The Unnamed Woman at Gibeah
Based on Judges 19
Preached at Supportive Communities Network Retreat, October 18, 2011
If you’ve never heard this story of the woman at Gibeah, I’m not surprised. It’s not in the lectionary readings. We didn’t learn about it in children’s Sunday school. I didn’t hear it until seminary, when pastors tend to hear all those stories that the church doesn’t like to preach about.
Here’s the story of the unnamed woman at Gibeah: A secondary wife of a Levite man ran home to dad–we can only guess that it was because her husband did something to deeply offend or hurt her. And after the woman had been home with her father for four months, the husband returned to bring her back to his home. Despite the father’s pleading the couple left the wife’s childhood home mid-day, because the Levite man was anxious to return home. They got off to a late start, and the couple needed to stay somewhere overnight. Instead of staying near Jerusalem, the couple stayed in the town of Gibeah, because according to the husband, Jerusalem was full of foreigners, and Gibeah was inhabited by good, Israelite people.
They went to Gibeah, and were taken in by a local. But as they were eating and drinking in the host‘s home, the men of the town surround the house and asked for the Levite man to come out so they could have sex with him. The host went out to reason with these men, and pleaded that they take his own daughter and the Levite’s wife instead. The men became enraged by this, until finally the Levite man pushed his wife outside, throwing her to the voracious men to be abused, humiliated and tortured all night.
In the morning, the woman was lying in front of the door of the house—it’s not clear whether she was alive or dead. Her husband told her to get up, and when she didn’t respond, he slung her over the back of his donkey and brought her home, where he cut his wife up into 12 pieces, sending a piece of this unnamed woman to each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
The response to this event by the people in Israel was no less disturbing. When the Israelite leaders heard the testimony of the Levite husband (a testimony that conveniently made him look innocent to any part of her death), the eleven tribes of Israel rose up against the tribe of Benjamin, where this horrible event took place, and they killed over twenty five thousand Benjamite warriors in one day. They also killed the children and mothers of the tribe of Benjamin.
After the massacre, the eleven tribes of Israel gathered with the remaining Benjamite men, making peace with what was left of the decimated tribe. In the “peace negotiations” the elders of all the tribes of Israel were concerned that the tribe of Benjamin not die out as a result of this bloody civil war. So they instructed the remaining men of Benjamin on where they might find unmarried Israelite women that they might have. So the men of the tribe of Benjamin went out to that place and took these women into a forced marriage through rape.
And, the people did what was right in their own eyes.
This is how the book of Judges ends.
This story is full of unnamed victims –the secondary wife of the Levite, the unmarried women who were abducted, raped, and forcibly married, and the men, women and children of the tribe of Benjamin who were brutally killed–none of these victims had a voice in this story.
But, as horrible as this story was, there were variations of it all throughout our scriptures. In Genesis 19, Lot’s home was surrounded by the men of Sodom. These men demanded that the guests of Lot be sent out to be abused and humiliated. Lot goes out to the people of Sodom to reason with them and offers his daughters instead. This infuriated the people of Sodom who try to tear the doors of the house down. Somehow these guests–who were angelic visitors to Lot–manage to bring Lot back into the house to safety, and no one was hurt.
But the woman at Gibeah, this second wife of the Levite–she had no angelic visitors to help her that night. Her host did not help her, her husband did not help her. She had no voice. She was cast off without regard for her humanity.
This story from Judges 19 also makes me think of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who when we first met her in the gospel story, was in a desperate situation. She was pregnant and unmarried, leaving her in danger of death and abandonment by her family. An angelic messenger of God appeared to her, and said, “Peace be with you.” I can’t help but wonder if she was thinking about this woman at Gibeah, who was offered those same words from her host, “Peace be with you,” which in effect means, “Relax. You are safe here.” But how many times have women in the Hebrew scriptures heard this peace be with you, only to find that things were not peaceful, and they had no reason to get too comfortable. Did the words Mary heard from this angelic messenger really give her hope?
But, at least Mary had a voice in this story. At least Mary could ask, “How can this be?” At least Mary could voice her concern, and ask assurance of this messenger and of God. The woman at Gibeah could not ask for help. She had no voice, she could not ask the host for his assurances that she would be safe.
I think also of Jesus’ own death and dismemberment. Like the woman at Gibeah, Jesus’ body was beaten and brutalized. He was sexually humiliated on that cross–we like to think that Jesus was at least wearing a cloth around his most private parts, but like the woman at Gibeah, his body was fully exposed to people that hated him and wanted nothing more than to see him exterminated. His life, and his body had no value to his captors–just like the woman at Gibeah.
I also find it remarkable that during Jesus interrogation, he also has no voice. He gave it up voluntarily. In light of the story of this woman at Gibeah, I find some small comfort that Jesus also understands her silence, her powerlessness, because he experienced it in his own torture and humiliation. Jesus understands the plight of the voiceless because he himself had no voice in the most terrible moments of his life.
I wonder why this Judges 19 text is in the scripture at all. There seems to be no redeeming value in it. The whole situation just reeks of blame shifting and denial and complicity. This story sickens me. It infuriates me. It also scares me. Because as horrible as it is, it happens all the time. This is not the first time a woman has been abused and left to die. We know it happened during slavery, we know it happened during the holocaust, we know it happened during Jim Crow, we know it happens now in Darfur, Rwanda, Iraq. We know it happens here today. It happened with Matthew Shepherd in Wyoming. The voiceless, the defenseless, the unprotected–they are victims of people who–like men of Gibeah–do “what they think is right in their own minds”.
