Samson’s Revenge and Jesus’ Redemption, Judges 13-16
Restorative Justice Series #4
Trinity United Methodist Church, Providence, RI
October 7, 2001
Rev. Anne Grant
We have been hearing some powerful stories about heroism
Over the past few weeks.
We read them in newspapers and magazines.
We hear them on television and radio.
Friends repeat them to us.
Stories help us grasp the enormity of what has happened.
Around the world,
In every culture, people love stories.
People need stories
To help interpret and understand
the meaning of life and death.
Today, we’re going to hear about a hero of Israel
Who was set apart by God even before his birth.
He was called to live a life of holiness, devoted entirely to God.
Instead he chose a life of selfishness,
devoted to himself, to his pride and his pleasure.
He believed he was fighting a holy war against the enemies of Israel, and he became a terrorist, destroying much of the land,
hundreds of animals, and thousands of people.
He ended his own life by committing suicide,
bringing down an awesome building in a single act of terror
that killed at least six thousand Philistines.
His name is Samson, and a lot of folklore grew up around him.
He was a judge who lived 1100 years before Jesus.
And his story appears in the Book of Judges, Chapter 13.
Judg. 13:1-5 ¶ Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, so the LORD delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.
A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife who was sterile and remained childless.
The angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, "You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive and have a son.
Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean,
because you will conceive and give birth to a son. No razor may be used on his head, because the boy is to be a Nazirite, set apart to God from birth, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines."
…
Judg. 13:24 ¶ The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him,
Judg. 13:25 and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him ….
It doesn’t take Samson long to decide to do things his way.
He is intrigued by the Philistines. They are exotic and alluring,
But he doesn’t really love them.
He doesn’t really want to get to know them.
He insists on marrying a Philistine woman.
Their wedding is a seven-day party of drinking.
Samson knows he’s called to be a Nazirite, set apart to God.
He knows Nazarites have a strict rule against drinking.
But it’s his party and he’ll drink if he wants to.
Samson introduces a party game—he tells a riddle
And makes a bet that his guests can’t figure out the answer.
If they can’t solve the riddle in seven days, he declares,
they will have to give him a wardrobe of 30 outfits.
He loves to show people up
and lord it over them.
Samson is a bully.
We can see what this young man’s priorities are—
He wants to win, he wants to control other people,
And he wants to look good doing it.
He’s concerned about outward appearance, about superficialities.
He is not seeking after the things of God
Except insofar as they put him in charge.
He plans to win this game and to get 30 fine linen suits--
But if the Philistines win--if they guess the answer to his riddle,
he’ll have to give them 30 outfits.
Samson does not intend to lose.
By the fourth day, things are really getting out of hand at this party.
No doubt most of them are drunk,
and the Philistines tell Samson’s new wife
they will kill her and her father, burn their house down
with the whole family in it,
If she can’t get the answer to this riddle for them.
So she pleads with Samson. Day after day, she cries,
Until on the seventh day of the wedding party,
He’s tired of her crying and
He tells her the answer to the riddle.
She tells the Philistines, and they win the game.
Samson is so angry that he goes off to another town.
He kills thirty Philistines
And brings their bloody clothing back to pay off his bet.
Eventually Samson returns to his new wife,
Only to discover that her father has given her to another man.
Now Samson is really angry!
Judg. 15:3 ¶ Samson said to them, "This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines; I will really harm them."
[Now comes a story of pure terror and revenge,
and Samson does not care who or what he destroys—
people, animals, the land itself.
Samson certainly is not having any devotional time or
checking out God’s view of the situation.]
Judg. 15:4-7 So Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails,
lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the shocks and standing grain, together with the vineyards and olive groves.
When the Philistines asked, "Who did this?" they were told, "Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because his wife was given to his friend." ¶ So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death.
Samson said to them, "Since you’ve acted like this, I won’t stop until I get my revenge on you."
[Can you imagine how this bedtime story may have shaped
generation after generation of children in Israel
to believe that taking revenge was an act of heroism?]
