There Might Be Giants

Every day he came out from the camp of the Philistines. He stood there in the valley between the Philistines and the Israelites and he yelled up at the Israelites, “Hey, you! What’s the matter? Don’t you want to fight me?”

He got their attention. After all, the man was six and a half cubits tall. Do you know how tall that is? Neither do I, but trust me, it’s big -- somewhere between six and half and nine feet tall. He was a Goliath of a man. And his name was…Goliath.

He wore a bronze helmet on his head and scaly armor on his body that weighed five thousand shekels. Do you know how much that weighs? I was really hoping that you did. It’s something over 100 pounds. And that doesn’t even count the bronze greaves around his legs and the bronze javelin he carried slung on his back, the spear that he carried which had a huge shaft and an iron point, and the huge shield that went before him. He was physically powerfully, super strong and he could burn down city walls with his laser vision eyes. Well, maybe not that last one, but he might as well have been able to do that. He terrified the Israelites.

He would stand there in the valley and say, “Come on out and fight me! Don’t you have a man up there who is up to it? Look, all you have to do is kill me and all of this army will be your slaves. But if I kill your champion, you will be our slaves. Seems like a pretty easy thing to do, Israel. I defy you! I unclog my nose in your direction, you silly window dressers!” My translation of the Bible is a little loose in this section.

No one would dare to confront Goliath, though. The scriptures say that all the Israelites were “broken and very afraid.” Even King Saul was afraid. So day after day, at dawn and sunset, Goliath would come out and taunt the Israelites and they would cower behind the rocks.

Now in the Israelite army were three brothers, Eliab, Abinadab and Shammah. They were sons of Jesse of Bethlehem. The oldest of eight sons that Jesse had. They were among those listening day after day as Goliath came out to taunt the army. They had a younger brother, the youngest, whose name was David. He had stayed at home to watch his father’s flocks.

One day, Jesse called David to him and sent him up to the front lines with some food for the older brothers. You know what army food is like. Nothing special. So Jesse was supplementing the supplies with some bread cakes and cheese and little bit of parched grain. He was also fishing for some news about how the war was going, so he told David to bring him back a full report.

Now we know something special about David, because in 1 Samuel chapter sixteen, right before this story, the prophet Samuel anointed David to be Israel’s new king. But the word is not out on the streets yet. Saul, the current king, hasn’t heard the word. David himself is not telling anybody. But we know that God has chosen David for a great task, despite that fact that he’s just a shepherd boy.

That’s how his brothers thought of him. When he showed up at the front lines he arrived just as the Israelites were stoking themselves up for a battle. They had arranged in battle lines and were peeking out from behind the rocks, trying to get a war cry going. Somebody was trying to do the wave. But then Goliath came out again. “Come on down here! Is there a man among you who has the courage to face me down? Send him out. I defy you, Israel! I despise you! Your mother wears combat boots!”

David was listening to all this and he turned to the soldier around him and said, “Did he just say that our mother wears combat boots? Are you going to let him get away with that?”

The people around him said, “He’s been doing this for forty days now. He defies us. He despises us. He insults our mothers and our God. The king will give great wealth to anybody who kills him. Money and he’ll let him marry his daughter and he will free his father’s house.”

This got David’s attention. “What did you say?” He stood up. “What did you say would be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this taunt from Israel? Who is this foreskinned Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

So they told him again. And it only made David bolder. Which only made his brothers angry. Eliab came dome and said, “What are you doing here David? Who’s looking after the sheep? You just came down here to hang out around the battle and get in on the action.”

David responded like any younger brother would. He said, “What have I done now? It was just a question!” But it wasn’t just a question. David got it into his head that if nobody else was going to stand up to this giant, then he would have to. So he kept asking until finally Saul heard about this boy who had showed up at camp.

He called him in and David immediately started telling him what he was going to do. “Don’t let anybody lose heart on account of this Philistine. I’ll go fight him.”

