William H. Willimon - "A Children's Story" (September 4, 1994)
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| - | It is a story which is child-like and playful, | 0:11 |
| and full of enough blood and gore | 0:14 | |
| to please any child's lust for these qualities. | 0:18 | |
| I remember that after I discovered | 0:24 | |
| that my children's favorite bedtime story was | 0:26 | |
| The Three Billy Goats Gruff, | 0:29 | |
| I never turned my back on them again. | 0:31 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 0:35 | |
| It is a story which is remembered | 0:35 | |
| and it's beloved by children. | 0:38 | |
| Not only because, | 0:41 | |
| only a diminutive child could fully appreciate | 0:42 | |
| a tale of great Goliath's defeat | 0:46 | |
| by little David and his slingshot. | 0:49 | |
| But also because children living in a world | 0:55 | |
| of thunder-speaking, oppressive giants, adults, | 1:01 | |
| delight in seeing David give big, bully Goliath | 1:07 | |
| what he deserves. | 1:13 | |
| How many times did you watch the Karate Kid | 1:15 | |
| when you were in junior high? | 1:18 | |
| I'm sure that if you remember, | 1:21 | |
| know Bible stories from your childhood, | 1:23 | |
| you remember this one. | 1:26 | |
| With all the armies of Israel trembling | 1:28 | |
| before the great giant Goliath, | 1:32 | |
| little David runs quickly and takes a stone, | 1:35 | |
| and slings a stone and strikes Goliath, | 1:38 | |
| and Goliath falls, end of story. | 1:41 | |
| And yet the teller of this tale | 1:45 | |
| skillfully builds the tension in the narrative. | 1:47 | |
| Now, the Philistines gather their armies for battle. | 1:52 | |
| This would be cause enough for Hebrew fear. | 1:56 | |
| And there came out from the camp of the Philistines, | 2:00 | |
| a champion named Goliath, | 2:02 | |
| whose height was about 10 feet. | 2:06 | |
| And he had a helmet of bronze, | 2:08 | |
| and he was armed with a coat of mail weighing 150 pounds. | 2:11 | |
| His spear had weighed 19 pounds. | 2:16 | |
| He's big Goliath. | 2:20 | |
| I think the narrator lingers over | 2:24 | |
| the tales of Goliath's immense armaments, | 2:26 | |
| thus to impress us with the immense odds against Israel. | 2:29 | |
| "Give me a man that we may go out and fight together," | 2:36 | |
| taunts Goliath. | 2:40 | |
| And up pops the youngest son of Jesse. | 2:43 | |
| Goliath demanded a man. | 2:48 | |
| He gets little David. | 2:50 | |
| David happens to be on the battlefield bringing lunch | 2:54 | |
| to his older brothers. | 2:57 | |
| And the contrast between this heavily armored giant, | 2:59 | |
| come out to fight a man, | 3:05 | |
| and the little boy bringing lunch, | 3:07 | |
| it couldn't be greater. | 3:09 | |
| Where is King Saul of the Israelites? | 3:13 | |
| You may ask. | 3:16 | |
| Well, he's paralyzed by fear. | 3:17 | |
| He and his whole army hunkered down in the trenches, | 3:19 | |
| and little David swaggers up to poor, quivering King Saul, | 3:24 | |
| tells him he'll go fight Goliath. | 3:29 | |
| Hey you're just a kid. | 3:32 | |
| David tells the king that while guarding his sheep, | 3:35 | |
| he's become quite good with a slingshot. | 3:39 | |
| The Lord save me from the paw of the lion | 3:42 | |
| and from the paw of the bear, | 3:45 | |
| and will save me from this Philistine. | 3:46 | |
| Now you will note that this is the first time | 3:49 | |
| that God has entered the story. | 3:52 | |
| Something more we find out with this mention of God | 3:54 | |
| is going on here in this story. | 3:58 | |
| Something more than merely a human schoolyard contest | 4:00 | |
| between a nice little boy and a schoolyard bully. | 4:04 | |
| "Go!" says the king, | 4:09 | |
| "And may the Lord go with you." | 4:12 | |
| And that's really the only hope that little David has, | 4:17 | |
| that maybe, the Lord is with him. | 4:20 | |
| You will note that though King Saul talks about the Lord, | 4:25 | |
| note that he puts his real trust | 4:29 | |
| in the same place as Goliath, | 4:32 | |
| in armor and in the sword. | 4:34 | |
| King Saul offers his helmet, | 4:37 | |
| and his coat of mail, and his sword to little David. | 4:39 | |
| Both the Pagan giant and the Hebrew king | 4:44 | |
| want to brag at the other royal coward. | 4:48 | |
| Trust in arms and armament, | 4:51 | |
| but David does not, he trusts God. | 4:55 | |
| With God's help and his shepherd's sling, | 5:01 | |
| and just five smooth stones, it's enough. | 5:04 | |
| The equalizer between the oppressor and the oppressed | 5:08 | |
| therefore is not technology, | 5:11 | |
| it's not arms, it is not the NRA, | 5:13 | |
| it's not a good defense program, it's God. | 5:16 | |
