Small Wins
1 Samuel 17:32-49; Mark 4:35-41

June 22, 2003

In earlier centuries, preachers and commentators on the Bible would take an Old Testament story and show how it was really completed and fulfilled somewhere in the New Testament, preferably in the Gospels. This approach didn’t always work, for often the preachers tried to squeeze square pegs into round holes. Usually, it made for some interesting preaching. I want to try something like that today where I believe both peg and hole are round. Besides, I couldn’t decide which great story is more important – David and Goliath, or Jesus calming the storm.

What would be unusual about the David and Goliath tale is whether there is anyone sitting here who does not know the end of the story? If you don’t, have no fear, we’ll get you there.

Israel had its first king, Saul, who was supposed to rescue Israel from all trouble, but nevertheless they were now in great trouble with a rival neighbouring nation of city-states on the Mediterranean coast known as Philistia. The Philistines would be the people who gave their name to Palestine, so in a way they won in the long run.

The armies stop short of colliding in a mountain valley, both sides setting up camp in the bordering hills. Into the middle strides a literal giant of a man, Goliath of Gath, supposedly nine feet tall. He had a suggestion.

War has always been a terrible way to solve problems, but back then a little less bloody way had been figured out to resolve the conflict and avoid a full-scale battle. There would be a match duel between champions from both sides and the individual winner took all. The result for the loser was not good, but “better that one man die than the whole nation.”

Goliath belligerently challenges Israel to such a duel: the loser would have to serve the winner. Of course, when you’re that big no one wants to commit suicide and Israel didn’t want to become slaves.

This exercise of posturing continued for 40 days, a flood of abuse from the monstrous Philistine who spewed out nasty things about the God of Israel. That may sound weird to keep going on like this, but how many days can you count that George W. Bush bellowed out his threats to Saddam Hussein and Iraq?

The army of Israel was thrown into a panic that soon turned into a paralyzed state of indecision. The name Saul is barely whispered as he too held his hands in his hand at a loss as what to do. The Israelites were overwhelmed by the power of a person who frightened them into inaction, who frightened them to death. Attila the Hun, Genghiz Khan, Sulemain, Ivan the Terrible, Adolf Hitler, Nikita Krushchev, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden - all freeze a part of us at the mention of their names. The syllables “Goliath” changed the way people thought, or worse, after 40 days they could no longer think straight.

Slipping in through the back door is David, maybe 17 years old. He is just a servant - tending his father’s sheep and running food supplies to his older brothers in the stalled army.

David is not a little boy: he could have made both countries’ Olympic Teams for lion and bear slaying, but he is of low social status and his brothers mock and insult him, echoing the abuses Joseph’s brothers had heaped on him.

David, nevertheless, is not a saint: he is part Bill Clinton, part Pierre Trudeau, perhaps part Saddam Hussein all in one. Our Bible Study group that read through the Books of Samuel know that the genius of David lay in his ability to understand that God was the real actor in every drama. This is God’s story and size does not matter. He is appalled to see Israel/God’s army so completely defeated mentally and spiritually. They had forgotten whose story it was and assumed it was now Goliath’s story.

The early Christians earnestly desired the gift of parrhesia or a bold self-confidence given by God. David had parrhesia, in bucketfuls, the ability to concentrate on a task so completely that anything could be accomplished. It wasn’t that David was a good shot with that famous slingshot; he knew exactly where to put the smooth stone and he put it right there in the middle of Goliath’s forehead. That was the end of Goliath’s story. The Philistines now fled in panic for they had relied upon the fear of a human being to protect them. The real story of God was now being enacted.

The Gospel story is much simpler and less dramatic. Jesus has been teaching parables all day and wants to cross over to the other side of the lake. An armada of little boats accompanied Jesus and his disciples. He falls asleep in the back just as a storm whips up the waves and starts to swamp their boat. The disciples are in a panic, they don’t know what to do, except complain to Jesus that he doesn’t care. The forces of nature are even crueler than Goliath.

Jesus has no armour, just a word that he knows exactly how and where and to whom to say it. The storm calms. Just as David had incredulously berated the paralyzed Israelites, Jesus asks his people, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” Don’t you have any of the self-confidence God gives to you through faith?

Even the wind and the storm obey him, they declare in hushed tones. No Goliath, no drowning waves can stop the person of God. What about us?

We have nothing to fear but fear itself, someone said! Fear teaches us not to think straight, not to look carefully at the realities, fear makes us believe there is a different world than the one God created and over which God still reigns. Fear panics you and me into throwing away every value, every principle, every love we possess.

We are not alone, this is God’s world. Let us live fully in the self-confidence God grants you and me. Small does win. This church is not defeated, as we know, by winds and cyclones. We are not crushed by poverty or injustice or declining memberships or false gods. We have only one option and one necessity: to live as if God is alive in God’s world.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan