Dead Dogs

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

2 Samuel 9:1-13; John 13:34-35

January 26, 2014 • Portage First UMC

Some of the predictions have become legendary. Some remind us that we are often very short-sighted people. When we try to assess a situation or evaluate a person, how often do we simply get it wrong? One man was told he was “too stupid to learn anything” and that he should find a place of work where he might succeed “by virtue of his pleasant personality.” That man, Thomas Alva Edison, went onto create many things we use today, including the light bulb. Another similar man, who had been unable to talk until he was four years old, was told by his teachers that he would "never amount to much.” I wonder where those teachers were when Albert Einstein won a Nobel prize? Abraham Lincoln failed in business, had a nervous breakdown and was defeated in eight elections before becoming president of the United States. Decca Recording Studios did not offer the Beatles a recording contract because “guitar music is on its way out” and the Beatles had no future in show business. Oprah Winfrey was told she “wasn’t fit for television,” and a Yale University professor told Fred Smith, who wrote a paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service, “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” Smith went on to eventually found FedEx and revolutionize the way packages are delivered.

Famous failures. Spectacular misses. We might chuckle at them, maybe even shake our head in astonishment, but then we might also remember the times when we have been told or when we have believed that we didn’t or wouldn’t amount to anything. Most of us go through times when we believe what someone else has said: that we are worthless, that we are nothing, and that no one has any value for us. For some of us, especially men, we get tied up in our work. Our job becomes, in many ways, our identity. And then the job goes away. We’re downsized, or replaced, or even just threatened, and suddenly our value seems to decrease. If we can’t produce, do we matter? Some of us place our identity with our children, our families. So what happens then when our children stray, when they get in trouble, when there is a breach in a relationship? What happens to our value then? Do we believe the voices we hear? Our worth, our importance, our value—all of this often comes from external sources. We tie up who we are with what we have, what we can do, what we can earn, and many other factors. So what happens, then, when that goes away? What do we do then?

This morning, as we continue our look at the life of David, we want to look at a story that takes place shortly David finally becomes king of all Israel. Throughout these messages, we’ve been looking to see how David lives a life that follows after God’s own heart, how his faith and his trust in God applies in real life, and this morning we want to see how he models the kind of love God has for each of us. Now, David is not some stained-glass saint, or just a picture in the Sunday School book. David is a real man, with real challenges and real temptations, but what sets him apart is that his identity and his value comes from God first and foremost.

Now, when last we met David, he was still wandering in the wilderness, trying to outwit the current king, Saul, who wanted to kill him. Saul, you see, had messed up and had been rejected as king by God, and David had been chosen to be the next king. But, as we’ve looked at the last couple of weeks, David did not try to take Saul’s throne away from him. In fact, he was pretty adamant about not doing that, about not harming Saul. Saul did not return that favor. For a long time, he hunted David in the Judean wilderness, while at the same time fighting against a people who lived along the coast called the Philistines. It was in the midst of one of those battles that Saul was critically wounded. He knows he’s not going to live, but he doesn’t want to be captured and, probably, tortured by the Philistines, so he begs his armor bearer, a man he probably trusted more than anyone else, to kill him. The armor bearer refuses, so Saul summons up the strength and falls on his own sword. The Philistines also managed to kill Saul’s son and David’s best friend, Jonathan, along with Saul’s other two sons. When the Philistines take their bodies and hang them on the wall of the city of Beth Shan to humiliate them, some brave Israelites make a raid and take the bodies down in order to give them a decent burial.

So David becomes king when Saul is killed, and the book of 2 Samuel begins with several chapters of political intrigue and battles between the remnants of those loyal to Saul and David, and once that battle is done, David goes on to defeat the Philistines, to basically reduce them to just a small nation in a few cities along the coast. When that’s all done, David becomes king over all of Israel, and God promises him he will have a descendant on the throne forever. Once David is firmly established in power, the “undisputed king” (Youngblood, “1, 2 Samuel,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 3, pg. 916), we come to the story we read today, the story of a young man named Mephibosheth.

His name means “One Who Scatters Shame,” and since names had great importance in ancient Israel, you have to wonder why his parents would have given him a name like that. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe it’s only later he took that name for himself, because Mephibosheth’s story is not a happy one. He first shows up back in one verse of 2 Samuel 4, where, in the midst of the battle between David’s forces and Saul’s loyalists, Mephibosheth is among those of Saul’s family who decide it’s a good idea to flee the palace. Mephibosheth is five years old at the time, and we’re told his nanny picked him up to run with him, but he “fell,” which I assume means she dropped him as they hurried away from the palace. The end result of that accident is that Mephibosheth’s ankles are both broken. He never walks right again. In their haste to flee, he doesn’t get the medical treatment he needs and he is disabled for the rest of his life (2 Samuel 4:4). Is that when he came to be known as “Shame-Scatterer”? Was that what others told him about himself? He was once grandson of the king, now he’s “Shame Scatterer.” How the mighty fall, so quickly!

Fast forward a few years, Mephibosheth is an adult, still lame in both of his feet, hiding out in a town called Lo Debar, at someone else’s house. A royal son in exile. A king’s grandson in hiding in a place far from the current capital in a town known as “No word, no communication.” Lo Debar was a place where the last of Saul's loyalists had settled, so it’s a place that would feel fairly safe to Mephibosheth. They were out of range of the new king’s word. Or so they thought, until the day when some of David's soldiers show up asking for the son of Jonathan. Can you imagine the fear that must have enveloped Mephibosheth when he's told David has sent people to find him? And yet, what choice does he have except to go with them? He can’t run away. He's not likely to be protected by anyone in town; they may have been loyal to Saul, but they weren’t stupid. It wasn’t worth their lives to try to protect this “Shame Scatterer,” this young man who will never be king. So Mephibosheth is loaded up, presumably on a cart or horse, and taken back to David’s capital, Jerusalem. It seems he is not told anything about what David wants, because when he gets to the palace, he seems even more afraid. It would be expected that the new king would do everything he could to get rid of all of the family of the previous king. I think Mephibosheth expects to die when he goes before David, but just in case he might be able to save himself, he bows down low and pays David honor. Some translations say he “worships” David (9:6).

What Mephibosheth doesn’t know, though, is that long before he was born, David made a promise to his father. They made a covenant, a promise of loyalty and love to each other. Jonathan knew David was his replacement. He knew that David would be king instead of him, and yet he asked David, “Show me unfailing kindness like the Lord’s kindness as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family” (1 Samuel 20:14-15). David had promised Jonathan that sort of kindness, and even though he would have been expected to take out his vengeance on all of Saul’s family, he chose to live by his promise. That’s why he has invited Mephibosheth to the palace—to show kindness to him for the sake of his father, Jonathan (9:1). In fact, he goes way beyond mere kindness and shows extravagant generosity. He gives Mephibosheth back all of his grandfather’s land, puts Saul’s servant Ziba in charge of managing it, and welcomes Mephibosheth into the palace to live. Specifically, he says Mephibosheth shall eat at the king’s table for the rest of his life. In essence, David makes Mephibosheth a son of the king (Birch, “The First and Second Books of Samuel,” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. II, pg. 1274). The end of the passage we read this morning finds Mephibosheth continually eating at the king’s table (Youngblood 919). Not a bad life for someone who considered himself a “dead dog.”

