Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 16, 2008

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

When you work with the Bible as much as I do, sometimes there are coincidences so remarkable that you’re tempted to call them providential and not mere coincidences at all. We’ve got one of those providential coincidences in our lectionary readings this week. Our country just elected a new President whose first name is Barack. In our reading from the book of Judges this morning we read of the prophetess Deborah, who is acting as judge for her people. A judge like Deborah was the closest thing Israel had to a political ruler in those days before the establishment of the monarchy. The people were being oppressed by a Canaanite king named Hazor and his military commander Sisera. So Deborah summoned her military commander to go fight Sisera and save the people, and Deborah’s military commander was named—Barak. This Barak isn’t spelled exactly the way President-elect Obama spells his first name, but still. It’s the same name. So how could I pass up a chance to use this text in worship today?

Obviously, I didn’t pass up that chance, but what exactly are we to make of this coincidence? I suppose we could make many things out of it, but one thing occurred to me as I read the Epistle lesson for this morning. We just heard it. It is a few verses from Paul’s first letter to the church at Thessalonica. There’s an interesting contrast between the 1 Thessalonians passage and the Judges passage. In the Judges, Barak is a military commander. His boss Deborah sends him off to do battle. Real battle. Physical battle in which men on the opposing sides try to and do maim and kill each other. Our text doesn’t expressly mention it, but we can assume that when Barak the ancient military commander went out to do battle against his enemy Sisera, he was wearing some kind of armor. Physical armor. I’m not sure what that armor would have been made of in those ancient days. Maybe bronze, but maybe just leather and wood. Whatever it was, we can be sure that Barak and his soldiers, and Sisera and his soldiers, were wearing some kind of protective covering, probably a breastplate and a helmet at least.

Compare that image of men arrayed in physical armor going out to engage in mortal combat with what Paul says to his little group of Christians in Thessalonica. He tells them that they too are involved in a struggle, albeit a spiritual not a physical one. They are at spiritual war with those who are in darkness and who get drunk and fall asleep when they should be on watch. Paul tells his people to put on armor, just as, we assume Barak put on armor before going off to fight Sisera. But he tells them to put on a very different kind of armor. Paul doesn’t say put on armor of leather and wood, nor does he say put on armor of bronze or iron. Rather he says “put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” Strange armor indeed. I’m sure Barak would have looked at Paul like he was out of his mind. Any soldier would, any soldier the way the world understands soldier in any event. Faith, love, and hope aren’t armor. Not physical armor. They won’t deflect an arrow or stop a spear. Yet Paul calls them armor, “breastplate” and “helmet” being pieces of armor.

So in our two readings this morning we have two radically different images of armor. The story of Deborah and Barak from Judges is a story of physical battle and therefore of physical armor. Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonians is a call to wage spiritual battle using spiritual armor. These two images are, I think, more than ancient images about two different kinds of warfare. I think they present all of us with a choice. I invite you to look at the two types of armor in these stories, physical armor in the one and spiritual armor in the other, as metaphors. As metaphors they point to something beyond themselves. They point to two contrasting ways of being in the world. They point to two different kinds of reliance, two different things on which we can rely in life. One of them says we can rely on the things and the ways of the world, on physical things, including violence, for making our way in the world. The other says we can rely on the ways of God, on the ways of love, peace, and hope, for making our way in the world. It’s a choice that God sets before each one of us every day.

Which brings us back to that amazing coincidence that I started this sermon with. The figure who wields the metaphor of physical armor, who represents the ways of the world, has virtually the same name as our new President-elect. That coincidence suggests to me that the two kinds of armor that our two readings deal with point as metaphors beyond themselves to something more than a personal choice that God places before us as individuals. That coincidence of names between Deborah’s military commander and the man who soon will be, among the many other roles the President fills, our military commander, our Commander-in-Chief, to use the Constitutional term to which the function of the President so often got reduced in the recent campaign, suggests to me that the choice to which our armor metaphors point is one not only for us as individuals. It is a choice that God sets before us as a nation as well. This time of transition from the Bush Administration to the new Obama Administration is, I think, a good occasion for us Americans at look at that choice as we seek to discern or way forward with our new President. Our nation has the same choice as we do as individuals between relying on violence and the ways of the world and relying of peace and the ways of God. As we experience another transition of power in Washington, this is a good time to look at that choice. Just what is that choice for our nation?

We know what the choice of the physical armor looks like. It is the choice we have always made. It is the choice Presidents of both political parties have always made, and Presidents of other parties made that same choice before the Republican and Democratic Parties even existed. It is the choice of reliance on power, on force, on violence for security. It is the choice of rule by the strong generally to the advantage of the strong at the expense of the weak. It is the choice of worldly, material values over spiritual ones. We know what that choice looks like.

We know much less well that the other choice looks like. It is the choice of love; and in the national arena that means the choice of peace and justice, for peace and justice are the social dimensions of love. We don’t know very well what that choice looks like because our nation has never made that choice. Not really. Not fully. Few nations have, and no empire ever has. Yet we have glimpses of what that choice might look like. We have seen nonviolence in action. We have seen nonviolence work. We have seen nonviolence drive the British out of India, where their rule was as violent and as unjust as the rule of any other empire. We have seen nonviolence bring down apartheid in South Africa and create at least the possibility of justice in that land that has known so little justice. We just saw a peaceful democratic process break down a racial barrier we never thought we’d live to see broken down. We have had glimpses of what the choice of love, the choice of peace and justice, would look like.

In this time of transition will our nation choose to pursue the option of peace and justice, the option that we see so dimly in those glimpses? There isn’t a lot of reason to believe that we will. We never have, and President-elect Obama has given no indication that he has a commitment to nonviolence. He has indicated at best only that he sees the use of violence in somewhat different terms than President Bush apparently does. But Paul tells us to put on the helmet of the hope of salvation. He meant something different by salvation than I do this morning, but in this time of transition in our life together as Americans, let us put on the helmet of hope, hope that our nation will at long last choose the armor of love, of peace, and of justice. Let us hope that under our new leadership we will move at least a little way in the direction of nonviolence, peace, and justice for all people. Deborah’s Barak defeated Sisera through force of arms. Let us pray that our Barack will lead us is defeating the enemies of peace and justice and in solving the massive problems that face us through force of love. It is God’s way. It is the way of the Christian. May it be our way. Amen.