Samson pt. 2: “The Riddler’s Revenge”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, August 24, 2025
Reading: Judges 14
This morning is our last go at the Book of Judges. We’ve called this summer series: “There are no heroes.” Whatever you see in the Book of Judges, don’t go and do likewise. It is a catalogue of moral failure.
Today’s story is one positive reason Dayle, and I wanted to do this series. Samson is one of the great characters in the whole Bible and if we only used stories in the church’s lectionary, we’d never hear about Samson at all. Having studied the story this week to prepare for today, and after months in this book I’m not actually sure what to say about Samson! I knew we had to talk about him. Maybe it’s good enough to let the story loose in the room, to work its way with us.
But here’s something I am convinced of: It is a mistake to reduce faith to simplistic moral instruction. And Judges refuses to be so reduced. Think of the moral of nearly every children’s sermon: that’s why you shouldn’t hit your sister, or why you should mind your mum, or be nice to the weird kid on the playground. Those all may be good ideas, but you don’t need God to raise Jesus from the dead to do them.
A teacher of mine used to make fun of his and my and our Methodism this way: here’s all we Methodists believe. ‘God is nice. And so, we should be nice too.’ It’d be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. We don’t need the Bible for that—we could just put it on a fortune cookie. The Bible is a sprawling, demanding, hilarious, terrifying, difficult book. Give your whole life to it and you’ll understand less than when you started. Just one glance at the Book of Judges and you’ll never confuse Christian faith with niceness ever again. I mean ever.
Samson is the Superman of the Bible. The Hercules of the Hebrews. Nearly indestructible. Superman was back in theatres this summer and they’d used so many movie titles you know what they called this film? Superman. Clever. Superman was invented by two Jewish teenagers in Cleveland and some of its mythology sounds a little Jewish—his name on Krypton is Kal-El, his father’s name Jor-El (El is a Hebrew shorthand for God). Now that’s a little superficial and the founders never spoke of their Judaism as influential in interviews, but it’s not hard to imagine in 1938 when Hitler is in power in Germany, Jewish teens wanting this sort of musclehead saviour. Superman is as American as an alien can be. Grows up on a farm in Kansas in a town called Smallville with the name of Clark. Such vanilla normality was the dream of lots of liberal Judaism at the time: to fit in, to be like everyone else, maybe to be more American than anybody else.
In the Bible, Jews also want to fit in, to be like everyone else. Sort of like all of us do in middle school. After Judges is over, the Jewish people approach God and ask for a king. ‘Other nations have kings.’ God and his prophet Samuel say ‘you don’t want a king. Kings just take your stuff in taxes and your daughters for their harems and your sons for their wars. Kings are the worst; you don’t want one.’ We Israelites listen, and think, and say ‘yeah like we were saying we want a king, like everybody else has.’ To ask for a human king is to reject God: the only king Israel needs. But God relents to his people’s nagging, grants us kings, and the kings are pretty uniformly terrible, even the good ones, like David and Solomon, have catastrophic failures. Blood on their hands. Thousands of wives and concubines. Trust in their armies instead of God. Just like God forewarned.
See, Israel is not supposed to be just like other nations. She’s supposed to be different from other nations. An example, a model, a light on a hill. So that all other nations might see how great Israel’s God is. When God calls Abraham and Sarah, childless 90-year-olds, to have so many babies the earth is full of them, the goal is to bless everybody else. Israel is set apart to be a blessing. If I’m blessed enough to get to heaven one day the first thing, I’m gonna ask God is ‘why like this?’ Why choose to save the world this way? Through an elect people? Because it keeps going wrong. Anti-Semitism is the world’s oldest hatred. But even internally, Israel keeps thinking ‘we’re elect, we’re the best!’ Uh, no, you’re elect to serve and bless others. Or she keeps thinking ‘ugh, do we have to be elect? Being elect is awful, we want to be just like all the other nations.’ Again, no, you’re elect to stand out, to be different. Why did God do it like this? Dunno. We’re never told. It’s just how God saves. Chooses one people through whom to bless the others. And Imma ask why one day.
I was with a Jewish friend for Passover. His daughter was there with a handsome beau. And I got curious. He’s Jewish too, right? The rabbi looked at me, bemused. ‘Of course. She knows better than to bring home a non-Jew.’ Now you can feel the moral complexity there, right? Does he mean Jews are better than other people? No way. Not at all. He means that if his descendants in 100 years are going to also be Jewish, his daughter needs to marry someone who’ll uphold the food laws, tell the stories, circumcise their sons. Those practices make Israel different so the world can know there’s a good God. I also heard Rabbi Yael Splansky make this point to her people: why does God give commands not to murder, commit adultery, lie and so on? Because we were doing those things. You don’t pass laws for no reason. Israel is always either fighting with or sleeping with its neighbours, here the Philistines. Israel is not morally superior to its neighbours. It’s just distinct, to bless its neighbours. And that’s a tight rope, a knife’s edge, one we gotta negotiate too as church. Too far this way and you think you’re superior. Too far this way and you’re no different than your neighbours.
