But upon hearing this plan, Barak waffled. Perhaps he was afraid of death or worse yet, losing against so mighty an opponent. He told her, "If you go, I’ll go with you. But if you don’t go with me, I won’t go."

Deborah was not hesitant in the least. Of course she would go. "But," she says, "Understand with an attitude like that; there’ll be no glory in it for you."

As the story goes, the Israelites do defeat the Canaanites in battle, and Sisera falls, as Deborah predicted, at the hands of a woman, a woman who offered him the comfort of warm milk and once he was asleep pounded a tent peg through his skull. The bards of the day sang songs about it. Deborah and Barak themselves offered wild praise that the people volunteered with abandon – bless God! And for 40 years after, there was peace and quiet in the land of Israel.

Then the story starts all over as soon as chapter 6 begins. "Yet again the people of the Lord did what was evil in God’s sight." This is an ongoing refrain from the time of the Judges. Just when we thought men and women of courage had fought the last fight, secured the last border, and sung praise to the glory of the Almighty for victory – wait just an historical minute – and the people lose hope, and faith, and the ability to distinguish good from evil all over again.

The courage to take risks is a funny thing. It takes leaders like Deborah and Barak to lead the charge. They were out in front risking their lives – ironically on behalf of those very same evil-doing Israelites. The story doesn’t tell us that the Israelites were innocent and good. It doesn’t tell us that they were smart and brave. The story says they were doing evil. They were sinners, and to me that means, no more and no less, that they were regular people just like you and me – perhaps complacent with their lot in life, bored, and restless. Sure, they were oppressed by the Canaanites, controlled by a cruel and more powerful culture than their own. But it took a gutsy woman judge and a somewhat hesitant military commander to goad them into action. No guts, no glory. Well, sadly even with guts, the glory was fleeting in this case. Short-lived was the peace of Israel. Short-lived was the time between when they were knee-deep in doing evil until the time they started doing evil again. Human beings love their ruts! We’ll take our sin, thank you very much, rather than take on the sins of the world.

With a people like this, it makes me wonder: What are God’s courageous, faithful leaders of today to do? Now, I’m not sure I really want an answer to that question. Deborah sat under a palm tree all day and settled disputes about justice, until one day, she’d had enough and schemed for victory over Sisera and his army. Barak, at first, wanted to refuse the battle, but with Deborah by his side, he couldn’t say "No." If God’s justice is truly our aim, know that the risks will always be great.

No guts, no glory.

Flip ahead a few thousand years to the time of Jesus. Jesus, like Deborah, was concerned for God’s beloved nation of Israel, and was also passionate about attaining God’s justice for the oppressed. He had a vision for the kingdom of God and for what it meant to serve God in the here and now. He tried to reach all kinds of people with his teaching, and it was clear that there were times even Jesus had his exasperating days, OR as Anne LaMott would tell it, I suspect even Jesus had those kind of days that would make him want to drink gin out of the cat dish. Telling people to repent and believe the good news is a lot easier than getting them to repent and believe the good news.

So Jesus, master storyteller that he is, uses all kinds of illustrations to try and make his point. He’s hopeful that where logic doesn’t work, perhaps subliminal messages will do the trick. In Matthew’s gospel, the apostle relates a story about investment that Jesus uses to make a point about God’s kingdom. We know it as "the parable of the talents."

Again, it is a story about being desperate enough to throw caution to the wind. Three servants work for a tyrannical master who doesn’t always make his expectations clear. This master entrusts them with different financial gifts according to their abilities and goes away for a while. We know what happens next, two invest the money and are praised for their returns, the other one hides his share out of fear of losing it. The master is furious with the wimpy servant – telling him "That’s a terrible way to live." In the end that "play-it-safe" gets thrown into utter darkness. Jesus teaches that, in God’s kingdom, No risk equals no reward. There will be no glimpse of glory for that one.

We can look back to Deborah, and to other Old Testament stories and sense a gut-level familiarity with this Master who always demands the best from us. In one way, it is true: God’s sense of justice is ruthless, harsh, and demanding. Our Master shows no mercy for wasted gifts, for playing it safe, for acting out of fear rather than love. God puts people in charge of their own lives, of fulfilling their own destinies. No guts, no glory. No risk, no reward. The stories share the same challenging message. Barak lost any glory he might have had for flinching in the face of Deborah’s dangerous request, instead the glory goes to a relatively unknown woman. The third servant is totally spineless when it comes to investing his master’s money. Therefore, we get the message from Jesus that this servant is not welcome in God’s kingdom.

Ouch. Will God really deal out this kind of retributive justice on the risk-averse? This kind of demand on us seems disproportionate to our human abilities. Who among us could live up to the great risk takers of the Bible, or the great risk takers of any historical period for that matter? We’d like to think that we have the potential to lead in spiritual ways, that we use our gifts for the good, that we are the servants who did their jobs well, the faithful judge, the righteous commander, and always, always on God’s good side. But the truth may be that we’re just this side of another umpteen years of going along with the crowd who is doing what’s evil in God’s sight.

The good news in it for us is that the Almighty God, the Judge of all nations, the Master of high expectations is just as radical and off the charts in showing compassion and mercy. Yes, we are clearly called out by God to take risks for the greater good. We are called to lead the charge against oppression even if it bloodies our hands. We are called to manage our God-given gifts to their fullest potential shunning all fear of loss or punishment should we mess up. We are to join hands, walk together, and risk our lives precisely for the sake of people who are still doing evil in God’s sight, because there but for the grace of God…

Then, and only then, will we come face to face with the radical love of Jesus, the love that risked it all for sinners just like you and me. One of the ironies of the Christian message is that so many couch this good news in such deadly serious terms. We take the command of the Master too seriously just like the third servant. To us, justice feels like judgment; mercy, like pity. The God of judgment becomes all we know. But take these stories and really peel away the layers, and you see something quite different. A woman defeats colossal power with warm milk and a tent peg. A servant risks investing his master’s gifts and is rewarded with partnership. The Son of God comes to seek and save the lost – not to herald great victories. The good news of God’s love comes from the underside. It’s funnier, and more amazing than it is serious. Who would have thought God’s favored and often contrary nation would be loved time and again? And from that, who would’ve thought that the greatest love story known to humankind would be about God’s unconditional love for the many, many human beings who have been a disappointment from day one?

Paradoxically the good news includes both justice and mercy. What fascinates me about this is that the most important story of the human drama on earth is not really serious at all. It was seriousness, religious and political seriousness that criticized, condemned, and killed Jesus. It was lightness, foolishness and love that risked raising him from the dead. Even after telling these stories myself, I don’t think God necessarily closes the gate to cowards; we all have our moments of weakness. But I do wonder if living cautiously and safely prevents us from truly seeing the kingdom at work in this life. Take the risks, the ones that seem foolish and have the greatest odds. Chances are, you’ll be glad you did.

Amen.