Sermon by Matt Sturtevant

Today is story time.  Our story comes from the Bible, from the book of Judges and there are three main characters that I want to tell you about…

Samson’s story

The first is Samson.  Samson was different than those around him from the beginning.  Before he was even born, he was to be set apart for God.  His parents did not think that they would be able to have children.  Until an angel visited them and told them they were to have a special son.  Even before he was born, he was destined to be extraordinary.  When the angel came to his parents, they told him that he was to be of the Nazirite order.  The order held itself to a higher standard of purity than other Israelites.  According to the angel, Samson was to refrain from any alcoholic beverage…any wine or fermented drink.  He was to refrain from unclean foods or behaviors.  And he was never cut his hair, never to let a razor touch his head.  He was to be held to this higher standard of the Nazirite order. 

So when he was born, his parents named him Samson – or “Sunny” or “Man of the Sun”, foreshadowing the influence he would have on his people.  He would be the sun that would shine brightly in a dark time.  The world that Samson was born into was not a pleasant one for an Israelite like himself.  The book of Judges tells the stories of the time after Israel settled in the Promised Land and the neighboring peoples that didn’t much like them being there.  We hear about Gideon’s fight with the Midianites.  We read about Deborah’s fight with the Canaanites.

By the time we get to Samson, the marauding-army-of-the-day is the dreaded Philistines.  The Philistines were sea people that settled in the area of Gaza on the shores of the Great Sea.  The area of land that we know today as the Gaza Strip was the site of conflict long before the current Israeli-Palestinian crisis.  In Samson’s day, the members of the tribe of Dan of the Israelite people cracked heads with the Philistines.  But it was the Israelites that got cracked for the most part.  For 40 years, the Israelite people were dominated and oppressed by the Philistines, until Samson came on the scene.

It didn’t take Samson long to pick a fight with the Philistines, and quickly we see what kind of man he was to become.  It all started with a woman.  How many times have we heard that story?   Valentine’s Day is this week and we as a nation are in the mood for mushy love stories with happy endings: Boy meets girl.  Boy falls in love with girl.  Girl breaks boy’s heart.  Only in Samson’s case it ends like this: Boy goes on murderous rampage and girl marries his best man.  Not quite made for the Hallmark Channel.

You see, Samson had fallen in love with a Philistine woman and wanted to marry her.  But there was a massive distrust between these two families…between these two peoples (ever been to a wedding like that before?).  And out of this distrust or competition between two families, they make a bet.  Samson bets that they cannot figure out an answer to his riddle, an answer only he knows.  But as in-laws sometimes do, they put pressure on his wife to find out the answer.  So she asks, and begs, and cries, and lays on a guilt trip until he relents and tells her…and she tells her family…and they win the bet.  Samson, not one for subtlety, goes on a murderous rampage and leaves his wife, who then marries his best man.

The stories about him get even stranger from there.  He attacks a lion with his bare hands and kills it, then later eats honey out of its corpse.  He captures 300 foxes and ties their tails together with torches to set fire to the Philistine’s crops.  Then he goes to live in a cave.  When the Philistines catch up with him, he grabs the jawbone of a donkey skull and kills 1,000 men.  The accounts of his life sound like they come from the pages of a comic book or a 19^th century novel.  He almost sounds like a crazy man like Frankenstein’s monster, terrorizing the countryside and living in caves.

In fact, a psychologist from the University of California, San Diego has recently claimed just that.  Eric Altschuler suggests that Samson that he was probably suffering from an anti-social personality disorder – what we used to call a sociopath.  He was impulsive, reckless, continually getting into fights, setting things on fire, torturing animals, stealing and bullying, all without remorse.  So it’s probably a stretch to psychoanalyze someone 3,000 years after the fact.  But the truth is that if we got to know someone like Samson in our lives, we would probably steer clear of a meaningful relationship.

But the other truth is that the reality of Samson’s rage and terror is probably not that foreign to us.  If we look deep, we realize we all have Samson side to us.  Our sinfulness, what Paul calls “the flesh”, is what pulls us from a meaningful relationship with God and others.  Jealousy, uncontrolled anger and rage, unchecked libido, trickery and lying.  Who among us cannot recall examples from our lives of our own Samson side?  It is a basic part of our sinful human nature, and I think our connection to Samson is part of why his story relates to us.  There are days when the rage of Samson is our rage.

