Take Off Your Armor: David and Goliath

Here's a fresh take on a story so iconic, even non-religious people know it.  Read 1st Samuel 17 for more

If this sermon was meaningful to you, learn more about the rest of our church at missionhillsucc.org. You are invited to support the ministry of Mission Hills United Church of Christ with a one time or recurring contribution - missionhillsucc.org/give

Transcript

Sermons from  Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

June 30, 2024

“Take Off Your Armor”

1st Samuel 17: 1, 4-11 – Common English Bible

The Philistines drew up their troops for battle. 4-7 A giant nearly ten feet tall stepped out from the Philistine line into the open, Goliath from Gath. He had a bronze helmet on his head and was dressed in armor—126 pounds of it! He wore bronze shin guards and carried a bronze sword. His spear was like a fence rail—the spear tip alone weighed over fifteen pounds. His shield bearer walked ahead of him.
8-10 Goliath stood there and called out to the Israelite troops, “Why bother using your whole army? Am I not Philistine enough for you? And you’re all committed to Saul, aren’t you? So pick your best fighter and pit him against me. If he gets the upper hand and kills me, the Philistines will all become your slaves. But if I get the upper hand and kill him, you’ll all become our slaves and serve us. I challenge the troops of Israel this day. Give me a man. Let us fight it out together!”

11 When Saul and his troops heard the Philistine’s challenge, they were terrified and lost all hope.

Last week we were introduced to David, the apple-cheeked little brother whose responsibility in the family was to watch over sheep as they grazed in green pastures.  Samuel was in town looking for the next king.  After standing in front of each brother and rejecting all seven, Samuel recognized this good shepherd’s good heart.  A good shepherd, even though, as I said last week, David was often distracted, trying to catch butterflies or singing and playing his harp and daydreaming.  But have no fear, if a predator approached, he could whip out his slingshot in ten seconds flat and use a single stone to put down even a lion or a bear, oh my.  That skill comes in pretty handy in today’s story.  

One day his brothers were on the front lines of a battle.  It seemed like the tribes were forever at war with the neighboring Philistines, although to say they were at war implies that they stood a chance of defeating the much larger and much better equipped army.  The tribes thought that having a king to rule over them would bring victory.  And it started out true.  One of new King Saul’s greatest achievements was to organize 12 squabbling tribes into their first ever victory.  All Hail King Saul!

The Philistines could have completely crushed little Israel.  That’s what they did to every nation in their way of global domination.  You see, the Philistines had a technological monopoly on iron.  Anyone who wanted so much as a cooking pot let alone a sword and shield had to buy it from the Philistines.  However, they had one weakness.  One time after a victory, along with material goods and the people they took to make into slaves, the Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant.  Big mistake.  Big.  That box contained the sacred stones on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed.  That box contained the very presence of God.  

Remember the plagues one after another in Egypt until Pharaoh let them go?  Well, wherever the Philistines took that box, each city would soon be overrun with rats and the people were covered with tumors; some translations say hemorrhoids.  Finally, in order to neutralize it, they put the box in the temple of their god Dagon.  The next morning, however, they found the statue of Dagon had fallen over face first in front of the Ark.  Must have been an accident.  They put it back up and the next morning it had fallen again, but this time its head and hands had broken off.  The Philistines recognized they clearly had a problem on their hands and so they returned the box along with a gift of five golden tumors, or hemorrhoids, and five golden rats.  Kind of a bizarre story but it’s why the Philistines didn’t/couldn’t just wipe these little tribes off the map.  The God of Israel was too strong so they simply continued to threaten and torment them.

And so that’s where we are today.  Another battle.  David’s father sent him to bring provisions to his brothers and bring news back home.  When David arrived, he was surprised to see everyone just standing around.  There was a standoff between the armies.  To break the stalemate, an offer had been made:  Instead of whole armies, each side would send one soldier.  Mano a mano.  Except this would be mano a big mano.  A giant, an exaggerated 9 feet tall.  Who really knows, but however tall he was, he stood as a giant in front of men who averaged 5 feet tall.  And he wasn’t just tall, he was built, the cover of a men’s fitness magazine built.  Solid muscle hidden behind 126 pounds of armor, biceps capable of throwing a spear the size of a fence rail; its tip alone was 15 pounds.  

No one would agree to fight.  He intimidated everyone except David who couldn’t understand why grown men would be afraid of a mere human when God is so much more powerful.  “I’ll do it!”  His older brother told him to go back home and “Let the men take care of manly things.”  David rolled his eyes and told some other soldiers, “I’ll do it.”

So, they took him to King Saul.  David said, “Don’t give up hope.  I’m ready to go and fight this Philistine.”  But Saul took one look and laughed.  David answered, “I can do it.  I’m a shepherd and whenever a lion or a bear, oh my, tries to take one of my lambs, I go after it, knock it down, grab it by its throat, wring its neck, and kill it.  And I’ll do the same thing to this giant.”  Since no one else was willing to try, why not.

