July 12, 2026
CHIMING OF THE HOUR
WELCOME
PRAYER
Unexpected God, We close our eyes to so much in the world — the problems we can’t solve, the people we can’t help, the strangers we don’t understand. Worse, we close our minds too often as well. To the everyday miracles of creation, to the joy of each new day, to the gifts placed deep within us. Open our hearts to receive the wonder of your surprising love. To see the world as you do — with mercy, hope and love. To serve the world as you know we can — with courage, hope and love. To witness to you in the world, sharing your peace, hope and love. Amen.
PRELUDE
CALL TO WORSHIP
Whenever we feel disrespected or overlooked, let down by others;
Resting and praying, we affirm that God sees us.
In those times when we feel lost or unsure, seeking God’s presence in our lives;
Listening and singing, we remember that God leads us.
As we worship, we share our worries and concerns, craving answers and support;
Praising and reflecting, we recognize that God works through us.
Together we remember that our God is a God of surprises;
Working in surprising places through surprising people, loving us in surprising ways.
*HYMN No. 1 “Holy, Holy, Holy”
1 Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
2 Holy, holy, holy! all the saints adore thee,
casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.
3 Holy, holy, holy! though the darkness hide thee,
though the eye of sinfulness thy glory may not see,
only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
perfect in power, in love and purity.
4 Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
*CALL TO CONFESSION
Trusting in God’s healing grace, we open our hearts and souls in confession as a community.
*PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Before God, with the people of God, I confess to my brokenness:
to the ways I wound my life, the lives of others, and the life of the world.
May God forgive you, Christ renew you, and the Spirit enable you to grow in love.
Amen.
Before God, with the people of God, we confess to our brokenness:
to the ways we wound our lives, the lives of others, and the life of the world.
May God forgive you, Christ renew you, and the Spirit enable you to grow in love.
Amen.
Silence is observed
*ASSURANCE OF PARDON
Forgiven, we continue to walk the Way of Jesus.
Amen.
*RESPONSE NO. 581 “Glory Be to the Father”
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen, amen.
*PASSING OF THE PEACE OF CHRIST
Like a tent in the wilderness the table of God stands open and ready as a place of sanctuary and safety, of hospitality and healing. So come, all you who are tired and travel-stained, footsore and famished; come with your fellow travelers and find companionship and comfort; for here, Jesus – who knows what it is to wander, watch and wrestle in desert places – waits to meet us and welcome us in, offering us rest and restoration, solace and strength, for the journey still to come.
May the peace of God, the comforting peace of familiar presence, the untamed peace of wilderness places, the challenging peace of watching and wrestling, surround and shape your journey onwards.
The peace of Christ be with you.
And also with you.
Worshippers are invited to briefly “pass the peace” of Christ to those directly seated around them thus keeping our worship time “decent and in order” with a focus upon being part of God’s community.
ANTHEM “A Festive Alleluia” Patrick Liebergen
THE CHILDREN’S MESSAGE
UNISON PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION
Living God, help us so to hear and ponder your holy Word, that we may truly understand; and that, understanding, we may believe; and, believing, we may follow in faithfulness and obedience, seeking your honor and glory in all that we do; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
SCRIPTURE Judges 4:17-22
17 Now Sisera had fled away on foot to the tent of Jael wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between King Jabin of Hazor and the clan of Heber the Kenite. 18 Jael came out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me; have no fear.” So he turned aside to her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug. 19 Then he said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. 20 He said to her, “Stand at the entrance of the tent, and if anybody comes and asks you, ‘Is anyone here?’ say, ‘No.’ ”
21 But Jael wife of Heber took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, until it went down into the ground—he was lying fast asleep from weariness—and he died. 22 Then, as Barak came in pursuit of Sisera, Jael went out to meet him and said to him, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” So he went into her tent, and there was Sisera lying dead, with the tent peg in his temple.
Pause…
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!!
SERMON “A Tent Peg”
I want to take a moment, first, to revel in the beauty of a good revenge story.
The count of Monte Cristo
Kill Bill
The Princess Bride
John Wick
Gladiator
The Gangs of New York
Man on Fire
The God Father
Cape Fear
Here we have the King Jabin and his General Sisera. Together, Jabin and Sisera anchor an oppressive regime. Sisera directs 900 chariot-tanks, who has spent 20 years abusing and beating and, when he wishes to, killing the Israelites without cause, and it is so delicious to watch Jael—his ally’s wife—pick up her tent peg and put an end to Sisera’s cruel control. It is good to watch the unjust get their just desserts. Or, what feels like their just desserts.
But the punishing of the unjust is not always the same as the restoration of justice, we know that.