If we don’t rage and destroy, it isn’t because we don’t sometimes want to.
Delilah’s story

But Samson is not the only character in today’s story.  The second main character in our story today is – of course – a woman.  Remember that Samson’s life was filled with strong women from the beginning.  The angel of the Lord came first to his mother, not his father, and spoke his prophecy.  When his father found out, he was first doubtful, then scared when he realized what power he beheld.  Meanwhile, his mother talked him down off the ledge and had the baby.

Later, we see Samson’s wife as a powerful woman.  While she told Samson’s secret, she did it because the Philistines had threatened her and her family.  So she protected her family by pulling the right information from her husband.  While it first looks like she is just a nag, the reality is that she saved herself and those she loved from certain death at the hands of her own people.  So Samson was always surrounded by strong women.

Delilah is no exception.  In the story of Samson and Delilah, we see a strong man that has met his match.  The story of Samson and Delilah is one that has captivated generations with its intrigue, romance, deception, and power struggles.  For centuries, poets and painters, musicians and movie-makers have all paid tribute to this love story…

Peter Paul Reuben, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, George Fredrick Handel, Camille Saint-Saens, Cecil B DeMille (Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr) and, of course, the Grateful Dead...all have portrayed this romance through art, song, or story.   The sermon title today is Samson and Delilah, Tragedy or Love Story.  That is the question that so many have struggled with through the centuries: What was the reality of their relationship?  Was theirs really a story of love, or a tragic tale of deceit and backstabbing?

When we first meet Delilah, we do not know if she is a Philistine, a Canaanite, or an Israelite.  What we do know is that she was league with the Philistines.  They approached her to get her to find out the secret of Samson’s great strength, and promised her great reward if she could.  So three times she asked…three times Samson lied.  First he told her that if he were tied up with 7 bowstrings, he would lose his strength.  She tied him with 7 bowstrings, the Philistines came in, he broke them easily.  Next he told her that if he were tied with new ropes, he would lose his strength.  So she tied him with new ropes, the Philistines came in, he broke them easily.  Then he told her that if she wove his hair into a loom and tightened it, he would lose his strength.  So she wove his hair into a loom, the Philistines came in, he broke free easily.

Now at this point in the story, you have to start to wonder about Samson.  If I am Samson I am either:

A) really dumb, not to catch on to what is happening.

OR B) really overcome or blinded by love or lust or something that brings me back time and again to this woman that clearly does not have my best interests in mind

OR C) really arrogant to think that whatever I tell her, it doesn’t matter because I can beat anybody on my own, without anybody’s help.

We never really find out because the fourth time is a charm.  He finally tells Delilah the truth that if his hair is cut from his head he will lose his strength.  He betrays his sign of the Nazirite vow, his conviction to follow God.  And to no one’s surprise, Delilah helps to cut his hair, the Philistines jump out but this time, Samson has no supernatural strength.  Samson is ready to subdue his captors again, but finds himself unable to fight back.  And he is led away to prison while Delilah receives her payoff.

So we are left to wonder about Delilah:

·        Was she an unwilling pawn, forced by an oppressive regime to hand over the man she loved?  In John Milton’s dramatic poem, he presents Delilah almost in a positive light.  In his poem Delilah paints herself much like Samson’s wife – at the mercy of the Philistines and their pressure on her to betray the man that loves her.

·        Was she a wily temptress, knowing full well the effect that she had on this poor sap Samson and seducing him to make a fortune?

·        Or was it somewhere in the middle…maybe she was tortured by her sympathy (or even love) for Samson and at the same time loving the fact that she had the power to make him dance like a puppet on her string of seduction…

In the end, we are not sure about her motive, but we do know about her method.  The theme of trickery and manipulation is one that repeats itself again and again in Samson’s story.  He tries to trick his in-laws with a riddle.  His wife tricks him into revealing his secret.  Delilah tricks him into revealing his secret and losing his strength.  And regardless of her motive, it is clear that sin begets sin.  Their relationship was based on trickery and manipulation and dishonesty.  Again, when we look down deep, most of us would realize that we also have a Delilah side to our lives.  We know about our own desire to manipulate or abuse others for our own safety or advantage.  We know about how maniacally fun it is to see someone twist because of our power.

