Third Saturday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Biblical Humanhood
by Jon Coutts
When people talk about “biblical manhood” I think of Samson, the manly man. There he is, rolling out from under a Camaro, wrench in his teeth, sweat on his brow, oil stain on his bicep and, of course, glistens of divine approval on his mullet of biblical proportions. He is awesome. I am no Samson myself, but who doesn’t love a good Samson? To the degree that people like this model a strength and personality beloved by God, they are to be appreciated. My only problem is that the mantle of “biblical manhood” that gets placed on them is reductive and gender-exclusive; it makes normative what is really a matter of personality.
This is an interesting thing to reflect on as we read the birth narrative of Samson in the run-up to our celebration of the birth of Christ.
“You will conceive and bear a son,” says the divine messenger in Judges 13:3 and, again later, in Luke 1:31. In that latter event, the virgin Mary is invited to bear the incarnate God into this world. The Spirit who breathed creation into being puts on the finishing touches by attaching it to divinity forever, first in a teenager’s womb. Centuries earlier in Judges, however, the miracle is not incarnation but healing. A couple has been dealing with infertility and the wife is about to become pregnant.
But there is more than physical healing in this story. Something social and spiritual is going on as well. The son to be born will take a vow of obedience to God – marked by abstinence from wine and haircuts – from which his strength will come. It will appear that his strength comes from his long hair and bulging muscles themselves, but Samson and his parents will know it comes from God. Later, when Samson’s saga is a train wreck, and all he wants is death, even though his hair has grown back he still prays for that one last feat of strength.
This is the secret that Judges has been letting us in on. Whenever God sends Israel a liberator from oppression it is an unlikely one. Until Samson. Samson fits the part. It will be tempting for Israel to forget that God is their rescue – just as their forgetfulness of God got them into this mess in the first place – especially when the strength appears to have swung back in their favour.
This is not the place to delve into Samson’s saga, except to anticipate where this story is going: God will prove faithful to the vow of obedience even after Samson has not. As Psalm 89 attests, even when we are faithful, everything depends on the faithfulness of God. As Jesus revealed, the secret to biblical humanhood is the particularity of obedience to God.
If we go back to the story of Samson’s parents, we see hints of a healing that is not only physical but social as well. The social healing will not come to bloom until the promise to Mary, but in retrospect, we see the seeds planted in ages past. To see it we have to have an eye for comedy. If Judges were a movie it would be directed by the Coen brothers.
Notice how the story begins: with the name of its leading man. Manoah. His wife is never named. This is typical of the male-pattern narratives of ancient times. But that is when it gets satirical. The angel arrives with news, and only addresses the woman. It is like the angels remember Eden, where the man was given Tree instructions and did a poor job passing them on. In this case, the angel comes to the woman, making a covenant that will lead to Israel’s liberation. “You shall conceive and bear a son.” Just keep him from wine and razors, and God “will begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines” through him.
As it goes, the unnamed woman relays the message to Manoah and, funnily enough, he does not believe her. He asks God for a mansplanation. And God, being merciful, condescends to give him one. But God, being hilarious, sends the message through the woman again. This time Manoah overhears and takes over. But God, still with that sense of humour, repeats the instructions in a way that asserts the woman’s agency. “She is not to drink wine.” She will be the one entrusted to bear forward the vital vow. Manoah insists on having the angel over for dinner and, with one last joke, the angel slips free of his power games and ascends in a flame of the fire.
Manoah figures they are going to die, but it is his wife who interprets correctly. “The woman bore a son, and named him Samson. The boy grew, and the Lord blessed him.” When Samson’s vow goes off the rails it is after he is out from his mother’s care. She keeps her end of the covenant and is a sign of the healing power of God. In a patriarchal setting, where infertility makes her vulnerable to scorn and starvation, divine dignity has been afforded to this woman whom history only remembers as Samson’s mom. Mary picks up her baton in this regard, but there’s a blossom of social healing in the fact that we know her name and recite her song.
This advent I am thinking about how Jesus fulfils human faithfulness for us, but also about how his parents serve as examples as well. Joseph is no slouch here either. He is actually reminiscent of Manoah who, for all his comic blunders, did give support to his family’s vow.
We do not see much of Joseph in Jesus’ story, but there’s good reason to let him widen our perspective on what it might take to follow suit. There’s a reflection on this in Natalie Carnes’ Motherhood: A Confession – a wonderful book released this year. In it, she reflects on the time Jesus’ parents lost track of him and, once they found him in the Temple, he said: didn’t you know I’d be in my Father’s house? Carnes writes:
Did that reply sting Joseph?… He provides for a holy family from which he is, in some sense, estranged; he has not the flesh-and-blood connection to the God-child his wife does.… His own proximity to divinity is not so intimate as his wife’s; his claim to the family is more open to question. Mary’s yes … is often celebrated as a moment of supreme obedience, but what of Joseph’s silent assent... what of Joseph’s humbler, quotidian sacrifice? I think Joseph must have been a man who knew how to open up his desires toward God’s call into the unknown. In submitting to the superiority of Mary’s calling, by taking her as his wife, Joseph is revered as a saint.[1]
This is biblical humanhood: in all strength and in our weakness to follow Christ in the obedience of God. In Samson’s birth narrative we see a foreshadowing of Christ’s, and from these parents, there is much to learn.
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