First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: I Samuel 17:1-11, 31-40, 48-51
Last Wednesday evening, shortly after darkness descended on the cradle of the Confederacy, the San Diego Padres (great name….“Padres”) adjourned to the clubhouse to celebrate their first National League Pennant in fourteen years, having just achieved it by dispatching the talent-loaded, heavily-favored and seemingly-all-but-invincible Atlanta Braves. Directly ahead, however, waited an even more ominous foe, the Bronx Bombers from the Big Apple (which sounds a whole lot better than merely saying “The New York Yankees”).
But if they were frightened, the Padres weren’t showing it. For in addition to momentum and Tony Gwynn, they had biblical precedent on their side, which surfaced in the words of their champagne-soaked president, Larry Lucchino. Said Larry (from beneath a shower of bubbly): “We feel a little like David going in, ready to sling a few stones at Goliath.”
Well, as a lifelong student of The Book, I appreciated his reference. And as a lifelong hater of the Yankees, I hope he’s right. So let the stones fly. Let the Giant fall. And let the San Diegoans, who already enjoy the best weather in North America, have (at long last) a championship to go along with it.
Interesting, isn’t it, that a baseball executive can evoke images of David and Goliath and all of us know what he is talking about. Jews know. Christians know. Agnostics know. Illiterates know. For the story transcends its setting and transplants a culture which is ignorant of….and (in some cases) hostile to….its origin. Which gives me pause when I consider that I have never preached it. But, better late than never.
The story is a heroic tale, featuring an underdog (who is as unlikely as he is undersized), going up against a foe (who is as fearsome as he is formidable). No way can the underdog win. Except he does. Which doesn’t happen very often. After all, the surest way to go broke is to buck the odds rather than bet them. But when the mini rise up to smite the mighty, how sweet it is.
The story, of course, comes out of Israel in that period where the issue was nothing less than the creation of a monarchy. “Can we find a king? Can we stand a king, once we find him? And if we find a king we can stand, can the king stand?” As you know, there were only three great kings of the monarchy….Saul, David and Solomon. And this is the story of how public sentiment began to slip away from Saul and swing toward David.
For Saul was up against it. Or, more to the point, Saul was up against the Philistines. There they were….fourteen miles west of Bethlehem….poised on one hill. And there Saul’s troops were…. looking across a valley….trembling on another hill. Whereupon a very large warrior emerged from the ranks of the Philistines and shouted across the valley:
Look, let’s save a whole lot of time and spare a whole lot of blood. Let’s go man-to-man instead of army-to-army. I’ll come from this side. You send someone from your side. We’ll meet in the middle. One of us dies. One of us lives. And the winner takes it all.
Which sounded good, until Saul’s army looked more closely at “Mr. Big Mouth.” Which wasn’t his name, of course. His name was Goliath. And he was one big dude. How big? Well, it’s hard to say. Biblical measurements (at least in this narrative) are far from precise. They range from cubits (which represent the distance between the elbow and the tip of the index finger), to spans (which represent the distance between the thumb and the little finger of the extended palm). Depending upon who’s doing the measuring, cubits and spans vary greatly. I’ll go into that more fully on Wednesday night. But for now, let the record show that Goliath had girth to match his mouth. I’ve got a trio of commentaries on my desk that put him at 9’6”. And I’ve got a fourth commentary on my desk that puts him at 6’9”. Ironically, I think the latter commentary is correct….which puts Goliath in the same league with Grant Hill (albeit a bigger, meaner, and better padded 6’9” than Grant Hill).
Much of the padding was body armor, which (if we translate the word “shekels” correctly) weighed in at 125 pounds, 15 ounces. But who’s counting? What is important about the description of Goliath’s armor is not how thickly it covered how much, but what it failed to cover at all. Meaning that the one part of Goliath’s body lacking armor was his forehead. But the text doesn’t tell you that. You have to read between the lines to figure it out.
But on with the story. Goliath thundered. Saul’s army trembled. And everybody tried to figure out how to keep from volunteering or getting volunteered. You know how that works. Lots of you are masters at it. But then David saved everybody’s day (and everybody’s hide) by saying: “David, here….reporting for duty.” Which blew everybody away. Because he wasn’t very old. He wasn’t very big. He wasn’t very experienced. And he wasn’t even a member of the regular army. What he was, was a lute-playing, lullaby-singing shepherd….whose only previous military experience was as a sandwich carrier and message bearer (linking his daddy at home with his brothers at the front).
