Passwords That Divide Us

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[0:00] back to Judges chapter 12, and you'll see why. It's kind of an interesting sort of side note, but this is kind of a sermon that's been percolating for a while, and this seemed like a good place to put it. So I want to just say something real quick about Judges. Judges is a really challenging book. Don't read it if you want to go to sleep later that night, because there's a lot of sort of horrible things that happen in it. There's a list of texts called the Texts of Terror, and Judges is home to many of them, actually, as it turns out. Some really bad things happen, and you have to make sure you understand that when you're reading Judges, just because people do really bad things in it doesn't mean that God told them to do it. It actually says in Judges, everybody did as they thought was right in their own mind, and that was actually the problem, right? So this is really more of a recording of all the ways that people were being bad and how actually God, they needed to return to God. So Judges has some challenging parts, and we're about to read one of them. So Judges is a book that's been today's passage features a person named Jephthah, and I don't want to put this too strongly, but he's one of the more stupid people in the Bible for various reasons. You'll see very kind

[1:10] of later on in the end, but in the passage just before this one, he takes a really ill-advised oath, and he comes to regret it. I'll talk about that later. And Jesus warns about taking oaths, and today we're going to talk a little bit about taking oaths in ways that people exclude each other. So let's get started. Victoria was right. We're talking about including and excluding people. For today, we see that Jephthah and his army are doing something actually kind of clever, but it was also cruel, and it's an example of how a word in the Bible became a noun and a concept in English. You'll see about that, and it still is. So let's go to our reading. This is from Judges 12, verses 5 through 7. This is how Jephthah and his army were able to filter out people who didn't belong to their tribe. They were from the tribe of Egypt, and they were from the tribe of Ephraim, and the people from the tribe of Ephraim pronounced things differently, and they were able to figure out who they were and then, sadly, to kill them. So like I said, Judges isn't great that way. Let's go to verse 5, chapter 12, verse 5. Jephthah captured the shallow crossings of the Jordan River, and whenever a fugitive from Ephraim tried to go back across, the men of

[2:19] Gilead would challenge him. Are you a member of the tribe of Ephraim? They would ask. If the man said, no, I'm not, they would say to him, tell him to say Shibboleth. We can all say that, right? Shibboleth? Not too hard? I guess not. If he was from Ephraim, he would say Sibboleth, because people from Ephraim cannot pronounce the word correctly. Then they would take him and kill him at the shallow crossings of the Jordan. In all, 42,000 Ephraimites were killed at that time. Jephthah judged Israel for six years. When he died, he was buried in the Jordan River. He was buried in the town of Gilead. Well, let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for showing us in your word our own brokenness and depravity, and we pray that we would learn from it. We pray you bless this message in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to take a sort of a time warp tonight, about 1955, and I want you to listen, because this is actually related. But I want to tell you about a Supreme Court case called Elfbrant v. Russell. Anybody know that one?

[3:27] Any constitutional scholars here? Kind of interesting. I'm not surprised you didn't, but it's kind of near and dear to my heart, because one of the teachers of my school district sued my school district and went all the way to the Supreme Court. Isn't that interesting? You know, like a little bit of history happened in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona. So in the 1950s, the school district I grew up in required a loyalty. Think about the 50s. They required a loyalty oath to the Supreme Court. And I'm going to tell you about that. I'm going to from every teacher in the district saying that they were not members of the Communist Party. You know this was kind of a thing back in the 50s, right? And Barbara Elfbrant was a teacher at my junior high, actually, as it turned out, and later at my high school. She wasn't a communist, but she didn't like the ideas of taking oaths. She's like, I'm not a communist, but I'm not going to take an oath either. I shouldn't have to. And she was a Quaker, so more about the Quakers a little bit later. So she refused, and she was going to be fired. But before she could be fired, she sued Russell, who was the district superintendent, and she sued the school district, and she sued the governor of Arizona.

