Samson and the Suicide Bombers

Back There is one line in that scripture that is often translated differently and may make a significant difference. In that final prayer that Samson makes for God to restore all his strength and more so that he can pull those pillars down, the RSV says "O Lord God, remember me, I pray, only this once, O God, that I may be avenged upon the Philistines for one of my two eyes." (16:28b). Not "my two eyes," or "my eyes," which may simply neaten the translation and harmonize discrepancies in the ancient texts. In my view, Samson's moment of vengeance, and this time his vengeance is seen as a godly thing, relates not to the loss of both eyes, but to one.

His first eye was given to Delilah, and we will give one eye to the Samson and Delilah story for its dynamic of seduction and betrayal. In another time in history, we might spend more time with this personal side of the story. But some of you may remember, as I do, bits of the old movie with Victor Mature as Samson and Hedy Lamarr as Delilah. (Nodding toward the Scancarelli's:) At my grandmother's house we would see those old Hollywood Bible epics on Sunday afternoons. Nowadays, Mature would look like a wimp next to Arnold Schwartzneggar, but Hedy Lamarr would probably still be pretty effective... (Not delivered: What man among us has not distrusted women's power at least once? What woman has not enjoyed luring a man to reveal more of himself than he wished?)

There is a dance of strength and dependence in every relationship, and in the Samson story we have a very independent strongman, almost a comic book Superhero, whose exploits involve spectacular feats of individual strength, as well as dangerous flirtations with weakness. There is also a mythic quality to the Samson story-he is fiery Aries, the furious god of war, then "eyeless in Gaza," toiling as a mill slave with the animals, he is the laboring Hephestus, the smith, married to wandering Aphrodite-who carries on affairs with Aries. The archetypal warrior always fights to defend a boundary, the archetypal lover, sometimes full of drink or stronger poison, crosses boundaries.

Samson is seduced by Delilah, we assume by her beauty that catches his one eye, though when he finally yields his secret to her, she is mothering him. His sleepy head is on her lap: false security, but he has tested the limits before. I recommend you read the full Samson story with its repetitions, like a good fairy tale, of riddles discovered and moments of inspired revenge, when Samson has the Spirit of the Lord with him as well as this hair. (It is a hair-raising adventure before it is a hair-razing one. And it also brings us back to the time when riddles were part of the process of testing-modern suits and courtrooms still contain some of this, with revenge, seduction, betrayal-but the testing here also recalls Oedipus in the Theban plays-he rashly kills his father, certainly marries the wrong woman, and then blinds himself. Philip Lopate, a modern novelist, emphasizes the personal side of the story in his essay in the collection, Congregation, which reminded me of the film noted above.)

We turn now to the other eye, because this story is also the story of two peoples in struggle and the calling of a man to serve God in that struggle, even to the point of death.

Samson is given a mysterious birth, promised by an angel, to a woman who is barren-like Samuel's mother Hannah or John the Baptist's mother, Elizabeth. And like Samuel, he is dedicated to God, not to live in a tribal shrine (Shiloh for Samuel) but to be a Nazirite- whose hair would not be cut, who would never drink wine, or eat unclean food. In this sense, from birth, Samson's life is not his own. This sense of dedication for the child might be one place where our text touches the baptism of Olivia Ann today.

Samson was also counted a "judge" or leader of this early Israel, but we know he is a lone operator and a rebel in a rebellious, disorderly time. He almost certainly drank wine and ate unclean food, he was attracted to Philistine women and is even noted to consort with a prostitute (16:1ff). Current scholarship and archeology shows that early Bronze and Iron Age Israel grew out of tribes mostly native to Canaan as a theological and political alliance-that is, at first very few Israelites are descended from the group that escaped from Egypt-so the book of Judges comes from a period when a people is being formed out of the rebels in the hill country who do not want to be ruled by the lords of the plain. (The unity of this early Israel comes about partly through the sharing of their stories- the Samson stories coming from the tribe of Dan.)

