Scripture: 1 Samuel 17:41-47; 1 Corinthians 1:23-25; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10; 1 Samuel 18:7; 1 Samuel 18:25-27 Series: 2021
A sermon in the ‘Songs of the Bible’ series on 1 Samuel 17:41-47. After opening with the Texas A&M 12th-man story and a depiction of how untrained ancient soldiers really were, the preacher notes we usually identify with underdog David because of the power asymmetry all children feel. He flips the story: what if we are Goliath, the one wielding power to harm? Tracing the arc from Samson through David, Solomon, and the prideful kings into exile, he argues we are all part-David, part-Goliath, which is why we confess. The true power of David lies not in his skills but in his weakness, where God’s power shows, just as the cross is weakness to the world yet the power that defeats the Goliath of death. He calls the congregation to be willing to be weak, to confess, and to forgive together.
Illustrations: texas-am-12th-man-e-king-gill, grandfather-john-huebel-aggie-1940, liam-neeson-taken-particular-skills, lieutenant-french-placeholder-etymology, samson-jewish-goliath, david-jerusalem-idf-six-day-war, david-two-hundred-foreskins-michal, teacher-quote-no-regrets-not-human
July 18
David and Goliath
The Philistine got closer and closer to David, and his shield-bearer was in front of him. When the Philistine looked David over, he sneered at David because he was just a boy; reddish brown and good-looking. The Philistine asked David, “Am I some sort of dog that you come at me with sticks?” And he cursed David by his gods. “Come here,” he said to David, “and I’ll feed your flesh to the wild birds and the wild animals!” But David told the Philistine, “You are coming against me with sword, spear, and scimitar, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel’s army, the one you’ve insulted. Today the Lord will hand you over to me. I will strike you down and cut off your head! Today I will feed your dead body and the dead bodies of the entire Philistine camp to the wild birds and the wild animals. Then the whole world will know that there is a God on Israel’s side. And all those gathered here will know that the Lord doesn’t save by means of sword and spear. The Lord owns this war, and he will hand all of you over to us.” 1 Samuel 17:41-47
Some of, you know that I grew up in College Station, Texas, where there is this small, higher educational institution. It shoots off cannons on Saturdays during a good year. Our house was a few blocks away from Kyle Field and I went to Aggie games all throughout childhood. My grandfather was an Aggie class of 1940. He was there when they won the national championship and the bonfire was a junk pile. My grandfather, John Huebel, was dropped off in the middle of the night at the train station and he didn’t know where he was going in the dark. When the sun came up, he realized that he still had two more miles to walk to get to the university. Most Aggies you meet are really excited about A&M. A few Aggies are two percenters, but most are not. Many go to fish camp before school in order to enter into the story and glory of what it means to be an Aggie, as well, the different hand signals for games and who can stand and who can sit during which quarter and the importance of the 12th man, and the story of the 12th man, as well. It is a great story.
On Jan. 2, 1922, the heavily outgunned Aggies were facing the top-ranked Centre College Praying Colonels on the gridiron in the Dixie Classic in Dallas. An Aggie by the name of E. King Gill, a squad player for Texas A&M’s football team, was up in the press box helping reporters identify players on the field below — and what was happening on the field wasn’t pretty.
The Aggies found themselves plagued by injuries, with their reserves seemingly dwindling with every play. As Texas A&M Coach Dana X. Bible looked across his rapidly emptying bench, he suddenly remembered Gill’s presence in the stands. Bible waved Gill down to the sideline and told him to suit up. Gill ran under the bleachers and put on the uniform of injured running back Heine Weir, who had been knocked out of the game in the first quarter. Gill returned to the sideline, where he stood ready to play for the entirety of the game. When the last play was run, the Aggies found that they had pulled off one of the greatest upsets in college football history, winning the game 22-14. And Gill remained standing, the only player left on the team’s bench.
The idea is that anybody could be the 12th man. If you’re willing and ready, coach could call you in. In some ways, this is how the story of David and Goliath has been read and taught. It is a familiar story. It is an easy story to teach. You may not be Goliath, or as big as Goliath, but you can be David. You can have the power of God.
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on songs of the Bible that looks through the scriptures in a way guided and retold in music. There are a lot of explicit songs in the Bible, but it all can be turned into song. For God’s love for us is so great that we cannot help but sing.
Today, David and Goliath.