[4:36] And the lower courts held that she couldn't be fired, but somehow they could withhold her salary, which is essentially the same thing. Isn't this odd? So that wasn't satisfactory to her. So the case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and they had to wait four years for it to come before the Supreme Court. So Barbara Elfbrant and her husband Vern had no income for four years, and they survived sort of on the help and generosity of friends. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled five to four in favor of the Elfbrants, so Barbara Elfbrant, and she was awarded back pay, which was great. But it also had set the precedent that states could not require loyalty oaths from their employees. And there's more to it than that. It's very interesting, worth a read. Abe Fortas, who was one of the judges, one of the Supreme Court justices has a really good opinion on it. And it involves both the First Amendment and interestingly involves the Fifth Amendment a little bit too. So it very much was a constitutional case. And it's good to remember that at this time, there was something called McCarthyism. And I just think of all the young people who aren't here right now. They're at the high school youth group. But I want them to know what McCarthyism was.

[5:43] And they'll probably learn. George has been learning this at middle college. So George knows a lot about this. He's in high school technically. But basically, it was a witch hunt for communists at every level of the government. And eventually, Senator McCarthy kind of lost. He was censured by the Senate in December of 1954. But the movement seems to be motivated a great deal by anxiety, right? There's these enemies among us. We need to figure out who they are. We need to root them out. We need to get rid of them, right? And how do we do it? We create an oath and make everyone take it. This sort of magical phrase so we know that they are one of the good guys. And if they won't take the oath, then they're suspect, right? And we'll destroy them. And that's what we're doing. And that happened. A lot of careers were ended at that time just for the suspicion of having what were called communist sympathies, sympathy for communism. Not even actually joining the party, but just communist sympathies. I have all sorts of sympathies. I would hate for any of my sympathies to be something that you could, well, I guess you could fire me for some sympathies. But let's not try to figure out what they all are right now. But I'm just thinking like if you had a job as a teacher, right?

[6:51] So. Hold on to this idea, Barbara L. Brandt as a Quaker not wanting to take an oath prevailing the Supreme Court because she said I shouldn't have to take an oath to be a teacher. I shouldn't have to take an oath like that. I want to talk about our reading a little bit, right? So go back to Jephthah and this sort of password that they set up at the narrows of the River Jordan, right? And evidently people from Ephraim looked the same as everyone else. They couldn't tell them apart by how they dressed, how they didn't wear special hats, right? Or anything like that. But they pronounced the word shibboleth differently. They said sibboleth. They said s instead of sh. And that gave them away. And so in that way, Jephthah's army was able to actually take revenge and kill a great number of people from Ephraim. And these are like in the same country. Like the people from Ephraim were a tribe of Israel. So these were their cousins in a way, kind of distant cousins. And here they were killing them.

[7:51] And so it's not an uplifting book at all. But it's worth reading. Just not right before bedtime. And that word shibboleth. So that's the word. Shibboleth is a word in the English language now. Did you know that? A shibboleth is a word or a phrase or a characteristic that is used to test another person to see if they belong to a group. That's the definition of the word shibboleth now. So every group has a shibboleth. You kind of, it's not you actually have to pronounce something correctly anymore. You have to say the right words now. To belong to the right group. To belong to the group. Right? And so there's all sorts of things that have shibboleths. Sports teams have one. There's like phrases that mark you as an alumnus or a super fan. So for USC it's fight on. Who said that? Yeah, fight on. For USC it's fight on. For Notre Dame it's wake up the echoes. Isn't that beautiful? I like that one. Wake up the echoes. It's from their song. I didn't know that one. You know. For Arizona. University of Arizona. It's bear down. Which is like the worst one ever. It sounds ridiculous. I don't know why. But it's because the captain of the football team. He said that on his death bed. He said coach tell the team to bear down. And now we're stuck with that one.

