a timid warrior named Barak, a slimy commander named Cicera, and a powerhouse tent dwelling woman named Jael. We're gonna talk about a prophet under a palm tree, a song before the story, small winds and love like the sun. The story is from Judges four and five.

It is cinematic. And if nothing else, I think you'll be entertained today. On that note, let us pray. Loving god, we take a moment to pay attention to our breath, the rise and the fall, the expanse and the release, and we notice any tension we might be holding, maybe in our shoulders, our hands, our spinning minds. We just notice that, and we breathe into those places.

We relax them a little bit, Reminding ourselves that we are safe here, that we can be who we are here, and that you are here. Christ as a light, illumine and guide us. Amen. Before we dive in to the book of Judges, you need to know that it's a little nasty, and that is a weird word to say in a sermon, but I am committing to it. We are dropping into the messiness of making a home.

Israel has made the exodus out of Egypt and now struggle to settle the promised land. In the outline of the biblical story, the era of judges exists in what archaeologists call iron age one. And in this liminal space, before they had kings, Israel sought leadership from judges more accurately imagined as tribal chieftains. The book of judges collects stories of these tribal chieftains responding to different crises of their time and their involvement always takes the same pattern. The people sin and turn away from Yahweh.

They fall into the hands of oppressors. Oppressors. They cry out. Yahweh sends a deliverer, a chieftain judge to rescue them. There is some respite, a moment of peace.

The deliverer dies. The people sin. You get it. The cycle just keeps continuing. As far as the scope of judges, at the beginning of the book, the leaders start off okay, and then they're not so good.

And by the end, they're downright horrific. The kings to come will do the same. They'll start out okay, but then mostly go downhill from there. Cycles, follow cycles, follow cycles. And all of these stories are here to do one thing.

They're here to break our hearts because we know something about destructive cycles. But before all that, Deborah, a prophet under a palm tree. Let's begin with judges four verses four to nine. Now, Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lapidoth, was leading Israel at the time. She held court under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim.

And Israelites went up to her to have their disputes decided. She sent for Barak, son of Abinoam, from Kadesh in Neftali and said to him, the Lord, the God of Israel commands you. Go take with you 10,000 men of Neftali and Zebulun and lead them up to Mount Tabor. I will send Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army with his chariots and his troops in the Kishon River, and give him into your hands. Barak said to her, if you go with me, I will go.

But if you don't go with me, I won't go. Certainly, I will go with you, said Deborah. But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman. So Deborah went with Barak to Kadesh. Okay.

I love this. Deborah, a prophet. Except the text doesn't say that. It says that she's a woman prophetess. In Hebrew.

The text is getting out in front of an unusual figure here. Like, Get a load of this judge. A woman. And the second description of Deborah in the NIV frames her as the wife of Lapidoth, but Lapidoth is not likely a person. There's no trace of anyone by that name in ancient texts, biblical or otherwise, so some scholars present a couple other options.

Lapidoth could be the town she's from from, but that is a far cry too. There's no evidence that such a place existed. And second, Lapidoth can be looked at etymologically. The building blocks of the Hebrew construction are Ishet, meaning woman, possibly compared to her male counterpart in the story Barak, and Lapidoth can translate as flames. So Deborah reads as a woman of flames.

Or in Will Gaffney's translation, Deborah is fiery woman, which makes sense alongside of this codependent warrior, Barak. Deborah outshines Barak in every way. She is sought out for her wisdom. She is listened to. She wisely sees into the future saying, Barak, buddy, your worst enemy will be defeated not by your hands, but by the hands of a woman.

I like to imagine that her eyes with these smile lines flashed with fire too. Like, she's in on the joke about how surreal and strange her life had become. Now remember how a moment ago, I told you that these stories are meant to break your heart. And the book of Judges is not categorical history. It is chronologically all over the map, and it is haunting as sacred text.

So it helps to think of Judges as liturgical scripture, as a way to form faithfulness in you. You're given this portrait of people who lose their way. You notice how their relationship with place and land is disordered. You notice how their relationship with stuff and strangers is in disarray. You notice these cycles of sin and spiritual deadness.

They love idols. They hate enemies. They have little trust, little awe, little love. Daniel Stulak in his book, wonderfully titled Gift of the Grotesque, summarizes the stories in Judges as a theological dark age where Israel wanders into a spiritual maze, where left turn after left turn after left turn always takes God's people back to the place they began, the chronic dispoliation of promised land. In other words, these people at this time spoil everything.

