1 Samuel 17:1-49
Summer 2018
I remember hearing about David and Goliath in Sunday school as a child. I didn’t know the context – that the Spirit of the Lord has been removed from Saul and his leadership is faltering, that David has already been anointed by Samuel and the Lord’s favor now rests with him instead.
And so David volunteering sounded…
arrogant, naïve, or impulsive to my little brain and heart.
How does he know he can do it?
Where does that confidence come from...
and how do I get some of it?
I wish I were that brave.
I remember thinking about the hundreds or thousands of soldiers camped out, watching Saul dress David in heavy armor, a silent majority choosing self-preservation instead of the fight. They weren’t managing the situation or coming up with any better ideas. So they sent a little boy to have courage on their behalf.
I heard this as a story about what happens when the grown-ups don’t act like grown-ups. Parents and soldiers and kings can become frozen with fear, quiet in the face of oppression. Do they think they need to have all the answers before they are willing to show up on the front lines? Do they want to feel in control and collected while they battle? I remember hearing this story and thinking about how careful the adults were being - too careful. So careful, it was dangerous for little David. I remember being mad at the grown-ups but also feeling a little sorry for them. The grown-ups were missing out on all the best things: adventure, trust, freedom, and believing in the impossible.
Author and speaker Simon T. Bailey says that most four-year-olds are operating at brilliance levels, their brains full of creative genius and wonder. But by the time those same kids are 17, only 10% of them are operating at brilliance levels. Because by 17, kids have heard NO 150,000 times and YES only 5,000 times. They have been taught to color inside the lines, to sit down, to be quiet, to answer questions according to limited choices a, b, c, and d. To BECOME within the confines of what the grown-ups are willing to imagine.
Society wants us to grow into strong soldiers but also conditions us to hang back, to wait for someone else to prove it is safe or smart or advantageous to act boldly for the sake of our own beliefs and what is good for the whole.
This week, Little David and his slingshot reminded me of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was 24 when he left his rigorous, academic training in Berlin, Germany to study at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. At first, his experience in America was a disappointment. “There’s no theology here,” he reported back to family and friends in Germany. But there was. He was just new to practical theology, moving from very heady coursework to the experiences and relationships that, over time, moved his faith from his head to his heart.
At Union, Bonhoeffer met African American classmates who introduced him to gospel and spiritual music. He began teaching Sunday school in Harlem, learned about the social injustices his students experienced as minorities and started to experience the gospel “from below” – the places of persecution, violence, poverty, and oppression. It changed the way he studied and taught, preached and lived what he believed.
Meanwhile, the Nazi regime was rising in Germany. He saw the way Hitler used Protestant doctrine and Christian scripture to endorse the dehumanization of Jewish people and other minorities. He could have stayed in New York, writing and shouting all the way from Harlem, but instead, he returned to Germany to fight. To speak and preach and write and stand on the lines of injustice. To live the gospel from “down below”. And it’s a good thing.
Because more than 80% of German Christian churches allowed the regime to declare Hitler the leader of the church instead of Jesus Christ. Most of the people showing up for worship on Sunday mornings were singing, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but they were not fighting at all.
Their silence, their fear, and their apathy was waiting on a guarantee they did not have the luxury to wait for. They were like the soldiers camped before Goliath, grown-ups with their hands tied. Unwilling to stand on the line.
Friends in Christ, Christian soldiers, there are plenty of reasons to freeze, to be frightened, to be silent - in every age. But they are not good reasons.
The Spirit of the Lord has always had more than enough soldiers who wait in camp, who hang back for a sign, who rationalize the surrender, who are willing to let a scrappy youth step forward in their place.
Our children are learning this story in Sunday school and in life. They know that the Spirit of the Lord is all set when it comes to a silent majority - adults whose hands are tied, who have already decided it is too hard or complicated, who come pre-programmed with excuses or fear or apathy - who surrender long before they get to the front lines.
Spirit of the Lord needs more Davids, scrappy underdogs
who trust that anointing meant something,
who know they have some skills that might apply,
who are unwilling to let evil go unchallenged,
who believe showing up and speaking up matter
whether they feel in control and collected or not.
This anointing - this sign, this call, this promise -
it requires that we move from our heads to our hearts,
that we believe, like Bonehoeffer, “from down below”
because that’s where God is.
It requires that we do not lose God’s YES
in the pile of NOs that ring in our ears,
that we are not fooled into thinking
we have be to safe or certain before we are brave.
Saul covered David with chain mail and bronze,
but David could not walk in all that stuff. It slowed him down.
It muffled his voice. So David removed the armor and stood
before Goliath as himself - no more and no less –
an ordinary kid marked with a promise, held in God’s favor.
He came forward trusting that he was enough
simply because God had already said so.
Friends in Christ,
What has you frozen this morning?
What has you consumed by fear or apathy or excuses?
What lines to you avoid because you think
there is only one right way to show up?
What are you hoping I name in this sermon
and what are you praying I do not utter?
The Spirit has drawn or dragged you here today to remind you that baptism is the most powerful and holy anointing. You have been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit. Forever!
The world is filled with people who have been fooled into thinking that’s not enough. That it can expire. That it only applies if we look like we have our act together or put on enough bronze to be formidable.
But we are not called to be fools for the world or fools for these lies. No, we are fools for Christ. We are fools for love and for justice, for a God who moves through
the ranks and the chain mail,
the fear and the violence,
the jealousy and the oppression,
every Goliath and King Saul
to find those marks for love and life.
For in Christ, we have been anointed
to proclaim good news to the poor,
release to the captives,
sight to the blind,
freedom to the oppressed,
and God’s extravagant favor for all.
We are not brave out of nowhere. We are anointed - very much on purpose. So may this unbreakable armor give you all kinds of courage for child-like brilliance, for ears to hear God’s YES breaking in, for living the gospel “from down below” and on the front lines today and always. Amen.