June 21, 2009
The Subversive Power of Truth - 1 Samuel 17:1-11, 32-49
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI have been glued to the TV for much of this week watching one of my favorite sporting events of the entire year. The College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska has been unfolding this past week, we’ve finally come down to the championship. I hate to say this to all you North Carolina fans out there (and I have rooted for ya’ll), but from my perspective, the two teams to beat are LSU and Texas. The only way to beat either one of those teams, in my estimation, is to get an early lead and hope to hold on to it. But if LSU or Texas gets an early lead, you can just hang it up.
In many regards, the church is in about the same boat. By every measure, in every category, we’re losing. If you consider yourself a “conservative” Christian who is concerned about the unraveling of the values we have held for years, you are losing. If you consider yourself a “liberal” Christian who is concerned about social justice issues –about the environment, or about the plight of the poor, or how we treat the least and the lost – you’re losing. If you’re an “older, more traditional” Christian who just really wishes that things would return to the way they were, well, they aren’t and you’re losing. If you consider yourself a “younger, more contemporary Christian” who wants to see Christian Rock ’n Roll on the same charts as plain old rock ‘n roll, that’s not happening either and you’re losing. Whether you’re Presbyterian, or Methodist, or Baptist, or Roman Catholic, or non-denominational, or charismatic, one of the things that we all seem to have in common is that in every category in every measure by every indication, we are losing. And we’re not only losing, we’re in the thick of the woodshed getting whipped to oblivion. We’re afraid. We don’t know what tomorrow holds. We are on very shaky ground. And we’re doing everything we can to stand up to or accommodate these cultural and societal and democratic and empirical and popular norms that look certain to turn us all into irrelevant relics of something we thought we once were.
In short, we are little-bitty David facing big-bad Goliath. In 1 Samuel, Israel appeared to be leaderless. King Saul was a lame duck and everybody knew it – including King Saul himself – and nobody was waiting in the pike to take his place. Even though God had already anointed David to be the next king, the people didn’t know David from, well, a little-bitty shepherd boy. All they knew is that they were back at war with the Philistines. And even though Saul had beaten the Philistines earlier, things were not looking good now at all. The Philistines were encamped on the top of a hill, and the Israelites were on another hill, with a valley between them. The Israelite army sat there for forty days waiting, weeping, and trembling. Finally, this big mammoth of a man named Goliath came to their camp, talked a little trash and issued a challenge to them, which made them tremble even more. “Let me fight one man,” Goliath said, “and we will spare you this bloodbath.” “Today,” said Goliath in front of the whole Army of Israel, “I defy Israel.” Those should have been fighting words, but Israel was too chicken, too afraid to respond.
But this little shepherd boy named David came up and said that he would fight Goliath himself. Saul laughed at that idea. Goliath was almost seven feet tall (maybe even nine feet tall), and here this little boy says that he can take him. David had successfully defended his sheep against wolves and bears, so why couldn’t he take Goliath? Actually this is what David said, “The Lord who saved me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will save me from this Philistine.” The Lord, huh? Nobody had mentioned him. It was a ridiculous idea, having this little boy go fight Goliath, even if he did have God’s help. But what else was Saul going to do? “Go ahead,” Saul said. “May the Lord be with you (you’re going to desperately need him).”
Saul was even kind enough to let David wear his armor, but David couldn’t even walk with all that stuff on. And besides, what good would all that armor have done David anyway? What do you think? What would you have done? Let’s just pretend to be David. You are the smallest boy by far in Israel’s whole army. In fact, you aren’t even in the Army. Your older brothers are, but you’re too small and young. You just keep the sheep. You have no Army training at all. At least all those other guys know how to duck and retreat. The only thing you have is this “Spirit of God” that we hear so much about, that we claim to have ourselves. You have this promise that you are child of God. That’s it… and this big mammoth of man who’s about to turn your neck into a corkscrew. And here King Saul offers you his armor, the best armor in all of Israel. Even though you’re too small and too weak to even wear it, what do you do? To the very best of my mental capacity, I can only think of three options. You can run as fast as you can back to your sheep and act like you never heard of Goliath, or God for that matter. That sounds like a pretty good option. You can face Goliath on his own terms with Saul’s armor. Or, you can face Goliath on God’s terms and walk headfirst into battle with God alone. It sounds good in theory, but if your neck is on the line, it’s pretty risky. If you lose, you die. So what do you do?
