This Week's Sermon: "The Prophetess Huldah"

So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went to the prophetess Huldah. She was married to Shallum, Tikvah’s son and Harhas’ grandson, who was in charge of the wardrobe. She lived in Jerusalem in the second district. When they spoke to her, 15 she replied, “This is what the Lord, Israel’s God, says: Tell this to the man who sent you to me: 16 This is what the Lord says: I am about to bring disaster on this place and its citizens—all the words in the scroll that Judah’s king has read! 17 My anger burns against this place, never to be quenched, because they’ve deserted me and have burned incense to other gods, angering me by everything they have done.[b] 18 But also say this to the king of Judah, who sent you to question the Lord: This is what the Lord, Israel’s God, says about the message you’ve just heard: 19 Because your heart was broken and you submitted before the Lord when you heard what I said about this place and its citizens—that they will become a horror and a curse—and because you ripped your clothes and cried before me, I have listened to you, declares the Lord. 20 That’s why I will gather you to your ancestors, and you will go to your grave in peace. You won’t experience the disaster I am about to bring on this place.”

When they reported Huldah’s words to the king, the king sent a message, and all of Judah’s and Jerusalem’s elders gathered before him. 2 Then the king went up to the Lord’s temple, together with all the people of Judah and all the citizens of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets, and all the people, young and old alike. There the king read out loud all the words of the covenant scroll that had been found in the Lord’s temple. 3 The king stood beside the pillar and made a covenant with the Lord that he would follow the Lord by keeping his commandments, his laws, and his regulations with all his heart and all his being in order to fulfill the words of this covenant that were written in this scroll. All of the people accepted the covenant.(Common English Bible)

“The Last Righteous King: When Josiah Reigned in Jerusalem,” Week Two

The scene in March of 1638 was not something you would want or hope to imagine happening on United States soil, even though the United States wouldn’t be formed for another one hundred fifty years. But the Puritans who colonized New England brought with them the European tradition of trials for heresy and witchcraft, by far most famously in the Salem witch trials that would occur some sixty years later.

But in March 1638, it was Anne Hutchinson’s turn. A devoutly Puritan woman, she had claimed to understand, via direct revelation from God, that humanity was saved by God’s grace rather than by adherence to the strict Puritan lifestyle. What’s more, she knew—with absolute certainty—that because of this she herself was in fact saved, and that she could not be subjected to the strict purity codes imposed on the outward appearance of women.

The Puritan men could not tolerate such dissent from a woman, and so Anne Hutchinson had to be addressed. She was imprisoned—while pregnant—for four months, put on trial for heresy, and sentenced to exile from the Puritan colony. And so, while pregnant, she walked from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, where she lived out her remaining years.

From ancient Israel to the modern United States, we live in fundamentally patriarchal—and by that, I mean male-led and male-driven societies. The monarchs of ancient Israel and Judah were men. The Ptolemies and Seleucids and Caesars and Persian emperors who followed them were men. Today, here, American presidents have all been men. We, the Disciples, became the first mainline American denomination to be led by a woman—in 2005, only sixteen years ago. Now, we are the only mainline American denomination to ever be led by a Black woman.

How these societies over history respond to women who refuse to adhere to the roles proscribed to them does, I think, reveal a great deal. The ancient Near East—not just Israel and Judah—was fundamentally patriarchal, but within Israel and Judah there was a tradition of prophetesses and judges, women who refused the roles imposed upon them to reveal the Word of God to the people. And today, we hear directly from one of these women—the prophetess Huldah.

We return today to the story of Josiah, whose saga we spent last week, this week, and then next week unpacking together. Josiah is remembered as the last righteous king of Judah, the southern kingdom after the unified kingdom of Israel split in two, before Judah is conquered by Nebuchadnezzar II just twenty-some years after Josiah’s death. But Josiah is also remembered as an uncommonly young king. He was crowned king at just eight years of age after his father, Amon, was assassinated after sitting on the throne for just two years—and this stood in marked contrast to the longevity of the reign of Josiah’s grandfather Manasseh, who reigned as king for fifty-five years.

Manasseh had reversed the pro-YHWH reforms of his own father, Hezekiah, in favor of idol worship, and the book of 2 Kings condemns him vigorously as a result. In his short reign, Amon continued in Manasseh’s worship of false deities. Josiah comes to the throne so young that he surely ruled with some sort of relative or royal advisor as regent. It was not until he was twenty-six and had already been on the throne for eighteen years that he begins his quest to reform the religious life of his kingdom and bring it back from worship of idols to the exclusive worship of God.