As followers of Christ, we may feel a twinge of guilt when we cheer for Jael. What about creative nonviolence and peaceful protest and advocacy? What about all the times we’ve said, “Violence is not the answer”?
But. We have not, fortunately or unfortunately, witnessed Jael in our midst, and we do not have to react to the death of Sisera in real time and face the ambivalence of this change in the political winds. Our own contemporary parallels of watching the mighty fall have, thus far, been peaceful and our self-righteous moral high ground spared.
This is not a sermon about pacifism and self-defense and the moral purity of nonviolence. This is a sermon about the moral function of revenge stories. We can take Judges 4 as a story. A story of hope.
We are creatures who love stories because we know, in stories, not everything that is narratively true needs to be literally true. Stories are safe places where we can put our fantasies and trust that we can be more than the plot twists we enjoy. We can safely cheer the death of the villain because we have the protection of a story to shield the impact of death and violence on the other characters.
As a pastor, I want to tell you: it is okay if you like a good action film. It is okay to get sucked into a good mystery where the murderer is caught and punished. And it is okay for you, to comfort-watch Quentin Tarantino films. It’s okay to enjoy a good revenge story, precisely because it is a story. It is ok, to cheer when the Disney villain does him/herself in – by their own actions.
There is a catharsis in that story, there is something in the hearing of a revenge story that can cue a set of chemical reactions that set our bodies into a kind of instinctive balance, affirming our sense that world is just and resetting ourselves so that we can go back out into the world feeling it is safe enough for us to move forward. And the tent peg, in its absurd detail, is one of the indicators that this is a safe story—its dark humor cues us to sit back and enjoy the story for the ways it allows us to release pain.
I don’t know why our brains work like that, but they do. It is a fine coping strategy to use the telling of these stories to make our way back to our emotional and physical baseline.
There is a release in watching Jael pick up the tent peg, knowing that every woman on this side of Mount Tabor has a reason to do so, and to watch Jael set these women free and get rid of the evil that has plagued them.
Sometimes, we need these stories of defeat in order to keep ourselves pointed toward hope.
The way that Mary, in the Magnificat, describes God tearing the mighty from their thrones and the rich being turned away empty.
We need stories where the oppressors lose. Where, in clean and simple words, evil collapses, exhausted, and the people are set free.
Theologian G. K. Chesterton’s proclaimed, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
It seems that adults, too, need fairy tales, and we need the reminder that dragons exist.
This story is not so much about Barak and Deborah and Jael and Sisera as it is about the people who need to hear this story repeated generations later. It is a reminder of Hope – that all humans need.
Much of the Old Testament—and, really, the New Testament—was compiled when a group of faithful people were suffering needlessly and tempted toward hopelessness. The Bible is the collection of hope stories that economically exploited, ethnically abused, suffering people told to each other to keep their spirits up and to motivate each other on the long march for justice.
Judges, in particular, can discomfit us because of its sudden, violent turns and the frequent justification of murder and, at times, genocide. And it’s not just Presbyterians that feel this unease. This is the book that features the short-tempered violence of Samson; the ill-fated sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter; the murder of the Levite concubine.
The Revised Common Lectionary, the map of Bible passages that tells Protestant preachers what to preach on each week, is so skeptical of these stories that there are only two passages from Judges twice in its three-year cycle—and today is one of those Sundays, when we tell the story of Deborah and dodge some of the more graphic violence of the Judges.
But Judges is ultimately a book about patterns, and how we cultivate goodness in a downward spiral of generational oppression. Throughout the book, we hear these refrains:
“The people once again did evil in the sight of God”;
“In those days there was no king in Israel”; “all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”
These refrains remind us that we are not the first witnesses of human cruelty, just as we are not the first or the only to pursue justice and work for the shalom of the world.
We are part of the legacy of brave women like Deborah and Jael, and the men who supported them, like Barak.
This story exists not just because we need it, but because generations of women and men before us, who faced capricious cruelty and narcissistic rulers, needed it first.
We can take this story for what it is: a stylized, simplified reminder that women and men can work together to undo injustice. That women and men can work together to bring hope! As followers of Jesus Christ – we are people of Hope!
There is, I think, much to be gained from the theological example of Barak, who appears here as a man whose faithful pursuit of justice requires an undoing of injustice, cruelty and suffering, a reimaging of strong and righteous men as collaborators who leave no one behind; who are brave enough to ask for help when they need it; and who do not let their own egos prevent their people from seeking liberation.
It is possible that this story has, for thousands of years, provided hope to women in cultures where rape was a weapon of war and oppression, and where men abused women as servants and property.
