Ehud had made a double-edged sword about a foot and a half long, which he strapped to his right thigh under his clothing. 17 He presented the tribute to Eglon king of Moab, who was a very fat man. 18 After Ehud had presented the tribute, he sent on their way the men who had carried it. 19 At the idols near Gilgal he himself turned back and said, "I have a secret message for you, O king."

The king said, "Quiet!" And all his attendants left him.

20 Ehud then approached him while he was sitting alone in the upper room of his summer palace and said, "I have a message from God for you." As the king rose from his seat, 21 Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly. 22 Even the handle sank in after the blade, which came out his back. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it. 23 Then Ehud went out to the porch ; he shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.

24 After he had gone, the servants came and found the doors of the upper room locked. They said, "He must be relieving himself in the inner room of the house." 25 They waited to the point of embarrassment, but when he did not open the doors of the room, they took a key and unlocked them. There they saw their Lord fallen to the floor, dead.

Judges 3: 16-25 (NIV)

I missed the first showing of Channel 4's programme set on a Manchester housing estate: Shameless.  But as soon as I started watching the repeats I was hooked.  In a unique way it mirrored my ten years experience of living on London housing estates -- here was the enjoyment of having fun, the resistance to authority and love of the trickster that I immediately recognised.  For Shameless is essentially a celebration of tricksters -- the streetwise who are always living on the edge but in the end manage to find a way through.  The Bible is also full of tricksters and Ehud is perhaps the purest and most archetypal of them.  Before Ehud there is Jacob and after him the most successful trickster of all -- David.  But Jacob and David had more to them than just being the trickster -- Ehud is the genuine article pure and simple.

Ehud came to prominence during a time when the Moabites under king Eglon were oppressing Israel.  Ehud as described in the Bible passage above kills Eglon and then raises an Israelite army and decisively defeats the Moabites.  Contemporary commentators have recognised the 'bad taste' humour and sexual innuendo in the story which is so beloved of our postmodern culture.  This certainly reinforces the trickster image of Ehud but more crucial is his ability to act daringly and successfully -- it is this which establishes his reputation and enables him to become a leader.  Also important is his successful use of words to flatter and deceive king Eglon.  All this: the humour, the quick wits and the daring action make Ehud the archetypal trickster.

There is something very appealing about the trickster to the modern imagination.  We are impressed by people that can resist authority, particularly when people can do that with style and humour.  Here surely lies the appeal of Shameless.  Shameless is often described as being gritty and it certainly does touch on issues associated with the rough side of life such as drugs and violence but it is essentially a comic vision of life.  Nothing really bad ever happens, no one actually dies although much fun is had with death and the conventions surrounding it, sex is abundantly present but sexual jealousy never leads to unreconcilable feuds, nor, is AIDS ever mentioned.  The plot of Shameless is always essentially the same -- someone gets themselves into a fix and family and friends rally round to get them out of it, it is very far from being the Waltons but neither is it Elmina's Kitchen[1].  Shameless is about surviving on the fringes of society.  It is a comic vision of how the excluded poke two fingers up to the ‘concerned’ establishment and get on with enjoying life -- alternately resisting and co-opting their representatives into their marginal lifestyle.  But it is not what life is really like and in the end offers us no hope, for it is entirely apolitical.  It offers no vision of how communities might be organised or of how institutions can be created and sustained.  The same thing can be said of the Judges such as Ehud: they are brilliant explosions of the divine spark but they are unable to form Israel into a coherent and sustainable community.

The problem with the Judges is one of continuity.  Whilst a strong Judge is in charge the Israelites can enjoy peace but once the strongman (and occasionally strong woman) dies the nation becomes vulnerable and quickly descends into chaos or oppression.  The trickster relies heavily on his personality and face-to-face relationships -- this is ideal for a chaotic environment such as Israel in the time of the Judges and many modern urban communities.  But relying on personality means that your power only extends as far as your personal contacts -- thus your geographical scope is limited (the Judges only ever ruled over small parts of Israel) and your achievements are not perpetuated over time.  Israel therefore went through a boom and bust cycle -- when the great leader was in charge everything was okay but once he died his personal fiefdom quickly fell apart.  The Bible seems to give us ambiguous messages about whether the system of Judges was how God wanted Israel to be ruled -- on the one hand we read about God's resistance to kingship in Samuel but on the other hand Judges is criticised as being a time when every man did as he saw fit -- which leads to the bonds of social harmony frequently been broken.  But what is clear is that ultimately Israel had to move beyond the Judges in the person of David -- a man after God's own heart.  David was as much of a skilful trickster as any of the Judges but he was also a man who knew how to organise, gathering around himself a band of committed followers and skilful in making use of the institutions of kingship and priesthood -- it needed such a man for Israel to flourish and achieve its full potential.  And it needed David to create the model for the Messiah and so prepare the ground for the coming of the King of Kings and Judge of Judges -- Jesus.

Shameless is great fun but it is also a valuable resource for Christians working on estates.  One of the projects on my wish list is to write a training programme based on the first series!  But seen through the lens of the Judges we can celebrate its vision of life and also see its inadequacies.  In the end life is more than a party, more than getting ourselves out of scrapes in stylish and humorous ways, more than a small circle of family and friends -- it is about building sustainable communities which persist and grow from generation to generation.  Not always so much fun but in the end much, much more satisfying.