Samson Got Ahold of the Pillars of Life and Death
At first glance, Samson hardly seems like a hero of faith for us to emulate. But Judges 16:21-31 shows us that at the end of his life, "Samson Got Ahold of the Pillars of Life and Death," and we can follow his example in our own lives. September 25, 2011
You’ve heard the saying, “Nothing is more certain than death and taxes.” But depending on where you live or who is in authority, taxes could change. I think the saying needs to be adjusted. There are two certainties in life—life itself and death. If you are listening to this sermon, obviously you are alive, and one day each of us will face death. But how do we deal with the uncertainties of life and prepare for death? How do we get ahold of what counts the most regarding these two pillars, life and death?
Samson provides the answer. Even if you never read the Bible before, you may have heard about him, and the one thing most people remember about Samson is that he was…what? That’s right, strong! A lot of people think that his strength was tied to his long hair. But neither his long hair nor his workout routine gave him extra strength. God did, and Samson was to use that strength to defend the Lord’s reputation and the people designed to be God’s own. The story of Samson covers nearly a fifth of the book of Judges, and the historical record includes great feats of strength. But only at the end of his days could we say that Samson Got Ahold of the Pillars of Life and Death.
Cut down and crowned
God gave the ancient Israelites a special set of rules to keep them unique and separate so the promise of a Savior wouldn’t be lost. Among those rules was one that had to do with making special promises to serve God for a certain set of days, weeks, or months. To show that you were serious about keeping your promise, you could make a Nazirite vow, which meant that during the time of your vow, you were to avoid three things—dead bodies, grapes, and razors. A few Israelites were set apart to be Nazirites for life. Samson was to be one of those. We would expect to hear Samson say, “Look out! There’s a dead deer along the road. Steer around it because I’m not supposed to touch dead things,” and “Oh, no! There are raisins in these muffins! I’m not allergic to them, but I’m not supposed to touch grapes in any form,” and “I wish I could get a shave and haircut, but I can’t because I’m under a special lifetime vow.”
But he made a mess of it. On the way to pick out a wife from among the bad-guy Philistines, a lion attacked. He tore a lion to pieces with his bare hands. Later he scooped honey from its dead carcass, told a riddle about it in the midst of a seven-day party, and, after losing a bet to people who tricked him for the answer, wiped out 30 bad guys to pay off the bet. Do you think wine was involved…and dead bodies? On another occasion he captured 300 foxes, tied their tails, attached little torches, and sent them running in the fields of the bad guys, burning grain, vineyards, and olive trees. More death and destruction! When bad guys tried to tie him up, Samson broke the ropes as though they were thin strings, grabbed a jawbone from a donkey skeleton, and clobbered 1,000 Philistines. More dead bodies! After spending half the night with a prostitute in a Philistine town, he realized he might get caught. So he hoisted the city gates out of the ground and carried them to a hill five miles down the road. When his heathen wife whined and pestered him to tell the secret of his strength, he finally gave in, figuring, “I’ve crossed the line with strong drink and dead bodies so often, why not tell her about the rest of my vow?” Samson believed he was invincible. But all the while, Samson was dead, dead to God, dead to real life, real living with God, and “he did not know that the Lord had left him.” Because strength from the Lord was gone, “the Philistines [were able to seize] him...Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison.” Before this Samson looked so alive. Others around him, including his enemies, considered him so alive, and wanted to stop his life from interrupting their lives. When they finally had the chance, they poked out his eyes and poked fun of him because they could now live a life of partying without worrying about Samson. He who made a donkey of himself by his self-centered attitude and behavior was now treated like a donkey. He who carried away locked gates was now locked in prison. He who burned grain fields was now grinding grain. Samson had been cut down.