Yes, that’s the description he gives of himself earlier in the passage: “dead dog.” That’s what he believes about himself. It’s not enough that he has been given or taken the name “Shame Scatterer.” He considers himself worse than useless. When David tells him what he plans to do, Mephibosheth asks, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?” (9:8). Some will say that’s simply false humility, but I don’t think so. I think Mephibosheth really had come to see himself as someone who wasn’t worth living, someone who was in essence already dead, someone who was somehow less than human. He was the grandson of a deposed king, one who had killed himself no less. He had a less than positive name. He was in the wrong political party for the days he was living in—on the wrong side of the aisle, we might say. He had no land, no home, nothing to his name, and he couldn’t even walk right. He could not remember when he had been well; he had always been lame, always had something wrong with him, always had people pitying him. In his mind, he was indeed just a “dead dog,” of no use to anyone.

And it’s largely because of that that I don’t think David did what he did as a political move. Some commentators suggest what David does here is an example of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” David could be seen as putting the last heir of Saul’s kingdom in a place where he can keep an eye on him (cf. Youngblood 919). Perhaps David’s purpose is to put Mephibosheth basically on house arrest. But I don’t think so. David didn’t have to do this. Mephibosheth is really no threat to him at all. He’s lame. He’s not likely to rally an army. No one is going to look to him for leadership. No, David treats Mephibosheth with kindness because he made a promise to his father, a promise that is summed up in the Hebrew word hesed. This is not a move that’s about power; it’s about honor, loyalty and faithfulness. It’s about valuing Mephibosheth as a real person. And more than that, it’s about doing what God would have David do.

We’ve talked about that word hesed before. It’s a word that is difficult to translate, because its meaning is so much bigger than any one word. Some of your Bibles will translate it as “lovingkindness,” a compound word that was basically created to try to define this huge concept. The best definition of hesed is this: when the one who owes you nothing gives you everything. When the one who owes you nothing gives you everything. Think about that for a moment. Hesed is about loyalty and love, about honor and faithfulness. It’s not about power, and it’s not about equality. It’s about mirroring God’s love for us into the world, helping people see themselves as God sees them. Hesed is about justice and righteousness. It’s about doing what is right, not just what benefits us, not just what benefits a small group. It’s about loving another person just because they are, not because of what they have done. In the Old Testament prophets, who preached many years after David, later kings are routinely called on the carpet because they fail to practice hesed. They fail in the area of faithfulness, in doing what is right for all the people (Goldingay, 1 & 2 Samuel for Everyone, pg. 138). Too often, we think “justice” is what will benefit us. We measure “justice” and “righteousness” by our own standards. But in the Bible, those concepts are always rooted in love, in covenant faithfulness. And, most of all, they are rooted in the way God loves us, dead dogs that we are.

You see, we are Mephibosheth in this story. We may not be physically lame (or we may be), and we may not have an unpronounceable name, but we are all Mephibosheth. We come here, and we stand in the presence of a king who could destroy us. We stand in the presence of a God whom we repeatedly offend because of our sin. We are “Shame Scatterer,” just about as useful as a dead dog in his presence. We forget that. We too often treat God as a buddy, or the being we’ve created in our own image. Because the most popular idol in our culture is ourself, we don’t like to think this way. We come to worship and we seek to create a God whom we like, who thinks like us. “The God we seek is the God we want, not the God who is. We fashion a god who blesses us without obligation, who lets us feel his presence without living his life, who stands with us and never against us, who gives us what we want, when we want it. We worship a god of consumer satisfaction…” (Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship, pgs. 120, 127-128 iBooks version). One of the reasons Christians often neglect the Old Testament is because we have this idea that the Bible presents two gods: an Old Testament god of wrath and a New Testament god of love. But the reality is this: the Biblical God is both. He is the God who could fry us. He has the power to do with us as he pleases, just as David did with Mephibosheth. So why don’t we bow down to him in worship and honor like Mephibosheth did toward David? Why do we tend to re-create him in our own image, to think he won’t hold us accountable? The other side is true as well, though. God always acts with hesed toward us because he chooses to. He is the one who owes us nothing but gives us everything. As my Old Testament professor, Dr. John Oswalt, put it: “The God who could fry you loves you.” That’s the amazing thing Mephibosheth learns. The king who could kill him shows love toward him, values him. Mephibosheth knows David doesn’t have to show him kindness, and yet David still does. And even though God doesn’t have to love us, he still does. He loves us enough that he sent his son to save us from our sins, to make it possible for us to be with him one day. He is the king who could destroy us but instead makes a place for us at his table—and invites us to dine there forever. Just because we are, we’re invited to the king’s table.

You know, it’s been sort of a rough week around here. Between Pastor Deb and I, we’ve had four funerals this week. We both started and ended the week saying goodbye to people we loved. And sometimes when I lead a funeral, I sort of think about and wonder how the person whose life we are celebrating reacted the first moment they saw the King’s table, the place we’re told no one can really imagine (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:9; Revelation 19:19). I try sometimes, to imagine it that is, and then I begin to wonder if that’s why the Bible tells us we will worship constantly in the kingdom of God. When we see what God has prepared for us, our only response can be worship, bowing down as Mephibosheth did in front of David. That’s part of why I love that song, “I Can Only Imagine,” because it reminds me that I can’t really begin to imagine what God has prepared for those he calls his children.

On the last night Jesus spent with his disciples, those disciples didn’t realize it but they were, quite literally, sitting at the King’s table. Jesus had gathered them for one final meal before his crucifixion, and when you know you have only a short time let, you tend not to focus on trivia. You want to talk about and share only the most important things. And so, that night, around the King’s table, Jesus shared many things, and he reminded the disciples, his best friends, that he loved them beyond anything they could imagine. Meanwhile, those same disciples were busy fighting about who was the greatest, who loved Jesus more (cf. Luke 22:24). Can you imagine them sitting around the table saying, “Jesus loves me best”? Their identity, their value was tied up in what others thought of them. Like we are so often, they were in the presence of the one who loves them without condition, and they’re focused on themselves, on their position, on their “greatness.” As Jesus sits there at the table, he shows them his love for them, but it’s clear they haven’t yet really let Jesus love them. He knows them, but they've failed to know who he is. It’s a little bit like this. Take a listen.