What are we doing? Whether we like it or not, we as a Church (and by that I mean this individual congregation and the Church at large) are the Israelites about to get whipped by the Philistines. Goliath is awfully big and we, in the grand scheme of things, are awefully small. Do we just surrender and spare ourselves the agony? Do we try to beat Goliath on his own terms? Do we face the world on its own terms? Or do we face the world on God’s terms? Or, another way to ask it is this: What does the church really need? Do we just need more money, or more young people, or more buildings, or more relevance? Do we just need more influence? Maybe we just need more technology. If we could just get the church up to the 20th Century, not to mention the 21st Century, then maybe we could have a chance against Goliath. Or, may we just need to become like the world, and adopt the growth strategies of Wall Street and the glamour of Hollywood.
UNC Charlotte has recently been selected to host a traveling exhibit called “Friends Always.” “Friends Always” commemorates the Berlin Airlift which is celebrating its 60 anniversary this year. On June 24th, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked the western portion of Berlin controlled by American, French, and British forces. In response, the United States took to the skies to supply Berlin with what its 2 million residents needed to survive: food, fuel, industrial goods, raw materials. Supply deliveries grew from 700 tons per day in June of 1948 to just short of 13,000 tons per day by April of 1949. In what at that time was the greatest humanitarian effort the world had ever seen, the US and her allies saved the lives of 2 million people. The Berlin Airlift ended one year later, and the Cold War ended forty-years later. I believe you could make a pretty good case that the Cold War was won not with bombs, missiles, bullets, and tanks, but with food.
God often works that way. Goliath was expecting David to come fight the conventional method. All David took, though, was God. And that’s all David needed. I still don’t know how that little sling-shot just so happened to have landed a rock right between Goliath’s eyes. All I know is that Goliath bought the farm that day, and David won, or – to state it most accurately – God won. And it happened on God’s terms, not Goliath’s or Saul’s or even David’s. I find it very interesting that both the Philistines and the Israelites basically agreed on how to solve their problems. Their approaches were identical. Only David had this crazy idea about God.
I think maybe the church ought to have the same idea. I don’t know what the future of the church in America, or the world for that matter, looks like. There are a number of alarming and frightening statistics out there. It definitely will not look like it did fifty years ago, and it won’t look like it does today. But the Church has always been at odds with the surrounding culture, always. And when it was not at odds with the surrounding culture, it was wrong. Chapter 17 was not Israel’s first battle with the Philistines, and it certainly was not the last. Israel was – and is – surrounded by enemies. And we are, too, as a church. When we are authentic, when we are what God has called the church to be, we are counter-cultural. We speak a different language than the culture. We don’t speak of retribution in the church. We speak of forgiveness. We don’t speak of instant gratification. We speak of taking up our crosses. We don’t speak of security. We speak of faithfulness. We don’t worship Caesar, or Washington, or money. We don’t worship ourselves either, or how we look or how we feel or how we live. We worship God and God alone, not just on Sunday morning, but every morning with everything that we have and do.
I believe that God has a good game plan for us. I don’t know what that plan is, but it will probably be something good and surprising and something that only God can do. Maybe we ought to pray about it, and study lots of Scripture together. We ought to lift our voices in praise for all that God has done. We ought to look at the past and what God has done for us there. We’ve faced the Philistines before, God has delivered us before, and God will deliver us now in some form or fashion. Either way, we are not going to be afraid, and we are not going to back down, and we are not going to surrender. We’re going to go out there and live every minute of every day for God. We’re going to put on God’s armor, not our own. And we’ll let God whip Goliath.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
