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Ode to Winter: Challenge and Reconciliation
Fran Dearman, Intern Minister,
Unitarian Church of Edmonton, December 3, 2000
The darkness and quiet of this season call us to reflect and to
make peace. In acknowledgement of domestic violence in general, in
memory of the events of December 6th at the Montreal Polytechnique
some years ago, I turn this morning to some of the ‘texts of
terror’ of our scriptural heritage, stories from which one
tends to shy away in horror. How are we to make meaning from such
terrible stories, be they stories from our own lives and times, or
stories such as the biblical tale of the sacrifice of Jephthah’s
daughter (Judges 11:29-40)?
I wish to acknowledge that this is difficult. This is difficult.
For some of us it may be more difficult than for others. Some of
us may have grown up with little awareness of the old biblical stories.
And some of us may have learned them all too well. There may be bitter,
bitter memories here for some of us. This may be thin ice for some
of us. Let us be mindful of this and skate very carefully.
Now I ought to tell you, especially if you are visitors, or new
to the Unitarian tradition, that what I am about to do here today,
to speak from a biblical text, is not typical of what happens here
most Sundays. In fact, it may have been years since that happened
here, if ever, and it may be years before it happens again. There
may well be Unitarian churches in Eastern Canada or the United States
or in Europe or in India or South Africa who still work with a lectionary
cycle of biblical readings and preach from text, but it is not an
expected feature of any Unitarian church I have ever attended in
the Canadian West. So why am I doing this today? Two reasons.
First, the Vancouver School of Theology went to a great deal of
trouble to bestow upon me the skill of biblical exegesis, and I like
to use it once in a while.
Second, the literature of the bible is a significant thread in the
fabric of western civilization. We use words and phrases and stories
from this literature and our historical experience of it every day,
often without even noticing it, so deeply is it woven into the shape
of our lives. These writings are my heritage. It has not always been
an inheritance that I would choose to claim. It has been shadowed
and clouded by the claims of other inheritors, some of whom have
claimed that only they know the proper way to read it, some of whom
have forged dreadful weapons from it.
I contest the right of anyone to tell me that only they know the
true and single meaning of these complex writings. Few things in
life are that simple, especially not this. Each reading by each person
will yield different insights. I believe that the meaning of these
writings is what we make of it as we hold it up against our own experience,
and as we share in the studies and insights and experiences of others.
I claim this literature as one part of my heritage just as I claim
Shakespeare and Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela and Oscar Wilde. [100
yrs since his death. Last words: Either that wall paper goes, or
I do.] I claim the right to read it from my own perspective, in my
own way. I claim the right to lift up what I find useful, helpful
and compelling. I claim the right to set aside what I do not understand,
or what I understand and do not admire.
Much of how I understand biblical writings comes out of my experience
with Classics, reading Greek and Latin literature. And I find many
similarities, in content as well as style, particularly where the
echoes of an oral literature can be heard. One similarity stands
out: these writings from the ancient world are of different genres
or types, cosmologies that consider the birth of the world, chronologies
that consider the lives and deaths of kings, lyrics of lovers, psalms
and songs of joy and sorrow. These are vast collections drawn from
the experience of being human, and facing life and death, and making
meaning out of that, stories and legends and poems about cares and
celebrations that sometimes pierce us to the heart with their familiarity,
and sometimes elude us entirely across the great gap of time and
space that lies between us.
In sum, there are no easy answers, working with these materials.
But I claim the right to attempt this complex task in a way that
respects my own understanding and my own experience. I claim the
right to attempt a close and complex reading of a complex work with
all my own skills and insights, and all the skills and insights of
those who have read it before me, as I am able, and as I find it
useful, helpful, and compelling.
And so I claim biblical writings as documents of human faith, with
all their depth and breadth, all their tensions and inner contradictions,
all their ambiguities and shades of grey, even an horrific tale such
as the story of Jepthah’s daughter.
What is the story of Jepthah’s daughter, anyway. [Don’t
put up your hand? Who knows it already? OK. Brace yourselves - it’s
pretty ugly.] You can read it for yourselves, if you wish, in the
Hebrew Bible at the Book of Judges, chapter 11, verses 29-40.
The story goes like this. Back in the old days of the area we now
know as Israel, Palestine and Jordan, when the people we now know
as Israel began to live there, after the times of nomadic wandering
but before the times of kings, as the need arose the people turned
to military leaders known as Judges. One such Judge was named Jepthah.
