1 Samuel 17:[1a, 4–11, 19–23] 32–49 and Saint Mark 4:35–41
Prudential Insurance has a wonderful commercial in which Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert asks people to write "life events" on blue and yellow magnets and stick them on a giant wall. The good things are written on yellow magnets and the bad ones on blue. "The results showed that the past was a pretty even mix of good and bad. Yet the future was almost all good things."
The group is asked what they make of the results. One man says, "We all want to think about positive stuff." But, a woman adds, "Realistically there will be down times."
Dr. Gilbert’s one sentence summation: "It’s great to think optimistically, but’s lets plan for whatever the future might bring."1
We spend a lot of time planning. Our whole lives, at whatever age we are, may be spent in planning.
Parents start planning for their children’s futures before they are born. Children, willingly or (my guess is) mostly unwillingly are enrolled in all kinds of classes and sports leagues, hoping they will be the next Bryce Harper, Jonathan Toews, or Itzhak Perlman.
Then they start to plan for the future. What high school? What college? What field of study? What job? Where and how they will retire? Life can turn into one big strategy session.
The problem is that even Harvard professors and Prudential Insurance can’t plan for everything. They can’t plan for the unexpected storms that blow in while we are not looking. They can’t plan for the giant problems that may show up in our lives.
Few nations then, few nations now, are better at planning for war than Israel. They had to and have to be. Not much has changed since biblical times when "the Philistines – that warring, marauding people who lived on the coast land we now call Gaza, regularly invaded Israel to plunder and enslave it."2
To answer this threat Saul raised up quite an army. The problem was that the Philistines had an "unknown unknown" in their ranks. His name was Goliath and he was a giant.
For you Harry Potter fans think Rubeus Hagrid but with a bad attitude. For you sports fans, think an NFL linesmen times ten.
Not only was Goliath big he was massively armed. A biblical times equivalent of a nuclear weapon. But, most important of all, he was frightening.
Being afraid can stop even the best of us in our tracks. If we see or experience something that really scares us, fear is a perfectly reasonable response. But, fear can cloud our vision. It can make our thinking fuzzy. In can even freeze us in our tracks and cause us to do nothing.
That is exactly what the army of Saul did. They did nothing.
"For forty days Goliath walks down the mountain and shouts challenges and insults. And for forty days the soldiers of Israel quake in fear, wringing their hands, talking among themselves about how terrible and hopeless this all is, amplifying the fear by their talk, which has now immobilized them."3
They could not see a way around their problem. The only thing they could see was the giant. He clouded their vision. They couldn’t see past him so they thought there was no way around him.
Now here is the one thing I want you to take away from this message. I really do want you to store it in the back of your mind because someday you will need it. I hope you here will go home and watch this on YouTube so that is forever listed in your watch history. I hope our YouTube viewers will earmark this post because it has one thing in it that is very important. David was able to beat Goliath because he didn’t know any better.
He was absolutely untrained in his use of conventional warfare. In fact, the moment Saul gets the young man all armoured up he discovers that it won’t work. He can’t move. Armour limits not only his vision but his movement. If he is going to defeat the giant it is going to have to be by unconventional means.
There is New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell called: "How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules." In it he says that David broke the rhythm of the of the encounter. We pay most of our attention to David’s great aim with the slingshot and forget the two things he did before.
First, says Gladwell, he sped up the encounter. He rushes his opponent. "The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,"4
When David didn’t approach his target slowly but ran at him, unencumbered by conventional armour and weapons he became quicker and more nimble than his opponent.
Second, and most important of all, after Goliath makes fun of him David reveals his most important asset: "You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts ... whom you have defied."5
What is important here is that this is the first time in a very long story anybody thought of calling on the LORD’s name. Read the whole 17th chapter of first Samuel and you’ll see it. The first and only time the LORD’s name is invoked in power is here. Right before his charge David shouts these words not only at the giant but for himself. He is reminding us who is on his side and it is nothing other than the LORD God of Hosts.
Often that is the last place we turn when a giant or a storm comes into our lives. We fail to remind ourselves to whom we belong – the LORD God of Hosts and the power that belonging entails.
The last thing the disciples do in today’s gospel, after battling the storm that has suddenly come into their lives, is look to Jesus. Waves are crashing in. The boat is being swamped and Jesus seems to be below deck, asleep, oblivious to it all.
They wake him and he does something just as audacious as David did. Instead of trying to sail the boat in a conventional way through the storm. Instead of taking command of the boat, Jesus wipes the sleep from his eyes and takes command of the situation. He sees more than just the storm. He sees an opportunity to put the power of God to work.
"Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, ‘Quiet! Settle down!’ The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass."6
That is the power of God we are tied too.
he story of David and Goliath and the story of Jesus stilling the storm are important to us because there will be times in all of our lives when we will feel like we are a very small boat on a very bring and rough sea. There will be times in our lives when we are feeling like we are surrounded by mountainous waves, or a problem so big it looks like Goliath, and we won’t know what to do. There will be times when all we have in our hand are the blue magnets of bad times.
It is then we must look for the new vision that God has given us in both of these stories. Sometimes we are just not going to be able to rely on all the technology or physical advantages that science has given us. Sometimes, we are going to have to act like we don’t know any better and like David rely on the power of the LORD God of hosts.
The new vision we receive in this place is unlike any we can receive anywhere else. Here we are given eyes to see the presence and power of God working in real life, to save and sustain real people. It comes when we trust ourselves to the LORD God of hosts and his new vision for our lives that comes, more often than not, in unexpected ways.
Nobody expected David to best Goliath but he did. Nobody expected Jesus’ voice really have an effect on the winds and waves when he told them to "put a muzzle on it" but it did.
We’re plugged into the power of God. And just a glimpse of that power, let alone a full-blown vision, will be enough to sustain you, and me, and the entire church against any giants or storms that may fill our lives and frighten us to death.
You and I will be able to defeat any force that comes our way when we, like David, admit that we really don’t know any better but to trust God and then listen to God say to our rushing hearts, and confused thoughts, what he said to the storm, "Peace, be still."
And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts, and minds, and thoughts in the power of the living God who revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Thanks for listening.
June 21, 2015
Endnotes
1. From the transcript of the Prudential commercial, "The Magnet Experiment."
2. Dr. Fred R. Anderson, "The Slingshot Gospel." The Madison Avenue Pulpit. June 24, 2014.
3. Walter Bruggemann, David’s Truth. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002), p. 35.
4. Malcolm Gladwell, "How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules." The New Yorker. May 11, 2009.
5. 1 Samuel 17:45. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
6. St. Mark 4:39-40. (MSG) [MSG=The Message]
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