“You are just a lad,” Saul said (when David volunteered). And, indeed, he was. Which troubled Saul. And which embarrassed Goliath, once he saw who Saul was sending. I mean, if you are figuring to kill somebody, it kind of taints your victory if the kill comes too quickly….or too easily. After all, if all that stood between the Yankees and a World Series title were the Tigers, they might not even show up.
But Goliath showed up….insulted everybody in sight (including David, Saul, Israel and Israel’s God)….and then waited for his opponent. Who came, in time. But when David arrived, he came totally without soldier suit, spear, sword, snub-nosed revolver, or sub-machine gun….because (well, we will return to that in a moment). But he did have a slingshot, five smooth stones and a good aim. Which he used to stun the Giant….knocking him down….knocking him out….but not necessarily knocking him dead. Which shows how much you know (or don’t know) about the story. David didn’t kill Goliath with a slingshot. David killed Goliath with a sword. What he did with his sword is called decapitation. Which was not very nice. But which was very final. Ironically, in the original version of the Jack and the Beanstalk tale, the Giant did not die when Jack cut the beanstalk out from under him, but when Jack cut his head clean off him.
So there you have it. A story for the ages. And a story for the sages. Was it true? Sort of. But who requires absolute accuracy? Still, for the historical purists among us, it is twice suggested (II Samuel 21:19 and I Chronicles 20:5) that a Jewish warrior named Elhanan (one of David’s heroes) slew Goliath. Which means that there were either multiple Goliaths (which was unlikely), or that David’s tribal name was Elhanan (again, unlikely), or that followers of David may have borrowed a story belonging to another Jewish warrior and applied it, retroactively, to their king (considerably more likely).
But don’t get all worked up about that. Israel certainly didn’t. While he was still a young man, David looked heroic and performed heroically. So whether he did this deed….or someone else did this deed….once the deed was done it seemed David-like. And so it has been attributed to him ever since.
What interests me today is neither the “who” of the story, nor the “how” of the story, but the meaning of the story. Which changes, I think, from place to place and from people to people. So what I want to do in the time remaining is address a trio of questions:
1. Why does Israel love this story?
2. Why do children love this story?
3. Why might you love this story?
Israel loves this story because it depicts her experience as a nation. Israel, the underdog. Israel, the undersized. Israel, the nation which has no business being here, but is. Meaning that Israel must have been watched over….or watched out for. By God. Or by somebody. Time after time, Israel was broken into….broken up….broken off….broken in pieces. The quintessential Israeli question begins: “How close did we come to not being here?” And the answer always begins: “Well let me tell you a story.”
Just when we thought there was no hope (and no way), God delivered us from the deluge….from the famine….from the Pharaoh….from the waters of the sea and the sands of the Sinai….from the Canaanites, the Ammonites, the Jebusites, the Hittites, and the Girgishites….from the giants….from the Germans….and from the Jordanians. Against all odds, God made a way for us through the waters (and through the wall) so that we might claim, conquer, inhabit and rule a good land…. a broad land….a land flowing with milk and honey (albeit the only piece of land in the entire Middle East with nary a hint of oil beneath it).
But we almost blew it….almost lost it….almost forgot it….almost turned our back on it….almost had it taken away from us. Which would have happened, were it not for a slew of unlikely heroes, including a man on Social Security named Abraham, a man on the lam from the law named Moses, or a man one step removed from puberty named David.
You get the picture? Of course you get the picture. Israel loves this story because Israel has lived this story. And lives it still….to this very day. What is impossible for Israel to conceive (in 1998) is that, to many parts of the world, Israel is beginning to look more-and-more like Goliath and less-and-less like David.
In a related passage we will examine Wednesday night, Israel is out wandering in the desert. As a people, she has not yet reached the Promised Land. But she is close….close enough to send spies. Which she does. And the spies come back, saying: “Wow, it’s wonderful there. It’s fruitful there. Grapes grow as big as watermelons there. But don’t get your hopes up, ‘cause we’ll never be able to go there. For the land is full of giants. Compared to them, we look like grasshoppers” (Numbers 13:33). At least that’s what ten of them said. But two others issued a minority report, saying (in effect): “Grasshoppers or not, we’ve got a chance.” Which they did. Which they took. And which paid off.
