Text: 1 Samuel 17:32-58
One of
William's and Alice's favourite episodes of Veggie
Tales is a retelling of the David and Goliath story called Dave and the Giant Pickle which pits
Junior Asparagus as David against a giant pickle. The lesson behind the story is one we all
know too well due to the myriads of children’s sermons we’ve heard on David and
Goliath. “All things are possible with
God who can do great things with small people who have few gifts and so we’re
all special to God just the way we are.”
I may be warped or jaded, I’m not sure which anymore, but I don’t think
the core message underlying the David and Goliath story is the one we teach our
children. That message goes a long way
or better yet, used to go a long way towards getting people involved in the
institution we call the church. Yet,
getting people involved in the institutional church is not the purpose of the
pulpit. Ministers of the Word are called
to proclaim that Jesus is Lord, the crucified and risen Lord. Unfortunately, in order to do that from the
story of David and Goliath we must talk about David beheading Goliath and
parading the head all over Israel as the foreshadowing of the ultimate
beheading of sin, evil, and death from God’s creation that God wrought by
Jesus' death and resurrection.
But, we
don’t talk about sacred decapitation, do we…especially not to children. In Dave and the Giant Pickle Junior the
Asparagus certainly does not jump on the fallen gherkin and turn him into an
appetizer, does he? No, he only appears
to have knocked a bully unconscious.
Yet, sacred decapitation is exactly what David did to Goliath and he
went further and made a public and humiliating display of Goliath's head to
terrorize the enemies of God and…and a very big and…to lift the hopes of
Israel. This story is one of the most
barbaric moments in all of the Old Testament, but...its also one of its most
important when it comes to understanding the New Testament’s most barbaric
moment, the crucifixion of Jesus and that being the means of God’s triumph over
death.
It is
important we know a bit about Goliath and what he symbolized because there is
more to him than just his being a mighty blaspheming giant bully whom everybody
was afraid to fight. Goliath was a descendant
of the Nephilim who were an ancient race of giants of unholy origin who somehow
managed to survive the flood in Noah’s day and until David’s day they stood as
an ancient threat and foil to God’s plans for his creation. Genesis 6:1-4 tells us that the Nephilim came
about as the result of an unholy union between “the sons of God” and human
women. I Enoch, which is an extra-biblical writing by an ancient Jewish
author tells us that the sons of God were rebellious angels who came down to
earth and it was they rather than Adam and Eve who succumbed to temptation and
introduced sin and death to the world.
They taught women sorcery and weaponry and the gigantic offspring
of their unholy unions with human women filled the earth with violence, oppression,
and death. In the Bible, the Nephilim
show up next at Numbers 13:33. When the
Israelites were about to enter the land of Canaan
Moses sent spies to scope it out. The spies returned with some monstrous grapes
saying the land is very good but…the Nephilim are in the land and there is no
way the Israelites could conquer them.
That lack of faith resulted in God sending the Israelites back into the
wilderness for another forty years of aimless wandering. Finally, by David’s day there are only five
of the Nephilim left, Goliath being one of them. Significant to note here is that in the
course of David's reign as king, he and his men kill them all. In fact, the history of David’s adult life
begins and ends with the deaths of these giants. David, the king after God’s own heart, the
anointed king defeats and rids humanity of the menacing remnants of that
ancient and so very real evil these giants symbolized.
Moving
from David to Jesus, in the Gospel of Mark 4-6 we find Jesus in the midst of
dealing with some Goliath's of his own. Jesus
manifests his power over nature gone awry by calming a storm and restoring the
sea to peace. He demonstrates his
authority over the demonic by casting thousands of demons out of just one man
and restoring him to peace. He shows his
power over death by restoring life to the dead daughter of Jairus a leader of
the synagogue. He removed the curse of
being perpetually unclean from a woman who had an issuance of blood for twelve
years by healing her. And, he does all
this only to be rejected as THE MESSIAH by his hometown of Nazareth. So, he leaves there and sends the twelve
disciples out on a very successful mission of proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom of God inclusive
of them healing and casting out demons in his name. When they return, he then pulls off the
kingdom feast. He feeds over 15,000
people with five loaves of bread and two fish.
Having
done these things in clear view there should have been no doubt among the
Jewish leadership that Yahweh had himself come to be the Anointed King like
David the we expecting who would overthrow all oppressors and once and for all
establish God's reign here on earth.
But, they didn't accept him. They
were actually expecting somebody more like David, a king who would manifest his
power over the powers by violence. There
is an interesting twist in this comparison between David and Jesus. Jesus' toppling of the powers does not
culminate in a horrific, blood-dripping display of the spoils of violence in
the name of God. No, it culminates in
the restoration of peace, sanity, wellness, and true life not only to humans
but to all the Creation. He brings
salvation.
A bishop
in the early church known as Irenaeus taught of humanity's recapitulation
through Jesus. Jesus, God the Son by
becoming human dying and being raised, as David did Goliath with Goliath's own
sword, beheaded our old humanity controlled by sin and death and has given us
his self, his life through the Holy Spirit and restored in us the image of God
which was lost in our old humanity.
Irenaeus writes: "when He became incarnate, and was made man, He
commenced afresh the long line of human beings, and furnished us, in a brief,
comprehensive manner, with salvation; so that what we had lost in Adam—namely,
to be according to the image and likeness of God—we might recover in Christ
Jesus".
God has
given humanity a new head (leader), Jesus Christ to take the place of the old
head we had in fallen Adam whose fallenness is epitomized in the Nephilim whom
we are all like in one way or another.
Since Jesus and by means of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit humanity
has at work in itself the mind of Christ, which means we have in us the God-given
capacity to live together in the image of the loving communion of God the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Our inner
Nephilim, the old self was crucified with Christ so that it is no longer we
each who live, but Christ living in us.
We each now have in us the capacity to bear the fruits of the Spirit:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control. Therefore, let us each
live and bear those fruits each day as the living proof of God's steadfast love
and faithfulness.
The neural
pathway of the mind of Christ in us is prayer and so we must learn to pray
without ceasing. Ceaseless prayer is the
way we get our inner Goliaths to shut up and go away. Wake each morning and offer yourself for this
day to Christ for his work. Then live
the rest of your day mindful of his presence with and in you. Find a
Scripture or a prayer to recite when your mind is idle or begins to worry,
judge, grudge, or self-loathe. Prayer,
being in relationship with God the Father through and with Jesus the Son in
union with him in the Holy Spirit is the living out of the new mind of the new
head that we now have in Jesus Christ.
Therefore, pray! The mind of
Christ is a terrible thing to waste.
Amen.