VIDEO: Fishing Fanatic

When we only know about Jesus rather than knowing him, experiencing him, we’re cutting ourselves off from real life. And yet, that’s where so many are today. There are a lot of folks, even people in churches, who know about Jesus, who know about the King, but they don’t know him. There are a lot of folks like Mephibosheth, who know about the king, but don’t really know him. I wonder if that's any of us here today. Jesus offers us unconditional love, love with no strings attached, something we can get nowhere else in our world. Even though we are like “dead dogs,” to use Mephibosheth’s language, he loves us still, and he invites to come and dine at the king’s table. When I was growing up, my pastor used to often say that he did what he did in order to make sure that people didn’t end up 18 inches out of God’s kingdom. That’s the distance, roughly speaking, from head to heart, from knowing about Jesus to knowing Jesus, to having a relationship with him. It’s sort of like when I went off to college, and my next-door neighbor in the dorm invited me to go into town with him. I didn’t have a car (freshmen couldn’t have cars on campus then), but he knew someone, this girl, who had a car because she lived off campus. That I was the first time I met Cathy. And I heard about her, and I learned some things about her, but I can’t imagine my life if all my knowledge about Cathy had stayed in the head. Eventually, I asked her to go to a movie with me, and even though she asked questions during the movie (she’s learned not to do that, though my kids haven’t yet), I still asked her out again. And I came to not just know about Cathy but to know her because we spent time together. We learned to love each other. My knowledge of her moved from head to heart. That’s what it means to have a relationship with Jesus. We spend time with him at his table, reading the Bible, worshipping with other Christians, and praying. There comes a point, then, where we have to decide to move from our knowledge about Jesus to knowledge of Jesus. From head to heart. Experiencing first-hand his love, his invitation to come to the table and eat forever. Do you know Jesus or do you just know about him?

That last night he was with the disciples, Jesus showed them, John says, “the full extent of his love” (13:1, NIV 1984). He knelt down and washed their feet, and he told them to do the same to others (13:14). Through acts such as that, Jesus said, others would know that we are his followers. Our response to the extravagant love he has poured out on us is to show love in practical acts of servanthood to others. That was King David’s attitude from the beginning. The very first question he asks in this chapter is this: “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” (9:1). Who can I show kindness to? Who can I show love, hesed, to? The way we demonstrate that the love of Christ lives within us is to turn around and love the Mephibosheths of this world, to love those who may be overlooked, who may be forgotten, who might even be someone we don’t like all that much. No matter what they do to us, we’re called to love them.

When we were in Israel in 2012, one of the things I was most looking forward to was an evening excursion underground, being able to see the original walls of the Temple mount, the walls that King Herod built to make the Temple complex larger. At the Western Wall, you can see some of those stones, but much of the original wall is now underneath other stuff. So we came at dusk to go through the tunnels, and our guide approached the guards, showing them our tickets, but they refused him entrance. They told him we would have to wait for no apparent reason. Mike, our guide, walked back over to our group and commented, “This is why I don’t like coming here.” Mike, you see, is a Palestinian Christian. He is a native of Jerusalem, which makes him a citizen of Israel, but even within that nation, there is a sharp divide between those who have power and those who do not. The guards decided they would push Mike a little bit because he isn’t “one of them.” To them, he’s a Mephibosheth, an outcast. It’s hard for us—at least I hope it’s hard for us—to imagine such treatment, but there it was, right in front of us. Eventually, we did get to go through the tunnels, and I was impressed that Mike, who could have responded in anger and bitterness (it obviously wasn’t the first time he had been treated this way), chose not to. Instead, he chose to respond in a loving manner.

David reminds us that no one is really a “dead dog.” Everyone matters, even the Mephibosheths of the world—especially the Mephibosheths of the world. Who can I show kindness to? If we have received the love and the welcome of the king, our calling is then to share that love and that welcome with others. And that’s hard. It’s very hard, sometimes. There are people who are hard to love. There are people we don’t want to love. That’s why Jesus didn’t give us a choice. He didn’t say, “Love others if you want to, if you feel like it.” No, Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (13:34-35). He didn’t say, “A new suggestion I give you.” He didn't say, “Here’s a good idea, what do you think?” He gave us a command. And commands aren’t only followed when you feel like it. Commands are followed until new orders come in. So far, our calling hasn’t changed. To follow Jesus is to love the outcast, the stranger, the enemy, the one you don’t like, the one who irritates you to no end, the Mephibosheths.

Don’t you imagine that there were days when Mephibosheth only reminded David of all that he had lost, of the loss of his best friend, of the many years he lost as we wandered in the wilderness trying to avoid Saul? Do you think there were days when he was tempted to throw Mephibosheth out on his ear? I do. You see, I love this story because I need it. I love this story because it reminds me of my calling to love the Mephibosheths of the world. I love it because it reminds me that no matter what happens to me, I’m called to love the “unpromising stranger” and to keep loving that person no matter what (cf. Peterson, Leap Over a Wall, pg. 179).

Tony Campolo tells the story of walking down the street in Philadelphia about noon when he noticed a bum walking toward him. The man was covered from head to toe with dirt and soot, and there was dirt caked on his skin. He had a beard that hung down to his waist with food caught in it, and he was holding a cup of McDonald’s coffee. He was staring into the cup as he walked toward Campolo, when suddenly he looked up and said, “Hey, mister, you want some of my coffee?” Campolo says he really didn’t, but he also didn’t feel he could reject the man’s generosity, so he accepted a sip of the coffee. When he handed the cup back to the man, Campolo said, “You’re being pretty generous, aren’t you, giving away your coffee? What’s gotten into you today that’s made you so generous?” The old man stared into Campolo’s eyes and said, “Well, I figure if God gives you something good, you ought to share it with people!” Campolo smiled, thinking he’d been set up. He figured the next thing was that the man would ask for five dollars in return from the coffee. “I suppose there’s something I can do for you in return, isn’t there?” he asked. The man said, “Yeah, you can give me a hug!” Campolo said he would have rather given him five dollars, but he put his arms around the man, and they stood there for what seemed like forever. Tony Campolo in a suit, the bum in ragged clothing, and just as Campolo began to feel really uncomfortable, he heard in his heart the words of Jesus: “If you did it to the least of these, you did it to me” (Tell Me a Story, pgs. 29-30). He might just as easily have heard the words from John’s Gospel: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (13:35).

How will you respond to Jesus today? Will you let him love you, let him welcome you to the King’s table? Will you let him tell you who you are rather than others? And will you love others in response to his love, no matter what they are like? Will you love them just because they are? Every time we love like that, the kingdom of God grows. Let’s pray.

Enemy In Your Hands

Sermon Study Guide is here.

1 Samuel 24:1-12; Matthew 4:1-11

January 12, 2014 • Portage First UMC

There is a word we throw around in church circles that seems to mean different things to different people. The word is “holiness,” and whether we realize it or not, that word is a huge part of our heritage as Methodist Christians. John Wesley, our founder, early on in his life was part of a group of young men at Oxford called “The Holy Club,” and they met regularly to hold each other accountable for particular spiritual practices. I was part of a similar group when I was in seminary. Groups like that at least in part tend to define “holiness” as a certain set of practices, things we “do”: prayer, Bible reading, fasting and so on. Part of the reason we are called Methodists is because John Wesley was so “methodical” in his practice of those spiritual disciples. But is that all there is to holiness?

Another word some might use to describe holiness is “rigid." For some, holiness can mean a list of rules and regulations that divide Christians from others. In the “holiness movement” of the 19th century, there were certain sins that were to be avoided if you were going to be a “good Christian.” You didn’t drink or smoke or go to dances—and women were to always were dresses. I’m not sure how that makes you holy, but there are still groups that define holiness in that way—a list of rules. And it’s because of that sort of definition that many who consider themselves “outside” the faith see Christians as judgmental. In other words, they perceive us as people who are only concerned about whether others are following our list of rules, and if they aren’t, we “judge” them or condemn them. There’s a huge part of our culture that sees Christians that way. You’ve probably had people tell you that Christians are just judgmental, that we're overly concerned with rules.

