Judith.

We love when Rev. Indira Huerta comes to visit Unity of Independence! This time, Indira is giving us a talk inspired by the Jewish warrior princess, Judith, from the Apocrypha (the lost books of the Bible).

Would you be willing to sacrifice your reputation throughout history to save your people?

Would you be willing to be known as a murderous, lying harlot who
prayed to God to be deceptive in order to protect the men, women, and children in your village?

I was. I am Judith.

When a pillaging army led by a cruel general destroyed village after village, raping, killing, and stealing everything they could, I heard the call from God that I had to do something to save us all. He had already cut off our water supply and my people were suffering. The army was at our door and the men in my village refused to fight. So, I prayed to God I prayed for strength, I prayed for courage, and I prayed for the ability to remain calm as I did what was mine, and mine alone, to do.

I was still grieving the loss of my husband, but what general would entertain a woman dressed in her grieving garments? I looked like a peasant. I had to make myself beautiful, irresistible, and vulnerable to him, so he would believe me.

Although I didn’t think I could do any of this, I dressed in my finery and went to his tent. I wanted to gouge out his eyes the entire time I was with him. I was nauseated being in his presence, disgusted to feel his hands on me, the smell of his foul breath as he neared me made me sick, but I continued to call on the strength of my God. For four days and four nights I was in the company of this disgusting human being, spinning lies so he would be distracted from his goal; to kill me and my people. I did not pray to be deceptive. I prayed for the courage and strength to do what I came here to do, what I was born to do; to save my people.

When the time came, when the general had let his guard down by getting so drunk, he passed out and the slaves had left us alone, I did what was mine to do. Using his own sword, I struck him twice and took his head from him. Back in my village, we hung his head from our gates and his army ran away in fear. The people of my village celebrated my courage and action; however, my own people’s history would write me as the disgusting woman who used her sexual prowess to lie to and seduce a general. But that is okay, because I listened to the call of God. Only God could have given me the courage, the strength, and the ability to complete that task. Only God. So, would I be willing to sacrifice my reputation throughout history to save my people. Without a doubt, I would. I would do it again and again if it meant that I was God’s faithful servant.

Here in America, we are known to be pretty rebellious. In fact, we are founded on rebellion, are we not? So, we don’t like to be called servants, or to have anyone or anything tell us what to do, or boss us around. But being a servant of God is not that. Nothing outside of ourselves is telling us what to do.

It is our deepest truth that is calling us to align with who we really are.
A servant is someone who serves. Many of us came into this world to be of
service to humanity, but not everyone is wired that way. What if we change the word? What if we called it stewardship? Stewards are caretakers. If we are God’s stewards, what could we possibly be asked to take care of? Our bodies. Each other. The Earth. The animals. All of it. If you do not feel like a servant, perhaps being a steward is more to your liking?

Back to Judith. Her story is dramatic, to say the least. But we are not always called to do such dramatic things as servants or stewards. Sometimes we are called to smile at the people we pass, or to forgive a perceived wrong. Sometimes we are called to sing a song that brings comfort to the masses, or to rescue a dog who ends up giving us comfort during our loneliness. Sometimes our calling is simply to show up daily, and sometimes our calling is something greater. I feel like our callings could be compared to people coming into our lives: a calling is for a reason (to save a drowning person or stop a vicious general), a season (being President of a country, or minister for a church, or a lifetime (a compassionate person who loves everyone around them, or a caregiver from an early age).

But where is God in all this calling?

When we are servants of God or stewards for God, we are not puppets to a
heavenly boss or tyrant who tells us what to do. When we are servants of God, our thoughts and actions are in alignment with our truest selves, our most authentic aspect of our hearts and souls.

God is not something outside of us.

In her book Billy Fingers, author Annie Kagan says, “The intelligence that gives birth to stars also breathes your breath.” Hear that again. God is very much inside of us, living through us. God is the power of forgiveness, the fortitude of strength, the whisper of goodness, the hope of possibility, and the light of inspiration inside of us. Author Erin Werley says that each and every one of us has the light of God within us, like a spotlight, and that
we can, indeed, hear its voice. And I believe her.

When I hear the voice of God within me, it is rarely still and small. It doesn’t scream, but it is emphatic. This, Indira, is yours to do, right now, so do it. I once told you the story of coming face-to-face with the man who took the father of my child’s life. When I did so, I heard the emphatic voice of God say, “Forgive him. Look into his eyes and forgive him.” The voice was firm, and I knew that forgiveness was my purpose in that moment. In that moment, I served God by removing anger I had directed at another who also has the light of God, the power of God, and the voice of God within them.

As a reminder of the day I forgave him, I have a meme on my Facebook page that says, “You will never look into the eyes of someone that God does not love.” And that light, power, and voice of God that we are, it is not just my calling to love each pair of eyes that I look into, it is yours, as well.