Saul covered David with armor and put a bronze helmet on his head.  But it was all so heavy David couldn’t even move.  He had them take it off and then he walked toward Goliath, stopping to pick up five stones along the way, feeling each in his hand before putting them in his pocket.  He approached Goliath with a sling in his hand.  Goliath saw this and roared with laughter.  Imagine the voice of James Earl Jones.  “This is what you send?  An apple-cheeked, peach fuzzed little boy?  Am I a dog that you come after me with a stick.  Come on, I’ll make roadkill of you.”  

Now imagine the voice of Linus from Peanuts.  “You come after me with swords and spears and ax, but I come at you in the name of the God Almighty.  And this day our God is handing you over to me.”  Remember the Linus voice.  “I’m going to cut off your head and serve up your body to the crows and coyotes.  You and every single other Philistine.  This battle belongs to the Lord.”

Provoked by this little pipsqueak, Goliath picked up his spear and started marching toward David, his big feet pounding the ground.  David calmly reached into his pocket, put a stone in his sling and slung it. He hit the Philistine hard in the forehead. Down he went.  

Now if this were a Hollywood movie, David would have missed four times.  One stone would hit on the ground in front of him, one go too far, one bounce off the armor and another hit a bird.  But then, music rising, imagine him fumbling, the last stone caught in his pocket trying to get it out, and just as Goliath pounces with a second to spare, David hit the one place on his body without armor.  The Bible, however, says it took only one stone on the first try and Goliath fell straight forward, face down in the dirt.  Then David jumped on top and did just what he promised and cut off the giant’s head and gave it to Saul while the Philistines ran screaming for their life.  To see that final scene would depend on a R or PG rating.

Saul was elated with the victory until he realized the people were chanting David’s name and not Hail King Saul.  Saul seethed with jealousy, only the first of many more times to come, as we will see next week.  This week, David’s special ability involved a slingshot.  Next week it will be his harp.

David and Goliath is not just an iconic biblical story, it’s culturally iconic.  Everyone knows, little people taking down the man. 

• Like Norma Rae inspiring factory workers to unionize.  
• Erin Brockovich against PG&E.  
• Like Bree Newsom.  In the aftermath of the murder of nine African Americans at Wednesday night Bible study at Mother Emmanuel AME in Charleston, Bree climbed up a flagpole on the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol and took down the confederate flag.  As she ascended, she quoted David’s most famous Psalm.  “The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not fear.”  As she descended, she quoted David’s speech to Goliath.  “You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence.  I come against you in the name of God.”  Bree’s father was the dean of Howard Divinity School, so she was well versed in scripture and understood the religious, not just cultural, meaning of David and Goliath.  
• So did Colin Kaepernick who grew up going to Sunday School and was confirmed in the Lutheran Church.  His David quietly knelt on the football field against the giant Goliath of racial oppression, his body covered in tattoos of scripture passages.  
• Or this Pride month we remember the riot at the Stonewall Inn where queers and drag queens like Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera had enough of constant police harassment and fought back.  Someone picked up a cobblestone like David’s stone to slay a Goliath.  No one could believe that anyone with so little power would dare fight back.  But look where we’ve come to today because they did.

Lots of examples of other people, but my question:  Who is your Goliath today?  Who stands towering over you.  Or perhaps better, what is a Goliath?  Might it be a giant fear, ten feet tall?  Goliaths keep us up at night with questions.  Maybe like, will she get through all the treatments and side effects?  Or how do I deal with dysfunctional relationships at home or at work that loom over me ten feet tall.  Or maybe even a real bully.  Perhaps it’s seeing something coming down the tracks toward us, fixated on a Goliath sized train instead of simply stepping off the track.  

Fear paralyzes.  We can’t move, but maybe we’re just covered in so much armor, a self-protective shield, that we can’t.  So covered in armor we’re always on the defensive even with people just trying to help, people from whom we’ve asked for help.  Sometimes our armor is, I don’t need any help.  So take off the armor.  

But taking off our armor makes us feel vulnerable.  Brené Brown would say that’s exactly what we need.  She said, “I was raised in a ‘get ‘er done’ and ‘suck it up’ family.  Very Texan,” she said.  “The tenacity and grit of my upbringing has served me, but I wasn’t taught how to deal with uncertainty or how to manage emotional risk.  I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and evil.  My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences wrought with uncertainty.”  

A healthy faith welcomes vulnerability.  It frees us from the 126 pound burden of certainty.  Ironically many religious people think faith is believing the correct things, assigning good and evil, right and wrong.  But a healthy faith frees us of the need to be right or see things as black and white.  Don’t we recognize that God is present in both light and shadows, in joy and in grief, in our best moments as well as the worst moments in our life?

David knew that only his vulnerability, taking off his armor, could allow him to win against his Goliath.  He stepped forward because he believed and then demonstrated that his weakness was God’s strength.  And that’s how we defeat our Goliath too.  Shedding the protective armor we use to try to keep ourselves from feeling or being honest.  

What is your Goliath?