Saul must have laughed at this. He said to David, “You can’t fight him. You’re just a boy and Goliath has been a fighter since he was a boy.”

Then David listed off his qualifications. “Look, I know how to handle stuff. I watch sheep and when a lion or a bear comes out after a sheep I go after it and I beat it with my staff until it lets the sheep go. Once I grabbed a lion by the mane and struck it and killed it. I can do the same with bear and I can do the same with this Philistine who defies the living God! The God who saved me from the paw of the bear will save me from this giant.”

It’s an impressive speech and you almost believe that David can pull it off until you remember that he’s a boy and Goliath is 30 feet tall and dressed in 300 pounds of armor. (Might as well be.) But Saul is willing to give him a chance and he gives him his own personal armor. He puts a bronze helmet on his head and body armor on. He puts a sword over his tunic.

It doesn’t fit. It won’t work. David knows it won’t work. It might have worked fine for Saul, but it’s a new day and David is trying a new approach.

It’s the same dynamic that we have sometimes in the church. We keep doing things the same way because they worked for us in the past. And when a new generation comes along we believe that if they just use the same tools and the same models, it will work for them, too.

What we are beginning to learn as a conference is that we have to open ourselves up to new ways of doing things. Last year we approved a proposal called All Things New that is aimed at changing the culture of our conference in the direction of fruitfulness. We’re going to build 250 new faith communities in 30 years.

Last week at Annual Conference we approved a 15-year, $15 million capital campaign to begin this effort. We struggled over it because that’s a lot of money, but when you think about it it’s really not much at all. $15 million dollars to start 8 new faith communities a year? Somebody pointed out that it’s about $60,000 per start. You can’t staff a church, build a building, establish programming on $60,000 a year. And where are we going to find the leaders for these new starts?

We are imagining churches like we’ve got today, though. The church of the future may look very different. There will still be places like Franktown that build off of their traditions in new ways, but there will be other places that will look differently. House churches. Small groups that meet in coffeehouses and bars. Storefront ministries. There is one church that meets in Waco, Texas under an interstate bridge. You know what it’s called? The Church Under the Bridge. It began as an outreach to homeless folks and now all kinds of people meet there. And these are the places that will produce new leaders. Church is going to be different if we let new people lead us.

Back to David. He gave Saul his armor back and he went down in a dry wadi. He looked around and picked up five small stones. He put them in his shepherd’s bag and then he went out to face down the giant. Big, ol’ Goliath, 50 feet tall with 500 pounds of weapons and armor – little ol’ David, with a staff and a slingshot and a pouch of small stones.

Goliath went out to face his opponent and he had so much stuff that he needed a helper to carry his shield. He looked down at David and he was disgusted. “I asked for a worthy opponent and you send me a boy with a shepherd’s staff? What do you think I am? A dog?” And he let out a string of curses directed at David. “You come on over here and I’ll leave you as a good dinner for the birds and the beasts.”

Now just about anybody else would have been quaking in his or her boots at this point. But not David. He may have been small but somebody big had his back. He knew that he was not facing the giant alone. He was facing the giant with the God who had helped him in the past.

“You come at me with a sword and a spear and a javelin,” David said. “But I come at you in the name of Yahweh Sabaoth, God of the armies of the Israel, whom you defied. So let me tell you what’s going to happen to you. Yahweh will give you into my hand and I will strike you down and separate you from your head. And it won’t be me lying out for the birds and the beasts; it will be you. People will know then that there is a god for Israel. And people will know that it’s not by sword and spear that Yahweh saves, because the battle belongs to the Lord.”

Then it happened…just like David said. Goliath moved up and drew near to attack David. David moved quickly and started running toward him. On the way he reached his hand into that shepherd’s bag and pulled out one of those smooth stones. He put it in his sling and twirled it around and that stone came flying out and hit that giant right square in the forehead. He fell flat on his face in the earth. Ding, dong, the witch was dead. Or the giant…

It’s a great story, isn’t it? The little guy beats the giant. A small stone in a sling beats the best military technology of the day. A boy has more faith and confidence than the king and not only says he believes in God but acts like he does. It makes you believe that a new day could be possible.