Teacher and scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz is the author who is responsible for
reinterpretations of The Bible. He discovered that through the centuries, the original Aramaic was in fact misinterpreted in several instances. One of the most profound discoveries is that of Matthew 27:46. It currently reads as, “And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “E-li, E-li, le-ma sa-bach, than-ni?” which was interpretated as “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

However, Neil says that that is a misinterpretation of Aramaic. What Jesus really said was, “For this I was born, for this is my purpose.”

For this I was born, for this is my purpose. It is as if he was letting them know that it was all okay, that he was okay. Can you imagine being so connected to the source of Life, to God, to the universe that as you are being tortured, you are calm enough to let everyone know that you knew this was your path. That is a beautiful gift that he gave those who loved him.

My other thought about this realization is what a difference in interpretations, right? Jesus was not crying out that God had betrayed him, but rather loudly letting everyone know that he knew this was going to happen, he knew he would be put to death, and he accepted it as part of his divine plan. Doesn’t this interpretation better align with our teachings of Jesus, that he was God realized, that he knew every step of his path because he knew his oneness with the energy that created him?
And that really is the secret to this servant/stewardship thing, isn’t it? When we are aligned with our truth, when we recognize that we are actually part of the greater plan, we stop complaining about what is in front us, what happened to us, what someone said or did, and we simply show up as the expression of God that we are. Now how do we get there?

In his book, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Father Richard Rohr said, “When you get your ‘Who am I’ question right, all of your ‘What should I do’ questions tend to take care of themselves.”

Who are you? Who are we?

We often say that we are divine, that we are expressions of God, that we are God in expression. But what does that mean?

Recently, I was listening to an audiobook by Erin Werley called One Truth, One Law: I Am, I Create. In it, she has a conversation with God and God says that we are a projection of an almost infinite number of thoughts. What we call our consciousness exists in a nonphysical world and is projected into what seems like a real, physical world to us. This energy that is God is constantly projecting all the thoughts of billions of people into the physical world. God is each of us. Our thoughts are Gods thoughts. There is no separation.

One of my most favorite stories about Rev. Temple Hayes goes as follows…She was a child, about 12 years old. It was the summertime, and she was laying around in the hot summer sun when she suddenly had a thought, “I want a dog.” And then she had a deep realization that it was not her that thought, “I want a dog” but it was God saying, “I want to experience God through this life you are living.” It was God’s thought inside of her, and when she heard it, she said, “Yes!” and a few weeks later, she had a dog. To be honest, I don’t think she has been without a dog since then. God wanted her to have a dog and she devoted her self to rescuing and taking care of dogs for the rest of her life.

English author and social critic Os Guiness says, “We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone. We are not called first to special work but to God. The key to answering the call is to be devoted to no one and to nothing above God himself.” Do you see? We are not devoting ourselves to anything outside of ourselves. In fact, when we devote ourselves to God, we are devoting ourselves to our truest, most pure, most authentic self. That call to someone that Os speaks of is us…the life of God that lives through us.

One of the greatest people we have known in our lifetime is Mother Teresa. She knew the truth. She knew that each of us needed love, support, help, comfort. She knew that the face of God was on each person, and it was her job to love God through loving them. Listen to some of her words of advice:
“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.”
“I don’t do great things. I do small things with great love.”
“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.”

If we really love ourselves as we love our partners, our children, our neighbors, our best friends, then when we act from a place of love, we are in the action of loving God, of being of service to God, of being God’s servant, God’s steward.

Sometimes love looks like rescuing dogs like Temple does, and sometimes love looks like ending the wrathful attacks of a warped general like Judith. Sometimes it looks like dying at the hands of the Pontious Pilate like Jesus.
There is nothing in this world that does greater good than to love God so much that you align with that energy and show up as God. I look at the universe in all its vastness and I see a giant pie. This pie has billions of pieces, and no piece is ever removed. But each piece touches all the other pieces in the center, and because we are all in this pie together, we take care of ourselves and each other, for if one piece becomes unwell, we feel that. It is our shared compassion and empathy.

When one of us experiences love, we all feel that love, as well. We all have the power to heal those ailments, by showing up, by being God in expression. By being LOVE. In the end, that really is the call. Showing up and being love. Jesus did it. So did Judith. And while our reasons or seasons may not be as dramatic as theirs, we will show up and be love too.

I want to share with you a poem by Mary Oliver, called The Summer Day.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I ask you…what will you do with your one wild and precious life that God lives through you? What are you being called to say, to do, by the life of God that draws breath through you? I wonder what you will be called to next…and like Judith, Jesus, Temple, me, and you every time you have answered the call, you will be ready.