There are, of course, other ways we use the word “holy.” There is a land in the Middle East we call “holy,” not because the land is any different than land you would find elsewhere but because of what happened there in history. There are people we think of as “holy”—in some traditions (not ours!), religious leaders are referred to as “Your Holiness.” There are other places that are thought of as “holy,” including sanctuaries and church buildings. And there are holy moments that come in our lives—special times in worship or at church camp or a big event. I know, for me, one of the holiest times in my life is the first time I walked through Jerusalem and found my heart strangely connected to that place, those streets where Jesus walked. It wasn’t the place so much as what happened there. And then we use the word in other ways: “Holy Cow,” “Holy Moley,” and I remember one man who hit his thumb on a mission trip and desperately wanted not to cuss, so he cried out, “Holy Moses and Joseph!”

But what does “holiness” really mean? When the Bible tells us to “be holy, as God is holy” (cf. 1 Peter 1:16), what does that mean? How can we live the way God calls us to live in the midst of everyday “real life”? We began looking at that question last week by exploring the life of David, and if you missed it, the sermon is online for you to listen to. We began last week exploring David and Goliath, facing the giants in our lives. Many of you named your giant last week on these canvases and prayed for the strength to take them on. But, as I said then, Goliath may have the largest physical giant David took on, he wasn’t the only giant David had to face. This week, in our reading, David is older. He knows he’s been chosen as the next king of Israel, and so does the current king, Saul. David is best friends with Saul’s son, Jonathan, but Saul wants David dead. He sees him merely as a threat to the throne, even though David has made no move against Saul. So David has fled to the wilderness and gathered a group of fighting men around him. He’s sort of a vigilante or hero for hire there in the Judean wilderness. And yet, all the time, he’s really running from and hiding from Saul. Saul has become an enemy. In some ways, Saul is more threatening to David than Goliath was. You see, Goliath was an identified enemy. He was a Philistine, who routinely fought against Israel. Saul is different. He is someone David looked up to, someone David worked for, someone David respected at least because of his office but actually because of his deep friendship with Jonathan and because Saul is David’s father-in-law; David married Saul’s daughter, Michal (1 Samuel 18:27). Saul is someone whom David should have been able to trust, and yet David is there in the wilderness fleeing for his life from the murderous intent of King Saul. And in the midst of that flight, he arrives at a place called En Gedi. There, in the wilderness, David gives us a glimpse of what holiness really looks like.

On my two previous visits to Israel, we had driven by En Gedi on our way to and from Masada, but in 2012, we took the time to stop at this oasis in the middle of the desert. And it is one of the few green spaces in that part of the country. With your back to En Gedi, you face the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth, a place where the water is so thick with minerals you cannot sink. Even a non-swimming like me can float in the water! Turn your back to the Dead Sea and you can view one of only two freshwater springs along the hills around the Sea. Most of the springs in that area are tainted with sulphur or salt, but the water at En Gedi flows clear and clean (Knight, The Holy Land, pg. 53). So it was and is a refuge in that inhospitable environment. The day we were there, it was hot. In fact, it was beyond hot. We had already been to Masada, where at 8:00 a.m. it was already over 80 degrees and still climbing. And yes, it’s a dry heat, but it’s still hot. I don’t know what the temperature was when we arrived at En Gedi, but as we started walking through the nature preserve and up toward the spring, the heat was overpowering and it made us long to get to the cool, clear water at the top. In fact, the water felt so good, so refreshing, this picture shows how happy Rachel in particular was to put her feet in it! If I remember right, I think she’s yelling, “It’s so cold!”

The name “En Gedi” means “spring of the young goat,” and wild goats were and are seen frequently around that area. It’s still an oasis today, and a favorite place for swimmers and hikers alike. The day we were there, there were many young Israelis, both singles and families, who were swimming and playing in and around the spring. As we walked upward, I began to understand why David would bring his men here. After who knows how long out in the intense heart, they needed a rest, a refuge, and the cool caves that surround En Gedi, the water that flows there, would provide a perfect place to rest and, at the same, escape Saul’s notice (cf. Peterson, Leap Over a Wall, pg. 76). So David finds a cave, and he and his men hide in it. But someone sees David headed to En Gedi, and goes to tell Saul.

When he gets the message, Saul heads out from his capital and takes with him 3,000 men. Does that seem like overkill to anyone else? He’s chasing one guy and he needs 3,000 soldiers? Either Saul thinks David is a bigger threat than he actually is, or more likely, Saul wants to make a point: you don’t mess with the king. He obviously has resources, and David only has a motley band of men. Three thousand soldiers, able young men from all over Israel, heading out into the desert to catch one guy—and they know where he is. He’s at En Gedi. It’s not that big of an area. Three thousand men is Saul’s show of force, and yet even with all those soldiers, he is still in more danger than he knows. When he passes what seems to be at least a slightly inhabited area (there are sheep pens there), he goes into a cave to answer the call of nature. And it just so happens that it’s the same cave in which David and his men are hiding.

Now, what follows is almost a comical scene. Saul is taking care of his business while David sneaks up on him and cuts off a corner of his robe. Saul never sees or hears David, and we might ask how that could happen. Well, the first thing to remember is that Saul would taken off his robe in order to do what he needed to do in the cave. He probably tossed it off to the side. So David is not actually next to Saul as he cuts the corner off the robe. But the other factor is this, as archaeologists have mentioned: the caves there in the desert are very dark inside. One scholar noted that if you're coming in from the outside, from the bright sunlight, you wouldn't be able to see more than five paces inside. He tried this out himself. David, on the other hand, seems to have been inside for a while, his eyes have adjusted, and he can see everything that is happening at the entrance to the cave. Therefore, he can see Saul but Saul can’t see him. Saul thinks he’s alone, and his enemy is right there near him (cf. Knight 54; Peterson 76).

David’s men want him to kill Saul. This is the perfect opportunity, and he may never get another chance! Get rid of him and you won’t have to flee for your life, you can go home, and you’ll be king. It seems like the ideal situation for David—but David is guided by another hand. Rather than the expedient or the easy thing, David wants to do the holy thing. He wants to do what is right. And so, without a word to his men, he creeps up near Saul, grabs Saul’s robe, and cuts the corner off of it. That one action has a lot of meaning in it that we miss. For one, David is cutting a corner of Saul’s royal robe, symbolically removing Saul’s royal authority, perhaps even meaning to communicate that such authority had been transferred to him, to David. We also have texts from that time period that talk about how cutting someone’s garment was an act of rebellion, or disloyalty. To grab onto someone’s garment was an act of relationship, like the woman who was bleeding and knew she would find healing if she grabbed onto the hem of Jesus’ garment (Matthew 9:20; 14:36). But to cut the garment meant a breaking of relationship (cf. Baldwin, 1 & 2 Samuel [Tyndale OT], pg. 144; Youngblood, “1, 2 Samuel,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 3, pg. 746). Does David intend that meaning here? Is he openly rebelling against Saul at this point? Perhaps he was, because almost as soon as he does it, he is repentant. Like that e-mail you wish you hadn’t sent, or that comment your carelessly made, David is, the Bible says, “conscience-stricken” because of what he did (24:5).