On the eve of battle he promised a sacrifice to his God in exchange
for victory. He promised to sacrifice the first being to come forth
from his home when he returned victorious. He had his victory. And
then he went home. And the first being to come forth from his house
was his young, unmarried daughter, his only child, singing and dancing
to greet him. This is the translation offered by the New Jerusalem
Bible:
As Jephhtah returned to his house at Mizpah, his daughter came out
to meet him, dancing to the sound of tambourines. She was his only
child; apart from her, he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw
her, he tore his clothes and exclaimed, ‘Oh my daughter, what
misery you have brought upon me! You have joined those who bring
misery into my life! I have made a promise before [the Lord] which
I cannot retract.’
She replied, ‘Father, you have made a promise to [the Lord];
treat me as the promise that you have made requires, since [the Lord]
has granted you vengeance on your enemies the Ammonites.’ She
then said to her father, ‘Grant me this! Let me be free for
two months,. I shall go and wander in the mountains, and with my
companions bewail my virginity.’
He replied, ‘Go,’ and let her go away for two months.
So she went away with her companions and bewailed her virginity in
the mountains. When the two months were over she went back to her
father, and her treated her as the vow that he had uttered bound
him. She had remained a virgin. And hence, the custom in Israel for
the daughters of Israel to leave home year by year and lament over
the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite for four days every year.”
What are we to do with this terrible story? Throwing up might seem
to be one appropriate response.
Another would be to turn our back on the Bible forever. That’s
what a friend of mine did. He was a young father, a scientist, a
naval officer. He reckoned that as a new father he ought to know
more about culture and world heritage and stuff like that. Once he’d
worked his way through the history of the world and all of Shakespeare,
he reckoned he’d do the Bible. He got as far as Jephthah’s
daughter, slammed the book shut, flung it into a far corner, and
never looked at it again. This too might seem to be an appropriate
response.
There are other responses, as many responses as there are readers.
We can walk a ways with Jephthah’s daughter, and wander with
her in the hills, and weep at her unjust death. We never even know
her name. Perhaps she reminds us of someone we know. Powerless. And
victimized.
Once we have caught our breath, once we have wept for the unjust
death of innocence, we can look at the story again, and let the thing
speak for itself, as a story. As a story. It is a story full of ambiguities,
full of internal contradictions. Jephthah is a mighty general, but
first he is named as a rogue bandit and leader of rejected men. Jephthah
is called to command, but first he is named as the son of a prostitute
mother and an unkown father, driven away by relatives who hate and
despise him. Jephthah is an orator of great skill, but his very name
means ‘one who opens’, meaning, I think, ‘one who
opens his mouth when he had better have kept it shut’. Jephthah
is a loving father, but one who destroys his only child, and with
her his only hope of descendents, one who unjustly blames her - blames
the victim - for the injustice that he himself has inflicted upon
her by his reckless vow.
The story is every bit as tragic in its inevitability as anything
Shakespeare or Sophocles ever wrote. Hebrew Bible has many examples
of young girls coming forth to greet victory and victors with dancing
and singing; it is their place and their role, just as lamentation
is also a traditional role for women. A father ought to have known
that it would be his daughter who would be the first to come forth
from his house. [Of course, if it had been a chicken, there would
be no story. It does serve the needs of the narrative that things
unfold as they do.]
Once we have caught our breath from the horror of the story, we
can ask other questions of the story as a story. Is it the literal
truth? We don’t know? Did Jephthah even have a daughter? We
don’t know.
We do know a little of how this story fits into the larger framework
of the Book of Judges. The overall course of the book is from times
of integrity and success to times of deterioration and degradation
and disunity. Three phases can be seen. The first judges are full
of honour and achievement, like Deborah and Barak. The second phase
are so-so. The third phase are highly questionable, and corrupt,
in their personal lives and in their achievements and in their inability
to unite Israel. Like Jephthah, and Samson. From an editorial perspective,
the deterioration of the judges explains why Israel will turn to
Saul and monarchy. From an editorial perspective, Jephthah has to
meet with disaster, victory or no victory.
We know something else of how this story fits into the larger framework
of the Book of Judges. In the beginning of the story, when the judges
are strong and virtuous, the women in the stories are treated with
respect, and given room for initiative and accomplishment. For example,
in the first chapter of the Book of Judges, a daughter [Achsah] asks
her father [Caleb] for a blessing. He has given her in marriage to
a husband who has achieved military victory. With her goes land.
She travels to her father and asks for more land, with springs of
water, and he gives it to her. Her portion out of victory is marriage
and springs of water. The portion of Jephthah’s daughter is
death. As the judges decline, so the women in their stories meet
with degradation. Their individual tragedies reflect a collective,
communal tragedy and failure.
We meet this theme in other biblical writings [such as Isaiah10:2];
the treatment of marginalized and less powerful people is held up
as a measure of their society’s health again and again. Modern
sociologists would tend to agree; the status of women and children
is directly related to the health and resilience of their entire
nation.