So much for Israel. Let’s turn to the kids. Why do kids love stories like this one….featuring great big giants and little boys who fell them? Because kids live this story, too….that’s why. To be a kid is to live in a land of giants. Kids walk around undersized, trying to fill roles that are too big for them (in a world that is too big for them).
In that vein, I love the little subtlety in the story wherein David tries to walk in Saul’s armor. But he can’t. The stuff is too big and too cumbersome. The suit doesn’t fit him….because the responsibility doesn’t fit him. And notice what David says next. He doesn’t say: “I am too small.” Instead, he says: “I have never practiced”….meaning: “I have no experience at this.” Which is lovely, don’t you see? Because who among us has not, on occasion, been thrust into a role for which we have had no experience. It’s happened to me. And every time it happens, I find myself saying: “What am I doing here? I don’t belong here. Nothing I’ve ever done….ever tried….ever learned….has equipped me to be here.” Which is when I either run like holy hell or pray to holy heaven (which is what David did….at least as I read it).
Even though I am 58 years old, there is still a child in me that feels like a pigmy in a giant-infested world. To this day, I have occasional nightmares which find me waking in a cold sweat because of a great weight sitting on my chest….which I cannot outrun, overthrow, shake off or otherwise subdue. There are giants in my life. And not all of them are friendly. Which brings the matter home to those of us who are neither children nor Israelis, but adults (more or less). What does this little tale have to do with us? I suspect it depends on where we place ourselves in the story.
Some of us identify with Goliath. At least we should. For most of us are “the giant” in somebody else’s world….to whom we seem bigger than life and more ominous than death. We are oversized. They are undersized. Our desires control their destinies. Our actions shape their futures. Our words manipulate their emotions. When we smile, they sing. When we frown, they tremble. When we jerk, they dance. When we sneeze, they run for cover.
It both surprises and undoes me whenever I discover that somebody is afraid of me. Because I don’t have it in me to hurt a fly. But it doesn’t have to “be in me”….you see….if it’s in them. Sometimes people create Goliaths where none exist, and I become the product of their imagination.
Last Wednesday night, I had dinner in Colorado Springs with a colleague from Texas. In the fourth year of his present assignment, he still feels uncomfortable….uneasy….unable to change anything. He believes that little will improve (in his church) until he preaches three funerals…. for three men….all of them, over the age of 75….and each of them named Goliath. They’re out there. Or at least he thinks they’re out there.
Which means that he identifies with David. As others of us do. Undersized. Underarmed. Yet finding a way to use some unique gift.…some unrecognized talent….some “fruit of the spirit”…. to level the playing field. If I can’t subdue you with five smooth stones, perhaps I can subdue you with five stunning sermons (or with something else that I can sling under your skin or into your heart). If I can’t outbox you, outlast you, outshout you or outspend you, maybe I can outlove you….which is how several of my heroes have brought giants to their knees.
But most days, none of this fits. I am neither Goliath nor David….neither giant nor hero. Who am I? I am a buck private in Saul’s army, cowering on yonder hill….hoping that it won’t be me….knowing why it can’t be me….slipping deeper into the crowd….all the while saying: “Would that there was someone who would go in my place….fight in my place….and (if need be) die in my place.” Which sounds cowardly, I know. But it’s also honest….and Christian.
For there was one, wasn’t there, who once went forth for me….lonesomely (as the song says) into that valley, where the shadow is longer than that cast by Goliath, or by Grant Hill for that matter. He, too, went without arms or armor, while I watched from the safety of an adjacent hill.
And he emerged victorious, although I scarcely knew it at the time. Or understand it, even now. But had he not gone where he went….had he not done what he did….I’d still be camped with the cowards, sleeping with the grasshoppers….with the giants calling out during the day, and crushing me by night.
Note: Readers of the text may quarrel with my assertion that Goliath died from decapitation (by a sword) rather than concussion (by a stone). After all, verse 50 of chapter 17 suggests that the stone was sufficient, even though verse 51 adds: “Then David ran and stood over the Philistine, and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him.” The issue is resolvable only when one understands that there were two narratives stitched together to form the present story….one early and one late. The early narrative includes verses 1-11, verses 32-40, verses 42-48a, verse 49, and verses 51-54. Later additions include verses 12-31, verse 41, verse 48b, verse 50, and verses 55-58. Most everyone agrees that verse 50 (supporting death by stoning) belongs with the latter source….meaning that death by decapitation was clearly the position of the earlier narrative.