Sarah Jobe, a chaplain in a women’s prison, wrote in a 2018 article for the Christian Century, about reading Judges 4 with the women prisoners. She writes that many of them were in prison for the violent acts they committed against boyfriends and husbands who repeatedly abused them. She describes the story of one woman, serving a sentence for the murder of her abusive boyfriend. The deputies who responded to her 911 call on the night of the murder recounted four years of prior abuse. They had arrested her partner 8 times and incarcerated him twice, for his abuse toward her, and one deputy even said that when they were called to the house to respond to a death, he assumed it was her who had died. These deputies told the district attorney prosecuting the case, “She is a hero. If it hadn’t been her to kill him, it would have eventually had to be one of us.”
As a result of these deputies’ advocacy, her charges were dropped from first-degree murder to manslaughter, resulting in a relatively light prison sentence of four years. Jobe tells the story of this woman, and others, concluding, “However you preach David and Goliath… that’s how you can preach Jael and Sisera.”
Jobe writes, “Every life is precious. Every death to be mourned. But if one person continues to flout such truth, God will fight against him for the safety of God’s people—through government, through the stars in the heavens, and through tent-dwelling women.”
It’s just as Martin Espada says in the poem we heard this morning:
“if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods,
that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.
So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.”
For us, in this community, perhaps we rely the story of Sisera and Jael helps us make sense of our feelings about the 2020 election. To sort out the complexities our own desires, to mark out as sacred the gray area of the Venn diagram where hope, vindication, and revenge meet, to remind ourselves that hope and social change are rarely as clear-cut as we wish. Stories like this one give us a way to sense of our emotions. Through the example of Jael and Deborah and Barak, we see good people pursuing justice in impossible circumstances.
But there is one other thing this story helps us to name: no one made it out of Sisera and Jabin of Hazor’s reign unscathed.
Everyone whose lives were touch by King Jabin and General Sisera experienced trauma. There are some rulers who are so awful that they manage to induce trauma on everyone under their influence, citizens, foreign dignitaries, and immigrants.
We celebrate these election results because it is the end of one kind of trauma. Yet the trauma stays with us. For the people of Israel, this trauma led them into repeated cycles of generational violence. It is our challenge, now, to heal the trauma we are able to. To do what trauma therapist Resmaa Menakam calls, “metabolizing trauma,” breaking it into digestible pieces in our bodies so that we can release it, and no longer reenact these traumas as we try to process them.[4]
No, not all of us were traumatized the same ways. The children and parents who were caged and separated at the border carry sorrow that is unimaginable to us. The foreign service workers with abusive supervisors carry another kind of trauma. The people and animals harmed by environmental deregulation face a still different burden. Our dear governor, ever professional, who was the target of kidnapping carries yet another kind of trauma. The kidnappers and other white supremacists pursuing violence are also acting from the trauma that Donald Trump enacted on them, the paranoia and hurt that he has stoked which causes them to attack others.
Even those of us who are outwardly unscathed still carry heavier burdens than we did four years ago. Even if we were only witnesses to this harm, we have experienced secondary trauma. We have felt the helplessness and pain of being unable to keep loved ones—friends and strangers—safe. We have been near to a kind of pain that tries to harden our hearts and scar our bodies.
As a church community, as a healing community, part of what we do now is metabolize our trauma. We make a point of metabolizing our pain. We invoke healing practices, recreating a sense of safety and restoring emotional and physical equilibrium.
And one of those healing practices may be storytelling, about terrible men who were defeated.
Those healing practices may also include celebrating the women—especially the Black women—who led the way in resisting evil, mobilizing voters, and making a way forward.
One other thing this story teaches us. At the very end, we are told, “On that day God subdued Jabin the Canaanite… Their power over Jabin kept growing stronger and stronger, until he was finally destroyed.”
We have great victories which rout evildoers and cause the downfall of oppressors. But change does not come in a day.
Only one of the villains in this story loses on this day. The victory, the dancing in the streets, is not an end, but a middle, a shifting toward a new approach. There is more work to be done—so much more. This victory is a signal, but it is not the totality. The people, with all their trauma, with all the burdens they carry and the healing they still have to do, will have to heal while they continue to push back evil.
It can be discouraging, to realize that we must heal while we protest, we must recover while we still resist. But we are not the first to have to do this.
We will go forward, with the courage of Deborah, and Jael, and Barak illuminating our path forward.
*AFFIRMATION OF FAITH
Adapted from the French Confession of 1559
We believe and confess only one God, who can do all things, is all-wise, all-good, all-just, and all-merciful. We believe that everything required for our salvation has been offered and communicated to us in Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God and God’s eternal Son. Jesus Christ clothed himself in our flesh: God and human in one person. We believe that we are illuminated in faith by the unfathomable grace of the Holy Spirit. God imparts this gracious gift.
