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Is there anyone here who does not know the rough details of David and Goliath’s brief battle? To start, let’s go right to the end of the story, a good Father’s Day reminder. After Goliath was killed and the Philistines routed and chased off, and the Israelites had plundered their camp for booty, everyone came back home. Saul apparently had never completely figured out who was this young guy who had performed this remarkable deed. He turns to his commander-in-chief Abner and asks, “Whose son is this youth?” Not who is he, but who is his father? No doubt about it, that’s how you identified a person in a patriarchal society. Big Abner fetches David and brings him into Saul’s presence. David is holding Goliath’s head in his hand and he answers the question, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.” Isn’t that the way to make your father proud? It was a different world back then, wasn’t it? War was a masculine enterprise based more on pride and greed and power and taking control of the other kingdom’s resources. We are more civilized in our wars than that. One day the Philistines just decided to push the envelope with the Israelites and plunked themselves down with hostile intent. The Israelites were encamped on one mountain and the Philistines on the opposite mountain with a valley down below between the two armies. There they stood and looked at one another, probably said a few choice curses and grumbled threateningly, but they didn’t fight. How utterly primitive! Then the bully Philistines sent out a “champion” - a good athletic term - to suggest a match contest for all the marbles. It was known to be done elsewhere; the two opponents represent their nations and the winner takes all. Sort of like the Olympics. Only one person is killed instead of perhaps thousands. How primitive! David gets entangled in this non-combatant battle through family. His three oldest brothers are in Saul’s army, so Father Jesse sends David to find them with a CARE package - like Jacob sending Joseph to find his murderous brothers. Not too much difference here, at least in the hostile response David receives with all his bread and cheese.? “What you doing here? Bet you came to see the show! And who’s watching over your flocks by night?” David just turns away and talks to someone else, a good conflict avoidance mechanism. David found himself in the midst of an army of scared soldiers paralyzed into talking too much and doing nothing. Goliath kept coming out and issuing his obscene challenges in the morning and evening for the classical forty days. Stalemated this way, what amazes you is that the two armies had to feed their camps during this time, so this is why David was running the bread and cheese shuttle. One day David was there when Goliath went on his rant. “And David heard him” is the succinct report. David finds himself alone talking about the Lord God. Everyone else is too busy, too scared, too angry and obscene, too much of a bully to think at all about the presence of God. The Philistines, of course, had their own god, and if Goliath had prevailed on that day, we would be worshipping Dagon as well as a few other deities. The Israelites had a tendency that when the going gets tough, they acted as if they were tough enough. They needed no God because they had all the skills and power needed. Don’t we all? David was incredulous that everyone seemed to missing the point. He was not some glib lad with God-talk lugubriously issuing out of his mouth at every breath as is so often popular, for he knew that shepherding had given him the practical skills for the job. Lions and bears had been no match for him, and David was probably the only person on either side of the valley who looked at Goliath and recognized that he was not really that big. Many of you have appreciated and used Eugene Petersen’s modern translation of the Bible, The Message. A few have read from that version during our worship. Petersen, a Presbyterian minister, has written a number of other books mostly targeted at the life of the pastor, always focused on a Biblical book or passage. One of his favourite and recurring passages is this one right here, not the slingshot, but the brook in the valley of Elah, where in full sight of both hostile parties armed to the teeth, the young lad bends down to sort through the stones in the brook. He finally selects five smooth stones to place in his shepherd’s pouch, and carrying his slingshot, he moved towards Goliath. Petersen sees the selection of these stones the most human and therefore most godly moment in all that was swirling around him. Choosing what was useful out of God’s creation, David prepared what was necessary for what needed to be done. Petersen also wrote a book, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work and identified the five stones as prayer-directing, story-making, pain-sharing, nay-saying, and community building. David did not have time for these. He rushes to the battle line, endures Goliath’s withering threats, and retorts by declaring what no one else had remembered, that as small as he was, God was with him, and this was God’s moment. Oh, and there was that intriguing little episode when Saul tried to put his armour onto David and it was way too big, too heavy and awkward. Sort of like the Peanuts cartoon when the mother dresses up Charlie Brown to go out to play in the cold and snow, and then he cannot move. David has to find a graceful way of declining the king’s armour and going virtually naked into battle, “just as I am,” carrying only five smooth stones, a sling shot, and the confidence in and presence of a God who was not too small. While everyone else on both sides of the valley was standing there
paralyzed, in overconfidence on one side and in desperate fear on the other,
David ran towards Goliath. While While few deny that this is the greatest of all children’s Biblical stories, there are those who say it is too violent for children to hear. Yes, violent in exactly the same language and images that we watch on TV almost every night; are we trying to hide the ugliness of the world from our children like one of those old fairy tales? David was no fairy tale character, and many of his later actions prove that he was no angel. Yet, when he was possessed by God, David was the most real human being around. He acted as if there was a God present who insisted upon love and justice. Actually, David never thought “as if.” Children love the story intuitively because here was someone small defeating someone big. Don’t try to explain it away or water down what happened. We need to keep in mind that when God is with you, when you know and feel and are possessed by God, there is nothing that big that we cannot defeat. What we have to do is talk again as if God exists and matters, and then make our decisions using the spirit, mind and body God has graced us with, and finally to act as if God is powering us from inside. That includes not only our families and friends and jobs and the ministry of this church, but also that obscene violence of humanity against humanity on the nightly news where the word of God is scarcely breathed. No sense, by the way, in “as if” when there is a Goliath standing in our way. Preached by Robert Kitchen Knox-Metropolitan United Church Regina, Saskatchewan |
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