But that could have been that. Saul finishes his business, grabs his robe, doesn’t seem to notice a missing corner, and leaves the cave. He intends to go back out to hunt for David. And, it seems, when he gets a distance away, David comes to the mouth of the cave and calls to Saul: “My lord the king!” (24:8). David had his enemy in his hands, and he chose not to kill him, but still he believes what he did was wrong. The king is God’s anointed, and David still has respect for Saul as God’s chosen, even if he knows God and Saul aren’t on the best of terms. That doesn’t matter to David. It’s not up to him to punish Saul. It’s up to God. “My lord the king!” he calls out, and then he confronts Saul. “Why do you keep saying I’m trying to kill you? I could have, right now, but I chose not to. I have a corner of your robe to prove it. So let’s stop this, my father Saul. Please know I have no intent to harm you.” In part of the passage we didn’t read, then, Saul responds by calling David his “son,” and he tells David this: “You are more righteous than I” (24:16-17). And at the end of the chapter, then, the two men go their way, a shaky peace between them. It doesn’t last long, because in chapter 26, Saul is hunting David again. But David cannot control Saul’s response. The only thing he is responsible for is his action toward and his response to Saul. And it’s that action and that response that makes him, in Saul’s words, “righteous” or “holy.”

Which brings us back to that question we began with: what does it mean to be holy and how do we live that out? We don't often find ourselves in the middle of a desert, hiding in a cave, being pursued by a vengeful king. What does this passage, and David’s action in particular, have to say to us here in twenty-first century America? First of all, this story reminds us that just because others think it’s the best idea doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. David’s men, who undoubtedly worshipped the same God he did, believed God had brought Saul to this moment specifically so David could kill him. And David began to buy into that, but in short order, he realized that killing Saul was not his job. Holiness happens when we make the choice to walk with God, to do the holy thing instead of the easy thing. Holiness is not always or often obvious. To David’s men, the “right” thing was obvious. To David, it was not so clear. Even when he acted, he knew right away he had done the wrong thing. He had dishonored Saul, and he repented of that action, because everything in David was concerned with following God’s own heart, and that required him to listen to God and practice God’s presence.

That’s why we often substitute real holiness for a rigid list of rules. If we create rules, we think, we can live in such a way that we’ll never sin again. And certainly the call to holiness is a call to avoid the sinful life, but holiness is actually so much broader and deeper than just a list of rules. Rules are easy. We may not think so when we’re trying to follow them; ask any child who is trying to learn the rules of their classroom or even of their home. But following the rules is easy. Holiness, on the other hand, is hard, because it requires us to spend time with God. Holiness is dealing with God and becoming more like him. Holiness is “the human aliveness that comes from dealing with God-Alive” (Peterson 75). It’s becoming more and more like God by being with him. This coming May, Cathy and I will have been married twenty-five years, and over those years, there are many ways we have “rubbed off” on each other. The longer couples are together, the more they seem to become like each other. That’s what happens from prolonged exposure. (That sort of sounds like a disease, doesn’t it? How about “spending a lot of time together”?) I have been a Christian, on the other hand, for over 35 years, and I know I’m not nearly as much like God as I should be because I don’t practice his presence as much as I ought to. Our struggle with holiness, with becoming holy people, comes from the fact that we struggle to spend time with God, to rub up against him, to become more like him. It’s so much easier to draw up a list of rules and become self-righteous than to become like the one who would rather die than live without you. Remember how often Jesus argued with the religious leaders of his day? It was all because Jesus didn't follow their rules. Instead, he lived the God-saturated life, and that was different than anything those religious leaders had thought of before.

At least some of our struggle comes because the Biblical evidence is that holiness grows best in the wilderness. It’s in the times when all the other things we have come to depend upon are stripped away, when we only have God to deal with, that we can grow in real holiness. Wilderness is the place of testing, the place of tempting. When the people of Israel were rescued from slavery in Egypt, they spent forty years in the wilderness, being shaped into the people God wanted them to be. In the wilderness, they learned to deal with God. They learned to worship, to live lives that were pleasing to God, to deal with each other in authentic relationships, and to trust God even for the most basic of things like food. In the wilderness, Israel became God’s people. Centuries later, the Son of God went from his baptism into the wilderness, the same wilderness David wandered in. He was there for forty days and nights, and we have no idea what he did during that time except that he fasted, and near the end of the time he faced three temptations. “Turn the stones to bread,” the tempter said. The temptation to be relevant, to provide what people think they most need. And Jesus said, “People do not live by bread alone. There’s more to life than bread.” Okay, the tempter said, then “throw yourself off the temple. The angels will catch you.” The temptation to be spectacular, to put on a show, to attract attention by some incredible presentation. And Jesus said, “Don’t put God to a test.” Well then, the tempter said, “Bow down and I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the world.” The temptation to be powerful, to have it all, to have people in awe of you. And Jesus said, “Worship the Lord your God only” (Matthew 4:1-11; cf. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus; Peterson 75). The temptations of life can only be overcome in the wilderness, where there is only God to depend on. It was only after the temptations had been dealt with that Jesus headed out to preach and to do ministry—to die and to save. Holiness comes in the wilderness.

And so we find David, in the wilderness, enemy in his hands. The temptation to win, to be right, to be king. But David has learned something during his time in the wilderness. He isn’t in charge. He isn’t the one who moves the world. You see, this story of David at En Gedi is a story about trusting God to take care of retribution, to deal with those who threaten us, those who are “enemies.” Vengeance or retribution or payback is something we often want to take care of ourselves. How many times have you felt like you knew what was right and you had the duty and the responsibility to mete out punishment, to dole out justice on your own? For most of us, the question would more likely be, “How many times this week?” That guy who cut you off in traffic—what did you imagine you’d like to do to him? That person who had fifteen items in the ten item lane—didn’t you want to say something to them? That person who made that post about you on Facebook—wouldn’t it be easy just to blast one back? The ongoing struggle with your ex-spouse, the argument between you and the neighbor that never seems to end, the unjust situation that the government perpetuates or maybe even started—holiness is not something that we just theoretically talk about. Holiness is lived out faith. Holiness is where the rubber meets the road. Holiness is the way we respond to every situation in which the enemy is in our cave, and we could do something, we could take matters into our own hands—but the question is this: what is God’s part in this? And how would God have us respond?

