Sermon: Texts of Terror
This is a sermon adapted from one I gave at Trinity United Methodist Church. You can view that version here.
In worship, I did a kind of content warning before preaching, per the advice of another amazing explorer of this text, Kyndall Rae Rothaus in her excellent book Thy Queendom Come. This particular Scripture is the story of a parent murdering a child. Give yourself the space you need before engaging, if you can engage this story or sermon at all! Take care of yourself.
Scripture: Judges 11:29-40
Sermon: Texts of Terror
Let us pray:
Patient teacher, we give you thanks for questions. We don’t always want to give thanks for questions; more often than not we want answers. So through the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts, help us learn to sit with the questions and challenges that this story of Jephthah’s daughter can bring. Amen.
My preaching professor used to tell us our job when we preach is to highlight the gospel, the good news, in the scripture we were reading. My own scriptural understanding of my job comes from Mary Magdalene after the resurrection when she preached the first Christian sermon saying, “I have seen the Lord.” Much shorter than sermons are usually. But here she was in the 20th chapter of the Gospel of John, proclaiming the resurrection. That's my job as a preacher. So what happens when the Bible story itself doesn’t have good news in it; what happens when the scripture we read bears no glimpses of resurrection?
When we read scripture as Christians, it is usually for devotion, to draw nearer to God. Maybe even to learn how to deepen our faith. So what happens when the Bible story itself makes us wonder where God even is?
Our scripture reading today is a story that brings with it these difficult questions. Feminist theologian Phyllis Trible wrote a now classic textbook on these kinds of passages that she labels “Texts of Terror.” These are tales in the Bible where women and girls are victims of violence. They are tragedies in the sense that there isn’t a happy ending or redemptive suffering. They are just terrible tales. Which leads us to more questions, like why would such stories be in the Bible at all? And why tell them now? Phyllis Trible explains that the Bible is a mirror, that just as art imitates life, so the Bible likewise “reflects in it both holiness and horror” (Texts of Terror, 2). By that I mean, we read what we are experiencing today. Though thousands of years separate us, human beings are still experiencing the inbreaking of God’s presence even as we continue to struggle with violence.
Take this story from Judges. A child is sacrificed at the altar of her father’s ambition. And nobody stops it. Not even God. Today children are sacrificed for adults’ ambition or greed, whether that’s on a large scale in the case of global climate change robbing our children’s tomorrow for today’s profit, or on a smaller scale in the neglect and abuse that occurs in homes all over the world. And most of the time nobody stops it. Not even God.
Where is that good news, that glimpse of resurrection? The Book of Judges as a whole is a hard place to find good news. Don Fine is leading the men’s Bible study on Judges right now if you want to read more of this book, but it is a difficult one. The judges referred to in the title of the book are not judges in the sense that we are used to; they are more like chieftains or warrior heroes. But not necessarily good ones. Each time we are introduced to one of these judges, we have just learned that Israel has sinned in the eyes of the Lord and is thus delivered into the hand of one of Israel’s enemies. The judge must step in and save Israel, and then there is a short time of peace. This is a refrain throughout the book of Judges. When we meet Jephthah, there has already been plenty of sinning and plenty of oppression. Jephthah is an able warrior, we learn earlier in the eleventh chapter, only we learn he has been abused and discarded in his childhood. He was made into an outcast, and only called back because he could do something for them.
He could have turned them down. But he didn’t, he agreed to fight- if they would make him a judge to rule over them. From outcast to judge. If he was able to defeat the enemies. If he doesn’t- well then. He will continue to be an outcast.
If we know this part of the story, we begin to understand Jephthah a bit better than we might if we just read the end of the chapter like we did in worship. His vow comes from a place not of love- how could it when it is so violent? His vow comes from a place of fear and insecurity. In some ways, his violence was just what he had been taught when he was abused and outcast as a child. Hurt people hurt people, right? Violence begets violence. Except when it doesn’t. Except when someone breaks this cycle. Jephthah’s daughter responds to violence much differently than her father.
