Proper 7B

Denise Giardina

I Samuel 17(1a, 4-11, 19-23) 32-49; Psalm 9:9-20; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41

The story of David and Goliath is one of the most famous in the Old Testament, a story that is known by and resonates even with people who aren’t religious and know little else about scripture. One reason may be that we hear it when we are children, and what child is not captivated by the tale of someone not much older than themselves, and just as weak and insignificant, who nevertheless is brave and, against all odds, defeats a giant?

The story of David and Goliath also resonates because who doesn’t love an underdog? There is nothing more compelling in the world of sports than the team of misfits who somehow manage through sheer determination to upset the champions who are considered a lock to win. Or the poor man or woman who by hard work manages to achieve greatness – imagine Abe Lincoln reading his books by the light of the fire in his lowly log cabin, or Horatio Alger pulling himself up by his bootstraps. Add the element of God fighting on the side of David, and you have a beloved story that reaches deep into the yearnings of human beings.

On a deeper theological level, the story is also often interpreted as an allegorical battle between good and evil. A lectionary website I sometimes look at makes this case clearly. Goliath is evil. David is good. Good stands up to evil, fights evil, and with God’s help, defeats evil. I suppose that was the reading that I used to accept. But when I read today’s passage from I Samuel while preparing for this sermon, it struck me very differently.

Perhaps that is the case because of disturbing events in the news these days. Back in the spring, a young man murdered a young woman at Wesleyan University, and said he thought it would be “OK” to kill a Jew. A young man in Pittsburgh with neo-Nazi views, who feared his guns would be taken away by the Obama administration, ambushed and killed two police officers. More recently, a man with anti-government and anti-abortion connections shot Dr. George Tiller in his own church, as he served as an usher. In Arkansas, a recent convert to Islam shot two Army recruiters, one fatally, as they took a break from their jobs. The suspect said he did not consider his act to be murder because of what the United States was doing in the Middle East. Most recently, a white supremacist and anti-Semite shot and killed an African-American guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

I know you have been following these events in the news. The affect does accumulate, doesn’t it? Perhaps you ask yourself if there is something about the times we live in that has contributed to these horrific events. And perhaps there is. But it also seems to me that there is nothing new under the sun.

In each of these cases, one could argue that a form of mental illness was involved. In every single case, family members claim this to be true. But I also believe mental illness can combine with other factors, deadly combinations that can lead to violence. When I was fresh out of college and looking for work, I took a job as a unit clerk on the Behavioral Medicine unit at Charleston General. In one case I recall, a mentally ill man had to be restrained to keep him from gouging out his own eyes. He wanted to do this because Jesus said if your eye offends you, pluck it out. And apparently the toxic atmosphere of religious fundamentalism in which this man had been raised, combined with his mental illness, made him a danger to himself. Combine mental instability with twisted religious and/or political beliefs, and a ready access to weapons, and you get tragic results.

But there is a more subtle force at work here, and I felt as I re-read the story of David and Goliath that I might identify it. It is the fear and hatred of the Other. It is the proclivity we human beings have to say, My group is good. Your group is evil. In fact, I do not even see your group as fully human.

David, for example, compares Goliath to lions and bears. “This uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them.” Consider the scenario: The Israelites and Philistines are ranged against one another in battle. The Philistines have sent for a “champion”, Goliath, who is apparently very large and fearsome, to challenge the Israelites to single combat. The Israelites, we are told earlier in the chapter, “when they saw the man, fled from him and were very much afraid.” But David, a youth, answers the challenge to face Goliath.

Notice though how Goliath and David confront one another. They talk trash. Goliath “disdained” David, “cursed David by his gods,” and said, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the field.” David invokes his own god, Yahweh, and replies, “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.”

Some commentators try to differentiate between the two by saying that David is superior because he invokes Yahweh as his support. But did Goliath not worship gods as well? Was Goliath not a human being and a child of God? Were the Philistines not human beings and children of God? Did they not have wives and children, and a culture, and daily lives where they went about their work, and laughed and wept, and ate and drank, and fished and plowed the fields and provided for their families? Did God love Goliath and the Philistines less than David and the Israelites?

In Shakespeare’s play Henry V, the English, who are outnumbered, the underdogs as much as David, fight a battle against the French. The English forces win, killing vast numbers of Frenchmen because, for reasons they don’t really understand themselves, they possess vastly superior technology. But at battle’s end, as they consider what has taken place, Shakespeare has the English King Henry V explain the result by claiming, “God fought for us.”

The history of humanity is a history of Us vs Them. And of course God loves Us more than Them, and fights for Us. This lie continues right up to June 21, 2009. It is the lie that leads mentally ill people to kill people different from themselves, and leads people who are not mentally ill to aid and abet killings by spouting hatred toward people different from themselves. For examples, you only need to turn on the TV, or the radio, or surf the Internet.

This past week we have been watching the upheavals in Iran, where thousands of brave citizens have been demonstrating against a repressive government. But what hypocrisy on our part! This is a country we have labeled a member of the so-called Axis of Evil. Many political commentators are praising the brave Iranian people and calling for their support. Many of these same commentators were only a few months ago calling on the US and Israel to bomb the Iranian people. One of our national leaders joked, “Bomb, bomb, bomb—bomb bomb Iran.” Who gets killed when those bombs begin to fall? Does the population suddenly split into Good Iranians and Bad Iranians, and only the Bad Iranians get killed? And who measures goodness and badness anyway? “I’m good, I hate Jews. You’re bad, you’re an African-American guard at the Holocaust Museum. You deserve what’s coming.” That is the result of our judgments.

I want to close with today’s Gospel. The disciples are caught on board a boat in a frightening storm, much like the one we find ourselves in as we live our lives in this precarious world. And Jesus stills that storm. It is a familiar story, but one line in this story struck me particularly this time. Jesus has been addressing crowds, and we can guess they have been pressing upon him, and he has been consumed by their attention. He might be feeling put upon, or worn out; he might not be in the best of spirits. But Mark tells us, “leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.” Just as he was. How was he?

We don’t know, for Mark doesn’t tell us. But Jesus was, however he was, a human being. A human being in the world, dealing with all its issues, as we are. And if we learn only one thing in this life, whether we are Philistines or Israelites, whether we are white or black, whether we are for or against legalized abortion, whether we are American or Iranian – can we not learn that we are all in this boat together?