David, you may remember, was not only a soldier; he also wrote songs—prayer songs. In fact, many of the songs in the book of psalms in our Bible claim to be written by, about or for David. The psalm that’s usually associated with this story is Psalm 57, which begins this way: “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed” (57:1). Now, whether or not David wrote this song before or after or even during his encounter with Saul at En Gedi is anyone’s guess, but the word he uses here to describe God is certainly appropriate: “refuge.” Originally, this word described a physical place someone would go to hide, or to feel safe. We all probably have those places; I know I do. Call it your “safe place” or your “happy place,” it’s a refuge, a familiar setting where you can go when everything seems out of control. But in the psalms, this word loses its physical meaning. It doesn’t necessarily refer to a specific place; it refers more to a person, to God. God is our refuge. When we feel threatened, when it seems our enemies will overtake us, when trouble seems near, the challenge and call of the psalms is for us to flee to God. “In you I take refuge,” David says. Now, obviously, he can’t literally take “refuge” inside God. But in God’s presence, David feels secure, safe, because he knows God is big enough to handle whatever comes his way, whatever enemy threatens him. Do we believe that about God, really? We may sing or even pray about God being our refuge, but when trouble comes, we tend to try to deal with it ourselves. We want to defeat the enemy through our own action. Not David. He could have. He knows he could have killed Saul right then and there. But instead, he chooses to repent of his rebellion against God’s chosen one and allow God to take care of the future. That’s holiness. That’s allowing God to be our refuge.

To live that way requires us to live in God’s presence constantly. Now, it’s easy for us to immediately think of the typical ways we “meet God”—prayer, worship, reading the Bible, holy communion. And those are all good and important ways for us to connect with God. But God can and must also be met and found in the daily activities of life. We spend more time with those sorts of things, the so-called “ordinary” moments, than we do in worship or in prayer. Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth century monk, once said he found God as much in his kitchen as he did at prayer. In a book called Practicing the Presence of God, he wrote this: “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.” Our homes are busy. Our lives are busy. We use that reality as an excuse, to say, “I don’t have time for God. I’m too busy.” But exactly the opposite is true. When we’re so very busy, we need to find the presence of God in the midst of the mess even more. In the midst of all those activities, with kids and grandkids calling out our name, we pray, “Lord, you are present here. Make me aware of your presence.” Frank Laubach, a missionary and literacy advocate, once wrote about what he called a “game with minutes,” in which he challenged himself to become more aware of God each and every minute for a whole hour each day. Can we do that? When we allow God to invade the ordinariness of our lives, we’re on the road to holiness.

There’s another place we find God’s presence. Jesus tells us we find him in the least of these. The call to holiness is a call to seek God’s presence in the face of human need. “Christ meets us in the faces of the poor, the broken, the hungry, the lonely, the disenfranchised.” Mother Teresa said she saw the face of Christ whenever she held a dying leper. It’s our tendency not to see the face of human need. We’d rather write a check or send some food, but don’t bother me with the faces. But here’s the question: do we want to see the presence of God? He is found in the least of these (cf. Seamands, Holiness of Heart and Life, pgs. 43-49). There’s a new ministry about to be birthed here through our Outreach Team and led by Steve Massow, a ministry that reaches out into the jails and the prisons. Not a lot has been set about what that’s going to look like yet; in fact, you can have a hand in shaping it by coming to the meeting next Sunday after the third service. Prisoners are specifically mentioned in the Bible as ways we experience the presence of Christ. Hebrews says, “Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison” (13:3). There are many other ways to see the face of Christ in the places of human need, but the point is this: holiness is about living our faith in the midst of the world, choosing to do the right thing rather than the easy thing or the “everyone else says to do it” thing. Holiness is about living in the presence of God each and every moment of each and every day.

Now, I know it would be easier for all of us if I could stand here and give us all a list of “do’s” and “don’ts,” a list of “this is what you always do” or “this is what you always don’t do” in order to be holy. Lists are easy. We can check them off and know if we’ve achieved the standard or not. Holiness is hard because it permeates everything we do and everything we are with the presence of God. It calls us to a God-drenched, God-centered life. We’re not allowed to compartmentalize our lives any longer. As Leonard Sweet puts it, “We are not called to imitate Christ but to become a Christian—to so allow Christ’s resurrection presence to live in us that we can say, in the apostle Paul’s words, ‘to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain’” (I Am a Follower, pg. 145, Kindle Edition). Holiness is not easy; that’s why it’s not something we do. It’s who we are.

John Wesley preached this truth his entire life. In 1755, on an August Monday in London, Wesley preached about what it meant to follow Christ fully. He explained that our life with Christ is a covenant, and then he proceeded to explain what that covenant, that relationship, is like. That was the first time the people called Methodist prayed together what has come to be known as the covenant prayer. The text of that day’s gathering has been lost to history, but in 1780, Wesley published a little book called Directions for Renewing our Covenant With God, and that covenant prayer has come to be, as one author put it, “one of the most distinctive contributions of Methodism to the liturgy of the church in general.” Wesley used the prayer at various times during the year, but it has become our habit in the twenty-first century to each year, near the beginning of the year, renew our covenant and our commitment to Christ, to recommit to this life of holiness, this whole-life dependence on God. So this morning, as we have done for several years, we’re going to share together in a covenant service. I’ve been writing on my blog this week reflections on this prayer, and my concern for myself, as well as for all of us, is that it’s too easy to say the words, to just read what’s on the paper or on the screen without thinking much about it. So, this morning, I challenge you to pray these words. Don’t just say them because it’s your turn and that’s what you’re supposed to say. Pray these words. Let this time of covenant renewal be a true conversation between you and God, a time of growing in holiness and righteousness. If you’ll join me, then, let’s pray together and commit ourselves again this year to God.

Too Big to Miss

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

1 Samuel 17:41-51

January 5, 2014 • Portage First UMC

Well, Christmas is over, and now it’s time to get back to real life. The decorations are gone, the radio stations have gone back to “regular” music (whatever that is), and New Year has come and the family that has been visiting has gone back to their homes. Tomorrow, the kids go back to school and everything will settle back into the regular routine. And that’s unfortunate, for so many reasons. Christmas comes to us as an intrusion, in many ways. Ebenezer Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’ classic story A Christmas Carol, says Christmas is “a poor excuse every 25th of December to pick a man’s pockets.” For Scrooge, Christmas was a huge intrusion. It interrupted his business, but for many if not most of the rest of us, Christmas interrupts us in good ways. People tend to be more giving, somewhat kinder (unless you got the last toy off the shelf that someone else wanted), and we take at least a day or two to spend time with our family. Then, it’s back to “real life.” After all, that’s where we live.

But what if “real life” could take on more of the characteristics of the Christmas season? What if we could find a way to incorporate the love, joy, peace, and hope that God pours out on us at Christmas into “real life”? This morning, we’re going to be starting a sermon series asking just that question. Not necessarily how we can make the whole year like Christmas, but more how we can make the whole year and our “real life” look more the way God desires it. We live “real life,” and so did one of the Bible’s towering figures. He faced so many challenges and difficulties in his life, and yet he remained, to the end of his days, a “man after God’s own heart” (cf. Acts 13:22). What is it about David that kept him so focused, even on days when it wasn’t a religious holiday? And what can we learn from David that can help us become people after God’s own heart, right in the middle of our own “real life”? So over the next several weeks, we’re going to be looking at different moments in the life of David, to see how he dealt with temptation, with lust, with anger, with family betrayal and even with death. David has much to teach us about real life, but we begin this morning with David as a young boy, kneeling by the side of a brook in the Valley of Elah.

