We live in a culture that places "visionary leadership" at the top of the ladder of personal achievement. We highly esteem men and women who are in command, who are on top of things, who can control and direct with a great degree of authority and efficiency. And we are told that if we are to be valuable, we must also develop these traits, we must also throw off the shackles of weakness and self-doubt. We must live up to our potential! We must be self-actualized! We must all be the heads of major corporations, the go-to guys at work, the speaker in the assembly, the leader of our group! Otherwise we have somehow failed as people, as Americans, maybe as Christians. And so we scramble and sweat and live our lives in a turmoil to be all that we can be, giving in to the seduction of leadership and power, selling out to the lie that we have to somehow prove that we are the best at everything if we are to be considered valuable as people, valuable in God's sight--maybe that we have to show God that we can do great things for Him, all the while failing to let God be God, failing to really rely on His power, sometimes failing to believe that He really has power at all, failing to rest in the peace He offers.
The story of Gideon offers a complete (and refreshing) reversal of this very American syndrome of self-actualization. The story begins with yet another period of disaster following decadence in the history of the Israelites. In its prosperity, Israel has once again turned away from God, and God has sent an invading force, the Midanites this time, to turn the hearts of His people back to Him. Israel cries out to God, and God goes walking through the land, finally stopping to rest for a time next to a winepress in which a young man is inefficiently threshing grain. God leans against the tree to watch, and when Gideon notices Him, God exclaims, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior!"
There is a certain amount of incongruity to this statement. It does not seem to have been the case that Gideon was a warrior at all, mighty or otherwise. In addition, the fact that Gideon is cowering in a hole in the ground, trying to get the harvest in before the Midianites ride by and steal his grain shows that he's not exactly a candidate for the Navy SEALs. And by his own admission, he's the weakest guy from the weakest clan from the weakest tribe in what seems to have been at the time the weakest nation in the world. By American standards, Gideon is a failure. But God is not through with His weak people, or his chosen standard-bearer, Gideon.
And we know how the story ends: God convinces Gideon (who takes a good deal of convincing) to muster an army to fight the people from Midian. God trims the army of 32,000 down to 300. God throws the Midianite camp into confusion at Gideon's signal. God brings peace at last to His people. This is not a story about Gideon's hidden talents that God brings out, or his latent leadership ability, or his secret well of vision, waiting to be tapped by God. At the end of the story Gideon is still Gideon. The story is about the power of God--a God who is ignored in the good times and the scramble for control and the lust for leadership, a God who is belittled when times are bad. At the end of the story, the inescapable truth is that God is in control, God is the winner of the battle, God confers worth on people, and it is God who grants His people peace.
In the midst of our struggles with the rat race, our drive to get ahead, maybe, if we are not as successful as this culture deems we should be, our battle with self-doubt and inadequacy--we need to remember that Gideon's God is our God. We need to re-learn the lesson we learned in Sunday school, the lesson that we have to learn and re-learn time and again: God is in control, our worth comes from who we are before God and not who we are at work, God is our peace, and God is certainly able to fight and win whatever battles come our way. Let's learn to clear away the clutter and wait to hear the Angel of the LORD say "the Lord is with you, mighty warrior!" remembering that the real warrior is and has always been the LORD.
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