June 21, 2009 - Proper 7, Year B (RCL)
David and Goliath
was always one of my favorite bible stories as a kid.
And it’s one of the stories
that has entered popular culture,
Goliath
standing in
for anything great and powerful, usually an opponent,
but not always.
Just googling it, I found references
to a web-authoring program,
an online business research center,
and the challenge of new internet based media
against the established and powerful news companies.
But is that all it is,
a nice parable
about small versus large?
I don’t think so.
You might remember from last week
that David
was just a kid, the youngest of eight brothers,
and so of course the one
who when they all get jobs
was left to mind
the family sheep.
Saul was king
and was becoming
more and more
erratic.
And suddenly
Samuel,
the prophet adviser to King Saul,
arrived in David’s hometown.
He said he was there to make a sacrifice
but no one quite knew why there
and not six miles up the road in Jerusalem.
He invited one of the men of the town, Jesse,
along with his sons,
to participate in the sacrifice,
and having had a good look at them all
had David brought in from the fields
and anointed him with oil.
And then apparently, without a word, left, and David went back to his sheep.
It wasn’t much later
that Saul began to behave really strangely;
his servants were convinced he has an evil spirit
and that the only thing that would calm him
is music.
And someone recommended young David,
and he left the sheep and headed for Saul’s court,
where he played his lyre, and Saul calmed down.
But it seems that eventually David
ended up back with his sheep,
because that’s where he was
when the Philistines
gathered
for battle.
Saul gathered his men as well
and the two armies
faced each other,
each one waiting
for the other to make a move,
each one waiting
for the other to break.
It was a stand-off.
And then the Philistines
decided
that instead of a full scale battle
which would no doubt result
in casualties for the winner as well as a loser,
instead of that
they would send a representative out
to challenge the ISraelites
in single combat.
Winner takes all.
They were confident;
they had Goliath,
six and a half feet tall
and almost as wide,
an undefeated champion.
And he went forward and shouted to the Israelites,
“Choose yourselves a champion, and let him come down and fight me”
But no one wanted to go.
They were too afraid.
They didn’t have a champion
like Goliath.
And for forty days this went on, twice a day,
Goliath challenging the Israelites
and them answering him with silence.
And then along came David.
He wasn’t there to fight;
he’d just brought some supplies from his father
to his brothers who were serving in the army. He heard Goliath’s challenge
and couldn’t understand why none of the Israelites responded.
It seemed to him
that not only was it a tacit admission of defeat
by the Israelites
but it was affectively saying
that the Israelites
no longer trusted
that God wouldn’t be on their side,
that God wouldn’t lead them
to victory.
And so he went to Saul
and offered himself.
Saul thought he was crazy - this kid
offering to fight the giant?
And he tried to discourage him. “You’re just a boy!”
David answered back, with perhaps just a trace of arrogance,
“Yeah, but I look after sheep, and I have to defend them from lions and bears. This Philistine can’t be any worse than them!”
But then he got to the heart of it. God has saved me from the lions and bears; God will save me from Goliath too.”
“Okay,” said Saul,
and ordered that his own armor
be given to David. The only problem was, that once David had it on, he couldn’t even walk.
It was way too heavy for him.
And so he stripped it off,
got out his slingshot
and picked up five smooth stones.
And went to face the giant, Goliath.
Who, of course, laughed at him.
“You’re out of your mind! Can’t you Israelites
do any better? You must be desperate!
But come, anyway, and I’ll kill you, boy, and the rest of you
can surrender.”
BUt David stood his ground.
“No I will kill you. Because I’m not relying
on swords and spears and armor,
but on God. And with God’s help,
I’ll kill you,
and everyone, on your side and mine,
will know the power of God who saves us.
And David took one of his stones, put it in his sling,
and slung it,
and it hit Goliath on his head and he fell down dead.
It’s a great story
about the little nice guy
winning out against the big nasty one.
But what the bible keeps drawing our attention to in the words of David
is that this not really about him at all.
It’s not actually the little nice guy against the big nasty one
so much as the big nasty guy
against the much bigger
more powerful
God.
Not that Goliath believed in God;
he had his own religion.
But it didn’t matter whether he believed or not;
the reality was
that God was greater than Goliath
and God was greater than Goliath’s gods.
And it took David
to see that,
and it took David
to act on his belief.
The Israelites
weren’t even willing
to give God a chance.
Sometimes, I suspect, we’re a little bit like the Israelites.
We look at the challenges in front of us,
and we tend to panic.
They look so big, so insurmountable.
We can’t imagine
how we could ever overcome them.
We can’t imagine
that they wouldn’t overwhelm us.
We can’t imagine
anything aver being different.
And so we get stuck, paralyzed,
unable to move forwards
or even backwards.
And sometimes we forget
to ask God’s help.
We’re so caught up in where we are,
that we don’t even give God
the chance.
David took a risk, a terrible risk - if he was wrong
it would have cost him
his life.
But it didn’t. God was faithful.
And God is still faithful.
God continues to act powerfully
on behalf of his people, on behalf of us.
Though of course, the way God works
is most often
through human beings.
Maybe the Israelites did pray to God to deal with Goliath.
But it didn’t matter. Because until one of them was willing to act , to be the one that God could work through,
all their praying
was pretty much useless.
Because there are always three parts
to the human side
of God coming to our rescue.
First is our willingness to ask for help.
second our willingness to actually trust God to help,
and then our willingness to risk being the ones through whom God will help.
Often in the church
we get into that stuck position
that the Israelites were with David.
We see numbers at church declining, we don’t have all the programs we used to have. We worry about whether the church will survive.
If David’s example is anything to go by,
then what we need to do
is ask God for help.
Then actually trust that God actually help us.
And finally,
step forward, put up our hands and say,
“I’m willing to give it a try, with the help of God.”
Because our God
is faithful; our God
will not forsake us;
our God
will lead and defend and deliver us
now
and forever.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009