Letter From the Pastor – August 2024
Dear Church family,
During the month of August, the lectionary -our guide through worship during the church year- takes us through the story of King David, and I will be preaching on these texts. However, one of the most famous stories about King David is not included in August, which is, the story of David and Goliath. So, I include in this space excerpts from a sermon I have preached on David and Goliath. My hope is it gives us a fuller picture of David’s life, and prepares us to hear his story told in the coming weeks with a focus on how our faith helps us to meet challenges.
Goliath only appears in the Bible for about a chapter of the Book of 1 Samuel, and in that chapter, he doesn’t do much, mainly, he is just talked with fear and reverence by the soldiers who are scared to fight him. Yet, he has become one of the most known characters in the Bible. In the modern day, when we refer to a Goliath we are usually talking about some huge, powerful entity. Some obstacle or opponent that seems impossible to overcome. We are talking about something on the scale of Amazon or Wal-Mart in the retail business world, the New York Yankees in sports, or the US Military. What have been some of the Goliath sized problems that you have experienced? What problems seemed too big to overcome? Have you been able to overcome them? Do they grow larger or more mythic as time goes on?
On the other side of the Goliath legend is David. In this story, David does not possess any of the recognizable traits of a great warrior, and yet he is the one who volunteers to go into battle with this dangerous opponent. The character of David has come to represent the little guy, the underdog that succeeds against the odds. However, I think we have gotten a little carried away in looking at the story of David and Goliath in this way. As I mentioned before, Goliath probably wasn’t the huge monster he was made out to be, and for that matter, those scholars who have studied David as an historical figure suggest that he was probably a clever and skillful warrior in his own right. So, with that in mind, this story becomes less about overcoming great obstacles through faith, but instead how our faith leads us to approach such challenges. For instance, it is assumed that the only way to overcome violent force is with a show of violent force, and in those circumstances David would lose. However, the young boy had a different understanding of his situation.
David’s great and abiding faith in the power of God led him to accept this challenge, and it carried him through the battle. It served him well, however, there were also certain tactical advantages that David had. For instance, he could move more quickly without armor. He used a weapon that he was more comfortable with and allowed him to use his skill to attack with precision instead of brute force. These tactics, these differences in approach allowed David to be victorious without using the sword and the spear. These were the weapons of a violent, wicked world, and had David tried to win using them, he probably would have lost, decisively. David allowed his faith in God to lead him to different choices, choices that valued who David was and the gifts he possessed. David’s battle with Goliath shows us that a faithful response to adversity is not a matter of trying to beat the world at its own game. We would most likely lose. This story is about faith in God and the creativity God blesses us with. God creates new possibilities in the face of adversity by guiding us toward the truth of who we are as individuals and as human beings who are made and loved by God.
For David, that truth was that he was a shepherd boy, with a great and abiding faith in God, not a violent brutal warrior. Our struggles are not overcome by using the worlds methods, or by meeting evil with evil, but by holding on to the truth of who God made us to be. Beloved people, with unique gifts, called to love and care for one another. Amen.
-Pastor Zach