With this second eye we look at the Samson who both marries and fights with the Philistines as part of a long-running tribal struggle with people who may be the mortal enemies of the Israelis, or even the Jews, to this day. When I first titled this sermon, I was going to focus more on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict, and the way we as a country are being pulled backwards into a revenge cycle. My interpretation of the suicide bombers in Israel, or even those Saudis who attacked the two pillars of the World Trade Center, does not focus on their Islamic fundamentalist theology of jihad and martyrdom, but on the basic, visceral law of vendetta. For us, all our acts must be faithful to the God who is greater than all tribal gods. But when we see the Israeli and Palestinian mobs on TV, screaming for each other's blood, who can doubt this tribal undertow?

This week saw President Bush given congress' authority to wage war in a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, and many of us differ on that, and I have opposed it according to Just War principles and analysis of the international political and economic consequences-but what does even this war-like part of the Bible say?

I think it shows a desire for justice that is even deeper than tribal hatreds. This desire for justice combines with the hope of redemption in the Christian reading of this story by John Milton. I am indebted here to member, Jay Sutterlin, for reminding me of Milton's verse play, Samson Agonistes. Listen to this vision of Samson's act as liberation from oppression-not just of one blinded prisoner, but a whole people:

"O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious! (remember the martyr dreams of glory)

Living or dying thou hast fulfilled

The work for which thou wast foretold (by the angel, still guardian in captivity?)

To Israel, and now li'st victorious

Among thy slain self-killed;

Not willingly, but tangled in the fold (elsewhere suicide is condemned by Milton)

Of dire Necessity, whose law in death conjoined

Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more

Than all thy life had slain before. (verses 1660-68)



Now Milton, the great Puritan poet, who was himself blind and had been betrayed by a woman was now on the losing side after the Restoration of the monarchy and bishops in England, Milton reads Samson with Christian eyes, and may Christian-ize. No longer is Samson the boastful bully, pulling pranks, daring fate, sleeping around, but: 1687ff. "with inward eyes illuminated... So Virtue, given (up) for lost..."



Samson Agonistes brilliantly shows a Samson repentent, remorseful, and increasingly wise despite the great suffering of forced labor and humiliation, transformed by visits from his father, who will try to bribe his way out and cautions him against suicide as self-punishment for his sins (vs. 505), a visit of Delilah, the traitress wife, who tries to rationalize her actions and seduce him to accept a fate of servitude, and a visit by a taunting Philistine giant which helps form his resolve. He knows that "Of what I now suffer she was not the prime cause, but I myself, who, vanquished with a peal of words (O weakness), gave up my fort of silence to a woman." (235).

More than this self-knowledge, Milton-suggests the Norton Anthology editor, shows how grace comes to Samson-and perhaps anyone of us-- in the pit of despair. Then Samson suffers and dies for his people based on this inspiration (which is not purely revenge, or is perhaps revenge purified). Agonistes, from struggle-wrestling first with his own calling, and then with the two pillars or towers.

But as events have developed, so I have come to see a different picture in need of emphasis. We do need the empathy, still, to understand that terrorists are not just bad people, little Saddams who inexplicably hate us. Our danger is in misusing our strength like Samson earlier in the story, going backwards, going it alone as the superhero superpower.

Here is blindness, in a patronizing pundit in the New York Times: "Getting rid of the Osamas, Saddams and Arafats is necessary to change this situation , but its hardly sufficient..." (Thomas Friedman, July 3, 2002). The author is right to say force alone will not solve all our problems, and we can not solve all of other people's problems, but he lumps three very different Arab leaders together: a bloody fundamentalist, a secular-minded dictator, and the elected leader, however weak, of an enslaved nation. This is blindness, demonizing enemies, making the fight with terrorism more of a religious war against all Arabs. But more dangerous than this demonizing and re-tribalizing is lure of force itself, for it is war that is the seducer (that weakens the world), and its seduction is truly blindness (and the Spirit of God truly departs).

Prayer: This was a prayer for faithfulness and that God would work in all our consciences, cherishing the fellowship of the church with all opinions and approaches. Amen.

Back