[9:06] You know. But it sounds strange. Okay. So but that's, that's, those are the shibboleths. That's how we know that you're a fan of this team or that team. So some secret organizations have shibboleths too. Like passwords or secret handshakes. Like, like the Freemasons for example. Right? And the church has some shibboleths. The church has some ways of knowing who's in and out. And we're going to get to those too. But you know what? You can really find them right now today is this hasn't changed. You can still find shibboleths in politics. Right? I want you to think of a phrase or a practice people will either display proudly or require someone else to say or do so they can be sorted into the good people or the bad people. Right? Just don't say it out loud right now. Is there some phrase that you're thinking of right now that means that you're one of the good guys or somebody else means it means that you're one of the bad guys. Right? But you know what? Whatever side you think is doing that the other side is doing it too. All sides do this. All political groups do this. They have their ins and their outs. The insiders and their outsiders. And this is actually how human society orders itself. There's something called social identity theory.

[10:14] It's worth looking at. I'm not going to go into it too much. But this idea is that we define ourselves by our membership in a group of people. People that are somewhat like us in one way or another. And the founder of social identity theory called those in groups. So you're in the in group. But for an in group to define itself it has to have an out group. It has to have a group that's not like us. And we define ourselves almost as much by what we're not like as by what we are like. So the in group is who we are and the out group is those people over there. And they have their own shibboleths to get in and we have our own shibboleths to get into our group. And we can. And so for Jephthah. It was you know can you say this word? No. Then you're an outsider. And we're going to dispatch you. Right? Now the founder of this teaching or this sort of this it's like social sociology. He had this set of practices that in groups always follow. In groups always want us. People in the in group always want to stay in the in group. And so how do you do that? You say good things about the in group and the in group's leader. You always have to say nice things about the leader. Right? Even if you don't mean it. But you have to be seen doing it.

[11:22] You have to be heard doing it. That counts as membership and that kind of it actually enhances your position in the group. You also have to say bad things about the out group and the out group's leader. Right? And you don't have social connections with out group people. You don't mix with them. You also make it hard to join the in group so it means something. So you have to have a few hoops that people have to jump through to get into your in group. But you know what else you do? You make it hard to leave your in group. You don't let people leave. You don't want them leaving because that diminishes your group. Right? If they actually do leave then you actually treat the people who left your group worse than you treat anyone else. You shun them. You disconnect from them. You break off from them. Right? So that's how in groups and out groups work. And we see this especially in groups like cults. Right? So Scientology, a lot of time and energy and frankly money is spent to get to the highest levels. And you learn all of their shibboleths and there are quite a list. I'm not going to go into it again today. But you're discouraged from having outside friends in some of these groups. And then they try really hard to keep people from leaving.

[12:29] That's been documented. But then when they do leave they shun them completely. And they tell even parents whose kids have left the Church of Scientology you have to cut off from your kids. You can't have anything to do with them. You can't go visit your grandkids. You can't do any of that stuff. Because that will kind of reinforce the in group. And it's kind of on. It's like in group and out group. It's an out group on steroids.

[12:51] And you know this can happen. Any group that's so toxic that it won't let you have friends outside itself is a really messed up group. Right? And we have to make sure that as Christians we don't act that way with the Church. Right? And we're going to get into that. So I want to put all this actually together right now for us and think about the Church and our faith. It's all that sort of that preamble is. Yeah, so what does that mean Hans-Erik? That's all very interesting. Sociology, Supreme Court. Right? And our Bible passage which is kind of disturbing. And you're like he's just like talking. Right? He's just saying things. No, this all comes together. I want us to think about the Church and our faith. Right? Does the Church behave like this? Does the Church do these things? Right? Does it have in groups and out groups? Does the Church have loyalty oaths and requirements of certain practices?

[13:42] And I would say in a way it does. In a way it has to. Right? But there's an important difference. Most of our sort of boundaries that we have about coming in and out have to do with our beliefs. Do we believe that Jesus is Lord? Do we believe in the incarnation? Do we believe he was raised from the dead? Right?

[14:06] And that's not to exclude other people but it's so that we're of like mind when we're together. It's not to put other people in a category where they're sort of unsavable. In fact, this puts them in a category where we are. We actually want to reach out to them and reach them. So we do kind of have oaths like we have like saying one of the creeds and often we'll say creeds. Right? The Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed. We say things like he is risen or Jesus is Lord. Those are sort of shibboleths but they're good ones I would say. And we have rituals to show that we've joined like baptism or giving testimony or membership in the Church.

[14:42] And so those are good things. Those show that we belong. And that's good. It's important to belong because it gives us identity. Right? God gives us identity in who he is in Jesus Christ. Right? But we should ask ourselves when do we exclude people and is it good to do so? This is an important question for the Church. When do we exclude people and is it good to do so? And the answer is we do exclude people on the basis of what they believe. Right? If they don't believe the same things it doesn't make sense for them to be members of the Church. An atheist can't really become a member of the Church. Because the atheist can't agree to the things that we believe in. But the atheist isn't in some group over here where we can't talk to them, be friends with them. And the atheist can come and worship in this building and be with us and even have a potluck with us afterwards. I mean that's an important difference. Right? We want to stay connected with people even though we exclude them from membership in the Church. Okay? So I notice I say members. Membership is important. It doesn't say anything about attending or participating, etc. We want people here. We want people here so they can hear what we're saying. We want people here to hear what we believe.

[15:47] Right? We want them to hear that message. One of the founders of the Covenant Church, his name is Paul Waldenstrom, Peter Paul Waldenstrom, he stated it this way. He talked about whether the Church should be open or closed to any particular person. And he said, Membership in a fellowship of believers is like the door to the Church. It should be so narrow as to exclude all those who do not witness to saving faith in Christ Jesus. So that's the limit. Do people believe in saving faith? Do people believe in saving faith in Christ Jesus? Then the door is wide enough, is narrow enough to let them in, but it kind of keeps other people out. Now, this is membership. This is not actually walking into the physical premises of the Church. But, he says, it should be so wide as to include all who do. And so his view was that you believe in saving faith in Jesus Christ, but you may disagree on all sorts of other theological things like the meaning of baptism and Holy Communion and some other things that are probably not as core central things. And you can disagree on those. And you're not going to be excluded for that because the door, the narrowness of the door is set at believing in the saving and having saving faith in Jesus Christ.

[16:54] And so that's narrow enough to let all these people in that have different opinions on all sorts of other things. But it excludes anyone who can't at least say that. Right? And that makes sense. We're talking about membership of the Church, right?

[17:09] And there's one other case that I'll mention just briefly. If you look at 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul is writing a letter to the church. And he's writing a letter to a very dysfunctional church. The church is so dysfunctional because it's celebrating a man who's sleeping with his stepmother. It's not disciplining him in any ways. It's actually kind of lifting him up in sort of some strange way. And Paul says, this is bad for you and it's bad for the church. It's bad for that man. It's bad for his family. And I think that's true, right? For all sorts of reasons. And he says, you have to hold a meeting and you have to, if he won't repent, you have to expel this person from the midst. But the reason, Paul says, is not to cast a spell on him. It's not to cast him into the outer darkness.

[17:48] Paul says it so he'll wake up and he'll be saved. That the seriousness of his own sin will dawn on him. Like, oh, this is serious. I can't do this anymore. And that he'll be pulled back into faith. You see the difference there between exclusion? And even exclusion is done for the sake of saving somebody, right? And we're inclusive of all sorts of things, but we're also exclusive of people who won't have the same faith as us. And in some rare cases, exclusion is a very important thing. We're exclusive of people who have sort of deeply injurious open sin. And we need to deal with that in a way that's actually geared towards helping them and saving them.

[18:27] So here's the part that's for us for today, right? I want us to stand in contrast to the world, right? The world is drenched in anxiety. This is what drives a lot of it. This is what drove McCarthyism in the 50s was really was anxiety. There's these people out there. We don't know who they are. We have to find them. They're a threat to us. Okay. So the world is drenched in anxiety. It still is. It uses things like loyalty oaths and performative rituals, and it sorts people into the good ones and the bad ones. It's just funny that one side's good ones are the other side's bad ones and et cetera. So they're just kind of looking at each other across this vast chasm. And this isn't our way.

[19:06] This isn't our way. It happens in the world all the time. For one thing, it can't come into the church. But for another thing, as you go out into the world, you can't do that. You can't make people take oaths and you can't take oaths yourself. Okay. Jesus tells us not to take oaths. And so we shouldn't, we don't require them of people in our social groups either. I've seen things on Facebook where they're like, I'm unfriending everyone who doesn't agree with me politically. And it's like, why?

[19:38] You're losing connection with somebody you could have influence with. You're losing relationship. This too will pass. You have to stay open and connected to people, right? This is what we're called to. We don't require people to agree to a political cause before they can join the church or become a member of the church. We don't put up political barriers to them visiting the church or joining the church or becoming a believer. We don't have a political loyalty oath to join the church. We don't. And we never will. I mean, as long as I'm here. If somebody else comes after me, I don't know what they're going to do. But you'd have to run them off if they did that. They shouldn't run them off. Well, you should run them off, but in a different kind of way. And here's the other thing. Nobody's required to join the church, right?

[20:22] You're not required to join the church. Now, it wasn't always that way. You remember how Norway was Christianized at the point of the sword? That was King Olaf. King Olaf. He made all the Vikings Christians by just threatening them.

[20:36] But here's the thing. If someone joins the church and then leaves, we don't cut them off. We stay connected in the hopes that we could possibly win. We don't want to be the means by which they hear about Jesus and Jesus comes back into their lives. And you know what? We can say positive things about other people and other groups. It doesn't take away from the great gift and identity that we have in Jesus. So we can say nice things about other people. So I'm going to tell you one thing. I think we can admire the Jehovah's Witnesses. I don't always admire them, but we can admire the Jehovah's Witnesses because they're really committed to Scripture. We think they've translated it wrong. And actually, we're pretty sure they actually have translated it wrong. And it's a very important ways. But you know what? The Jehovah's Witnesses have won more First Amendment cases than almost any other religious group. They've won at the Supreme Court about 50 times. 50. Thank you, Jehovah's Witnesses. Because they won't take oaths. They won't serve in the military. Right? They won't. There's a lot of things that they won't do. Right? And a lot of our religious freedoms have been expanded by the work of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

[21:41] You can admire the Latter-day Saints. For how nice they are. And how together their families seem to be. And for their zeal for missionary work. We can admire that and go, wow, that, you know, they're doing a few things right there. You know? I can't find anything nice to say about Scientology. I just, look. Tom Cruise seems like a nice guy. There we go. I said one nice thing about Scientology. Tom Cruise seems like a nice guy. He really does. He seems genuinely nice. Okay.

[22:10] And all these groups have defects. We don't turn a blind eye to their defects if we praise them a little bit. But we have to be honest about those defects without banishing some of this place where we can't even share our hope with them. Right? We want to stay connected.

[22:24] So, as hard as it is, a Jehovah's Witness or a Latter-day Saint come to your door and you have the energy for it, talk to them. Listen to them. Engage with them. Tell them, give, always be, stand ready to give an accounting of the hope that you have in Christ. And it's going to be, and it's okay to point out the differences between our faith and their faith. They need to hear that. Right? But we don't just, you know, if you're really busy, you could slam the door in their face, but do it slowly. So it's just kind of like, you know, it's going to, got to, you know, got to go. Now, I mentioned the Quakers. I admire the Quakers. Quakers generally do not swear oaths. Right? They value integrity and believe in speaking truthfully. So, honesty is really kind of a core idea. Right? They're not in Quaker faith. They're Christians. And they see swearing as a potential way to avoid telling the truth. Because if I swear, like, if I swear on a stack of Bibles, if I say that, I'll swear on a stack of Bibles, there's a good chance the next thing I'm about to say is a lie. Isn't that right?

[23:30] Isn't that right? Why do I have to do that? Why do I have to be all dramatic about it? There's something going on. So they're like, I'm not going to take an oath. I'm not going to swear on a stack of Bibles. Because that looks less honest, actually, in a weird way. Right? And so instead of swearing, they typically respond to questions with yay or nay. Well, probably now yes or no.