By faith we receive grace to live holy lives in awe and reverence for God, for we receive what the gospel promises when God gives us the Holy Spirit. Faith does not cool our desire for good and holy living, but rather engenders and excites it in us, leading naturally to good works.
We believe that the sacraments are joined to the Word in order that the Word may be more fully confirmed. Baptism is given to us as the pledge of our adoption, in which we are grafted into the body of Christ, and renewed in holiness of life by his Spirit. The holy Supper of our Lord is a testimony of our unity with Jesus Christ, who died only once and was raised for our sake. The body and blood of Jesus Christ are food and drink for the soul just as bread and wine are nourishment for the body.
As for the true Church we believe that it ought to be governed in accordance with the order established by our Lord Jesus Christ. In this way, pure doctrine can be maintained, the poor and afflicted can be helped in their need, assemblies can be gathered in the name of God, and both great and small can be edified. Amen.
*HYMN No. 837
“What a Fellowship, What a Joy Divine”
1 What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
leaning on the everlasting arms;
what a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
leaning on the everlasting arms.
(Refrain)
Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms;
leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.
2 O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way,
leaning on the everlasting arms;
O how bright the path grows from day to day,
leaning on the everlasting arms.
(Refrain)
Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms;
leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.
3 What have I to dread, what have I to fear,
leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near,
leaning on the everlasting arms.
(Refrain)
Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms;
leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.
THE PASTORAL PRAYER & THE LORD’S PRAYER
Unexpected God, awaken us to the surprising and unexpected ways you work in the world. Open our minds to the unpredictable and diverse people you work through.
Expand our hearts to the extraordinary and unanticipated ways you work in us.
Be with us, when our lives are upended by grief: for people or relationships; for plans or dreams. Help us find purpose and healing to move forward each day. Comfort us in our loss and restore us in your strength. Surround us with the support of others to rediscover your joy.
Be with us, when our lives are transformed by abundance: of new ideas and ambitions; of plans to be made or desires fulfilled. Remind us of your blessings in all we are and all we have. Inspire us to accomplish the possibility you have created for us. Renew us with appreciation for the miracles in each day and your enduring care for us.
Be with us, when our lives are stirred up by opportunity: to speak out or stand up for those in need. Give us the courage to reject injustice in our communities. Bless us with compassion for those who are isolated or shunned, and help us make them whole.
Be with us in our waking, our resting, our dreaming. Let us know and share the peace that comes from your eternal grace.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
PASSING OF FELLOWSHIP PADS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
TITHES & OFFERINGS
Every minute of every day, God is making all things new, giving and giving and giving again. And you are called; we are called to be a part of God’s work of generosity. You are called to give, to surrender your time, talent, and treasure to this God-work of making all things new. You are called to give. We are called to give. The morning offering will now be given and received!
OFFERTORY ANTHEM
*RESPONSE N0. 606 “Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Come”
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
praise him, all creatures here below;
praise him above, ye heavenly host;
praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
*PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
Creative and renewing God, We give thanks to you for the blessings we enjoy: the diverse beauty of each province from lakes to prairies, and mountains to coasts; the resources and opportunities to learn and grow, and leave our mark; the freedom to live and love, being true to ourselves. Bless these offerings as you have blessed our lives. Inspire us to discover beauty in those who appear different from ourselves; to create opportunities for diversity to surprise and to flourish; and to share the abundance of your love, without limit or restriction. Amen.
*HYMN No. 69 “I, the Lord of Sea and Sky”
1 I, the Lord of sea and sky,
I have heard my people cry.
All who dwell in dark and sin
my hand will save.
I, who made the stars of night,
I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear my light to them?
Whom shall I send?
(Refrain)
Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
2 I, the Lord of snow and rain,
I have borne my people’s pain.
I have wept for love of them.
They turn away.
I will break their hearts of stone,
give them hearts for love alone.
I will speak my word to them.
Whom shall I send?
(Refrain)
Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
3 I, the Lord of wind and flame,
I will tend the poor and lame.
I will set a feast for them.
My hand will save.
Finest bread I will provide
till their hearts be satisfied.
I will give my life to them.
Whom shall I send?
(Refrain)
Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
*BENEDICTION
The cross, we will take it.
The bread, we will break it.
The pain, we will bear it.
The joy, we will share it.
The Gospel, we will live it.
The love, we will give it.
The light, we will cherish it.
The darkness, God shall perish it!
Amen.
*POSTLUDE