This quest for reform began in last week’s passage of the discovery of the scroll or book (likely a Torah scroll, or a fragment of a Torah scroll) in the Jerusalem temple to God. It is presented straightaway to Josiah, who today has it brought to Huldah, a prophetess of some renown, to be authenticated as the genuine article.

This she does, with a vivid prophecy explaining both the upsetedness of God at how the kingdom of Judah has spent these past seventy-five years refusing to follow God as well as God’s openness to listen to Josiah’s voice, and be moved to mercy amid that upsetedness.

And I want us to hear that closely, and pay it special mind, because I think far too often we in the church only hear that first part—the part about God’s upsetedness—when it comes from the Tanakh, and not the second part—the part about God’s openness to hear our voices and to respond to our voices with mercy.

I think we do a profound disservice to Judaism and to the holy texts we share with the Jewish faith when we reduce the Tanakh down to just the divine anger part. The Tanakh’s prophets bore messages of much more than just that, and Huldah is cut from the cloth of many of the prophets who have named books in the Tanakh. She makes clear that yes, our iniquities and injustices, our betrayals of our faith, profoundly grieve God and—like those male prophets—shows a way forward in our relationship with God: showing remorse for our misdeeds, and pledging to do better.

And Josiah is as good as his word here—I had to leave the account of the religious reforms themselves on the cutting room floor for this sermon series in order to get it to fit between Laity Sunday and Ash Wednesday, but 2 Kings 23 takes considerable effort to describe in detail the lengths to which Josiah went to end the idolatries and worship of false deities in Judah.

Josiah and his advisers took Huldah seriously to begin with, by going straight to her with the scroll given by the high priest Hilkiah, and Josiah took Huldah seriously afterward, by responding to her prophecy and authentication of the scroll with the reforms that Huldah makes clear God knows Josiah to be capable of implementing.

So, amid a patchwork of patriarchal ancient Near Eastern cultures—again, not just ancient Israel’s—a female prophet is treated with the utmost deference by a king and his closest advisers. Perhaps we should take that as evidence of Huldah’s singular remarkableness—and I do not think we would be entirely wrong in doing so. But I do think we would be incomplete in doing so.

Because we do not know much about Huldah—just as we often do not know much about historical women, like Anne Hutchinson—it is easy for us to look beyond the person herself and wonder who or what she represents to us. Huldah’s impressiveness makes her a forerunner to all the women who have had to fight and scrap for every ounce of respect as incisive, competent leaders across almost every field, including the church. But Huldah’s presence in this narrative should force the question of why such tenaciousness continues to be necessary to begin with. If, over 2,600 years ago, a king was secure enough in his status to call up a woman to teach him of God’s will, why does the church still hesitate to call up women as pastors to teach and preach of God’s will?

That, I realize, may be a question that addresses a place Valley is no longer in. We are led by a female moderator, a female elders chair, and more. But we live in a society and in a broader church where there remains a higher risk of the Anne Hutchinson treatment than the Huldah treatment. And that is true for a great many people, not only women, who confound our prejudices and paradigms.

Matthew Paul Turner, in his history of American Christianity, Our Great Big American God, notes that Hutchinson gets interpreted differently for different people. She is a symbol of feminism for some, of religious diversity for others, and a theological inspiration for still more. She has become a person who is whatever we need or want her to be in the moment. It is a treatment we have meted out to many great historical figures. February is Black History Month, and I think of how we have also treated people like Martin Luther King Jr. thusly, making him into what we want or need him to be to suit our worldview and purposes, which may well not have been his worldview and purposes.

Truthfully, we may even do this to Jesus as well. We want Jesus to reflect ourselves, rather than for ourselves to reflect Jesus—and those are not the same thing. We are all children of God, but we hold Christ as the Son who is the Messiah. We emulate Him, not vice versa. Discipleship is hard work, and making Jesus into more of an idealized version of ourselves is often easier. But as with so many things, what is easy is not often what is right. What is convenient is very seldom what is just.

May we instead take as our example the treatment of Huldah--the deference and respect afforded Huldah by Josiah. She was called upon to authenticate the genuine article that the Torah scroll was. Let her also be the genuine article: not what we want her to be, but who she was, in all God’s glory.

And in honoring her own authenticity, may we find a way to honor ours as well, to honor the reality that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, sinners yes, but sinners called and redeemed by that same God who made us. We as sinners have built systems and societies that do not, have not, done right by so many people across history. For every Huldah treated with esteem and consideration, there has been an Anne Hutchinson who was not. For every Martin Luther King who is honored in the passage of time, there is a Martin Luther King who was hated while he was alive.

That does not have to be our future. That does not have to be how we inevitably treat other children of God. We can choose, and have always had the choice, to see others as the genuine divine article.