[23:52] Quakers believe that one's word should be accepted as truth based on their reputation for honesty rather than an oath. Right? And I like this. And if you remember history, did you know that Quakers were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement both in England and in the United States? Right? And I kind of ask myself, how do they keep getting so many things right? Barbara Elf Grant wouldn't take an oath.

[24:19] Even though she might have agreed with the oath, she's like, I'm not going to take this oath. Right? How do they keep getting so many things right? They take the words of Jesus seriously. That's how they got it right. Jesus said exactly this. Let your no be no. Let your yes be yes. Don't swear on anything. Just be an honest person. Okay?

[24:42] Remember how I said that Jephthah wasn't too bright? I'm going to go back to Jephthah for a second. I said he took an ill-advised oath. In the passage before the one we just read, he took this really terrible oath. This is one of the texts of terror.

[24:57] He swore to God that if he would win a battle that he was about to go into, that when he came back to his town, any living thing that came out of the town would be his. And if he came back to his town to greet him, he would sacrifice to God.

[25:13] So he comes, he wins. He knows he has to keep his end of the oath. And what comes out of the town to greet him? Some of you know this story. His daughter. Doesn't this read like a Greek tragedy a little bit? His daughter came out of the town. And his daughter learned of his oath and she said, Father, you have to keep this oath because you made it to God. All sorts of worse things will happen than me dying if you don't keep this oath.

[25:38] And she said, at least let me go out and mourn in the wilderness with my friends for a few months before I die. So that was a really dumb thing to do. This is probably why Jesus says don't take oaths. I'm sorry, we kind of brought a dark Paul over the room here, didn't we? You know? But it's like one of these things stand in Judges as this warning to us about, you know, swearing on things, taking oaths on things, right? We don't take oaths, right? But you know who does? God. God takes oaths, right? And he can because he can keep his word and he means them seriously and he puts his whole self behind them, right? We call those oaths covenants, right? We're not as good as he is at that. So God can take oaths. God can make covenants. But we're not very good at it. So I think we should stay away from it, right? So I like the Quakers. I like the Quakers. They gave Barbara Elf Grant the framework to see a case prevail in the Supreme Court. You know, sad that it was only five to four. I'm not suggesting we switch to Quaker as a church affiliation. Can you imagine? Foothill Quaker Church? Next week you come back, we change. We're not going to do that. I think actually the covenant church understands all of these issues and is probably pretty good at a lot of this stuff, right?

[26:51] Okay. So I think we're in the right place. But we have to live into these things. We have to live into this idea, right? We have to stand up. I think we have to stand up to the current atmosphere of anxiety and sort of sorting. In the same way that Joseph Welch stood up to Senator McCarthy, you may have heard that. He says, in the end, sir, have you no decency? Have you no common decency at all? And that was kind of the end of it for McCarthy. Somebody actually stood up to him, somebody with a little bit of backbone.

[27:21] And it might be unpopular for us to not go along with whatever oath taking is going on out there, right? It might be a little unpopular if we don't recite all the oaths that people on all sides want us to take. But you know what? These movements will come and go. McCarthyism isn't happening anymore. A version of it is probably still happening here and there, but it'll go, you know? The really toxic movements like that tend to self-destruct after time, and they will. But we need to be the ones that people look at and they say, well, they never got on board with all that nonsense.

[27:56] What's different about them? Right? Our identity is in Jesus Christ. It's not in these performance. It's not in these performance. It's in these formative oaths that we're required to take. And so we don't require them of each other, and we don't take them ourselves. That's what's different about us. And then those people find out the difference is that we don't look at the world and find ways to exclude or hurt like Jephthah or my school district, but we want to include, and we don't give up on people. We don't write them off. And we're a little bit more like the shepherd that leaves 99 sheep and goes looking for the one. There's no one so far outside of God's grace that we can't go and find them. And bring them back into the fold. Let's pray.

[28:38] Father, thank you again for teaching us from your word. And we pray that we would find our identity only in you and that we would welcome all who come through these doors. And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.