David was a boy, for sure. He was small compared to the other soldiers who were afraid of the big man, Goliath, but like Liam Neeson in the movie, Taken, David had a particular set of skills that helped him in this enterprise. As a shepherd, he was not afraid of lions and wolves. He had fought them off. He protected his flock without swords. He practiced and honed his craft, but, still, a fully armored warrior is a frightening thing. It’s a scary thing. It should be. That’s the whole point. Ancient armor was as much about scaring your enemy as protecting your insides. There weren’t any regular armies in the ancient world, not until the Roman legions only a few hundred years before the birth of Christ. All the fighters in all the armies did other stuff the rest of their time. They were called for war when it was deemed necessary by the lords of the land, but they were farmers and craftsmen, first. They weren’t trained for battle beyond a few cursory instructions. Stick them with the pointy end, something like that. They weren’t, for the most part, battle hardened. They weren’t used to seeing metal in front of them aimed at their death. This is very, very different than it was for those of you who fought for our country. Going through basic training would have been an incredible luxury for soldiers of David’s time. Even a week of just getting used to all the rules, getting your body in shape, getting your mind in shape, learning to have unit identity, all these basic things that happen in modern military training. How to use your tools of war, how to meet objectives. As well, there wasn’t really an officer Corps in the ancient world. This is why folks were sitting around the tent talking about how scary Goliath looked. “He’s really big and scary. I don’t want to fight him.” “I don’t want to either.” There were so-called generals like Abner and others lifted up as heroes, but for the most part, they would have been the literal meaning of Lieutenant, which in French means place-holder. Lieu means place, tenir, is to take or to hold. Lieutenant, Place-taker or place holder. Somebody needs to tell the poor fools where to go, so it might as well be you. A few hundred years after the time of David, the Greeks and the Persians brought tactics and strategy to war in ways never seen before, then there is Alexander the Great and Hannibal and Scipio Africanus and Julius Caesar. But for the most part, soldiers in the Army of King Saul are just these dudes trying to survive. Dudes who are told that if they don’t fight for this guy, they’re going to be killed. And if they do fight, they’ll probably still be killed. Almost every injury was also a death sentence due to field medicine at the time. David was a boy who came to bring rations for his brothers and he had a certain set of skills. When others were afraid and did nothing, David stood for God and defeated the giant. David and Goliath is a powerful story and a powerful song for children because there is this power asymmetry that everyone feels. All children feel it. For the child, there are always people bigger than you. You know, to be a child is to come to grips with a deep power asymmetry, realizing that you are not as powerful as the people around you. All grownups are more powerful than you. Even when you get larger, there are people more powerful than you. Some of the challenge of adulthood is understanding and realizing your own limitations in that. No matter your profession, no matter your field, there are people more powerful than you in different ways. I mean, you may be the richest person you know, but there are people who have other abilities or, they have youth, or they have other gifts or different things like that. The universe is not balanced. If someone you know is gifted in one thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are gifted in another.
We understand that there are David’s and that there are Goliaths and we often see ourselves more like David. We’re drawn to the story because of these power asymmetries.
But there is another way to hear and understand the story of David and Goliath. Instead of the Davids, what if we are the Goliaths? It’s one thing to hear the story and to be like, “yeah, I am like David and I can be powerful.” It’s another thing to read this story and say, “oh my gosh, what if I am Goliath? Yes. What if I am the one with the power here? What if I am the one with the strength? What if I am using this power to harm others?” The story of David and Goliath comes after the story of Samson in the book of Judges, Samson, who was a Nazarite, who was pledged to God to never cut his hair or drink, but was given amazing strength and, for example, was able to kill a thousand people with the jaw bone. of a donkey. Samson, in some ways, could be seen as the Jewish Goliath. He is eventually taken down by his pride. He has been given gifts by God, but he’s too proud and blinded by them. The story of David does not end in David and Goliath. David turns into a great strategist and a great general in his own right. People chant Saul has slain his thousands but David his ten thousands. David later captures Jerusalem from the Kidron Valley in the south, a feat that is not repeated until the IDF took the city from the same side in the Six Days War. After David and Goliath, Saul becomes jealous and tries to get David killed and so he gives him these impossible tasks in order to marry Saul’s daughter, Mikel, Saul says that you need to cut off 100 foreskins of the enemy. And David cuts off 200 foreskins, and puts them in a bag, the most disgusting bag I can imagine, and gives them to Saul. So weird stuff going on. Eventually, the pride of David ruins him. His son, Solomon, becomes king and does great things. Solomon builds the Temple, but the pride of Solomon ruins him, as well. And then, pretty much all of the heirs of Solomon are really bad. The books of Kings and second Chronicles are filled with Kings of Israel who who are filled with pride, who are Goliaths. Instead of sending another warrior to fight them, God sends prophets like Elijah, like Jeremiah and Isaiah. All of it ultimately ends in the exile to Babylon and Assyria. Few of us are all Davids or all Goliaths. We all have moments of righteousness and moments of thirsts for power. This is one of the reasons why we practice the prayer of confession in our early service, and why we believe in the power of confession. We realize that mistakes will be made.
We are going to distort God’s gifts in some way. It’s going to happen. As a teacher of mine wrote, “Someone who has no regrets is someone not fully human and certainly someone not much formed as a Christian.” We can lie to ourselves about it or we can confront that reality. And the question is, what are we going to do about it? Just like the question is not if you’re going to get knocked down in life, but how fast you’ll get back up again. This life is going to knock us down. This life is going to give us challenges that are not as clear as David and Goliath. There will be enemies that are not as clear as the Philistines and people willing to make direct confrontations like that. This life is filled with ambiguity, with challenges below the surface. This life is filled with moments when we, ourselves, are our greatest enemy. We need to remember that the power of David is not in his guile or his tricks as a shepherd or his experience with fighting lions and wolves. It is not his particular set of skills. The power of David is in his weakness. Let me say that again. The power of David is in his weakness because in that very weakness, we see the power of God. In that willingness to be weak, we see the power of God. As Paul says, though I am weak, he is strong and I boast not in myself, but in the cross of Jesus Christ, it is foolishness to the Greeks. But to me, it is the power of God. The cross is a sign of weakness to the world. Jesus was arrested. He was beaten. He was mocked. He was killed in a crude way by cruel people, yet the Goliath of death was defeated. My brothers and sisters, let us be willing to be weak together. Let us be willing to accept help together. Let us be willing to accept forgiveness together. Let us be willing to confront those moments when we actually are Goliath, or when we are David, let us not be proud, let us confess, let us forgive. Let us seek the love of God.
In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.