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In the 4th and 5th chapter of Judges tells a story we rarely read on a Sunday morning. In the book of Judges, The story goes that the people of Israel had stopped living into the Covenant that they were given and judges would rise up to help them get back in line. Judges four and five Tells the story of Deborah. Well, some judges were military leaders. Deborah was a prophet and an arbitrary among the people. She was important to military endeavors though and the Israelite general went into battle. He would wait for Deborah because she had the ear of God and brought God’s presence. Now Deborah is important on the discussion of whether or not women can be ordained and leaders in a church, but she is not why I tell this story.
At the end of the battle, the general of the opposing army, Sisera, ran off. He went to the home, the tent of a family with whom his King was allied, a Hittite, a non- Israelite , the wife, the woman of the home, Jael, invited him in. Gave him food and water and a place to rest.
When Sisera had fallen asleep she quietly crept up behind him and drove a tent Spike through his head.
And when they sang the song of the battle won Jael was called the most blessed among all women.
A woman, an outsider, saved the Day. And well it was celebrated and remained celebrated enough to be in the story and have daughters named for her, it is the most unexpected ending to a story.
An absolute legend.
Of course, Legend also has the meaning of being a story that is exaggerated above and beyond several steps beyond the reality which you may have been taught Harriet Tubman might live in that space as well.
The first biography of Harriet Tubman was written in 1886 by a white woman named Sarah Bradford done with extensive interviews in hopes of raising money for Ms. Tubman. Sarah Bradford said Ms. Tubman made 19 trips to the south and brought back 300 people from slavery. A little exaggeration, as if the truth wasn’t impressive enough. Over the course of 10 years, she makes the 100 mile track from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, but often the 500 mile trip from Massachusetts to Canada, 13 times, each trip taking weeks to months each way. All the while being hounded by slave catchers who could, with the Fugitive Slave Act, take former slaves, or black folk without papers back to the south.
She was said to have said at a suffrage rally: “I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say—I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger.” a feat almost unheard. One I’m not even sure Moses can claim.
Now I know our story might be a little hard to follow the translation that we’re reading this summer, the First Nations translation, so let me just clear a few things up. Jesus and the disciples go to the local synagogue as they would often do on the Sabbath day.
Now there were rules and expectations for the Sabbath. Sabbath day was a day to be dedicated to God. And so you don’t feel your time with the things that you do every other day of the week. You don’t work. You don’t lay her and you don’t expect the rest of creation to work or labor. Either. You make it possible for those of your household, even your animals, your beast of burden to rest.
And Sabbath was always meant to be a gift, not a burden. After 400 years of slavery in Egypt, God gave the people the law on how they rebuilt their new society and included in that is remembering the Savage and keeping it holy so they could rest and remember and honor the God who set them free.
Now here’s the thing, no one should die because of the Sabbath. Jesus references leading an animal to water which would be work for you but you can’t let the animal dehydrate.
And if some accident happens and drop the knife you’re using on your foot and the choice is between bandaging up the wound or taking someone to the doctor and letting them bleed out you help them.
And if that well hydrated animal falls into a trench, you can work to get that animal out.
You can absolutely care for someone in need.
And a cynical reading of the story says that the Pharisees had gotten too caught up in the law that they missed the meaning of it. But they probably wouldn’t have scheduled elective surgery on the Sabbath. They wouldn’t have planned on moving across town. To be fair, everything is probably a lot easier if you just calm down, do very little and not put yourself in a situation where you have to make a decision about whether or not something is urgent and life dependent. Because the reality is, someone who has been dealing with mobility issues, maybe scoliosis for 18 years could wait one more day but I’m saying that as someone without a chronic illness. They might have been thinking what worse could happen in the next 12 hours that it couldn’t have waited. Maybe that was it that it didn’t ring of the urgency that healing on the Sabbath allow for.
I guess the other way to read it, which I don’t like either, is that the value of this woman’s life was less than the value of the animals that they would lead to water.
There’s a scene in the 2019 movie called Harriet, members of the underground railroad gathered to discuss the fugitive slave act and the 500 mile Trek to get freed people into Canada. And more than one person said it was too far and it was too dangerous and they couldn’t do it and that war was coming so they might as well. Just wait.
Now I don’t know if this scene really happened. But I do know and Reverend Dr. King’s letter from a Birmingham jail. He talked about the white folk and the white clergy. Just asking him to keep waiting. Don’t do anything right now. Keep waiting. And he asked how long can we wait? It had already been nearly 250 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow.
In the film Harriet tells them that some of them don’t remember what it is to be a slave, some were born free, they care about what is happening but the memories are gone or they never had them.
She says, I have heard their groans and sighs, and seen their tears, and I would give every drop of blood in my veins to free them.
She spoke of the suffering, the children beaten for not working when they were still tiny children, and girls being raped when they were still children, and babies being sold by their mamas, and beatings that carry scars for a lifetime. And any moment they waited, was another moment where these terrors were happening, to the point that Harriet is said to have said:
I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.
Relieving the suffering of the woman bent over liberated her to be part of the Sabbath with the rest of her community and people. Without the healing, her whole life was labor. What’s the worst that could happen in the next 12 hours? 12 more hours of pain, of struggle, of suffering.
For Harriet, for the woman bent over, this was a matter of life and death, liberation or death; anything in between was horror, was not living.
We don’t know what the woman in the synagogue did next. She probably honored the Sabbath in ways she had not been able to in nearly 2 decades. Then maybe she told the story. Maybe she found ways to liberate others.
That is what Harriet did. From feeling enslaved people at the risk of her own life, to caring for persons disabled and aging, to speaking for the rights of women, all women, she embodied “No one is free until we are all free.”
We see the suffering in the world, in our communities, by our neighbors near and far. And we empathize, and we grieve, but their suffering is so distant, there is often not a memory there for us.
But they are our siblings, and so their suffering is ours.
And we can’t wait for something to change, when we, like Jesus, like Harriet, have the ability to do something, to relieve suffering, to lead to freedom.
I think because we have no writing of Harriet’s own, what was remembered and passed down were stories of what she overcame and what make her heroic. It kind of seems like she knew she was unique, but I wonder if she would have also said, this is just the calling of God in our lives. If Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say he just did what anyone should do. If Oscar Romero would say, it’s just the truth of the gospel and the world. If they would say they aren’t anything special or that we all are.
Our lives, our liberation, our freedom, our salvation, our beings are wrapped up in the all that God created. And there is no time to wait.