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Thought
for the Week Sunday 21 June – Second Sunday after Trinity
The
two stories before us today are both familiar, both gripping, both full of
immediate meaning, even if what they seem to mean may differ greatly from person
to person. Readings from the Old Testament are sometimes quite obscure and we
listen with half an ear, wondering what this has to do with our own life and
times. Yes, we know they have their place in the history of God’s
relationship with people of the past, and a clever preacher can often weave
the web of reason and events over a long time that does indeed effectively
link the past with us. Yet, it is like looking through the wrong end of a
telescope isn’t it? We live in a “look ahead” world and we really want to
hear about the “here and now”. Who,
though, is immune from the thrills of a darn good story? The story of David
overwhelming the giant Philistine is one of the best and we can hear it with
all the attention of a kid listening to a tale of adventure. We especially
like the blatant exaggeration – Goliath is six cubits and a span tall, and
that’s tall even by Basketball Star standards. We’re told that a cubit is the
distance between the elbow and the fingertip – that’s about 18 inches, and a
span is half a cubit. By my reckoning that made Goliath 9’9” tall – or a
shade under three meters. His
coat weighed five thousand shekels –a shekel was a teeny weeny bit less than
an ounce. I calculate that his coat weighed 140 kilos. I don’t need to go on.
The writer paints an awesome picture, and the forces of good face a
terrifying champion of the forces of evil. No
wonder the assembled ranks of the soldiers of Israel quaked in their boots –
sandals, I guess – when he challenged any one of them to take him on single
handedly. Every
Comic Book hero has faced odds like these, and by brute force and cleverness
has overcome the one who would become ruler of the world, or whatever his
ambition may be. But Comic Book heroes are always big guys anyway. Have you ever
seen a scholarly hero, a geeky one, with round glasses and skinny arms? Well,
perhaps David was not exactly geeky – ruddy and handsome is how he’s
described for us, whatever that means, but still only a boy. A boy though, on
whom the eye of the Lord had come to rest, and whose destiny was already set
in stone. David had three things to offer on that fateful day: First, his
sense of destiny! He knew that his life would not end that day, for if it
did, all that he knew the Lord wanted of him would not come about. Next, his
sense of righteousness – and by that I mean his firm conviction that his
people had the right and the obligation to occupy and defend that land.
Lastly, he had skill. The kind of skill that those who cannot resort to brute
force must develop – the skill to launch a projectile with unerring accuracy.
Deadly accuracy, in this case. Goliath
was hit by David’s stone, and fell like a stone! The
story builds and builds but the conclusion is sudden, and from it we garner
lessons that have trickled down to us over the ages. “The bigger they are,
the harder they fall” is perhaps the most obvious, and perhaps the most
trite. Yet it has been as true of Banks as it is of bullies, as we have seen
lately. Destiny,
righteousness and skill – if we package these three qualities together,
perhaps one word for them would be “integrity.” As
the Presidential elections in America concluded, a correspondent wrote that
he had not noticed the word “integrity” used even once by either side. “It is
a quality, the loss of which is regretted by the mature among us, a quality
yearned for by the young, and a quality abandoned by the worlds of politics
and commerce”, he wrote. It is hard not to agree. For those at the bottom of
the economic pyramid in these difficult times, the ones who are both blamed
for the crisis and who must bear the cost in terms of jobs and security,
there must be a yearning for someone to be their voice, someone to stand up
for them, someone to face the mega powers, a David. Well,
there are certainly some questions about the story of David and Goliath, and
perhaps it is not literally wholly true, but in the inimitable way of the
Bible, our own lives and times are informed. Belief in our own sense of
destiny, an unswerving idea of what is the right thing, and confidence in our
individual skills – these are vital elements in pursuing a Godly and
Christian life. Before
we began using the Revised Common Lectionary to determine our Sunday readings
we used a slightly different method, one that often matched themes in the two
or three lessons for the day. Although it was a little artificial sometimes,
it was quite nice to note the echoes of whatever Jesus was saying or doing in
the Gospel lesson, in the Old Testament lesson of the day. We rarely see
those echoes now because the readings tend to continue from week to week in a
more linear way. Yet
the greatly loved story of Jesus calming the violence of the sudden storm
does find some echoes in the tale of David and Goliath. Small
bodies of water, such as the Sea of Galilee are notorious for becoming very
rough, very suddenly. Twice in the gospels we hear of this happening, and at
least twice in the Old Testament, notably in the story of Jonah, but
similarly in the story of God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind. Rough
seas, and sudden squalls, can be very frightening. We find ourselves
confronted by an element far bigger than we are, and we feel powerless to
control it. A sailor will try to steer the vessel into the wind, but
sometimes that is hard to do as well. The winds can be capricious too. Boats,
even quite large ones, can founder under the crushing weight of a wave,
especially if it hits broadside. The sailors and passengers alike look to
someone who knows the ways of the seas and who can cope with the immediate
dangers. Unlikely
as it seems to us, Saul and the gathered soldiers of Israel were persuaded to
believe in the stripling who came forth to defend them. The
disciples huddled in the small boat could not muster similar belief. Perhaps
because Jesus’ trade was that of carpenter and not of fisherman it did not
occur to them that he had the skill or ability to save them. Yet,
if you’ve ever known someone who always manages to snooze when the world is
falling apart around them, you will know how absolutely infuriating that can
be. Scared as they were, the disciples were amazed that Jesus continued to
sleep peacefully in the teeth of the storm. They woke him, but not for the
purpose of asking him to save them. “Don’t you care that we are perishing?”
they demand. Jesus may have smiled to himself, for when has just caring ever
really solved a problem? Action is what it takes, Actually doing something. By
their question, were the disciples asking for his help in a round about way?
Perhaps. I really don’t know, but we can certainly infer from Jesus’ response
that his mere presence, either asleep or awake, was not enough to stiffen
their faith that they would survive. And he rebukes them for their lack of
belief. Then stills the storm. Not
only skeptics but many theologians seek explanations for miracles, looking
for the noble intervention of some human quality – such as the generosity of
all the bystanders at the miracle of the loaves and fishes, making that the
true miracle. For me, the little boy’s wonder at witnessing the impossible
always takes over and I like to believe in the miracles of Jesus just as we
hear them related. Bt
even if the story of David and the Giant are wildly exaggerated, and even if
the disciples simply gained courage from Jesus, having been wakened, to
withstand the remaining wrath of a dying storm, the abiding lesson for us has
to be our trust in God. Each
and every one of us has a destiny to live out. Each of us has a sense of
righteousness to proclaim, and each person has skill to offer in the cause of
the kingdom. “Who
is this, that the wind and the sea obey him?” ask those disciples. There is
an answer: Jesus is the crucified and risen Lord who is with us in storm and
in calm, on sea and on land, when we have all the answers and when we have
nothing but questions. Revd Canon Tony Jewiss To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |