Rev. George Miller
August 29, 2021
Judith 15:12-14
For a while now, we’ve
started worship with the celebration of certain days- Gunkle Day, Teachers Day,
Golf Day.
Though there was concern
that it could get to be too much, it’s been a joy.
We’ve acknowledged Filipino Day,
Canda Day. In October, in solidarity with Ari, we’ll honor Cuban Independence
Day.
We can do this because celebrating
other countries doesn’t mean we’re any less Americans or don’t adore the USA.
Just as we can celebrate Iowa
and Ohio, Day without it meaning we don’t love Florida or our home state any
less.
A highlight was when we celebrated
Haitian Flag Day and ya’ll showed up in your red and blue.
For me, celebrating Haiti
was a gift, empowering me to learn more about my own heritage.
I looked at men from Scottland,
seeing how many had the same legs and hair as I do. Hungarians who have the same shaped eyes. Romanians
with similar skin tone. Germans with their stoutness and stubbornness.
Celebrating Haitan Flag Day made
something wonderful happen- the ability to celebrate my own ancestors.
Now, when Carnide and I text,
I’ll send her memes of the Haitian Flag, she’ll send memes of German and Scottish
flags.
Doing so is a way of saying “I
see you, you see me, we are beautiful, strong, and complete.”
Friends- repeat these words-
“I am beautiful, strong, and complete.”
Let that set in for a moment…
We hope that you have enjoyed
this month’s dive through the book of Judith.
We hope that everyone has felt empowered, enlightened, entertained.
We’ve spent 5 weeks sharing
sermons about Judith and the woman who served beside her.
When’s the last time you spent
even 2 or 3 weeks hearing about women in the Bible? Usually, its
Jesus, Moses
Jesus, Paul
Jesus, Abraham
Jesus
And then Mary, Esther, Mary
And then right back to
Jesus, Joshua
Jesus, Joseph,
Jesus, John
How refreshing that for 5
weeks it’s been the maid and Judith. They
may have been surrounded by 132,000 soldiers, but they were the stars.
For all us men who’ve been
present the past 5 weeks, now you have a sliver of an idea of what it’s like
for women to come to church and only hear stories in which a guy is the lead
action figure.
For all the guys, we hope that
you embraced Judith and realized that her story also applies to you.
We hope that you discovered a
wonderful thing- that as a person of faith, there is a part of Judith that also
lives within you.
No matter who we are, male
or female, everyone of us here can look upon Judith and realize that just like
her, as Citizens of God’s Kingdom, we’re all
-Beautiful
-Warriors
-Leaning Upon the Lord.
Judith is not only a hero
for all the kick-butt women here, Judith is a hero for everyone one of us.
Judith is a hero is the
truest sense who gives us an example of how to choose life when the world
around you tries to surround, dehydrate, and hurt you.
Judith, like Moses, like
David, is a deliverer of her people. She
is a person who trust God, knows how to lean upon the Lord, and what it means to have the blood of her ancestors
running through her veins.
Judith lives inside each one
of us when we find a way to confront to injustice, unkindness, and non-humility.
That’s why today’s closing
reading is so…beautiful.
It is such a holistic, healthy
scene in which we see an entire nation come together to act as ONE and to show
respect to the greater good.
Judith has faced the great
monster.
Like any hero, Judith has
worn her armor. Used her weapon of choice. She has destroyed the Big Bad Wolf, the
Kraken, the Darth Vader.
The city comes together to
celebrate- “Ding Dong Holofernes dead!”
In this moment, we see all
the women of Israel come together.
Sisters, mothers, aunts, neighbors.
They bless Judith. They dance, twirl, hop, leap, sway, sashay in
her honor.
Judith passes out wreaths
and flowers. The women crown themselves
with olive branches.
Judith walks before them as
all the female citizens dance with joy.
For me, what emotionally resonates
is this image of all the men of Israel.
The men march behind the women,
dressed in full armor, carrying their weapons…and wearing flower necklaces.
Think about it. These men are mighty, strong, these men have
steel. Yet…
…these men are man enough to
also wear flowers around their neck, they are man enough to have the women lead
the way, and they are men enough to honor a woman who rescued them.
What a testimony to self-security,
a demonstration of what it’s like to celebrate someone without jealousy.
What an image of how Heaven
and the Kingdom of God must look like. Here
we have a powerful image of equality.
Women feeling safe enough to
dance freely in a crowd. Men who can walk
behind, wear pink pansies, not worrying how they look, nor feeling any less a
man.
Is this what Jesus talked
about when he said, “Blessed are you?” Is
this what Paul meant when he said, “In Christ there is no male or female?”
How different would our
entire world be if Judith was included in the Bible and taught in Sunday
School.
How different politics, employment,
education, the church would be if we had this story and other female-based ones
that were taught and known just as we teach and know Moses and Elijah.
In closing, a gift of Judith
is that no matter if we are female or male, we are shown what it means to embrace
our inner beauty, our inner warrior, and we lean upon the Lord.
Judith teaches us that we can
celebrate one another without it meaning that we are any less, or they are any
more.
We can celebrate Canada and Cuba
and it does not make us any less Americans.
We can celebrate Judaism and
Hinduism and it doesn’t make us any less Christians.
We can cheer on Judith, we
can chuckle at Holofernes, we can admire the maid.
We can feel bad for the Assyrians
when they are destroyed- it does not mean we are any less than who we already
are.
Because in God, we are
healthy warriors; we are 3 dimensional beings.
In other words, when we lean
upon the Lord, regardless if we are in the wilderness or in the Promised Land,
-we are beautiful, we are strong,
and we are complete.
And we are Emmanuel.
Amen and amen.
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