And that’s what Samson seems to have missed.
If you know one thing about Samson, it’s that he has long hair. It’s a sign of his vow as a Nazirite. Within the set apart people, Israel, there are further set apart people, the Nazirites. They vow no alcohol use ever and no razor to the head, among other things. John the Baptist may well have been a Nazirite: a vowed religious, like a monk or nun. With long hair. Now if there’s a second thing people know about Samson it’s that he’s undone by Delilah. The Philistines may not be able to subdue Super Samson but Delilah and her raven black hair, they can bind the strong man. Can you believe that Angela Lansbury of Murder She Wrote early in her career played seductive Delilah? There she is in more familiar guise. Hedy Lamarr, the greatest movie star of her day, played Delilah too (she also was a rocket scientist on the side—for real, look it up). You’re not surprised old time Hollywood fell for the sexiness in the story, are you?
But in what you heard, Delilah is a bit of an enigma. We don’t even know if she’s an Israelite or a Philistine herself, we’re not told. The Philistines offer her a fortune for intel on how to subdue their archenemy and it’s money well-spent. Samson had killed 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. He’d ripped apart a lion with his bare hands. Once when his enemies wanted to meet him at the city gate, Samson picked up the city gate and moved it somewhere else. Samson can do the impossible, like Superman in Superman II flying so fast around the Earth that he reverses time. Delilah sweettalks Samson into giving up the secret of his strength and three times he misleads her. Each time she calls in the Philistines, but Samson’s strength is still there. Now, I want you to notice we’re way past lust in this story. Samson loves Delilah—one of very few times in the Bible we’re told a male character loves a female one. And in a relationship of mutual vulnerability you do tell one another your deepest secrets, trusting they’ll keep them with you. Delilah does not. Samson might be Superman physically but he’s as dumb as a rock. After three betrayals, he gives the fourth time. ‘Shave my head and I’ll be like any other man.’
You, see? The temptation always facing Israel. To be like any other person, not called out, not elect, not special at all. Here’s another temptation: not to know your own story. Samson has reduced his calling to be a Nazirite, one called out among the called out, to remind Israel of God as Israel shows God to the nations. He thinks his strength is his hair. It is not. It is his God. The hair is just a sign of his commitment to God and God’s to him. This is my great worry about us. I think we love our church and each other and our city. But do we know our own story, to share it with others? Do we live differently because of it? There was a US legislator who wanted the Ten Commandments in schoolrooms. Stephen Colbert asked the man to name the Ten Commandments on live TV. He got three of them. I was laughing about this with a friend in seminary and we looked at each other. Uh, could we name all ten? On live TV? Standing there on the spot we remembered 7. With no cameras. No judgment for not knowing enough, the Bible isn’t a trivia game. Don’t let me mislead you: faith is not a knowledge test. Can you remember the names of all twelve disciples or whatever (I usually can’t). Faith is a love test. You need enough knowledge to love, but love is the goal: do we love like Jesus? That’s a test hard enough to require many lifetimes.
So, Delilah lulls Samson to sleep in her lap, a sleep so deep he doesn’t notice when someone comes in and shaves his head. You gotta wonder if he’d kept the Nazirite vow about drink if he’s that passed out. There’s Samson shorn, like a tiny babe. He looks almost innocent, doesn’t he? Samson is like the defeated general Sisera of the Canaanites from earlier in our series: he’s asleep on the judge Deborah’s tent floor, she’s grabbing her hammer and tent peg. In Judges, domestic space, women’s space, is dangerous for male warriors. Hairless, Samson is now strengthless, and the Philistines come in and subdue him. They gouge out his eyes. They take him back to their stronghold and put him to work grinding meal: women’s work, humiliation. They bring him out to parties to perform for them, their blind subdued former archenemy. One commentator points out Samson is a slave in the promised land: shackled, put to menial labour, an object of derision. This happens in Superman II as well: Supe gives up his superpowers to marry Lois Lane and gets beat up by a simple street thug. Leonard Cohen loves this story so much he fuses this story with David and Bathsheba: “she broke your throne; she cut your hair.” Cohen’s hazy on the details, but he gets the feels. Superman is now a slave.
Here’s a fun fact. Folks are always asking what real-world payoff sermons have, how all this Bible stuff affects our normal lives. There is another people besides the church who traces their continuity to these stories. I don’t just mean our Jewish elder siblings as a religion worldwide. I also mean the modern nation-state of Israel. Now this is tricky—I praise Israel a lot in here as God’s people. I don’t necessarily mean the country with the flag and the questionable foreign policy. But I don’t not mean the country called Israel either. I mean the world’s 15 million Jews. About half of whom happen to live in Israel. Israel is a tiny country in a rough neighbourhood, about the size of New Jersey, barely 10 miles across in places. It’s also a nuclear power, and here’s the real-world Bible payoff. Guess what Israel’s nuclear program is called? The Samson option. Being so small, Israel knows if she deploys nukes, she’ll likely destroy herself too. She has ‘em, because her neighbours in multiple directions are committed to her destruction. But use ‘em, and you’re giving your enemy what they want. As Christians we’ve run countries and empires since the fourth century. Israel is the first Jewish state in more than 2000 years. It’s hard to run a country on a faith, we Christians have mostly given up trying. Did you notice this story takes place in Gaza? Lord, bless Israel and grant her peace, and her neighbours peace, and Gazans food and safety. Was that real-worldy enough for you?