One of my seminary professors has written about this story. She is one of the interpreters who claims that Jephthah’s daughter is not this demure, obedient little girl. Too often we read this story and marvel at the child’s willingness to be made a sacrifice. But maybe it isn’t willingness at all. Perhaps Jephthah’s daughter hears of the curse and makes the deliberate choice to meet her father. As my professor writes, “Perhaps she...knew that no one else’s death would make [her father] stop and realize that his disregard for innocent life made him no better than [those] who had treated him like garbage to be discarded” (Dana Nolan Fewell, The Children of Israel: Reading the Bible for the Sake of Our Children, 79). But whether deliberate or not, Jephthah’s daughter’s response to her father’s plan to murder her is a rejection of returning violence for violence.
But her response does not change her father’s mind either. He insists on remaining faithful to an unfaithful vow (Trible, Texts of Terror, 102). So where is the good news? A father burns his child to death because of a stupid oath. Nobody stops him. Not even God.
If we read the Bible without thinking, if we read it expecting every story to have a happy ending, if we read it denying that texts of terror can exist in our holy book, then we could be left believing that God not intervening means God was ok with this sacrifice. After all, we learn at the beginning of the section we read today in worship that the Lord’s spirit came on Jephthah before he won a victory over his enemies. Before he even made his terrible vow. Where was the Lord’s spirit when Jephthah faced his daughter with her tambourine when he returned home? After all, in the famous story of Abraham and Isaac in the book of Genesis, God provides a ram for a sacrifice instead of Isaac. No rams here. Instead we have questions without answers.
Which is fitting if this scripture is a mirror of our world, right? Where is the Lord’s spirit when children are trafficked? Where is the Lord’s spirit when drone strikes take out children instead of terrorists? Where is the Lord’s spirit anytime a child is abused? But in some ways, asking that question lets all the other people who could have done something to save Jephthah’s daughter off the hook, and it lets us off the hook today. Jephthah could have rescinded his vow. His neighbors could have pointed out his folly. Someone- anyone- could have poured water on the pyre. Today is not so different. We think we can’t do much about child sacrifice on a global scale, especially when the sacrifice is committed by corporations or the government, but even small actions can make a difference. We can be more conscious about where we shop and to make sure we aren’t sacrificing children in sweatshops halfway across the world for cheap fashion. We can donate to organizations that combat human trafficking or that work to educate children. We can pay attention to the children in our own communities and families.
There is a postscript to this story. Much is made of the fact that Jephthah’s daughter has never known a man. This fact functions as a way of telling us how young she is, but it also tells us that she was destined to be forgotten with no children to remember her. But someone does remember her. Her friends who go into the hills to lament her unlived life with her remember her. As my professor points out, “They stood in stark contrast to the adult citizens...who made no move to save or comfort Jephthah’s daughter” (Fewell, The Children of Israel, 81). They joined her in her grief. And they continued to tell her story after she was killed, four days a year every year thereafter. My professor stresses that “the story will never replace the child” (Fewell, The Children of Israel, 69). The violence of her end was completely senseless. Grieving for her does not redeem her story. But maybe it can redeem us. Maybe it can teach us to interrupt the next child’s death. Maybe when we hear the story it can change us.
I went to see a show this past week called Hadestown. It is a musical retelling of the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. At the end of the story, after you are left gutted, the narrator steps in with a song: “It’s a tragedy. It’s a sad song. But we sing it anyway, ‘cause here’s the thing: to know how it ends and still begin to sing it again as if it might turn out this time.”
We know the words of the story in scripture aren’t going to change. But if we listen to these stories, maybe we can help change the world it mirrors. Maybe the more we tell the story of Jephthah’s daughter, the more we see those children sacrificed in our own world, in our own community, maybe even our own families. And maybe we can become the ones to step in- not, as Jephthah’s daughter’s friends did in singing with her and remembering her- but before the pyre is built to say no. Phyllis Trible writes, “Sad stories may yield new beginnings” (Texts of Terror, 2). May our reading today yield new beginnings.