Judg. 15:8 [Samson] attacked them viciously and slaughtered many of them. Then he went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam.
[It sounds something like bin Laden hiding out in the caves of Afghanistan, and the pressure is on the Taliban to find him.]
Judg. 15:9-11 ¶ The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi. The men of Judah asked, "Why have you come to fight us?" ¶ "We have come to take Samson prisoner," they answered, "to do to him as he did to us."
Then three thousand men from Judah went down to the cave in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, "Don’t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?" ¶ He answered, "I merely did to them what they did to me."
You see how this story of revenge and retaliation grows,
And it all begins when each person says, I have a right!
In this country, we have a cherished Bill of Rights
That protects the rights of the individual—sometimes
At the expense of the whole community
whenever individuals shoot off their words and their weapons
without concern for the harm they are causing.
As the story continues,
Samson grabs the heavy jawbone of a donkey
and kills one thousand Philistines.
Then Samson falls in love again with another Philistine woman.
She accepts a bribe and tricks him into telling her the secret of his superhuman strength—
It lies in his long hair that’s never been cut.
It’s twisted into seven enormous dreadlocks.
While he’s sleeping, they cut off Samson’s hair.
And suddenly Samson is not a superhero anymore.
He’s just an ordinary mortal.
Judges 16:21 Then the Philistines seized Samson, gouged out his eyes
and took him down to Gaza.
Binding him with bronze shackles,
they set him to grinding in the prison.
Samson, the powerful judge of Israel, enormously gifted by God,
Has now lost his vision.
He is reduced to walking in circles all day,
grinding grain for the enemy
like a lowly beast of burden.
Why? Because he used his great gifts for his own selfish purposes
And not for the purposes God intended.
Judg. 16:22-30 But the hair on [Samson’s] head began to grow again after it had been shaved.
Now the rulers of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate, saying,
"Our god has delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hands."
When the people saw him, they praised their god, saying,
"Our god has delivered our enemy into our hands,
the one who laid waste our land and multiplied our slain."
While they were in high spirits, they shouted,
"Bring out Samson to entertain us."
So they called Samson out of the prison, and he performed for them.
When they stood him among the pillars,
Samson said to the servant who held his hand,
"Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple,
so that I may lean against them."
Now the temple was crowded with men and women;
all the rulers of the Philistines were there,
and on the roof were about three thousand men and women
watching Samson perform.
Then Samson prayed to the Lord, "O Sovereign LORD, remember me.
O God, please strengthen me just once more,
and let me with one blow get revenge
revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes."
[To his dying breath Samson is only concerned about
the way others have offended him.
He never understands the way he has offended God and
he never understands the redemptive purposes of God.]
Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars
on which the temple stood.
Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one
and his left hand on the other,
Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!"
Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple
on the rulers and all the people in it.
Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.
Samson died in one final act of terror,
Bringing down the Philistines and their temple.
That’s exactly what the suicide terrorists wanted to do
At the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
They wanted to bring down the Philistine sinners and our temples.
And many of us responded just like Samson did by saying:
"We have a right to take revenge."
Much of the power to decide what this country does now
Lies in the hands and heart of our President.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of George Bush
He certainly has the power to set
more than three hundred foxes on fire
And burn down anything left to burn in the nation of Afghanistan.
How will he choose to use the power invested in him?
By Bush’s own admission, he spent much of his youth unfocused,
Going to parties and getting drunk like Samson did.
In 1985, in his late 30’s, he had no sense of God’s call on his life.
He says that was the year Billy Graham talked to him,
Questioned him about his commitment to Christ.
Bush had grown up Episcopalian and when he married,
He transferred his membership to the United Methodist Church,
where his wife belonged. But none of it really mattered much.
In his autobiography, he credits Graham with
"planting the seed of faith in my heart.... It was the beginning of a new walk where I would recommit my heart to Jesus Christ."
