FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Rev. Craig N. Goodrich
Associate Pastor Administration/Executive Director

June 21, 2009

FACING GOLIATH

Scripture: 1 Samuel 17:1-11, 38-49, Mark 4:35-41, Matthew 5: 9

It is one of the most familiar stories in the entire Bible. David and Goliath, the great victory of the little shepherd boy of Israel over the giant Philistine Goliath. Do you remember when you first heard the story? What are your childhood memories of David and Goliath?

In the fourth grade I changed schools. At the insistence of my parents and over my adamant objections I entered St. Albans School for Boys in Washington, DC. It was my father’s school. I had wanted to stay with my friends at my beloved neighborhood school, Woodacres Elementary. The transition was hard. Here we were, all little boys really, but dressed everyday in our blazers and ties, many of us carrying briefcases, like little men or junior lobbyists or lawyers. It was a whole new world. There were no girls and even in fourth grade I knew that was a problem. It was a world of cloistered, musty halls, tradition, compulsory daily chapel, rigorous athletic programs and long hours of homework. Of course, I came to love the place and am forever grateful to my parents for the gift that they gave to me.

One of the worlds this new school opened up for me was the Washington National Cathedral, which was adjacent to the school. In 1964 the Cathedral was still under construction. Near the high altar is St. Mary’s Chapel and I vividly remember standing there with my classmates on more than one occasion, looking up and staring transfixed at the giant Flemish tapestry on the wall. It showed the story of David and Goliath and specifically the triumphant David, after the battle, leading the procession towards an awaiting, adoring crowd in Jerusalem. In his right hand, dangling near his side is the head of Goliath. David is holding it by his hair. In his left hand is Goliath’s huge sword. The image held me in its grip with an abhorrent fascination. As a boy, I loved the story of David and Goliath.

If you go to Amazon.com and perform a “David and Goliath” search, what turns up is over 16,000 results of books, movies, DVDs, action figures, puzzles, coloring books, and clothing. Many of the books are similar to the ones that Kacy found in our own elementary library this week. Here’s one “Five Minute Bible Stories” (twenty stories in all) And on the cover is the painting of David and Goliath, the huge giant on the ground and David’s sling still in his hand. Or this one, “David and Goliath”, which spares no detail “David approached Goliath’s body. He took the giant’s sword and with one swift stroke, cut off his head. “Here is Goliath, our enemy”, cried David as he raised the head high in victory.” It really is a brutal story, isn’t it?

And, of course, the story lives outside the Bible and the family of faith. It has been embraced by the wider culture. So we hear about David and Goliath comparisons when a vastly outmanned football team surprises a power house and wins the game, remember Appalachian State and Michigan two years ago. We hear of David and Goliath in business battles and in litigation when the little guy takes on the dominant market force, or when Mr. Smith goes to Washington. And most of us almost instinctively cheer for the underdog and dream of situations in which we might have the faith and courage to be like David, to stand up to and defeat the Goliaths in our life, whether they are our fears, or forces of injustice and oppression.

In a recent New Yorker magazine, Malcolm Gladwell, author of bestsellers The Tipping Point and Blink has written an intriguing article entitled “How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules.” (The New Yorker, Annals of Innovation, May 11, 2009). In it he focuses on a Northern California junior high girl’s basketball team from Redwood City which made it to the national playoffs despite having considerably less natural talent than most of the opposing teams. How did they do it? By constantly employing the full court press. Other teams who expected an easy walk up the court were surprised and shaken by the constant pressure. They were not prepared for this maneuver and they panicked, committing turnover after turnover and allowing the Redwood City girls easy baskets. David beat Goliath.

Gladwell says this, “David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time.” And then he describes the work of political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft who studied every war fought in the last two hundred years between the weak and the strong (the strong being at least 10 times more powerful). He found that the underdog won almost a third of the time. But here is what was really amazing. He found that when the underdog refused to play by the rules their winning percentage went from 28.5 percent to 63.6 which led Gladwell to conclude that “when underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win... even when everything we think or know about power says they shouldn’t.” (www.newyorker.com, at page 2 of article quoting Arreguin-Toft).

Consider again David and Goliath. David is just a boy, but he is an experienced shepherd who knows how to use the sling. He realizes that Saul’s armor rather than helping him will actually get in the way. “I cannot walk with these; for I am not used to them.” (verse 39) Goliath assumes that any man who comes forward from the armies of Israel will fight by his rules, with the sword at close range. Goliath’s mistake is that in his arrogance and overconfidence he failed to clarify with David the rules of the duel. Goliath is taken totally by surprise. Despite all his armor and weapons, he is unprepared and stunned as David runs towards him. David outsmarted Goliath. David didn’t play by the rules and he prevailed and all Israel celebrated.

Now there is much more going on in the Biblical account. David has already been anointed by the prophet Samuel and as readers we know that he will become the beloved king of Israel. But on the battlefield it is only David who stands for the God of Israel. All the others including King Saul cower in fear of the giant and fail to trust in God’s deliverance. Over and over again in the story, David and only David, invokes the help of the God of Israel. It is David who defends God’s honor. So he shouts to Goliath “I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel who you have defied.”… This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand… so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the lord does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s.”

So David possessed more than just the skill of the deadly sling. He had the weapon of faith as well.

