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Let us continue in worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the book of the Judges, the eleventh chapter. I begin the reading at the verse which is numbered 29. "Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and passed on to

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Mizpah of Gilead and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, 'If thou wilt give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me when I return victorious from the Ammonites shall be the Lord's and I will

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offer him up for a burnt offering.' So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them and the Lord gave them into his hand and he smote them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minneth, twenty cities and as far as Abel-Karimun with a very great slaughter. So the Ammonites were subdued

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before the people of Israel. Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah and behold his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances. She was his only child. Beside her he had neither son nor daughter and when he saw her he rent his clothes and said, 'Alas my daughter, you have brought me very low

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and you have become the cause of great trouble to me for I have opened my mouth to the Lord and I cannot take back my vow.' And she said to him, 'My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone forth from your mouth now that the Lord has avenged you on your enemies on the

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Ammonites.' And she said to her father, 'Let this thing be done for me. Let me alone two months that I may go and wander on the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my companions.' And he said, 'Go.' And he sent her away for two months and she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the

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mountains. And at the end of two months she returned to her father who did with her according to his vow which he had made. She had never known a man. And it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year." And may

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God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Once upon a time, long ago, in a land far away, there lived a man named Jephthah and his daughter. The daughter is unnamed. In those days women were considered to be

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little more than property and so remembering their names was not counted to be important. What happened between Jephthah and his daughter is a tale of great terror. The Bible tells it in an almost embarrassed fashion. The story is related very tersely. Now as we approach this morning's story, I ask you to recall

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with me our Presbyterian understanding of Scripture. We believe that when the Bible speaks to us of matters of faith and practice, we may believe it and trust it absolutely. But we do not acknowledge that the culture and the tradition recorded on the pages of Scripture is binding to us today. If we believe that

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the cultural aberrations described in Scripture applied to us, then we would, among other things, be practicing polygamy. We would stone to death any youngsters who were insolent to their parents. We would practice slavery. The Bible teaches, for example, that prisoners can be made into slaves, that they can be

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exiled from their homelands, that children can be sold into slavery, that the poor can be sold into slavery, that if a slave tries to run away, that a hole may be bored through his or her ear to identify him or her as a runaway, and slaves may be used for sexual favors whenever their owners desire them. But

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this kind of thing, you see, is not the counsel or the command of God. This is a cultural aberration from the time in which the Scriptures were written, and those cultural aberrations we do not accept as binding on our time. Now, it is in terms of such a cultural thing that we must understand this story, for it is

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not an expression of truth. It is an expression of error. It is here for our reading not because it is a good example, but because it is a bad example. I shall tell the story in five chapters. Chapter one, entitled "Shadow." Jephthah was born in Gilead. He was the son of a prostitute, and he was socially ostracized because

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of this. He went off into the mountains and gathered with him a group of others who had been ostracized for one reason or another. He quickly assembled a gang. The Bible says, "Worthless fellows gathered about him and went raiding with him." He was the chief of a guerrilla band. We might compare Jephthah and his group

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to a big-city gang today, tough, hard, violent. Now, at that time, the Ammonites were coming down and attacking the children of Israel. So Israel swallowed its pride and went to Jephthah and his gang and asked if they would defend the country against the Ammonites. And Jephthah said he was willing to do this

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for certain rewards, and the rewards were agreed to. And the Scriptures notice that the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. Now, this does not mean that the Spirit of the Lord approved of what Jephthah does or did. What this means is that God is protecting his people Israel and is using Jephthah as the instrument of that

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protection. There is no evidence of the deserving of God's grace in Jephthah. Chapter 2, entitled "Deepening Darkness." Even though he knows that the Spirit of the Lord has come upon him, Jephthah is not satisfied with this. He wants some insurance to add to his assurance. So he proposes a bargain to God. He says, "If you

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will deliver the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes forth from my house to meet me when I return victorious, I will offer up as a burnt offering to you." What he is saying in so many words is this, "God, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." And this is, of course, a double blasphemy. In the first place, God

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has already promised his Spirit to Jephthah. It is not necessary for him to enter into any binding contract in order to assure that he will fulfill his word. But in the second place, the nature of God is such that he would be offended by a human sacrifice. What we see Jephthah doing here is attempting to practice

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magic. There's a great difference between magic and prayer. When a witch throws her ingredients into her pot and stirs her brew, or when a magician mutters his Kabbalistic incantations, these are attempts to bring the supernatural under the control of the natural. The magician or the witch is trying to do certain

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things which will force divine powers to yield to the will of the witch or the magician. There's an attempt here to bind the supernatural, and this, of course, is blasphemous. We encounter this same kind of thing in our own time when we hear people say things like, "Lord, if you will free me of this cancer, then I will do

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this or that. Lord, if you will help me pass this test. Lord, if you will help me get this contract. Lord, if you will help me to escape the blame this time, then I will do for you this or that." I listened to a television preacher this week who announced to his viewers, "If you will send me money, then God will bless you. If

