Third Saturday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Judges 13:2-24
2 In those days a man named Manoah from the tribe of Dan lived in the town of Zorah. His wife was unable to become pregnant, and they had no children. 3 The angel of the Lord appeared to Manoah’s wife and said, “Even though you have been unable to have children, you will soon become pregnant and give birth to a son. 4 So be careful; you must not drink wine or any other alcoholic drink nor eat any forbidden food. 5 You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and his hair must never be cut. For he will be dedicated to God as a Nazirite from birth. He will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines.” 6 The woman ran and told her husband, “A man of God appeared to me! He looked like one of God’s angels, terrifying to see. I didn’t ask where he was from, and he didn’t tell me his name. 7 But he told me, ‘You will become pregnant and give birth to a son. You must not drink wine or any other alcoholic drink nor eat any forbidden food. For your son will be dedicated to God as a Nazirite from the moment of his birth until the day of his death.’” 8 Then Manoah prayed to the Lord, saying, “Lord, please let the man of God come back to us again and give us more instructions about this son who is to be born.” 9 God answered Manoah’s prayer, and the angel of God appeared once again to his wife as she was sitting in the field. But her husband, Manoah, was not with her. 10 So she quickly ran and told her husband, “The man who appeared to me the other day is here again!” 11 Manoah ran back with his wife and asked, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife the other day?” “Yes,” he replied, “I am.” 12 So Manoah asked him, “When your words come true, what kind of rules should govern the boy’s life and work?” 13 The angel of the Lord replied, “Be sure your wife follows the instructions I gave her. 14 She must not eat grapes or raisins, drink wine or any other alcoholic drink, or eat any forbidden food.” 15 Then Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, “Please stay here until we can prepare a young goat for you to eat.” 16 “I will stay,” the angel of the Lord replied, “but I will not eat anything. However, you may prepare a burnt offering as a sacrifice to the Lord.” (Manoah didn’t realize it was the angel of the Lord.) 17 Then Manoah asked the angel of the Lord, “What is your name? For when all this comes true, we want to honor you.” 18 “Why do you ask my name?” the angel of the Lord replied. “It is too wonderful for you to understand.” 19 Then Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered it on a rock as a sacrifice to the Lord. And as Manoah and his wife watched, the Lord did an amazing thing. 20 As the flames from the altar shot up toward the sky, the angel of the Lord ascended in the fire. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell with their faces to the ground. 21 The angel did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Manoah finally realized it was the angel of the Lord, 22 and he said to his wife, “We will certainly die, for we have seen God!” 23 But his wife said, “If the Lord were going to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offering and grain offering. He wouldn’t have appeared to us and told us this wonderful thing and done these miracles.” 24 When her son was born, she named him Samson. And the Lord blessed him as he grew up.
Psalm 89:1-4
A psalm of Ethan the Ezrahite.1 I will sing of the Lord’s unfailing love forever! Young and old will hear of your faithfulness. 2 Your unfailing love will last forever. Your faithfulness is as enduring as the heavens. 3 The Lord said, “I have made a covenant with David, my chosen servant. I have sworn this oath to him: 4 ‘I will establish your descendants as kings forever; they will sit on your throne from now until eternity.’” Interlude
19 Long ago you spoke in a vision to your faithful people. You said, “I have raised up a warrior. I have selected him from the common people to be king. 20 I have found my servant David. I have anointed him with my holy oil. 21 I will steady him with my hand; with my powerful arm I will make him strong. 22 His enemies will not defeat him, nor will the wicked overpower him. 23 I will beat down his adversaries before him and destroy those who hate him. 24 My faithfulness and unfailing love will be with him, and by my authority he will grow in power. 25 I will extend his rule over the sea, his dominion over the rivers. 26 And he will call out to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’
John 7:40-52
Division and Unbelief40 When the crowds heard him say this, some of them declared, “Surely this man is the Prophet we’ve been expecting.” 41 Others said, “He is the Messiah.” Still others said, “But he can’t be! Will the Messiah come from Galilee? 42 For the Scriptures clearly state that the Messiah will be born of the royal line of David, in Bethlehem, the village where King David was born.” 43 So the crowd was divided about him. 44 Some even wanted him arrested, but no one laid a hand on him. 45 When the Temple guards returned without having arrested Jesus, the leading priests and Pharisees demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” 46 “We have never heard anyone speak like this!” the guards responded. 47 “Have you been led astray, too?” the Pharisees mocked. 48 “Is there a single one of us rulers or Pharisees who believes in him? 49 This foolish crowd follows him, but they are ignorant of the law. God’s curse is on them!” 50 Then Nicodemus, the leader who had met with Jesus earlier, spoke up. 51 “Is it legal to convict a man before he is given a hearing?” he asked. 52 They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Search the Scriptures and see for yourself—no prophet ever comes from Galilee!”
New Living Translation (NLT)
Biblical Humanhood
by Jon Coutts
Jon Coutts lives in Calgary where he is Assistant Professor of Theology at Ambrose University. Prior to this he pastored churches in the Christian and Missionary Alliance and most recently taught ethics in England. He is the author of the SCM Studyguide to Church Leadership and of A Shared Mercy, a book on forgiveness in the church published with IVP.
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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