But even in the stink, even in the dark, even in this labyrinthine maze, there are flashes of inspiration and wisdom and lightness of being and humor and humanity. This fiery woman under a palm tree is all of that. Judges on a whole won't actually get better. But as a sacred text, we are meant to be broken open by the story. To remember that life can certainly be brutal and kind of grotesque, and wisdom can still be found as a fiery presence taking our hand and leading us through the battle ahead.

And sometimes, wisdom even makes its way into our heart like a song. The truth is the story of Deborah and Barak and their enemy, Cicera, and a foreign woman named JL will exist as a song before they're even a story. Judges five is called the song of Deborah, and it includes some of the oldest Hebrew in the bible. Historical critics believe that Judges five is an older poetic version of the story in Judges four, meaning the song actually came first. And the Song of Deborah is similar to texts that we have encountered before.

Back in Exodus 15 after Moses leads the Israelites through the sea at night on dry land, Moses and Miriam sing a song of victory. They sing a song of liberation. Walter Brueggemann notes that these songs, and especially the song of Deborah, is one of Israel's most formidable and earliest articulations of faith in Yahweh. So they don't start with a textbook or a bunch of memory verses or a treatise or a finely tuned argument they know themselves with a song. Isn't that a comfort?

If you're like me, you listen to the same Phoebe Bridger's song on repeat for an entire evening, and then you just keep doing that same thing all summer long. We don't always know why we find ourselves in a song. There's something about the melody and maybe the lyrics that speak our truth. So listen to some of the lyrics in Judges five. Deborah sings, hear this, you kings.

Listen, rulers. I, even I, will sing to the Lord. In the days of j l, the highways were abandoned. Travelers took to winding paths, meaning it was a scary time. And so God chose new leaders When war came to the city gates, the remnant of the nobles came down.

The people of the Lord came down against the mighty. From the heavens, the stars fought. From their courses, they fought against Sisera. These are poetic expressions of people who need a god to fight for them. That's how they understand themselves worthy of divine allyship even through cycles of estrangement and disloyalty.

And so Barak summons fighters, 10,000 under his command, and Deborah goes with him, and they make camp. And word gets out to Sisera that the people he oppresses are about to fight back. And Sisera, in turn, gathers all his men and his 900 chariots fitted with iron. The mention of chariots of iron is not literal. Chariots of this time are wooden, maybe with a little reinforced iron, maybe a little swag.

And the iron description exaggerates just how terrifying Sisera's military machine had become, having spent two decades oppressing Deborah's people, the Israelites, bullied for so long, are up against a monster. And here's what happens next. Judges four beginning in 14. Then Deborah said to Barak, go. This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands.

Has not the Lord Lord gone ahead of you? So Barak went down Mount Tabor with 10,000 men following him. At Barak's advance, the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera got down from his chariot and fled on foot. And the Barak chases the chariots further, and all Sisera's troops fall by the sword, and we're told not a man was left. Verse 17.

Sisera, meanwhile, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. Because there was an alliance between Jabin, the king of Hezor, Sisera's king, and the family of Heber the Kenite, Jael's husband's family. And at this point in the story, you might be drifting off, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. God's people, god's people always prevail. It is a foregone conclusion.

But what you need to pay attention to here is this lone man who is this henchman of oppression running away from the battlefield, maybe out of breath, perhaps a a gash across his forehead from the fight, pulling back this tent door to assume his protection. Verse 18, Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, come, my lord, come right in. Don't be afraid. So he entered her tent, and she covered him with a blanket. I'm thirsty, he said.

Please give me some water. So she opened a skim of milk and gave him a drink and covered him up. Stand at the doorway of the tent, he told her, if someone comes by to ask you, is anyone there? Say no. But JL, Heber's wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep exhausted.

She drove the tent peg through his temple into the ground, and he died. Just then, Barak came in pursuit of Sisera and Jael went out to meet him. Come, she said, I will show you the man that you're looking for. So he went with her, and there lay Sisera with a tent peg, threw his temple dead. Actual words in the bible.

And on that day, subdued Jabin king of Canaan before the Israelites. And the hand of the Israelites pressed harder and harder against Jabin king of Canaan until they destroyed him. This story is wild. It is kind of sick. And by sick, I mean it is so good because it's high drama.

And before you go thinking, where did all of this come from? Remember, Deborah predicted it. She told Barack when he chickened out of the fight that because he didn't march forward with her orders on his own, the true hero of the story would be a woman. And maybe when you heard that, you thought, wow, Debbie, confident. I like it.

