Sermon - On Judith! - Old Testament class

 Sermon - on Judith!

(Link to YouTube video of the service/sermon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6JjqEUY9_4&t=6s )

Text: 

Judith 12:16–13:10

Judith came in and lay down. Holofernes’ heart was ravished with her and his passion was aroused, for he had been waiting for an opportunity to seduce her from the day he first saw her. So Holofernes said to her, "Have a drink and be merry with us!" Judith said, "I will gladly drink, my lord, because today is the greatest day in my whole life." Then she took what her maid had prepared and ate and drank before him. Holofernes was greatly pleased with her, and drank a great quantity of wine, much more than he had ever drunk in any one day since he was born.

When evening came, his slaves quickly withdrew. Bagoas closed the tent from outside and shut out the attendants from his master’s presence. They went to bed, for they all were weary because the banquet had lasted so long. But Judith was left alone in the tent, with Holofernes stretched out on his bed, for he was dead drunk.

Now Judith had told her maid to stand outside the bedchamber and to wait for her to come out, as she did on the other days; for she said she would be going out for her prayers. She had said the same thing to Bagoas. So everyone went out, and no one, either small or great, was left in the bedchamber. Then Judith, standing beside his bed, said in her heart, "O Lord God of all might, look in this hour on the work of my hands for the exaltation of Jerusalem. Now indeed is the time to help your heritage and to carry out my design to destroy the enemies who have risen up against us."

She went up to the bedpost near Holofernes’ head, and took down his sword that hung there. She came close to his bed, took hold of the hair of his head, and said, "Give me strength today, O Lord God of Israel!" Then she struck his neck twice with all her might, and cut off his head. Next she rolled his body off the bed and pulled down the canopy from the posts. Soon afterwards she went out and gave Holofernes’ head to her maid, who placed it in her food bag.

Then the two of them went out together, as they were accustomed to do for prayer. They passed through the camp, circled around the valley, and went up the mountain to Bethulia, and came to its gates.

Sermon Text: 

In 2019, I was working full time every day as a substitute teacher for an elementary school district. I loved the kids at the schools, they all knew me, and would behave well for me when I came into the classroom. The pay for subs in the city in California where I lived was actually very good, compared to many places - $185 a day - by comparison normal sub pay here in Richmond county schools is 90$ a day, and that is after giving everyone a 20$ per day raise at the beginning of this school year. 

So there I was, 2019, everything was going great - I expected to just keep on subbing until I found a permanent teaching position at one of the local colleges. I even bought a 2020 planner. It was a really nice one, with stickers and lots of room for sketching and writing stuff for each day. I really had things all planned out - it was my plan A  all the way. But then as we all know...God kicked plan B into action and everything that I thought was going to happen just didn’t. 

That plan B eventually led to me being here at St. Augustine’s...so while plan B is not what I had in mind - never would have expected or planned for it myself back then, it has all worked out OK. 

We all get up every day and have a “plan A” - these are the plans we make for ourselves, and you know...we have to do it, our plan A is the thing that helps us cope with the struggles of daily life, we have to plan things and set schedules, and have expectations, goals, and ideas about what and how things ought to be done. 

But...there will always be plan B - most of the time, the things that we expect or plan for do not go 100% to plan, there are little ways that God sneaks in to our daily plan A’s and just shifts things ever so slightly (or ever so dramatically) towards plan “B”. I call God’s plan “B” because it’s generally plan “Better than your own plans” - even if we can’t see it at the time. 

God has a habit of doing this kind of planning, and we see it throughout the bible stories in all kinds of ways, and in particular in our reading today we see a really great example of how God uses unexpected people, in unexpected ways to kind of reverse our expectations. Judith wasn’t a princess or a queen like Esther, she wasn’t a Judge like Deborah - she was actually a widow, and childless, both which placed her in a lower strata of society. 

She was not the person that we would expect to be the heroine in the story. Holofernes was a ruthless and brutal man, he had been cutting a path of bloody warfare through the region for years. Many had tried to take him down from his position, and just met their own ends. God knew that the situation called for a plan “B”, and God called Judith away from her own Plan A, and it led to the end of Holofernes in a most unexpected way. 

The key takeaway from this I think, is not that we shouldn’t make plans, we have to do that! Life would be completely unmanageable without them! But, to learn to be flexible, to pay attention, and to have faith and hope, and to understand that God is always in charge, that our ability to control events in the world is very limited. 

Back home where my family is in Pennsylvania we have the National Center for Padre Pio - St. Pio had a tagline which was “Pray, Hope, and Don’t Worry”. This line could easily be misconstrued to mean that you should just pray for the things you want, and don’t worry about anything in the world and hope you get what you want. But that isn’t really what these things mean for us as Christians - we pray, because prayer changes things, mostly us - we pray for others, we pray for the world, we pray because we understand that we are not in control, that we are not the “boss”. We hope - and in the context of Christianity hope becomes a true strategy for managing the anxieties and worries that might otherwise overtake us - we hope, that when things happen, that are frightening, or painful, or just out of our control, that God is in it - even in this terrible thing, or that worrisome thing - that God is in even this. 

We do not worry or let anxiety overtake our minds and thoughts, because worry really is the enemy - it’s the thing that takes us away from God, it makes us distrustful of our neighbor, it makes us bitter and angry. So we do what we are able to do to love our neighbors, and have faith and trust that God has got the rest. 

Because God will always do the unexpected. Like sending Judith into Holofernes chamber to liberate her people in a most unexpected way - God will also be with us...all of us. As Christians we are called to believe this. 

As we enter into the advent season, where once again we see God working behind the scenes in a most unexpected way, to reverse people's expectations, to enact the ultimate plan “B” through the “YES” of an unassuming teenage girl. A child of humble birth, who wasn’t a great military leader, but walked among the common people, as one of them, telling stories that constantly even now, 2000 years later continues to challenge us, to ask us to let go of our expectations, to not worry so much...because he shows us that god is in it with us for the long haul. 

So back in 2019….i bought that daily planner, I had thought I would have lots of substitute teaching assignments and was set to start Seminary the following fall - I had gotten the email that I was accepted to PSR, and was planning to sub on the days I didn’t have classes, and I was going to keep track of all of it in my cute pink flowery planner. Well we all know  what happened to everyone’s plans that year. We ended up on lockdown, schools were closed, I was out of a job, PSR shifted to online learning (which we are still doing thank goodness!), and the planner? 

Well, I packed it in a box with some crayons, markers and colored pencils for my grandbaby and he used it to make art. All the days that I had thought I would carefully plot out became freeform scribbles and splashes of color that only a 2 toddler can do - totally unplanned, spontaneous art! 

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and many of us are going to find ourselves seated around a table with family and friends, some who may have very different ideas from us about what is going on in the world.

This can be a challenging situation I know...so maybe...we can take Padre Pio’s advice - pray for those we love, and those we don’t necessarily agree with, hope that God is at work and with us even this situation, as we try to remain respectful and keep our cool, and don’t worry so much about keeping control of the situation or other people.

 

Lets all just do our very best to let God’s plan B work its way out, and love everyone we can along the way.