This week we’ve been watching the news out of Iran. They had an election there and all the polls seemed to indicate that a reform candidate by the name of Mousavi was going to beat the current president, Ahmadenijad. Thousands of young people were in the streets anticipating a new day when Iran would turn away from repression and towards justice.

Then the election results were announced. The current president was said to have won in a landslide although most people believed that there was massive fraud. The vote count was strictly controlled by the government. Riot police lined the street. Communication with the outside world was reduced to Twitter.

Then the protests began and they were largely peaceful. Thousands, then hundreds of thousands of people went into the streets. The reform supporters wore green and chanted “Allahu Akbar.” “God is great. God is great.” All night long they shouted this from the rooftops, “Allahu Akbar. God is great.” Every night they go to the rooftops and they shout, “Allahu Akbar. God is great.” And they expect a new day.

There was a picture from the middle of the week. It shows one of the reform protestors – a man who looks to be in his 30s or 40s. He is hurling something in the air at the policeman who have come to confront them. He’s got his arm back to fling the object and his feet are off the ground because he is throwing this object with all of his might. What he is throwing is a bouquet of flowers. Flowers. To think that a regime might come down because people throw flowers at the giants.

I have to believe that God is calling us to the same sort of new day. We all face giants of some sort or another in our lives. We know their names and we tremble in their path. Maybe it’s depression that stands like a Goliath in front of you. That’s certainly been a giant in my life from time to time. Maybe it’s an addiction. Maybe it’s an old wound in your soul that has more power than it ought to. Maybe it’s a relationship that is going sour. Maybe it’s a bully.

There may be giants in this world. But no giant you can face is greater than the power of God. In the end Goliaths fall and fail, but God never does. And the people who find wholeness and salvation are those who know this and act on it. Who do not fear what can be done to the body but who put their confidence and trust in the one who comes to make all things new.

We’ve got some giant-slaying to do in this world. But we don’t have to do it alone. God is with us. God is great. Thanks be to God.

1 Samuel 17:1-49 (NRSV)

The Philistine came on and drew near to David, with his shield-bearer in front of him. When the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was only a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance. The Philistine said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, "Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the field."

But David said to the Philistine, "You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies of the Philistine army this very day to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hand."

When the Philistine drew nearer to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead; the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground.

The Only Thing Stable is What We Shall Become

This is graduation season and last Wednesday I was at Nandua’s graduation where we saw Lauren Mears and Kerri Tracy become alumnae of the high school. Kerri did a wonderful job of capturing the mood of the night in her salutatorian’s address. We were all very proud.

One thing that happens at graduations, though, is that the keynote speakers generally pull out all sorts of phrases that have become shopworn from overuse: This not an end; it’s a beginning. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. You are the future of America. Now the baton is being passed to a new generation. Give to the alumni association now. These are the phrases we are accustomed to hearing at graduation exercises.

At least one of those phrases is a lie, though. It’s a saying that gets used, not only by graduation speakers but even by political leaders. “The future is in your hands.” That is not true. What you do with your choices in the years to come is critically important. How you live your life and what you give your energies and your labor to make a big difference in what the world looks like. But ultimately it is not true that the future is in your hands because the future is in God’s hands.

“So we are courageous always.” This is what Paul says in the passage we read from Second Corinthians this morning. “So we are courageous always.” Those were hard-won words for Paul. He didn’t have an easy life. This is guy, after all, who was knocked off his donkey and blinded while he was on a mission to persecute Christians. He had to give up all of his status and all the things he had worked for to become a leader among the religious authorities in order to follow the voice of Jesus which called to him in his blindness. When the scales fell from his eyes and he could once again see he had to put himself at the mercy of the Christians – the very people he was seeking to destroy.

