Title: David - Goliath - Jesus
6/25/06 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time Yr. B
I Samuel 17, Mark 4:35-41
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
Most of the time I will spend hours on a sermon - this one was given to me, it was like someone opened my head and I poured it into the computer.
The David and Goliath story is a kind of fun story when it is told in the way we heard it this morning - the young-at-heart version. It is a much harder story to hear when you read it right out of the Bible. There is a great deal more blood and guts. The young-at-heart version leaves out the part about David taking the Philistine's sword and cutting off his head and declaring that it was God's will.
It is awful.
Why must we use God as our cover up when in truth, we are the ones that choose violence; we are the ones that practice an eye for an eye.
I wish we would just own it once and for all and not proclaim that it is God-driven.
Leave God out of it.
In one moment David proclaims that God does not save by sword or spear and then in the next he proclaims that God will deliver Goliath into his hands for him to cut his head off.
Writer Ann Lamott in her latest book writes: “When God hates all the same people that you hate, you can be absolutely certain that you have created him in your own image.”
German pastor Martin Niemoeller who protested Hitler's anti-Semite measures in person to the fuehrer, was eventually arrested, and then imprisoned for eight years at Sachsenhausen and Dachau once confessed: “It took me a long time to learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies. God is not even the enemy of his enemies.”
Why can't we leave God out of all of our hating and battling?
Why can't we turn to God to help us calm the storm instead of recruiting him to help us cause one?
Just because the story of David and Goliath is in the Bible does not mean that it is a divine blessing upon the use of violence.
There are Biblical texts of terror - we must be honest about that - but why do we see their purpose as divine guidance rather than tools to help us look at our selfishness - our hatred - our prejudices - our need for revenge?
The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures warn the people time and again that their violent actions would lead to their demise. What did the people do to those prophets? They murdered them.
In the New Testament the two times people choose violence in a particular situation, Jesus rebukes them.
The God we see through Jesus does not bless violence.
In the parable of Jesus in the boat with the disciples when a storm starts up he gives them a good talking to about their fears.
“Why do you get so worked up?” He asks.
That's what fear does. It works us up. It grows and grows until it appears to be a giant that will do us in if we don't do it in first.
In our personal relationships fear and anger builds, we stuff our honest feelings and concerns and eventually we attack with words that are sharp and destructive. Words become our weapons of mass destruction instead of tools of mass construction.
In our politics we turn certain groups into pariahs, people with agendas that want special rights so we create legislation to keep them in their place before they take over the way things have always been.
We talk ourselves into believing it is okay to abuse prisoners because we think they abused us first. It is okay to be inhumane to someone else who was inhumane first.
I want humanity to stand up and own what we do with fear and not use God or the Bible or religion to condone or bless it.
We are a fearful people and the way we are coping with our fear only creates more fear and more insecurity, not less fear and more security. We way we cope with our fear is only making more enemies across the world, not less.
Time and again Jesus said, “Be not afraid” but those words can't get through.
Jesus, we are afraid. There are so many Goliath's we are battling that we can't even begin to keep up anymore. Jesus, we are afraid and the only response we know is revenge and retaliation - how could we possibly trust any other way?
People say that an alcoholic will not seek true healing until he or she has hit bottom -
Perhaps that is true with our use of violence to protect us from our fears. Not until we hit the bottom will we finally admit that it just isn't working this way.
Perhaps then we will really let God help us instead of creating God in our own image. When we finally hit bottom we can let God be God - we can let Love truly do what it is created to do.
To Love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
To Love our enemies and pray for those that persecute you.
Take a look at Jesus Sermon on the Mount and you will find what is truly blessed and revenge and retaliation is not among them.
You may say to me that the Sermon on the Mount is nieve and foolhardy. I will say it is different and we do not know if it is foolhardy because we have never tried it.
Until we are willing to try it my vote is that we not pin on God the revengeful choices we continue to make.
Let us pray:
Compassionate God, we bring to you our concerns for our troubled world.
We thank you that your Spirit moves and breathes within all of creation, laboring steadfastly to renew our way of relating from the most personal to the global.
May the nations seek the peace based on cooperation and sharing which you offer, more than on the peace of drawn swords.
We give thanks that you seek NOT to judge, but to save, not to destroy, but to create.
Help us refocus our fears and instead seek opportunities for partnerships and healing.
Speak to us and how us each our part to play in your mission of recreating the earth and caring for its precious creatures both great and small.
We pray to you in the strong name of Jesus Christ. Amen.