| David's stone finds its mark. | 5:20 | |
| Great big Goliath falls dead at David's feet. | 5:22 | |
| Now this little story, beloved and believed since childhood, | 5:27 | |
| is marvelously transparent. | 5:33 | |
| We need not linger long on it's import. | 5:36 | |
| However, I do want to say something about it's significance, | 5:40 | |
| particularly, for you students. | 5:44 | |
| 'Cause I assume that maybe with the exception | 5:49 | |
| of the children in this morning's congregation, | 5:52 | |
| it's your students that maybe know most about this story. | 5:54 | |
| Because you know firsthand, | 6:04 | |
| what it's like to be the victim of those who are giants. | 6:07 | |
| Giants in their field. | 6:13 | |
| This is not for those grownup-types among us, | 6:16 | |
| who have so perfected our armor to the point | 6:18 | |
| that we feel strong, big, autonomous, | 6:21 | |
| totally invulnerable, and impervious. | 6:25 | |
| It's meant for those of us who know what it's like | 6:28 | |
| to come up against a bully | 6:31 | |
| on the playground or in the classroom. | 6:33 | |
| Those who know what it's like to be small, | 6:36 | |
| and powerless, and on the bottom. | 6:39 | |
| Anybody whose ever been exposed | 6:42 | |
| to the power wielded by others | 6:45 | |
| who are bigger, or richer, or smarter, | 6:48 | |
| or more mature, more better armored than they. | 6:51 | |
| And of course around here, | 6:57 | |
| anybody who receives grades is small, | 6:58 | |
| and anybody who gives grades is always susceptible | 7:03 | |
| to the temptation to bully. | 7:06 | |
| She is now a Duke professor, | 7:12 | |
| but she told our class that | 7:15 | |
| when she was a student in graduate school, | 7:17 | |
| she used to sit through hour after hour | 7:19 | |
| of graduate seminars and never open her mouth. | 7:22 | |
| And after a seminar, | 7:28 | |
| she would go back to her carrel in the library, | 7:29 | |
| and she would just weep, | 7:33 | |
| because she thought she had something to say, | 7:37 | |
| something to offer, | 7:39 | |
| but she felt so small. | 7:42 | |
| This little story is not neutral. | 7:49 | |
| It is not disinterested in contests | 7:53 | |
| between the giants and the small. | 7:55 | |
| It is prejudiced. | 7:58 | |
| Prejudged towards first year students and sophomores, | 8:00 | |
| and it tends to be biased against university administrators, | 8:05 | |
| particularly the Registrar, as well as the Dean's Council, | 8:09 | |
| and alas for me, even clergy, | 8:14 | |
| were backed up by giant gothic steeples, | 8:16 | |
| and hide behind well-armored, limestone pulpits. | 8:18 | |
| I'll put it to you straight, | 8:24 | |
| you are meant to identify with, | 8:26 | |
| and to draw encouragement from the actions of little David. | 8:29 | |
| Unlike the entire army of Israel and it's great king, | 8:34 | |
| David doesn't hunker down in the trenches | 8:39 | |
| and wait for fate to work its course with him. | 8:41 | |
| He acts, he takes what he has, | 8:45 | |
| he takes what he knows and he acts. | 8:49 | |
| He is not skilled in the martial arts. | 8:53 | |
| He never had a course in the military science. | 8:57 | |
| Yet he does know how to use a lowly slingshot right well, | 8:59 | |
| and by God's grace that is enough. | 9:04 | |
| Now your Generation X of young adults, | 9:10 | |
| deeply suspicious about the viability | 9:13 | |
| of political solutions to what ails us. | 9:15 | |
| Too easily, I think, reconcile to the world as it is, | 9:19 | |
| and cynical about talk of the world as it could be. | 9:23 | |
| You need to hear this story of little David who acts. | 9:29 | |
| You need to believe that it's true. | 9:34 | |
| In our first year student's seminar, | 9:40 | |
| Dr. Hague and I asked students to read Victor Franco's book | 9:41 | |
| about his survival in the Nazi prison camps. | 9:46 | |
| And one sentence from Franco always stands out | 9:52 | |
| in their reading. | 9:55 | |
| It's where Franco says the Nazi's stripped their victims | 9:58 | |
| of every dignity, every shred of their humanity | 10:02 | |
| except the last of human freedoms. | 10:07 | |
| To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. | 10:12 | |
| To choose one's own way. | 10:18 | |
| Did Franco, the Jew, know this story | 10:24 | |
| of David and Goliath? | 10:27 | |
| Yes, and time and again in their fiery trials, | 10:28 | |
| what hope God's people must have found | 10:33 | |
| in this narrative of little David. | 10:36 | |
| Of how little David, who wasn't large, | 10:39 | |
| and he wasn't well armored, | 10:41 | |
| used not only his wit but also his faith in God | 10:44 | |
| to triumph over Goliath. | 10:50 | |
