The Shock of Gideon’s Turn

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Reading the Gideon cycle in Judges we find ourselves at an unexpected turn after his victory in war. Rather than the hero we are led to expect who transcends his fearfulness and forges forward in trust, we find instead a normal person.

Maybe, a person more like ourselves than we are willing to admit.

What catches us off guard is how quickly Gideon forgets his Yahweh ordained purpose. God did not call on him to destroy parts of Pineil or administer the whipping that the men of Succoth endured; he performed both of these actions out of his own desire for revenge. The Israelites will respond in much the same way as we turn the page. Rather than turning to the Lord in their desire for leadership, they cry out for Gideon to lead them as their ruler. Is there hope for Gideon?

We can benefit today by meditating on the words of a later leader.

Psalm 3

O Lord, how many are my foes!

How many rise up against me!

Many are saying of me,

“God will not deliver him.” Selah

But you are a shield around me, O Lord;

you bestow glory on me and lift up my head.

To the Lord I cry aloud,

and he answers me from his holy hill. Selah

I lie down and sleep;

I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.

I will not fear the tens of thousands

drawn up against me on every side.

Arise, O Lord!

Deliver me, O my God!

Strike all my enemies on the jaw;

break the teeth of the wicked.

From the Lord comes deliverance.

May your blessing be on your people.

Life with God

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Most Christians can enunciate the Immanuel principle in some fashion; “God is with us.” This stirring promise has been the foundation of belief and practice for as long as there has been a Church. Discovering the key to tapping into this powerful presence has been a goal of discipleship for centuries, not just for purposes of knowledge but also to seek out the transforming power of that relationship. Through the history of the Church, many disciples have discovered and deepened our understanding of various disciplines that allow us to draw closer to this power source. In 1978, an unknown Friends pastor published a book entitled Celebration of Discipline which has become a standard in Christian libraries. Richard Foster, the author and one of our leading thinkers on Christian spirituality, has contributed a new work that narrows its focus to the practice of reading the scriptures for personal transformation.

The book, Life with God, centers on the practice of Lectio Divina, a contemplative praying of the Scriptures which enables the Word to become a means of union with God. In each of its chapters, Foster challenges us to respond and be shaped by the truth-proposition that God voices throughout the scriptures, “I am with you. Are you willing to be with Me?” If you’ve read the book or would like to, I would love to engage in conversation with you about the ideas and practices within. In the coming weeks I will examine one chapter and idea per week in addition to looking at another book having to do with the reading of the Bible, Scot McKnight’s upcoming The Blue Parakeet.

Gideon Pursues the Enemy III

image After Gideon and his army had routed the entire army of the Midianites and began marching their kings Zebah and Zalmunna back toward the Jordan, he must have been wondering why his Israelite brothers had refused to support him. Angrily he must have decided that they remained turned against Yahweh, unwilling to trust the mission that he had been given. Given the distance of time, do we see the irony in Gideon’s rage against them. They were bypassed by the Midian army but would suffer humiliation and destruction at the hands of God’s judge.

Perhaps the irony is masked by the change we see in Gideon himself. Starting out as hesitant and fearful, he slowly obeys God’s commands and embarks on the restorative mission. Obedience marks this Judges’ cycle until ego and the need for revenge transforms the man. Does he feel that God’s mission gives him permission to act independently to punish Piniel and Succoth? He crosses ‘over the line’ in crossing over the Jordan. Are we at similar risk?

Christian leaders are all tempted by ego and the human desire to get ‘even.’ It’s easy to even momentarily forget that we serve at the pleasure of God and it is His glory alone that should be the result of our service. Obstacles may come, we may have to face struggles that prick our every nerve ending and exhaust the limits of our patience, we may even find ourselves sidelined for a season when we feel as though we should be in the middle of the action but we must maintain our trust in God and the purpose he calls us to.

Gideon Pursues the Enemy II

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After being denied sustenance in Succoth, Gideon pursues similar support in Peniel, to the same end. A vehement no! from the men of Peniel garners similar threats of retribution from Gideon. When he returns this way on the way back home, he states that the tower he is facing will be torn down. Do the men of Peniel respond in fear? For that matter, did a similar threat to scourge the men of Succoth with briars and thorns cause them to give in? The word tells us no and that the army of God’s purpose moved on under the power of the Lord.

