The Bible and “Me Too”

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that the Bible doesn’t have any “Me Too” moments of its own. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post. This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. So much of our attention as of late has been focused on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the presidential election and its aftermath, and other recent conflicts, that one of the most significant moments in our society seems, at times, to have been entirely forgotten. I’m talking about the “Me Too” movement. I want to be clear, as a Christian priest, that the church has often failed to support those who have experienced harassment or abuse, particularly and most unfortunately in the church. The church must do better. And for that reason, this week I’d like to bust the myth of the idea that the Bible doesn’t have any “Me Too” moments of its own. Because it does. In Judges 4 and 5, we hear the amazing story of Deborah, the only woman of all the judges of ancient Israel, which concludes with a woman named Jael violently killing Sisera, the Canaanite general, by drilling a tent peg through his head while he sleeps. In doing this, Jael breaks the peace that her clan, the Kenites, had made with the Canaanites. Yes, this is not a common Sunday School story. I don’t have time to tell you the whole story, but I’d really would encourage you to read it. In particular, because there is an important reversal that happens in the story, once you get to the end of chapter five. In the song of chapter five, Deborah basically sings the story that a later author will set to prose in chapter four. But the story ends in a different way. After telling of the death of Sisera, the song imagines his mother looking out through the window, wondering why her son, the Canaanite general ,has not yet come home from battle. Her friends, other ladies in her house answer her, “Are they not finding and dividing the spoil?—A girl or two for every man…” the spoils of war. The custom of soldiers raping or abducting women in the community of the defeated army was a common one in the ancient near east, just like it is in our own time. Women are particularly vulnerable to victorious army collecting the so-called spoils of war, something Sisera would have done had he defeated the Israelites, even though, of course, the prophet Deborah led the charge that defeated him. And so, it is perhaps for every woman who would have been vulnerable to the Canaanite soldiers that Jael breaks the peace treaty of her own clan of Kenites, letting who she is as a woman be more important as she stops the murderous Sisera. Who knows, maybe Jael had at one time been spoils of war, given to the Kenites by Canaanites like Sisera, and now Jael is getting justice. In fact, though the text is translated as her driving the tent peg through his temple, the Hebrew could also be translated as her driving the tent peg through his mouth—a clear reversal of the sexual violence that victorious armies would wreak upon the women of the defeated. And I think it is important for us to hear this entire story, this profound ancient narrative where women overcome sexual violence and warfare through the power and might of God. I think it is important for us to know that even in patriarchal times like back then,