He was snuck out of Damascus in a basket lowered from the city walls. He had confrontations and conflicts with people everywhere he went. He was misunderstood constantly by the people in the churches he had established – people like the Corinthians. He was beaten, jailed, undermined, ridden out of town on a rail…It is an understatement to say that Paul did not have an easy life. So for him to say, “We are always courageous. We are always confident.” This was not said lightly.

Paul knew what was coming, though, and that made all the difference. He knew that if you just take the world at face value it can be a discouraging place. In the world there is pain and injustice. In the world people suffer loneliness and despair. In the world children are neglected and the elderly know the grief of losing loved ones they have known for many years. In the world our friends at school sometimes exclude us or make fun of us. In the world we sometimes hurt our friends. In the world relationships are a mystery to us and they are the source of our greatest joys and our deepest pains. If you take the world as it is you know that it’s a tough place.

That’s not all there is to the world, though. With the right eyes you know that the greatest truth is not that might makes right and nice guys always finish last. With right eyes you can see hints of heaven peaking through the fabric of this world. As Paul puts it in chapter 4, verse 18 of this second letter to the Corinthians: “We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

The world looks different when you look at it with heaven on your mind. You start to see possibilities that were not there before. You start to realize that the suffering and the pain of this world is not the only thing to be said about it. You start to believe that the world is a God-filled place.

Yesterday we were visiting with Laura Dennis who is back home now after undergoing a lot of surgeries and a long time away. We have been praying for her for some time now. As we talked I said, “When I look at how far you’ve come, Laura, it’s miraculous. I don’t know how it happened.”

Laura didn’t hesitate. She said, “I know how.” She knew that it was the prayers of so many people and the God on whom she has relied that made all the difference. Don’t just look at what is but what can be and will be.

So we are courageous always. “We know,” says Paul, “that while we are at home in the body we are on a long journey apart from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.” It’s not always evident what God is up to. It’s not always clear why things happen the way that they do. But the ways things are right now is not the whole story. The world as it is is unstable. The only thing truly stable is what we shall become in Christ.

I’m always drawn to signs of unwarranted confidence. Like when one of our cats stares down a big dog. Who do they think they are? Once Suzanne and I were driving across southern Oklahoma with some seminary friends - driving back to Dallas. In the grasslands along the Red River there are a lot of towns that look like time has passed them by. They’re ramshackle with lots of buildings falling down. We went into one of those towns and there was a welcome sign on the highway going in. It was bent and pockmarked where somebody had shot up the sign with shotgun pellets. But you could still make out the words and what it said was: “The Best is Yet to Come.” What unwarranted confidence!

That’s exactly what Paul is talking about here, though. There is a higher calling to which we are called because there is a higher destiny to which the world is called. Jesus came to show us that the end of the line for us and for all creation is not decay and destruction; what we wait for is the new heaven and the new earth and what we do while we are waiting is to seek to be well-pleasing to him.

Paul includes in verse 11 this vision which we take to be a warning but is really a promise: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be dealt with according to what was done through his or her body, whether good or evil.” Now you can read that like a bad warning you give children around Christmas time: “He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad or good so you better be good for goodness’ sake!” You can read it like that or you can see it as a promise that the life we live for good in the world is done in expectation that this is not all there is. And we do these things, as John Wesley said, “not for wrath but for conscience’s sake.”

Another way to translate that verse is to say, “When we appear before the judgment seat of Christ who we are will be revealed at last. Our true selves will be known.” We live such strange lives as human beings. We’re never really at home. We don’t know ourselves and we always suspect that there is something incomplete about us.

Paul wants to tell us that we find our identity in Christ. The story of what God did in Jesus is so compelling and so complete that it resolves the mystery of who we are. “The love of Christ holds us fast,” Paul says, “so that we are convinced of this: One has died for all and therefore all have died.” In Jesus’ death, all those things that would lead us to self-destruction and nothingness – sin, in a word – all of that is put to death. “Jesus died on behalf of all so that the living may no longer live for themselves but rather on behalf of him who died and was raised.”