David, as we will see in the weeks to come, becomes a significant figure in the Old Testament, but at this point in his story, he is just a shepherd boy. He’s the runt of the litter, the youngest son out of eight boys, a nobody from the nowhere town of Bethlehem. It’s likely David spent much of his time away from home, tending the sheep out in the wilderness. He could be gone for days at a time doing that, because you had to take the sheep where you could find water and grass, and that’s not plentiful in the desert surrounding Bethlehem and its neighboring town, Jerusalem. David is the youngest, and his brothers and their father thought he wouldn’t amount to much of anything. So we can understand why they are shocked when, in the chapter just before this, the prophet Samuel shows up and says one of the eight boys will be Israel’s next king. Lo and behold, it turns out that God has chosen the runt, David, to be the king. And yet, after Samuel anoints David and proclaims him to be the next king, life seems to just go on as it always had. David does go to work for the current king, Saul, for a time, but Saul doesn’t seem to notice anything about him. At the end of today’s story, he doesn’t even recognize this boy, this runt who has been in his service for at least a little while.

So, in the story we read this morning, David has come to the battlefield—not as a soldier, but as a sort of pack mule. He’s come to bring supplies. Three of his older brothers had volunteered in the war against the Philistines, so they were with King Saul on the battlefield in the Valley of Elah. David is sent to bring bread, cheese and roasted grain to those on the battlefield, and to find out for his father how everyone is doing (16:1-19). When David arrives, though, he quickly forgets about the food because he’s appalled at what he sees. You see, the Philistines had come up with a somewhat more humane way of deciding the outcome of this battle. Rather than both sides killing each other until no one is left, the Philistines had proposed that each side bring out their strongest warrior and the two of them would fight. The loser’s side would become the servants of the winner’s side. Scholar John Goldingay comments it would be even more sensible if they decided it based on a soccer tournament or a game of chess, but then again, he is British (1 & 2 Samuel for Everyone, pg. 83). So the Philistines make their challenge: send out your best warrior. And they send theirs out, a man whose name has become synonymous with “giant.” His name is Goliath.

It’s hard to picture what he must have looked like. The Bible tells us he was “six cubits and a span” (17:4). That’s over nine feet tall by modern measurements. Add to that his strength; 1 Samuel says he wore armor that weighed about 126 pounds—and that was just on his torso. He also wore protection on his head and legs, and carried a javelin and a spear. The spear point itself weighed over 15 pounds, and on top of all of that, as if his size wasn’t intimidating enough, he had a shield bearer that went ahead of him. Goliath is tall, strong and well protected (cf. Baldwin, 1 & 2 Samuel [Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries], pgs. 125-126). Now, Saul, the Israelite king, was no slouch. He is described as being “a head taller than any of the others” (10:23), and he had armor that was quite extensive and heavy itself. So the Philistines probably expected the king himself to take on their champion. But Saul doesn’t want to. Like his men, he’s hiding in the tents. He’s afraid of the giant. The Bible says he is “dismayed and terrified” (17:11). So it’s even more striking when this little runt, who is not a trained soldier, comes into the camp, hears Goliath cursing Israel and her God, learns this has been going on for forty days (17:16), and says, “Are you going to let him get away with that?”

Sometimes taunts like that can be hurtful. Or sometimes it’s exactly what you need to hear. For some reason, as I read this, I thought of one of the first Mayor’s Prayer Breakfasts I attended here in Portage, several years ago, and the invitation was given to come to the buffet, but those at our table held back. Until we were corrected, and pointed in the right direction. Robin Wilkening, who was sitting with the fire department, came by our table and straightened us out: “Why are you Methodists still sitting here when there’s a food line? Get up and move! You’re embarrassing me!” Of course, Robin was teasing us, but it was enough for us to get up and move—and have a great breakfast! David’s question is meant in the same way. Why are you still sitting here, Saul? Why hasn’t someone answered the challenge this giant is giving? And if they won’t move, David will. Even though his brothers are ashamed of him, David’s determined that no one will mock God or Israel while he’s around. Even when King Saul protests, David insists he is more than able to take on this giant. “The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine” (17:37). After one awkward attempt to put David in Saul’s armor (sort of like trying to put an adult’s clothes on a toddler), Saul gives in. Even if David loses, he supposes, they won’t be any worse off.

And that’s when we find David kneeling down by the brook. He’s testing stones, checking their weight, their balance. He’s vulnerable, unprotected. There’s nothing to stop Goliath from killing him right then and there, except it seems that Goliath is amused by David. “Am I a dog,” he asks, “that you come at me with sticks?” (17:43). No, David doesn’t see Goliath as a dog. He sees him as someone who is on the wrong side of God. He will not allow this man, who worships an idol, to talk down about the living God. So he carefully selects five smooth stones, and then he stands up and faces Goliath. “The battle is the Lord’s,” David says, “and he will give all of you into our hands” (17:47).

That is what we most forget when we face giants. Oh, I know we’ve not faced men ten feet tall. Our giants are much more commonplace. Cancer. Joblessness. Family struggles. Grief. Divorce. Loneliness. Betrayal. Debt. Foreclosure. Death. The list could on and on. The giants we face are common to many of us, but no less threatening. They whisper, “God can’t really get out of this. God isn’t listening to you. Look at you—all those years of going to church and serving on committees and putting money in the offering plate and see where it's gotten you. God has abandoned you. No one loves you.” Maybe they do more than whisper. Maybe they stand on the hillside and shout at you. Maybe the voices never quit. You even hear them in your sleep. And you know they are false. You know the words are lies, and yet they are so insistent, so repetitive, that it’s easy to begin to believe them. They’re so much louder than the still, small voice of the one, true God. You know Goliath, and maybe you’ve become convinced that you don’t have enough weapons to win the battle. The voices echo through our soul, maybe even from well-meaning “friends.” That’s the way it was for David. The same sort of voices that treated Goliath as important and undefeatable also treated David as insignificant. His own family is telling him he can’t win. After forty days of listening to Goliath’s voice, they’ve begun to believe him. His truth has become their truth, but that doesn’t make it the real truth. As Eugene Peterson puts it, “The moment we permit evil to control our imaginations, dictate the way we think, and shape our responses, we at the same time become incapable of seeing the good and the true and the beautiful” (Leap Over a Wall, pg. 39). And so David kneels at the brook, looking not for bigger weapons, but for five smooth stones. Echoing this story, the prophet Zechariah once said the battle is won “not by might, nor by power, but by God’s spirit” (Zechariah 4:6).

One of the best movies of last year, in my opinion, was the story of baseball player Jackie Robinson as told in the film 42. Many of you know the story, even if you haven’t seen the film. Robinson was the first African-American to play in major league baseball, and he faced a huge giant in his time called racism. But his manager, Branch Rickey, was motivated by his faith in God to bring Robinson up into the big leagues, to make a difference for generations to come. Together, they faced Goliath—multiple Goliaths—as they sought to end discrimination in baseball. There are many great scenes in the film, but this scene probably best sums up the giant they faced.