Samson is performing for his Philistine captors, like a minstrel, like a slave, a mascot, it’s humiliating. Until he gets himself positioned between the two load bearing pillars. And he prays. Maybe the first time in the four chapters we’ve known Samson, he prays. It’s not a great prayer.
“Lord God, remember me and strengthen me only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.”
To his credit, he remembers God for the first time, now that he’s weakened and humiliated. Faith is like that right? We often only turn to it at our lowest. To Samson’s deficit, he prays for revenge for his two eyes. Remember how God commands an eye for an eye? That’s to limit violence. If Samson loses his eyes, his eye-gouger-outer should lose his. Here Samson kills 3000 Philistines for his two eyes. That’s the math of retribution—how many Israelites will the Philistines want to kill in reprisal? But you can’t expect Samson to get prayer right the first time he tries, it takes lifetimes. And Samson pushes those pillars apart. The temple of the Philistines comes down on their heads and Samson dies with them. He kills more Philistines in his death than he ever did in life. Hollywood and artists love this almost as much as they love Delilah the seductress.
Two takeaways from this story, and whatever I say here if we can leave today forever having destroyed the notion that faith is about being nice, that’s good enough. But I fear that’s a zombie idea, it keeps coming back, however much you drive a stake through its heart. Okay, one, being called out. The balancing act. God calls Israel so as through Israel to bless the nations. God calls us, church, so that God might redeem the world through us. Feel ridiculous? God is committed to saving the world through the church and we often can’t even contact our volunteers properly, recycle our waste right, inspire our own children. Think how Israel feels. Given election, adoption, she either cherishes those for herself or lords them over other people. This is why I want to ask God in heaven: why this way? Saving through a people. You know how weak we people are, you made us! There would have been more efficient ways of saving the world presumably! But this is God’s way. Choosing one people through whom to bless and save the others. The whole story of the Bible, of human history, is about us getting that wrong. Keeping God’s gifts for ourselves or just preferring to slink out of our calling and be like other people. Don’t do it. Church: God has asked us to show the world how odd God is. How unusual, how different than people thought God might be. Think we’ll get that right any more than our Jewish forebears? We won’t. But God is determined to use such broken vessels as us to give water to a thirsty world. Isabelle Hamley, the scholar I’m leaning on in this sermon, says this:
Time and again, the Lord chooses to work with younger brothers, with women, with those who are oppressed and enslaved, rather than with the powerful of the world. The subversion of power blooms to its fullness in the narrative of Jesus, from birth in humble and hidden circumstances to a shameful death on the cross. The entire biblical narrative focuses on this point of God’s voluntary relinquishing of power in order to transform the world at its deepest.
So, second and last point today: Jesus. The Samson story prefigures Jesus in some dark but unmistakable ways. Samson has trouble getting born. Anybody special in Israel it’s hard to get them into the world at first, their parents can’t conceive. He’s specially vowed to God, like Jesus, he’s elect within the elect people. He does miracles. Now, Samson’s miracles border on the mythological, there’s a reason I keep mentioning comic book heroes this morning. Jesus’ never do; they’re small, modest, basic stuff-of-life: food and drink and healing. Samson is betrayed by his beloved for money, as Jesus is turned over by his close intimate for silver. And as Samson pushes apart pillars to take his enemies with him, Jesus also dies with his arms outstretched, his death more of an impact than even his singular life.
Now notice all the ways Samson and Jesus are different too! Samson uses his strength to kill his enemies, to dazzle onlookers and elevate himself. Jesus uses his powers to quietly heal, spends most of his time prayer alone or with three or twelve friends. The contrast with Samson shows us how quiet and unassuming Jesus is. And in Samson’s final self-sacrifice we see a dark figure of Jesus’ cross. Jesus is the real Samson option. Samson takes life, Jesus’s gives life. Samson kills thousands, Jesus saves millions upon millions. The saviour we want is Samson: a strongman to kill enemies, a Superman, a Hercules, a fixer. The saviour God gives is Jesus, who saves us not by killing anybody, but by accepting death himself. Friends, this series has been dedicated to showing you can’t understand Jesus without Judges. Look how poorly we run our lives, Judges shows us. The newspaper, the internet, couldn’t agree more. Now, look how good a saviour we get. The one we wanted? No, so much better than we wanted. One whose death gives life to all. Amen.