16 October 2011

The Lord raised up deliverers – a series on Judges
Samson – Judges 13 through 15
Also including 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
OT 29A / Time after Pentecost
16 October 2011


And so we have come to the last of the judges from the book of that same name … and oh, what a leader we have before us today! Such might and strength, such bravado and swagger, such a womanizer … no, it’s not a certain Austrian bodybuilder turned actor turned governor of California … but Samson. Samson is the final judge in this series of human deliverers God sends to his people Israel.
Samson’s story is also the longest of the judge-sagas … spanning four entire chapters of the book. That makes it far too long for reading in its entirety during Sunday worship … so I chose some selections which would fit within our time frame today.

We begin in chapter 13 with the same old refrain which has started each new judge saga … “The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord …” and this time, the enemies at whose hands they begin to suffer are the Philistines … a name which should be quite familiar to us today, as we pronounce it Palestinians … here is a rivalry for the land which goes back thousands and thousands of years.
And so the usual cycle of things, apparent in each judge-story, is also present here:
• People forget about God;
• People start worshipping other gods, primarily the gods of their neighbors;
• People start to suffer at the hands of their enemies (plunderers who plundered them);
• People lift up their voices and weep at their misfortune;
• God sends a judge to deliver them from their enemies;
• Judge dies and people go back to their stubborn, disobedient ways.

What we have before us today, though, as our printed portion, doesn’t include all these steps. Since these “missing” are the more well-known parts of the Samson saga, I chose to leave them out. So what did we miss by not including them?

• Samson, like so many of the patriarchs before him and at least one prophet after him (Samuel), is born to a childless woman … and when she does become pregnant, Samson’s mother vows that he will be a Nazirite, citing the sixth chapter of the book of Numbers, which outlines the procedures for being one “consecrated to the Lord” (for that is what Nazirite means). The two main requirements are that the Nazirite will not drink wine or strong spirits, nor will a razor ever touch their hair.
• … and, for those who know the Samson story, that hair piece (ha ha) becomes vitally important for Samson later on in his story … the story at the end of his story, the most well-known part, Samson’s falling for Delilah … which leads to the breaking of his Nazirite vow, the loss of his superhuman strength, his blinding by the Philistines, and his violent death … in which he took out more Philistines than he did in his whole life.

But those parts of Samson’s story, well-known as they are … to which you may return on your own (they are in chapters 13 and 16 of Judges) … that’s NOT what’s before us today.
What we DO have here … are stories which point out why Biblical scholars call the Samson saga “the moral low point of the book.” Indeed, the Bible I use most often, the Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard Version, puts this summary-note on this story:

The final “deliverer” is the moral low point of the major judges. Samson broke his Nazirite vows, had intercourse with non-Israelite women (something forbidden by God), never associated with other Israelites in his conflicts with the Philistines, and did not deliver the Israelites from the Philistine oppression.