Church leaders can find a second item of interest in this passage. It is sometimes the case that we can misread external signals thinking that they guide our purpose. If Gideon had asked of God for sustenance, relying on the people of Succoth and Peniel to be the answerers of this prayer, he may have been tempted to turn back and question his own interpretation of the mission. Maybe not at the first denial, but perhaps the second. How many times have we, as church leaders, been certain of God’s calling to a specific purpose only to find obstacle after obstacle in our way. What is the magic number of denials that we count before we turn back? Maybe our practice needs to be …one more than that.

Gideon Pursues the Enemy

image The story of Gideon is a tale of faith, or the lack of faith. God pursued him to fulfill his purpose in restoring the relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Now, as Gideon pursues the enemy across the border territory of the Jordan. Exhausted but driven, the warriors of Israel pursue the enemy without stop. Needing sustenance to carry on the mission, Gideon asks the men of Succoth for bread to carry them further.

A lack of faith stops them cold.

A church leader faces this all the time. God will implant a vision and a call to the leader for a particular church to accomplish and yet, when the vision is presented to congregation, the naysayers raise the heads and begin to find reasons why that could not possibly be God’s call on that body. In one light, their hesitation is justified. It will cost too much money, it will damage the reputation of the church, it will never work, the carpet will get dirty. The moment of truth arrives for the leader; will they act in faith to God and his strength or give in to the church in fear for their position. Too often, we fall into the latter.

Gideon faced both the fear of the loss of reputation (Ephraim) and the concern for safety (Succoth) but kept his eyes focused on the purpose to which he was called. Did he wonder how Yahweh would ever redeem this people?

Kairos

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We as Americans are at a tipping point in our history. Our nation is roughly divided into two ideological camps; one leans toward the notions of individual responsibility with minimal interference from the a central governing authority and the other finds its identity in a large, caretaker governing authority and abdication of individual responsibility to that authority. Christians find themselves on both sides of this division with a decision to make as to whom the next leader will be. Unlike many other elections in the past with little other than the cacophony of partisan slogans and frenzied lowing to differentiate the ideologies, this event is different. It is kairos.

Some in the Christian community will insist that a call to action is misguided and unnecessary; God will place the man or woman that He ordains into this position of authority without human involvement. While miraculous intervention is always a possibility, this ‘sit back and observe’ attitude shows a profound misunderstanding of how God interacts with His world. Even a cursory review of the biblical record demonstrates that God works through His human agents, imbuing them with appropriately formed hearts and the ability to act on what is right. In a country in which we practice representative self-rule, our responsibility is to exercise our franchise based upon the ethics and morality of Christ.

This moment in the history of the United States is kairos. For those unfamiliar with the Greek term, it is a decisive point in a place, situation, or time where the divinely ordained purpose must be grasped boldly by moral agents. It is an opportune time in which human decision is crucial to the fulfillment of divine purpose. Those whose wills are attuned to divine purpose will recognize kairos, those who only hear their internal drummer will not.

Will you act decisively for life in this moment? The next president will be filling positions in the Supreme Court in the coming terms. Will those appointments be men and women who ‘find’ legislation in the Constitution or those who interpret it according to the intention of its authors? Your vote will decide the direction.

Will you act decisively for individual liberty in this moment? The corollary of liberty is individual responsibility guided by your Spirit-driven ethics and morals. The next president will lead the country from either the perspective that you are able to exercise this liberty and be responsible for yourself or that you are unable to be responsible for yourself and that a large government presence and intervention are necessary for your good. Your vote will determine that direction.

Will you act decisively to reverse deepening corruption of the culture? It becomes more difficult each day to see the imago dei in our fellow citizens. The humanity that we each posses is challenged with debasement by a pornified, violent, crass culture that is supported by an underlying attitude of moral equivalency. Cultural insistence that you or I are not to apply our moral or ethical standards to someone else, thus judging their ethics is at the root of the continued and quickening downward cultural spiral. The next president will either lead by an example of honor and principled service to others or from a position in which no morals or ethics are to be judged superior to any other system and that each should seek out whatever they feel is right. Your vote will determine that direction.

If you decide that this is not a kairos moment that needs your action that certainly is your privilege. I urge Christian readers though to review Christ’s insistence that we not retreat into fortresses but that we carry His message of the restoration of humanity and justice in both orthodoxy in the Church and orthopraxy in the world. The Kingdom exists as a here and now concept as well as a yet to come idea. In the here and now, your purpose is to be an influence in the culture, to spread your Christlikeness like yeast throughout your sphere of influence. As a citizen, your responsibility is to apply your values and ethics to selecting the fellow citizen who will lead  us into a strange and new future.