Some things we do know. We know from archaeological evidence from
around the world that human sacrifice and child sacrifice are something
that our ancestors did do. The record is horrifyingly clear.
Some things we do know. Jephthah’s daughter is not the only
story of child sacrifice. There are several others in the Hebrew
Bible. There are similar stories in the epics of Homer, and other
Greek and Latin literature, again and again. [Iphigeneia, Polyxena]
Where is G-d in all this? G-d is not there. G-d in word or deed
is not part of this story, as it is written and handed on to us.
All we hear of G-d is that the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah,
which is a formulaic phrase meaning that Jephthah was victorious
in battle. Otherwise, in the story, G-d neither asks for nor accepts
nor rejects the sacrifice. The story is bald narrative, and we are
compelled to make our own connections to make meaning out of it.
I emphasize this. Nowhere in this story, as I read it, does the story
try to tell us where right and wrong lie. It is this ambiguity that
makes it art, and keeps us coming back.
Some have read the story as a model of behaviour, of obedience.
Medieval art sometimes depicts the scene alongside Abraham’s
binding of Isaac. But there is no ram in the thicket to substitute
for Jephthah’s daughter as was done for Isaac.
Some have read the story as a model of rash stupidity. The rabbinic
commentaries condemn Jephthah roundly. ‘When did G-d ever ask
for such a thing!’ What a stupid, thoughtless, reckless thing
to do! The passages in Hebrew Bible that describe child sacrifice
generally do so with horror, and condemn it, and forbid it. This
is one way that Israel distinguishes herself from her neighbours,
that the people of Israel do not do this thing that so many of their
neighbours do, even though the historical traces of the act linger
in some of their customs.
Some have read the story as a courtroom drama. When Jephthah committed
himself to do battle with Israel’s enemies, he spoke of the
contest in terms of a legal case, that G-d would decide. In effect,
Jephthah’s vow, his offer of the sacrifice, was an attempt
to ‘bribe the judge’ - a forbidden act - and a sign of
his lack of trust in the holy to deliver the victory. And so the
holy gave Jephthah his victory but at an ironic and tragic price.
It was not Jephthah, but his daughter who paid the price with her
life. Her life was Jephthah’s future. Perhaps we, western individualists,
people of our own time and place, cannot begin to understand the
intense sense of identity and community that shaped their relationship.
We can attempt to understand the relationships of our own time and
place. In the realities of our own time and our own lives, how might
we respond to this powerful story?
Does Jephthah’s daughter reminds us of someone we know? What
sort of victim impact statement would a storyteller spin from her
lips today? We sacrifice our children every day. We dominate them.
We are giants in their lives. We lead them towards plans and hopes,
that may not be the plans and hopes they would chose for themselves.
[I have a friend who loves her daughter dearly, but is determined
the child will take ballet lessons, as she did. I don’t know
how the child feels about that? And I must admit, I am not a parent.
I am a godmother, and a cousin to youngsters, but I am not a parent.
I have never walked that tightrope of responsibilities. But I have
been a child. I knew before I entered grade school that my parents
were determined I would have a university education. In fact, that
path did work for me. Some of it. But the hunger was theirs first,
not mine.] Do we hear them, when they come to meet us, dancing to
the sound of tambourines? Do we give them springs of water?
We sacrifice our children every day. We know that the health of
their society is reflected in the treatment of marginalized and less
powerful people. And yet so very many of Canada’s children
live in poverty. About ten days ago, I sat in City Hall at the Taste
of Truth gathering, where several agencies of concern called on the
government to remember their promise of ten years ago, that child
poverty would be eradicated. It has, in fact, got worse. Far too
many children go to school hungry. Far too many children live in
fear for their personal safety. Far, far too many children have limited
access or no access at all to the rich resources and experiences
that lie all around them, just out of reach.
We sacrifice our children every day. We squander their environmental
inheritance. We violate the ecological health of the world they will
inherit. We poison the air they breath, the water they drink, the
very earth they walk upon. We accelerate the extinction of the creatures
with whom they should be wandering the hills, singing and dancing.
Like the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter, these violations
are foolish, wrong, and unnecessary. Like Jephthah, we may have a
little time to think in these things, before it is too late. We can
do better.
In conclusion, how are we to find meaning and reconciliation with
such a terrible story as the sacrifice of a dancing child? How do
we make peace with the challenge of this ambiguous biblical legacy?
We can claim this story as a part, a painful part, of our human heritage.
It is not a story of how things ought to be. It is an open and ambiguous
story that invites us inside, that invites us to consider how we
could do better. [I try to practice this in front of the mirror from
time to time. Early in the morning of a rainy day I say to my bleary-eyed
reflection: I was wrong. I was foolish and reckless. I’m sorry.
I don’t want to do that any more. I can change. We can do better.]
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