As we take a closer look at these selections from the 14th and 15th chapters of Judges, we see this unfold.
These three stories, joined together as they are today, do have a common thread. Samson is a Lone Ranger kind of judge, to be sure … whereas the other judges may have lit the fires of rebellion in a similar manner, they always went back and enlisted the aid of their fellow Israelites in continuing the battle to throw off their oppressors. Not Samson. His is an “hasta la vista, baby” go-it-alone swagger-style.
At first, God is mentioned as a reason why Samson does as he does … violating God’s law by taking a non-Israelite for his wife. His parents know God’s rules, and protest. But Samson prevails, “Get her for me, because she pleases me.” It is said that this was from the Lord, for he was seeking a pretext to act against the Philistines.
But that’s the last mention of God in any of these sections of Samson’s story. In the whole of the Samson saga, God is mentioned only three more times … passages not before us today … and in most of those, times when Samson called on God to rescue HIM, because his swagger-style had gotten him into trouble.
So what shall we make of Samson, then? Obviously his is a tale far worse than the Sunday-school-image we’ve passed along over the years … far more PG-13 or even R-rated than G … this womanizing, petulant, faith-fraud, short-fused flier off the handle … unwanting, unwilling of the help of any of his countrymen … a go it alone “my way or the highway” kind of guy …
… and yet, and yet, THIS is the one God chose for the task at hand. Yes, he failed at it … he didn’t shake off the Philistines … and his judgeship was one of endless war with them … but still, God chose him for the task.
Why?
Well, again, we need to go back to that six-step process which tells the tale of each judge-saga in this book of Judges … the Israelites always sin, and that sin ALWAYS has to do with their dissing God … their real deliverer, the one who not long before had rescued them from their Egyptian oppressors … they Israelites diss God, and so God says … OK, you don’t want me around, I’ll oblige … you’ll see what life will be like without me.
Now, God always hears the Israelites’ cries, and God always sends them a human deliverer … a judge … to rescue them from themselves and their ways which led them once again into servitude and subjugation at the hands of other nations … but we must note this about those judge-deliverers … each one of them had shortcomings … failings … some kind of behavior which would make us question their fitness to be worthy of that name … deliverer.
Ehud was plain gross. Deborah, Barak and Jehu upset the social norms of their … and our … time. Gideon questioned God’s choosing him. Jephthah made that horrible vow which cost his daughter her life. And Samson was a great big jerk.
And that’s precisely the point God’s making here. Do not totally trust in human deliverers … human rulers … for they will fail you totally. We see this here in these judge-sagas … we continue to see it in the stories of the kings of Israel and Judah which follow, in the books of Chronicles and Kings … we’ve seen it throughout history … the history of kings and queens, princes of the church and reformers of the church, politicians and presidents … yes, even and especially today.
DO NOT PUT YOUR FAITH IN LEADERS OF FLESH AND BLOOD, FOR THEY WILL FAIL YOU.
God knows this about us. God saw it even then … during and through the times of the Judges, the kings … the exile and the return … the takeover of Israel by Rome.
So God decided to make a change. God decided to send One of himself … his own Son … for a personal delivery of humanity from all that we bring upon ourselves.

That’s the message Paul brings as he begins his first letter to the Thessalonians … a message coming in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction… we need no human deliverers because in Jesus, God has sent himself to deliver all of humanity, all of creation. Jesus – fully God so that where human deliverers have failed, he will not … but also fully human so that he gets what is going on with us … living our life, suffering as we suffer, rejoicing as we rejoice … dying our death … yet, raised to new life, to give us the same promise and hope.
We need no human deliverers, no human rescuers … because in Jesus, God has sent his very self to rescue us. Wrath … bad stuff … has happened and is happening and will continue to happen … to be sure … and it will always be tempting to turn to human rescuers … smooth talkers offering easy solutions to the difficult, complex problems of living in the 21st century. Swagger and bravado can be quite appealing to us.
And yet … as Paul writes … our God says, don’t choose rescuers with hearts of stone and feet of clay … for these can become false gods, idols … instead, turn to God, and THE rescuer he sends us, the fully God-fully man named Jesus Christ … who will guide us in our living in these difficult days … guide us to work while we wait … to live out our calling to go and tell, to do his work … his work, which we discern as we read his Word, worship in his Word, eat and drink his Word … a Word which exhorts and implores us to be his feet and his hands in going to those who the world rejects … the poor and the powerless, the downtrodden and despised, the meek and suffering, the ones the world considers of little account … to these we are called to go and serve, to live with and love in the name of the Son of God, who comes to us and claims us as his own … without swagger, without bravado … just quietly, patiently, working his will in the world.

Will we stumble? Will we fail? Of course. But that’s no excuse to not get up and get going. Remember that God called Ehud and Barak, Jephthah and Gideon and yes, even Samson, to his task … since God called those to his Word, and was with them … God will most certainly be with us, too, as we share in this most blessed of callings … to serve a living and true God, THE living and true God, while we wait for his Son from heaven, who he raised from the dead … Jesus … our rescuer, in whose name we worship and work and live.
Amen.