His family says his prayer life
helped him overcome his drinking problem and a fiery temper,
and that he studies a daily Bible lesson
and starts each day on his knees praying.
I have to confess to you that I have to reserve judgment on Bush.
I was pretty dismayed by his election campaign,
By the way he exploited narrow religious interests
in his visit to Bob Jones University,
a fundamentalist school that banned interracial dating
and whose founder called Catholicism a cult.
His appeals to the religious right made many of us
wary of his links to groups such as the Christian Coalition
and their ultra-conservative social agenda for the nation.
I’ve been troubled by his support for Big Business
over the needs of the poor and the planet.
Is the President’s faith just calculated
for its political appeal to the religious right?
USA Today has reported that
Bush says his faith has made him more humble and tolerant.
"I find great comfort in my faith," he told Fox News.
"It helps me realize that I am a person that has a lot of responsibility, but I am just a person - nothing more than a human being
who seeks redemption, solace and strength
through something greater than me."
Usually Bush prays in private, the article said, but
When he met with Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski
at the White House this spring,
he invited his guest into his private study.
Trajkovski is a United Methodist lay minister,
And wears a lapel pin with the cross and flame insignia
of the United Methodist Church.
The article reported that the Macedonian and American presidents
knelt side by side in silent prayer.
White House aides didn’t mention that time of prayer
When they described Trajkovski’s visit May 2 to reporters,
and they were displeased to learn it was about to be made public.
Bush has said he doesn’t think of himself as an advocate for his religion, but he doesn’t intend to hide his faith.
"I am ... a lowly sinner who sought redemption and found it,"
he told USA TODAY in January. "That doesn’t make me better than anybody, it just adds perspective, I hope. I think people are going to find that in tough times ...they’re going to see a steady hand because the rock on which I stand is something other than the moment, the emotion of the day. Faith can be a steadying influence."
Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, senior pastor at Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, sometimes prays with the president over the phone. Caldwell says Bush’s faith is such a significant part of his life that he can’t help but talk about it.
"The President’s faith is extraordinarily important to him, not just for spiritual reasons but for professional, emotional, social and family reasons," Caldwell says. "The president allows his faith to permeate his entire being. He does not keep his faith in a box and open it when he’s in trouble."
When Bush was asked what political philosopher or thinker
he most identified with, and he answered simply,
"Christ, because he changed my heart."
Presidential aides say Bush doesn’t impose his faith on others.
Some of them see his expressions of faith as a key to his character.
"I find it very welcoming," says his press secretary Ari Fleischer,
who is Jewish.
"It’s a reminder for everyone about the importance of faith in our lives, and the President practices his so powerfully and so privately that it serves as a simple reminder of the American tradition of having a strong faith."
(Judy Keen, "President’s Faith Is A ’Great Comfort’ To Him," USA TODAY, [I am unable to locate the date and page of this reference].)
Of course, that’s exactly what you might expect
a presidential press secretary to say.
Can we believe this report, or is it just a cynical public relations
effort on the part of the Bush White House?
Is President Bush genuinely allowing himself to be changed?
Will he be a champion of retributive justice,
requiring thousands of innocent lives
for the thousands taken from us?
Or will he begin to practice restorative justice,
bringing the nations of the world together
at the table to end the cycle of revenge?
I hope he will become known for restorative justice.
Maybe we’ve seen signs of
some change in President Bush this month.
He seems to have gained a healthy distrust of his snap reactions.
He stopped speaking about a Crusade against bin Laden,
after falling once into that trap with
bin Laden seizing it to his own advantage,
As if the President were turning back the clock a thousand years
To call Christians to another Holy War against Moslems.
When he made that comment,
and it was broadcast around the world,
many of us were stunned.
I called both our Senators’ offices
and urged them to ask the White House to stop using that word.
I’m sure a lot of other Christians made similar calls,
And, to his credit, President Bush seems to have gotten the message
and taken it to heart and stopped using
the inflammatory word Crusade.
He’s also stopped calling for an Old West "Wanted" poster
for bin Laden: "Wanted Dead or Alive."