VIDEO: 42, “Do You Think God Likes Baseball?” (edit)

The rest of David’s story is well-known, and, oddly enough, is told in rather quick fashion considering all the build up in the story thus far. David goes out, puts one stone in his sling and hurls it toward Goliath. This would have not been a slingshot like you might have played with as a child. The first time I was in Israel, in the town of Bethany a man had a sling that was like the one David would have used and he demonstrated how it worked by putting a stone in it, swinging it around a couple of times, then letting one end of the sling go. The stone went flying a long distance over the houses of Bethany. I wouldn’t have wanted to be where it landed! The man smiled at us as we watched it go and said, “My mother-in-law lives over there.” So David hurls the stone at his enemy. Everyone else thought this enemy was too big to take on, too intimidating, too scary. But David saw this enemy, this giant as being “too big to miss.” Now, some commentators want to downplay what happens here. The sling, they say, would have allowed David to operate quite a distance away, outside the range of Goliath’s weapons, and, they say, David somehow managed to hit the only vulnerable spot in Goliath’s armor—his forehead (cf. Baldwin 128). Some commentaries want to make it all about David’s skill. And while he was undoubtedly very skilled, and all of that may be true, it misses the main point of the story: David is not fighting for himself or even really for Israel. David is taking on the giant so that he can defend God’s name, God’s reputation. He believes no one should be allowed to speak ill of the God who has walked with David from early in his life. It’s his faith in God that gives David the strength to confront the giant and to kill him. It’s a story that is so well-known that it’s often used today in political and sports metaphors to describe a small opponent taking on a much larger one. Not long ago, a Florida candidate for the senate was told he was the David in the election, the underdog, and he responded, “Remember, David won” (cf. Goldingay 83). And so David did (I don’t know about the politician). But when did David win? I believe he really won long before the stone was put in the sling.

David won when he recognized what was really going on here, that this wasn’t a physical battle so much as a spiritual battle. Israel had forgotten God. The king had forgotten God. David won when he helped them remember God. And David won when he stepped out of the king’s armor. For David to try to go out into battle with someone else’s armor would have been a disaster. Can you imagine little David trying to wear armor designed for a man who stood head and shoulders above most other men? David needed to enter the battle in a way that was authentic to him. That’s why he was by the brook, and that’s where he really won the battle. Down on his knees, refusing to use weapons that the world thought were appropriate. David’s looking for five smooth stones because he needed something authentic to who he was (Peterson 42).

When I was younger, the giant that most threatened me was fear—specifically, fear of death. Not my own; it was more a fear of being left alone. I don’t know what triggered it, or even exactly when it started. But I remember it would sometimes take over my whole thought process. Somehow I got it in my head as a kid that if, before I went to bed, I told my parents, “I’ll see you in the morning,” then nothing bad would happen to me or them during the night. And that fear, that giant, dogged me for a long time. Those “end times” movies that made the circuit of churches in the seventies didn’t help any. The giant continued laughing at me, screaming my name, and threatening to be my undoing, telling me, “You don’t have any real faith! A real Christian wouldn’t struggle with this!” And I was convinced of that for a long time. Like Saul’s men hiding in the tents, I spent a lot of energy—emotional and spiritual energy—fighting the giant without ever really facing it. There were two things that finally brought me peace. One was studying the Bible and learning better theology than I had taken from Sunday School. And the other was the same thing that sustained David. Like David, I needed to spend some time kneeling so that I could adequately face the giant.

David pulls five smooth stones out of the water, but he only needs one.  When he stands up, he’s ready to face Goliath. “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin,” he says, “but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands” (17:45-46). While David was kneeling at the brook, he was praying, asking God for the strength to stand up for what was right. And that’s why, there by the brook, David won the battle. Whether he lived or died (though he was pretty sure he would live), it didn’t matter. He was, in that moment, his most authentic self, on his knees, in the presence of his God.

You see, when the giants come after us, we really have only two choices: fear or faith. The one “stone” that we need is not summoning up within ourselves some faith (as the self-help gurus would tell us). No, the one “stone” we need is prayer, because that’s what connects us to the God who is bigger than any giant that will come our way (cf. Lucado, Facing Your Giants, pg. 168). Paul says, “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying” (Ephesians 6:18). We have to face the giant on our knees; no one else can defeat our giant for us. A counselor can’t, a pastor can’t, a good friend can’t. You have to face your own giant on your knees. As Eugene Peterson puts it, “Every person learns the way of faith freshly or not at all” (43). Others can pray for us, but we need to be on our knees ourselves as well. Will we face the giants and live our lives on our knees? Will we be shaped by our fear of Goliath or our faith in God? One of the big themes of the Bible is that God delights to do is turn the odds upside down (Goldingay 84). Over and over again, the one who shouldn’t win does and the one who is the “least of these” becomes the greatest. The biggest example of this, the pinnacle of God’s work, is when Jesus was crucified. To the world, it was a shameful death. To the world, it was the end. Death was the end. The rulers and powers of this world had finally silenced this one who threatened them so much, and when the stone was sealed in front of his tomb, there were those who believed it was done. He was done. They wouldn’t be bothered by Jesus anymore. But God takes those odds and turns them around. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, put it this way: “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27; cf. Arnold, NIV Application Commentary: 1 & 2 Samuel, pg. 264). Before too long, the shepherd boy who was kneeling by the brook is standing over the giant who was shouting. The giant is dead, and God is not. We have only two choices in the face of posturing giants: fear or faith.

What is your giant? What is it that’s facing you, intimidating you, telling you that you can’t make it? What threatens you in this new year? In just a few moments, we’re going to have holy communion, and during that time, you're invited to come to the front and write your giant on one of these canvases. Just pick a short name for your giant. Some will be easy to describe: “cancer” or “health,” “family” or “stress.” Others may not be so easy to name; some may be too personal. You may just need to write “Goliath” on the canvas. But this morning, as you come, this is an act of faith, of facing down the fear that surrounds that giant. Sometimes we just need to name it because the giant has been hiding in the shadows and yelling at us from the sidelines, and it’s time to put a stop to that. The canvases are conveniently located next to the kneelers, providing a place for you to pray as well this morning, to get on your knees like David did and place your trust in the God who will not fail you. The bread and the cup this morning serve to remind us that God loves to overcome the odds, that God always brings life out of death, that no giant can stand up against the God of the universe.

As we head into the new year, you may find yourself facing that giant again and again. Just naming it here may not take away the fear immediately. I prayed and prayed and prayed for a long time before I was able to defeat the giant that had followed me since I was young. And there are still times when he peeks his head around the corner, but I’m holding on to the fact that my God is bigger than the giants, and that there is no evil he can’t defeat. But that assurance has only come with a long period of prayer and a lot of patience and perseverance. You may need someone to walk with you, to pray with you, to remind you to be on your knees, and if you do, please talk to Pastor Deb or I. We’d love to connect you with a Congregational Care Minister who can be there and pray for you. Sometimes we just need help finding our voice as we face the giant.

In the coming weeks, we're going to be looking at David even more closely, and we’ll learn that Goliath is not that last giant he faces, but it is here, in the Valley of Elah, where he learns what it takes to defeat the foes that face him. David is a man after God’s own heart, and when the giants come, as they will, he constantly returns to prayer, for he knows, as John would later write, that “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). That giant isn’t too big to face; he’s too big to miss. In that confidence, you’re invited to come this morning; receive communion, name your giant and pray. Let’s prepare our hearts for holy communion.