If we don’t lie and manipulate, it isn’t because we don’t sometimes want to.

But there are more than two characters in our story.  Unfortunately, the third person in this story is often overshadowed by the others.  The strength of Samson…the cunning of Delilah…What is really at the heart of the story is the faithfulness of God!

Woven throughout this story of reckless power and cunning trickery is the faithfulness of God who never stops caring for his people.  When the people of God are toiling under the oppression of the Philistines, God is faithful and sends a deliverer.  Whenever Samson delivers God’s people through his strength, we find these words: “The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him” or “rushed at him”.  It is an active presence, almost an attack on Samson to give him his supernatural strength.  The Spirit of the Lord is an active participant in the life and strength of Samson.

We must remember that God’s power is not at our disposal.  We are not like painters who get to use this color or that as we do our work.  It is we who are used by God to accomplish his purposes.  God is the painter; we are only the paint.  Samson’s greatest mistake was forgetting whose power it was that defeated the Philistines.  God was using him, not him using God.  Samson was arrogant.  God was faithful.

Until the end, when Samson finally figures it out.  After years and years of uncontrolled rage and trickery and arrogance, Samson has finally met his match.  So in the final chapter of the story, we find Samson weakened, blinded, his hair starting to grow back after being shaved.  The Philistines are parading him around in the temple before their god.  Maybe Delilah is in the crowd…maybe she is long gone.  Samson has enough strength for one more trick, one more bit of deceit…but this time it is out of humility and trust in the Lord.  He cries out to God to give him his strength for one more action of deliverance.  He knows he cannot do anything on his own, so he calls on God’s faithfulness.

So he tells his captives that he is too weak to stand on his own…that he must lean on the main pillars in the middle of the temple.  Archeologists have excavated a Philistine temple that shows it was a long room with two wooden pillars set on round stone bases that act as the center support for the temple.  It is these pillars that Samson asks to rest against.  And in his final act of deliverance of God’s people, his strength returns and he pushes the columns down, bringing the whole temple with them.  He and all those inside were killed.  A deadly action that meant peace for the people of God.

How do we react to the story of Samson?  While we rejoice that an oppressive regime was defeated, it also has a haunting similarity to so many stories of suicide bombers and terrorists.  How are we to react to a man who kills himself and so many others in the name of God?  In the end, I think what we have to do is not look at Samson’s rage and power, but God’s faithfulness in the midst of it.  Our world will continue to show us examples of mass destruction.  What is harder to see – but always more important to look for – are God’s examples of faithfulness and love.

I started out last month determined to find a love story from the Bible that would go great for Valentines Day.  It’s hopeless….

Abraham turns his wife over to the enemy to save his own hide!

Rebecca lies to her husband Issac for the sake of her son.

Jacob’s whole life and marriages are surrounded by lies and deceit!

David and Bathsheba?!?

Hosea and Gomer?!?

So what about Samson and Delilah…is theirs a tragedy or a love story?

It is clearly a love story.  But the greatest love is not the one between a lusty strongman and a deceitful beauty.  Yes, maybe they were two people madly in love in the midst of troubled times.  But the greatest love in the story is the love of the God that will not let God’s people go, even when the best that they can muster is people like Samson or Delilah.  God provided peace and salvation for his people, even when they rejected him again and again.  It is that love story that we celebrate this morning, the love of a God that will not let us go.

The truth is that to find a story of love, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, and passion, one can only turn to the faithfulness and eternal love of God.  The story of Samson and Delilah tells that story, not through power and coercion, but in the end by humility and dependence on God.

So if you want to learn about love this week, don’t look to the example of a man who was more motivated by his libido and his rage than anything else.  And don’t look to the example of a woman whose greatest strength was to manipulate others.  And don’t look to their dysfunctional relationship if you want an example of how to live in your relationships.  But look to the God who holds his arms open wide, even when we do our best to turn our back on him.