| To those who trust God, | 10:54 | |
| there is a way even when there is no way. | 10:56 | |
| And we have difficulty believing in this story, | 11:04 | |
| and we have difficulty believing it, | 11:07 | |
| not simply because we're modern and we're mature, | 11:09 | |
| and therefore we come to the Bible | 11:11 | |
| prejudiced against its truth. | 11:14 | |
| We have difficulty believing this story | 11:18 | |
| because of a lack of faith, | 11:22 | |
| because we're just not too sure | 11:25 | |
| if we really believe the gospel. | 11:27 | |
| For today, that little Jesus, | 11:31 | |
| without the benefit of a medical education | 11:34 | |
| or government certification, | 11:36 | |
| went out and cured this daughter of this poor woman, | 11:38 | |
| and cured a man who was deaf and blind. | 11:42 | |
| We're just not too sure. | 11:45 | |
| We have difficulty believing the story, | 11:48 | |
| and a lack of faith in God renders us immobile to act. | 11:52 | |
| In 1955, about 3,000 American children died | 12:01 | |
| from poliomyelitis. | 12:05 | |
| It was a huge national initiative to find a cure for polio. | 12:09 | |
| And wonder of wonders, the polio vaccine was developed. | 12:16 | |
| I can still remember my third grade school teacher | 12:20 | |
| telling us about little Dr. Jonas Salk | 12:24 | |
| just working in the laboratory, | 12:27 | |
| Who defeated the big giant polio | 12:31 | |
| with nothing more than a few test tubes, | 12:33 | |
| and a petri dish, and an education. | 12:36 | |
| Interestingly, in 1993 about 3,000 American children | 12:41 | |
| died from gunshot wounds. | 12:47 | |
| Yet there is no national outrage, | 12:53 | |
| there is no great initiative against | 12:57 | |
| the horrible plague of children dying by guns. | 13:00 | |
| Now why is that? | 13:07 | |
| Well, the NRA owns much of the US Congress, yes, | 13:10 | |
| but is there a more fundamental reason | 13:14 | |
| that we no longer believe that we little us, | 13:19 | |
| working in some laboratory at the university, | 13:23 | |
| that we can conquer anything? | 13:25 | |
| What can just one little person do? | 13:28 | |
| And I'm telling you that a great deal depends | 13:33 | |
| on which stories you know by heart. | 13:35 | |
| Which stories you dare to believe. | 13:40 | |
| When Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall died, | 13:45 | |
| Justice Sandra Day O'Connor | 13:50 | |
| who disagreed with Justice Marshall on most things, | 13:51 | |
| she said, what I will miss most | 13:57 | |
| about Thurgood Marshall is his stories. | 13:59 | |
| Those stories about the tough days | 14:06 | |
| in the civil rights movement. | 14:08 | |
| When there was only Thurgood Marshall | 14:10 | |
| and a couple of NAACP lawyers going up against a great, | 14:13 | |
| legally-sanctioned, ingrained system of racial injustice. | 14:17 | |
| I will miss those stories | 14:26 | |
| because they changed the way I look at the world. | 14:29 | |
| Thus Jesus told his little band, | 14:38 | |
| "They will arrest you and persecute you, | 14:41 | |
| "hand you over to prisons, | 14:44 | |
| "you'll be brought before kings and governors because of me, | 14:46 | |
| "you'll be betrayed by your parents, | 14:49 | |
| "and your brothers, and relatives, and friends, | 14:51 | |
| "but not a hair on your head will perish. | 14:53 | |
| "I am with you." | 14:57 | |
| Well-armed, big, bragging Goliath on one side, | 15:02 | |
| well-armed, quivering, cowardly King Saul on the other. | 15:07 | |
| Now, whose going to triumph in this conquest | 15:14 | |
| between the two available alternatives. | 15:17 | |
| Go on get your armor! | 15:22 | |
| Your psychological, sociological, economic defenses | 15:23 | |
| and just hunker down 'cause it's either Goliath or Saul. | 15:27 | |
| But wait, there's another warrior in the battle. | 15:33 | |
| Someone else is moving forward into the fray. | 15:39 | |
| And I'm not talking about brash, | 15:44 | |
| sophomoric, upstart little David. | 15:47 | |
| I'm talking about God. | 15:51 | |
| The God who is determined not to leave history up | 15:54 | |
| to the bloody refuse that's leftover | 15:58 | |
| after ignorant armies have had their clash in the night. | 16:01 | |
| The God who is prodding even little shepherds into the fray. | 16:05 | |
| As long as there is God there are surprising twist | 16:12 | |
| and turnings in our story. | 16:16 | |
| The world is not yet fixed or finished. | 16:18 | |
| Listen up all you small ones. | 16:23 | |
| There is space enough even for the small and the vulnerable | 16:27 | |
| to do something with history | 16:32 | |
| if you dare let God put you to godly purposes. | 16:35 | |
| (triumphant music) | 16:54 |