I can relate to the impotence of the host, and the father of this woman at Gibeah. Because that is how I feel about the bad things that happen in this world. Because I don’t know what to do, I allow things to happen all around me; I feel confused and helpless to the power others exert around me. The people of Israel throughout history have felt this confusion about this story from Judges 19. Hosea says of the people at Gibeah, “They have deeply corrupted themselves…God will remember their iniquity; God will punish their sins.” (Hosea 9:9). Amos says, “the prudent one will keep silent about such a time, for it is an evil time” (Amos 5:13).
But neither of those responses seem adequate responses to the terror of the woman at Gibeah. “God’s gonna get ‘em” does not end the horror. “Don’t talk about it” certainly does not stop the violence. As people of God, as preachers of the good news, what are we to do? How are we to respond?
The story of the unnamed woman at Gibeah brings me to Jesus‘ last days on earth. When the Levite cut up his wife’s body and sent it to the twelve tribes of Israel, I can’t help think about communion. Let’s face it, communion is pretty barbaric. When you eat bread, think of my broken body. When you drink wine, think of my blood. Why on earth would Jesus want his disciples to remember that? Shouldn’t this horrible event be best forgotten, like Amos said? Or shouldn’t we be content to know that God will punish the people that do terrible things, as Hosea says?
Jesus, gathered with his disciples around the table, asked for something quite different than forgetting or waiting for God‘s vengeance–Jesus asks us to remember. Our eating and drinking needs to be a remembering of Jesus death and suffering, and remembering of the blood spilled, a remembering of his silence, his sexual humiliation, his abandonment by those that could have spoken for him.
Our communion theology as Anabaptists is broad and grace filled. We share in the ritual of communion, and we also recognize that we participate in communion every day. We give and receive communion when we gather together. We give and receive communion when we eat with friends and family. We give and receive communion when we give and receive hospitality. And in gathering together as people of God, we remember Jesus–his life, his death, his last meal with his disciples–and in doing this, his life and death have meaning for us.
Around our family table every night, we like to tell stories. My ten year old son, Willem, usually gets this going. “Mom, tell me a story from your childhood.” So, I tell him how I broke the TV as a kid and tried in vain to fix it with crazy glue, or my various trips to the emergency room as a child, or how Charlie and I met at college. Willem also asks about my mom (who he never met), why she died, what she was like, and any stories I know from her childhood.
Telling those stories can sometimes be hard. I don’t always want to talk about my mom. Because when I talk about her life, and remember the funny stories she shared with me about her own childhood, I inevitably remember her death. I don’t want to remember those days leading up to her death, where her body was broken, and cancer had silenced her speech. But, I also want my kids to know about their grandmother whom they never met. I remember her life so that her life can make a difference in their lives.
That’s also one of the reasons why we tell the story of Jesus. When we talk about Jesus life, we remember his teachings, his miracles and his activism, and it makes a difference in our lives today. It becomes our model for living. When we remember his death, we are horrified that it had to take place–that Jesus’ message of peace and his advocacy for the poor and voiceless were so threatening to religious and political authorities that he had to be killed in the most humiliating and brutal of ways.
When I think about the crucifixion of Jesus, I am drawn think about other voiceless folks throughout history that have been brutalized and killed. And it’s so easy to feel desperate and hopeless about the pointless death of people throughout history. We don’t want to remember the terrible things that have been done for the sake of freedom and democracy, in the name of Christianity, for the sake of progress.
But it is only in remembering that these nameless, silenced people begin to have a voice, and their lives begin to have meaning and significance to us. It is in telling the story of the woman at Gibeah that her life has meaning to us. We can say to her death, and to the death of countless other voiceless, brutalized people, “This can never happen again. I will not be silent about this.”
In our own context, as members of the Anabaptist traditions, and members of Supportive Congregations Network, we have to remember the stories that brought us here. The stories of people we know who could not say to their community, “I am gay.” We remember some of our own stories—our inability to come out in our communities, because of legitimate fear of shunning, shaming and persecution. We remember our own experiences of questioning the denomination’s stand on sexuality, and the alienation we experienced as a result.
But as more and more of us remember, and tell our stories, we find that in the sharing of these stories that have been silenced for so long, that we experience unity. Our re-membering brings us unity in the body of Christ.
In remembering and retelling the story of the woman at Gibeah, we weave her story into our own story. We cannot save her, we cannot put the pieces of her body or her life back together, but we can re-member her by recognizing her suffering, and trying—in our own small, often inadequate way–to ensure that violence, misogyny, and ignorance, and power mongering end in our communities, and in churches, in our denominations, and in the church universal.
When we re-member the woman at Gibeah, we become one body, and one community of faith with the suffering ones in this world. Our voice becomes her voice, our suffering is her suffering, and our pain is her pain. And we do not deny people that are part of our community, we do not scapegoat them, and we do not hurt them. They are part of us and to that end, we work to care for an nurture those that are part of us.
Today, we re-member the dis-memberment of the woman at Gibeah. We recognize that her story happens in every age. This story has happened to us, and to the people we know. We take this story of suffering, silence and powerlessness, we talk about it, and it becomes ours. We re-member her and in doing so welcome her into our fellowship. Today we say, this cannot happen anymore. We will not be silent about this. We will replace her silence with our voice. Because is not some distant story, hidden in the Hebrew scriptures, and overlooked by the lectionary readings, she is one of us. She has a name. She is part of our community, woven into this group of people for whom we care deeply. Today, we remember the woman at Gibeah, our sister, friend, neighbor and fellow traveler.
AMEN.