But something happened. Only when he realized that he was dead inside did he get ahold of the pillar of life, realizing that real life is a life with God, and with that he got ahold of the pillar of death, realizing that death was the gate to eternal life. Samson prayed, “O Sovereign Lord, remember me.” He had been self-centered for most of his life, but not now. When“the Philistines had assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate, saying, ‘Our god has delivered Samson…into our hands,’”Samson got ahold of the two pillars that held up the building. “He pushed with all his might, and down came the temple.”That was not suicide but more like a soldier jumping on a grenade to save his comrades. Samson was carrying out his vow to destroy God’s enemies and in doing so showed that he got ahold of the pillars of life and death. When cut down, he finally realized that real life was not about him, but about God’s love for him. When cut down, he finally realized that God had given him a crown, the crown of eternal life.
The devil is like a roaring lion looking to devour us, and too often we’ve walked along his cage, stuck our hand out to see how close we can get, only to be bitten. Too often we’ve come up with clever plans and sent them like foxes with tails on fire only to realize later that those plans were all about us, padding our comfort, and burning other people. Too often we’ve claimed that no one can bind us, rope us, or fence us in, and that we have a right to “the sweet life.” After all, we’re Americans! Only to realize later that claiming our rights doesn’t give us the right to be greedy or selfish. Too often we’ve worked our jawbones and cut people down to the size we want them, which is a notch below us, only to realize later that we were exercising the jawbone of a donkey. Too often we’ve relied on our own strength to withstand Delilah-like temptation and given in to what we know is wrong, ignoring God’s directives and warnings. And if we don’t realize we’re behaving like Samson, God finds a way to cut us down so that we can become blind to self-centeredness and the Samsonite baggage and see life in this world for what God says it is, not cushy but cross-filled.
Only when cut down with crosses like Samson will we get ahold of the pillar of life, that real life is living with God. And right then—when we reach up to put our hand to our head with a sigh of “I give up”—that’s when we realize we are wearing a crown. How can that be? Think of this…
Jesus never tore a lion apart with his bare hands, but he is the lion of Judah who tore Satan to shreds. He didn’t dig honey out of carcass to tell a riddle, but his words are sweeter than honey and can give life to those who are dead inside. On trial before Herod, whom he had described as a fox, Jesus said nothing and burned Herod with silence. Jesus didn’t kill with a jawbone of a donkey, didn’t lift and carry the gates of a city, but rode a donkey through Jerusalem’s gates, not to carry them away but to carry your sins and mine to a hill where we would wash them away from God’s sight with his blood. Jesus kept himself pure from temptations of prostitutes, but he was not afraid to deal with them, forgiving even them and turning their lives around. No one took Jesus’ strength. He kept it always but put it under wraps and on hold and suffered as God left him alone—so he would never leave us alone.
Jesus lived the one pillar, called life, perfectly, and conquered the second pillar, called death, to change it into a gateway to more and better life. There is a reason why he did all that. If you want to know the reason, just look at Samson. Then look at yourself in the mirror. Jesus got ahold of the two pillars, life and death, for sinners like us, setting the path that we see in Samson and that we see in our lives, moving from cross to crown.
That’s what gives us the power to get ahold of these pillars of life and death as we live on this earth and move closer to death. We know that there will be crosses to bear—either brought on by ourselves or allowed by God to cut us down—and in those crosses we rejoice. Someone who does not have a hold on the pillars of life and death will think we’re crazy because they’re thinking like Samson in his early days, that physical life is for partying and physical death is disaster. But the Savior God changed all that for Samson and for us. Like Samson in his last days, we now have a grip on the pillars of the real meaning of life and death. The apostle Paul wrote what was on Samson’s heart and is in ours—“We also rejoice in our sufferings…because God has poured out his love into our hearts” (Romans 5:3-5) and “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). We work like beasts of burden week in and week out. A baby miscarries. Bills pile up. Chemo causes hair to fall out. Day in and day out we bear our crosses and are cut down. But through it all, we are wearing a crown. That’s what it means to get ahold of the pillars of life and death.
Read the Bible account about Samson’s life, and you’ll have a hard time classifying him as a hero. There’s no glossing over the dirt and disobedience in his life. But check the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 11, and you’ll see that God lists him in the Hall of Faith. Our names are not in that chapter, but we’re in that Hall. How can that be? The answer is the same for us as it was for Samson. Because Jesus went from cross to crown, so will we. Amen.
Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on September 25, 2011
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