President Bush appears to have recognized
the folly of some of his automatic responses,
Perhaps he sees that we need a more prayerful response to terror
than vigilante justice from our own wild west.
President Bush has spoken out against prejudice
and acts of revenge taken against Arabs and Moslems,
And that’s good.
He has recognized and reminded us
that the Afghan people are not the enemy.
His plan for our national response includes building an alliance
With other nations rather than unilaterally planning
a massive retaliatory strike.
He is airlifting food and shelters for those Afghanis
Who are streaming over the border into Pakistan.
We know there must be enormous pressure on President Bush
To bring out all kinds of military force
against bin Laden and al Qaeda.
The movie Thirteen Days shows the huge pressure
on President John Kennedy
To unleash the full force of American air and naval forces against Cuba in 1963, when the Soviet Union placed missiles on that island
At the very doorstep of the United States.
The American and Russian generals were itching for a fight,
And they could have plunged the planet into World War III
If President Kennedy had not resisted their pressure.
Far greater pressure must be on President Bush,
And I would like to believe that he is truly being transformed,
That he is committed to standing firm against those who want
A war of revenge.
When Samson brought down the Temple of Dagon on his head,
Destroying 3,000 Philistines on the roof alone,
And thousands more below,
It was an act of revenge and certainly a bold declaration of his right
To choose the way he would die.
More than a thousand years later,
another young Jewish man
willingly laid aside his own rights
and chose death on a Roman cross,
not as an act of revenge against the enemies of his people,
but as an act of redemption.
"You have heard it said, ’An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,".... You have heard it said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say unto you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:38, 43-45).
For Christ came not into the world to condemn the world,
But that the world through him might be saved. (see John 3:17)
He knew that the only way to truly, finally destroy enemies
Is to transform them into brothers and sisters through the power of love.
Many of us have a sense that we are poised on the edge of history
And the decisions that are being made now by people in power
Will affect our nation and our world forever in unimaginable ways.
We need to pray for our President
and those in authority to lead all people,
For this is a great crisis of faith for all who share this planet.
I got an e-mail on Friday from Pakistan.
It appears to come from an individual or group
called the Movement For Reforming Society,
located at Muslimabad, Near Fatehgarh Canal Bridge, Moghalpura, P.O.Box 6216, Lahore-54840, PAKISTAN.
The e-mail pleads for all people to lead a Godly life.
The message carries a shared confession:
"We are openly defying our Creator.
We have joined hands with the Satan
to wage a war against our Lord.
We are leading our lives in contrast to God’s will
and are on our way to destruction by sinking ourselves
in the sea of terrorism, cruelty, corruption,
evils, nudity, obscenity and indecency
despite the fact that God has forbidden us from doing so."
There is a sense of urgency, a desperate hope that maybe
If enough people of all faiths join together and repent
before it is too late, and truly turn to God,
that we can all be saved from certain destruction.
Samson took thousands of people down with him when he died.
But Jesus said: I, when I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all people to myself (John 12:32).
In his letter to Titus (2:11-14), Paul wrote
¶ For the grace of God that brings salvation
has appeared to all people.
It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,
while we wait for the blessed hope — the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and
to purify for himself a people that are Christ’s very own,
eager to do what is good.
We are going to share together in the symbols of Jesus’ death,
His body broken for all the world,
His blood shed for all the world,
Freely given for all who choose the way of redemption
And not the way of revenge.
If there is anyone here who has not yet committed your life to Christ
And received the power he has for you to transcend
Your own rights, there’s no reason to delay,
There’s no time to waste and no need to wait.
Why not give your life to him and see what he can make of you?
Lord, you gave yourself for us,
So we don’t have to be afraid to give ourselves to you,
Because you love us with a far greater love
Than we could ever love ourselves.
Make your home in each heart that opens to you now,
In your name we pray. Amen.
(NOTE: The American bombing of Afghanistan
began an hour after this message was given.)