We live, not for ourselves, but for Jesus! What a relief! What a relief not to have to prop ourselves up continually. What a relief to know that our ultimate worth is measured not on our terms, but on God’s terms. What a relief to know that the things that have defined my life for so long don’t have to define them anymore. I’m not just my family history or my physical state or who I’m involved with or what my job. I’m not victim, abuser, abused, addicted, hopeless, God-forsaken, sinner – none of those words capture who I am in God’s eyes. For God I am, like God’s son, Jesus, a child. God’s child. And I live for Jesus.

I haven’t figured this side of myself out yet, but I am prone to watching some fairly dark movies. It’s partly to do with the fact that I know God sees into the darkness and knows the light of what we can become. Sherrybaby is not a movie I can recommend for family viewing but contains a vivid portrait of how hard it is to try to live on your own terms and the illusion that freedom and independence sometimes is.

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Sherry, a young woman who has just been released from prison after three years. Sherry’s heroin addiction got her into the prison and she comes out determined to put her life back together. She wants to stay clean and rebuild her relationship with her young daughter, Alexis, but the patterns from her past are too deep to overcome.

Sherry goes to a halfway house and immediately begins to have trouble with the other residents and to get involved in a sexual relationship with the house manager. After getting in a fight at the house, which is called the Genesis House, she goes to live with her brother and sister-in-law who have been keeping her daughter, Alexis, while she has been in prison. Sherry’s sister-in-law thinks she is an unfit mother and tells Alexis not to call Sherry ‘Mom’.

The truth is she is an unfit mom. She has been deeply wounded by abuse in her family but she deals with it by being extremely needy and self-destructive. She ends up spiraling back into a life of drugs.

All along the way we see glimpses of what Sherry could be if she could work through her neediness and her obstinate refusal to do the things that would lead her to health. An AA friend gets her cleaned up after she has a particularly bad bender. Then she goes back to try and connect with her daughter one more time.

She gets her brother to agree to let her take Alexis for the day but she is really determined to take her away to Florida. They drive into the next state and stop at a fast food restaurant. While waiting in line for the bathroom, Sherry sees another mother berating her child and she snaps, cursing and pulling the woman by the hair and throwing her out of the bathroom. Alexis is terrified and ends up wetting her pants.

As Sherry is changing her in the parking lot she realizes that she can’t do it. She can’t be the mother she wants to be or needs to be as long she does it alone. They get back into the car and head home.

Facing her brother again in the darkened front yard of his home, Sherry looks at him with tears coming down her face. “Could you help me take care of my daughter? I can’t do it by myself.”

“Of course I can,” her brother says. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“I know,” Sherry says. “But I never asked you.”

It’s a small step. We don’t know where it goes from there. But she has made a small move toward recognizing her own limits and to taking some responsibility for her life.

“From now on,” Paul says, we don’t see anyone through the lens of the flesh. Even though we once knew Christ that way, now we don’t know him that way. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Look, they have been made new!”

What journey have you been on away from God? Where are the places in your life where you need to say, “I can’t do it by myself”? What is old can pass away. What is new can come. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Thanks be to God.

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

So we are courageous always. We know that while we are at home in the body we are on a long journey apart from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. But, yes, we are courageous even though we think it better to be apart from the body and at home with the Lord. This is our aspiration - whether at home or on that long journey apart to be well-pleasing to him.

For we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be dealt with according to what was done through his or her body, whether good or evil. So, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade people, but who we are is revealed to God, and I hope it is also revealed to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but rather are giving you the opportunity to boast on our behalf, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in appearance but not in the heart. If we are ecstatic, it is for God, but if we are of sound mind, it is for you.

The love of Christ holds us fast so that we are convinced of this: One has died for all and therefore all have died. And he died on behalf of all so that the living may no longer live for themselves but rather on behalf of him who died and was raised. Therefore from now on, we don't see anyone through the lens of the flesh. Even though we once knew Christ through the flesh, now we don't know him that way. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Look, they have been made new!