What are we, we who live all these years later, to do with this familiar story? It might after all make a good Father’s Day sermon on faith and courage, bravery in the face of fear. Max Lucado, popular author and preacher has written a book entitled Facing Your Giants in which he spiritualizes our giants: fear, anxiety, failure, addiction. He sums up the lesson of this story as “Focus on giants – you stumble. Focus on God - your giants stumble.” Facing Your Giants, Thomas Nelson Publishers (2006) p.166. And this is an appealing approach.

But I don’t think it is quite as simple as that. You see as Christians we cannot read the Old Testament and this story apart from the New and the person of Jesus Christ. And this is where things get even harder for us.

In the lesson from Mark’s gospel, the disciples are overwhelmed with fear as the waves start to swamp their boat. Jesus is asleep in the stern. They wake him up protesting “Lord, Don’t you care?” and then Jesus declares the command “Peace ! Be still!” Immediately the wind ceases and there is calm. Jesus brought peace to the chaos of the raging sea. Even the wind and the sea obey him. But the truth is that while the wind and sea may obey him we tend not to. Rather, like disciples we exclaim, “Who is this?!”

We say “who is this?!” when we hear Jesus say “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.”

We say “who is this?!” when we hear Jesus say, “You have heard it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in Heaven.”

What in the world are we to do with this? Love your enemies?! Who is this? Most of us would rather stay in David’s world wouldn’t we?

The apostle Paul picks up on the refrain of Jesus in his letter to the Romans, chapter 12 when he writes to the real people in the Church in Rome: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them…do not repay evil for evil… if it is possible so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all…. If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink… Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Jesus and Paul are radically changing the rules on us. Here the weapon of choice to be used against our enemies is neither the sword nor the sling. There is a new weapon and it is nothing other than the love of God.

In the New Testament the word which is most frequently translated the “love of God” is the Greek word “agape.” The Scottish commentator of the last century William Barclay describes agape as “unconquerable benevolence” or “invincible goodwill.” This then is the love we should bear towards all people, even towards those who are our enemies and who seek to do us harm. Daily Study Bible Series, The Gospel of Matthew, Revised Edition. (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, PA 1975) page 173.

Barclay describes the Christian calling of being peacemakers as the highest task in which we can be engaged, for by it we seek the reconciliation of relationships, starting not with world peace out there, but with those closest to us. But he goes on to caution, “Only the grace of Jesus Christ can enable [one] to have this unconquerable benevolence and invincible good will…. It is only where Christ lives in our hearts that bitterness will die and this love spring to life. We need Christ to enable us to obey Christ’s command.” (p175).

Probably the best example of the use of the weapon of love in most of our lifetimes, and it seems so clear in retrospect, is the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s where the leaders of the movement insisted on nonviolent resistance and of expressing Christian love and prayer for those persons and forces that it would have been so easy to hate as “the enemy.”

Tom Long, professor of Preaching at Candler, tells a story which takes us back even further in our collective history. He tells of growing up in South Carolina and as a young boy looking up to the wall of his grandmother’s sitting room and seeing there a genealogy of family photographs. In the middle of them in the central place was “a sepia-toned, civil War-era photograph of a striking young man dressed in a uniform of a Union army officer.” He did not recognize the man. So he asked his grandmother who he was. His grandmother responded “I’ll tell you when you are old enough to understand.”

Long writes:

“Years later, just before she died, she saw me in the sitting room one day, all by myself, gazing at the portrait. She came in, sat down beside me and finally told me the story. The man was a good man, she said, a minister, a chaplain in the Union Army. In May 1862, after the smoke had cleared from the field of battle at Williamsburg, Virginia, this chaplain rode out onto the field on his horse to see if there were any wounded troops who had been left behind, and he came across a nineteen-year-old Confederate soldier, lying wounded and terrified in a ditch. The boy had taken a bullet that had practically severed his leg at the knee, and he was slowly bleeding to death. Feeling compassion, even for the enemy, the chaplain lifted the boy out of the ditch, put him on his horse, and took him to the Union medical tent, where a surgeon amputated his leg at the knee, bandaged him up, and stopped the bleeding saving his life. When the boy was strong enough to travel, this chaplain got together enough money to see that he was sent home to his grateful and relieved parents in South Carolina.”

Well, I am sure you have guessed by now. The nineteen year old wounded soldier was Long’s great-grandfather, the minister was Joseph Twitchell and Long observes that “if Joseph Twitchell had not had the vision and character and compassion…to look in the forlorn ditches for dying people, even for his enemies,” there would be no Tom Long. He concludes “the more that we know of life, the more we know that all that we have is gift, all that we are is grace. Preaching from Memory to Hope, Westminster John Knox Press (2009), pages ix to x.

Well, I wonder, are we old enough to understand? Perhaps it is time to put away childish things, including “an eye for an eye” and our storybook expectations and understandings of life.

“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God” said Jesus.

On this Father’s Day, I hope you will receive God’s grace and agape love for you. I hope you will know that Jesus loves you and that his grace and mercy are as deep and wide as the sea. I hope you will open your heart to this love and to the power of the Holy Spirit.

And I hope you will be a peacemaker and so show that you are a child of the Father. Be ready for battle, yes, but be armed not with the sword or the sling but with the unconquerable love of the son of David, Jesus Christ our Lord, who on the cross made peace for us all.

Thanks be to God!

Alleluia! Amen!