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you will plant your seed of faith, then God must honor your planting." That is an attempt to bind God. That is an act of evil unbelief. God is love. God is more ready to answer our prayers than we are to pray them. It is not necessary for us to make some kind of proposition by which he must fulfill that to which he

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has committed himself. The darkness in the story, you see, is deepening. Notice that nowhere in the story does it say that God answers Jephthah even a single word. Chapter 3, "Midnight." The battle is fought and Jephthah and his forces win. And Jephthah returns to his home at Mizpah and his daughter comes out to

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greet him. Now she is his only child. The Bible says, "She was his only child. Beside her he had neither son nor daughter." She's very happy because of her father's victory. She comes out with timbrels and dance. One is reminded, for example, of how Miriam came forward after Moses had been blessed of God and won

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out over Pharaoh of Egypt. Or one is remembering how the women of Israel came forth with timbrels and dancing when King Saul came back victorious from the battle with the young hero David by his side. Well, just so this young girl comes, happy over the victory which her father has known, and

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she comes out of the door of the house. And by doing so, she seals her own death. For you remember the vow which Jephthah had made, "If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes forth from the door of my house to meet me when I return shall be offered as a burnt offering." He has offered a

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blasphemous vow and he has promised her death. And when she comes out of the house, what does he do? He blames her. He says, "My daughter, you have brought me low. My daughter, you have become my calamity." And the Hebrew is very strong here. He overwhelms her with blame and then he says, "I have made my vow and I shall not

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turn back." It was a blasphemous vow. It was a vow that God did not request. It was a vow to which God did not respond. There is in this man's life no scintilla of evidence of genuine faith. But still, he, the man, will keep his vow. And this girl, no more than a piece of property, she must die. Remember, this is

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a story written by men. What is happening is not of God, it is of men. This is an evil of culture that we're beholden. Now, if it sounds extreme to you, I would respectfully call to your attention the things like this go on in the world today. In the International section of the New York Times of January the 15th

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of this year, there was an extensive story about how many women are slain by their husbands in India for religious reasons. They are referred to as suicides, but there is no question that these women have been murdered. In 1987, the last year for which we have complete figures, 1786 women at least were

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murdered by their Indian husbands, most often because the dowry was not paid or because the wife was in some way disobedient. In fact, it is the custom in India for a family to say when they hand their daughter over to the new husband, "You may return to our house only as a corpse. You must endure anything and

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everything that he visits upon you." And they do, even unto death. Now, we have course are not so gross here in the West, but let me remind you of some things. When we have a wedding service here, who is given away? Do we give away the groom? Oh no, we give away the bride. One man passes his possession to another man

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that he might have her as his possession. Or let me give you another example. I was sitting a couple of years ago talking with Dr. Monica Helwig. Dr. Helwig is a nun in the Roman Catholic Church, a noted theologian on the faculty of George Washington University. And she was talking about that experience, many

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of you probably saw it on television, it happened about five years ago, in which Pope John Paul II was visiting in Mexico. And he was speaking to a large conference of priests and nuns. And at the end of his presentation, a nun stood up and began to lecture the Pope about his and his church's views with regard

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to women. And he sat there with a very beatific smile on his face, the kind of smile we've come to recognize there, apparently listening to what she was saying. It was on all the news broadcasts, because it was such a remarkable thing that a nun would stand up to lecture the Pope. But Dr. Helwig told me and the

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others of us who were sitting there, being present at the event and seeing it all, and talking with others afterwards, she knew that the moment the nun had begun to speak, the Pope reached down and switched off his translation device so that he could no longer hear her. And he said later that the whole time in which

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he was talking, he was reciting the Rosary, muttering the name of Mary while a woman was seeking equality in faith. My friends, this is a medieval man with a medieval mind and a medieval theology, wearing a medieval costume, going about the world with medieval pomp and ceremony, telling women that in things of

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the Spirit, they are not to be counted as equals. Or how about what happened just a few months ago when Ted Bundy was executed? You will remember that he is the man who killed at least 28 women. Just a few hours before he was executed, in an interview he said, "I am not saying that pornography made me do what I did. I

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take full responsibility, but pornography helped to mold and shape my behavior. It fueled my thoughts." And yet as we sit here this morning, less than two blocks from this place is a store where they are selling pornography at this very moment, debasing to women, contrary to the laws of this city, laws which are

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unenforced because the legal authority to enforce them rests in the hands of men. And men want to read what they want to read and do what they want to do, and the last survey shows that every one out of every ten wives in this country is a battered woman. Or take a survey conducted just a few years ago, a review

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of 50 children's books published here in America. In every one of them, the father was bigger than the mother. The father was the central figure twice as often as the mother. The father carried 90% of the dialogue, the mother only 10%. The woman was almost invariably pictured in the home wearing an apron. And there were

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very few heroines. The story centered about heroes. It started very early with lines like these, "Dick said, 'I'll steer the sled, Jane, you just hang on.'" So Jephthah blames his daughter, his arrogance to be the reason for her annihilation, his sex to be the reason for her sacrifice. He does it with fire

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and we do it in more sophisticated ways. In this tale of terror, we are now at the midnight hour because we see before us a nameless girl with an illegitimate father, the name of the girl's mother never mentioned in the story, her grandmother a prostitute, and she stands isolated, sentenced to death because of

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a man's sin. Chapter 4, Twilight. There's one glimmer that enters into the story here because while the girl surrenders to her father's will immediately, that's what she's been trained to do, she knows nothing else to do, she does make one

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request, "Let me go alone for two months to wander upon the hills, I and my female friends." It's a very small request. Here's a girl who's going to die prematurely, who's going to die violently, who's going to die still a virgin, not even any children to remember her with love and affection, and her death is

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altogether premeditated, and so Jephthah answers, "Go." One word, "Go." It's his last word in the story. It's not hard to understand why she goes off to the hills, "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help, my help cometh from the Lord." Hills speak to us of peace and of courage and of strength,

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steadiness in the time of stress. It's interesting to notice that when our Lord Jesus approached Jerusalem for the last time with his crucifixion, he chose to stay outside of the city at a place called Bethany, and Bethany was in the mountains of Gilead where this young unnamed girl walked for those two months,

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and it says that Jesus went out into the hills. You see, he wasn't the first one to walk there who was going to be murdered because of the evil of others. I wonder if he thought about her, this one who was not dying for her own sin but for the sins of others, even as he was to do. She has her women friends with her. She can

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get some support and counsel from them. That's still true today, isn't it? Every advance that women have made in our society, they have made largely because of their own efforts. Every inch they have won with their own efforts. You know, a few years ago now, the University of Chicago published a series of books

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called "The Great Books," and it's supposed to contain the great literature of the ages. Dr. Robert Hutchins, who was the chancellor of the university at that time, got the collection together. Now, volume four in that multi-volume series is entitled "The Great Conversation," and in it are cited various philosophers who

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think and speak, various experts who devote themselves to consideration of the origin of humanity and the destiny of humanity and other very profound philosophical speculations. And you know, in that entire book, with all those hundreds of people cited in those great conversations, not a single woman is

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quoted. Not one! And that's done you. I was very much touched when I read Linda Ellerbee's book, "Just One of Those Things." You remember, she's the NBC television journalist. On page 181 of her book, she's talking about her mother. She says, "My mother could not go to college because they didn't have the money. She couldn't

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go to work because her husband wouldn't let her work. She couldn't go into politics because she didn't find any other women in politics. She kept saying that it was not her time, but she pushed me and she made me study and she made me stretch so that when my time was here, I could do what I could do." Praise God for

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Linda Ellerbee's mother. For those women who stand together like Ruth and Naomi, saying, "Entreat me not to leave thee or to depart from following after thee." This is the twilight in the darkness. This is what Jephthah's daughter experienced with her friends there on the hills of Gilead.

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Last chapter, title, "Dawn." She comes home and she is slain. The Hebrew tells of her death in only five words, "And he did to her his vow which he had vowed." But that's not the end of the story. There's a little postscript, a little PS added. It says, "She became a tradition in Israel. From year to year, the daughters of

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Israel went to mourn for the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days every year. She might have had no children to remember her, but the women of Israel did. They refused to forget her and I don't want us to forget her either." And that's the reason I brought her into this pulpit this morning. She is never

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mentioned again in all of the pages of Scripture. Her dad, Jephthah, is. When he dies, he is given a very noble epitaph. Samuel describes him as being a great military leader. Even as late as the book of Hebrews, he is described as one of the Old Testament heroes of faith. But that is why our church has always said that

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when we read the Scriptures, we read them in terms of what they say about faith and practice and nothing more. For we worship Jesus. We do not worship this book. Jesus was before this book. Jesus will be after this book. Jesus is in every way superior to this book.

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And whenever this book does not measure up to him, then we look to him. And believe me, there is no Jephthah in Jesus. He was born of a woman and women stood by his cross. He never nagged them. He never flattered them. He never patronized them. He told no jokes about them. He never gave to them any condescending

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praise. He listened to their thoughts. He responded to their ideas and their arguments. He never told them to be more feminine. He never excluded them from any dimension of life. And as Jesus was, so all men are to be. This tale of terror, you see, can have a beautiful ending. It can conclude with the dawn if women will

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practice all the strength that God has given to them. And if men will practice all the gentleness which God has given to them. If we will all seek to be like Jesus, which means that some things we are doing we will do no more and some things undone we will immediately do.

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[silence] Then all of us, women and men alike, all of us can know a new dawn and live more happily ever after. [silence]

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Let us pray. [silence] Oh God, bless we beseech thee anything that has been said which is in accordance with thy will. Erase from our consciousness anything which violates

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thy counsel. Send us forth from this place stronger in the truth, not only knowing it but living it, to the honor and glory of thy Son in whose name and for whose sake we pray. Amen. [ End ]