Office of Readings

  Then the Israelites cried to the Lord; for Jabin had nine hundred chariots plated with iron and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years.

  At this time Deborah was judge in Israel, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth. She used to sit under Deborah’s Palm between Ramah and Bethel in the highlands of Ephraim, and the Israelites would come to her to have their disputes decided. She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali. She said to him, ‘This is the order of the Lord, the God of Israel: “March to Mount Tabor and take with you ten thousand men from the sons of Naphtali and the sons of Zebulun. I will entice Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, to encounter you at the wadi Kishon with his chariots and troops; and I will put him into your power.”’ Barak answered her, ‘If you come with me, I will go; if you will not come, I will not go, for I do not know how to choose the day when the angel of the Lord will grant me success.’ ‘I will go with you then,’ she said ‘but, the way you are going about it, the glory will not be yours; for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman.’ Then Deborah stood up and went with Barak to Kedesh, and there Barak summoned Zebulun and Naphtali. Ten thousand men marched behind him, and Deborah marched with him.

  Heber the Kenite had cut himself off from the tribe of Kain and the clan of the sons of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses; he had pitched his tent near the Oak of Zaanannim, not far from Kedesh.

  When Sisera heard that Barak son of Abinoam was encamped on Mount Tabor, he called for all his chariots – nine hundred chariots plated with iron – and all the troops he had. He summoned them from Harosheth-ha-goiim to the wadi Kishon. Deborah said to Barak, ‘Up! For today is the day the Lord has put Sisera into your power. Yes, the Lord marches at your head.’ And Barak charged down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men behind him. At Barak’s advance, the Lord struck terror into Sisera, all his chariots and all his troops. Sisera leapt down from his chariot and fled on foot. Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth-ha-goiim. Sisera’s whole army fell by the edge of the sword; not one man escaped.

  Sisera meanwhile fled on foot towards the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. For there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the family of Heber the Kenite. Jael came out to meet Sisera and said to him, ‘My lord, stay here with me; do not be afraid!’ He stayed there in her tent, and she covered him with a rug. He said to her, ‘Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.’ She opened the skin that had milk in it, gave him some to drink and covered him up again. Then he said to her, ‘Stand at the tent door, and if anyone comes and questions you – if he asks, “Is there a man here?” say, “No”.’ But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent-peg, and picked up a mallet; she crept up softly to him and drove the peg into his temple right through to the ground. He was lying fast asleep, worn out; and so he died. And now Barak came up in pursuit of Sisera. Jael went out to meet him and said, ‘Come in, and I will show you the man you are looking for.’ He went into her tent; Sisera lay dead, with the tent-peg through his temple.

  Thus God that day humbled Jabin the king of Canaan before the Israelites. And the Israelites bore down more and more heavily on Jabin the king of Canaan, until he was utterly destroyed.

  Richard is remembered not as a great scholar or a great political figure, but as a great pastor – a wise, diligent and saintly bishop who administered his diocese with a perfect mixture of what St Paul calls “goodness and severity”, of discipline and love. He found himself called to the administration of a diocese sadly disorganized by neglect and by the fact that he himself was, for the first two years, a homeless vagrant. Yet he pulled it together. As early as 1246, while he was still under the royal ban, he published his Statutes which he expected all his people to observe.

  He was a strict disciplinarian – in his diocese, in his household, and in himself. Clergy who were lazy or immoral came in for severe rebuke, and he expelled one man from his living in spite of appeals from some of the highest personages in the land, including the king and queen. So also with the laity. When the people of Lewes dragged a thief out of a church, in which he had sought sanctuary, and lynched him, Richard made them dig up the body, carry it on their shoulders to the church, and give it Christian burial. In his own household he was much loved as a wise father, though here again he ruled with severity. He expected high standards of honesty and uprightness among his household and dismissed those who misbehaved. But he was above all things severe with himself. Unlike many of his fellow bishops, he hated ostentation and display, and always dressed soberly and fared simply. Meanwhile his greatest self-discipline was in the realm of his prayer life. Early visitors to his chapel sometimes found the bishop stretched on the ground, having spent all night in prayer. He used always to reproach himself if the birds were awake and singing their songs before he was at his prayers and praises before the altar of God.

  Richard was therefore a disciplinarian; but the quality for which he was so greatly loved by his people was his generosity and affection. He loved to give things away, to the great distress of his stewards and bailiffs who were trying so hard to restore the ravaged resources of the diocese. When he entered a village he would ask the priest to give him the names of any in his parish who were poor or sick, so that he could visit them himself and relieve them with gifts of food or money. Bocking records that, on many occasions, the bishop went out of his way to bury the dead “with his own hands”.

  There are many miracles connected with Richard’s life, many of them very human. Once, when celebrating Candlemas at Cakeham, he joined in a procession which went outside the church, each member carrying a lighted candle. A gust of wind blew all the candles out. Suddenly it was noticed that the bishop’s candle was alight again. “Who lit my candle?” said Richard to one of his chaplains. “No one, my Lord”, came the reply. Richard looked again at the candle, then put his finger to his lips and said: “Not a word”. Out of a century which produced many great lights the candle of St Richard of Chichester still burns brightly, for he was a great saint, a great pastor, a great lover of God and man.