And if so, you're forgiven for not realizing Deborah wasn't even speaking about herself. She points to a different hero, a woman outside the tribes of Israel at camp behind enemy lines. JL brings down a warrior and with him a whole kingdom. And now, you know you're in a biblical story where the strong shame the strong are shamed by the weak, The stranger turns out to be your unlikely salvation, and any amount of oppression will be found out and pinned to the ground where it belongs. Hey, I get it.

This story is wild. It's a little bit nasty. A woman welcomes the enemy into her tent, lulls him to sleep with some warm milk and cozy blanket, and then she sneaks up on him. And the song in chapter five paints a picture of his head between her legs, and he dies at her hand with a phallic tent peg, her weapon. And if you sense sexual innuendo, you are correct.

That's exactly how ancient audiences would have heard it. Sisera doesn't die as his commander or as commentators claim at the hands of a temptress. He dies at the hand of a woman who bends gender. She is the one with the peg in her hand. It's doing that.

And in my opinion, it's the strangeness of this small win that makes the story shine so bright. Like, what if below the surface of this sensational tale, we could sense a divine economy of gift? People say it all the time, the world is burning. And after yet another week of heat warnings, it certainly feels like it's so. And honestly, I think that's how they felt in judges.

Chaos in politics, tribes polarized, abuse of power in the poor. And somehow, somehow, this text never loses sight of the humanity of these biblical figures. The woman who was sought for her wisdom out under a palm tree. The man of battle who knew his limitations. The enemy seen as a scared, tired boy exhausted from the fight in a woman who, should she let the man rest and revive and live, would likely have become his next victim.

He's a brutal man. Love might seem so small in judges. Winning might look like losing. A world might feel like it is burning, but the divine economy of gift loves small wins. Small wins like a little bit of good advice.

And the one friend who's on your side. And the times you don't lose your cool. And the one deep breath that connects you to the present moment. The beautiful sunrise you only caught the tail of a simple prayer that just goes, thank you. When I read the story of Deborah as a story of light through the lens of Jesus, I'm reminded that God loves life, like all of it.

The judge, the scoundrel, the betrayer, the denier, the fool. And we do well to seek wisdom and defend goodness like Deborah and JL, however imperfectly, however small the win. Because there is a point to all of this, especially in dark times, and that point is love. And in the words of Deborah's victory song, love named as such a bright thing, it shines like the sun. In Judges five, there is actually one more character we haven't met.

Near the end of the song in verse 28, we spot Sisera's mother waiting for her son to return from battle. Five twenty eight. Through the window peered Sicera's mother. Behind the lattice, she cried out, why is his chariot so long in coming? Why is the clatter of his chariot delayed?

And the wisest of her ladies answer her, indeed, she keeps saying to herself, are they not finding and dividing the spoils, a woman or two for each man? Colorful garments is plunder for Sisera. Colorful garments embroiled, embroidered, highly embroidered garments for my neck. Is this plunder? And the song provides this ironic twist.

Cicero was a son. He came from between a woman's legs, and he died between a woman's legs. A full circle picture that is so tragic. You kinda have to laugh. I mean, it's just really good storytelling.

The victory song adds this flourish for our imagination saying, remember how Sisera oppressed us and beat us down for two decades? Well, he got what was coming to him all the way back to his mother. We'll never have to worry about him again. These people sing to express how sweet it was to feel free. And whenever they could, however possible, they find a little levity.

Sometimes humor in a hard time is all the light that you're gonna get, and there's power in our laughter. In fact, light is the metaphor we end on. The whole account concludes in five thirty one. So may all your enemies perish, Lord, but may all who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength. Then the land had peace for forty years.

I don't know who your enemies are or how your most painful prayers sound like when you just feel like cursing. But I delight in this image of love blazing and bringing us strength and helping us rise. So go find your own hilarious and unlikely heroes. Like, welcome a new perspective. Uncover the light and trust that god empowers you to be fully who you are.

So we bless the light that lifts you, bringing you peace, we hope, for years. Let us pray. Loving god, we take a moment to listen to our own hearts, to open ourselves to the spirit, to imagine an encounter with Jesus, and we just listen for you. If we need to find fresh perspective, fresh profits, will you guide us on that journey? And if we need a new song, will you sing over us with hope and truth?

If we need to just do some counting up of our own small winds, will you point them out for us? And if we need to be wrapped in love to rise like the sun, will you bring actual arms to hold us? Spirit of the living God, present with us now. Enter the places of our longing and our lack, and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.