I Am David: Faith, Foolhardiness and the Impossible Task

We have been listening to the First Book of Samuel at Vigils for a couple of weeks now, and I am finding myself captivated once again by the stories about Samuel, Saul and David.  These stories are thick with insight about human nature.  We meet Samuel, temple oblate called to succeed Eli, whose sons have disgraced the priesthood.  He becomes a great leader and wise judge, but old age brings trials when his own sons fail to follow his example and the people insist that he place a king over them, which he does against his own better judgement.  We meet Saul, tall and handsome, but awkward and uncommunicative, clearly uncomfortable with kingship.  His initial success quickly begins to dribble away from him when he fails to listen and act prudently, making decisions that endanger the lives and spiritual wellbeing of others.  Then comes David, the chosen king, the man after God’s own heart, whose rise to power, golden years and decline fill the remainder of the books of Samuel.  David is a central figure in the history of Israel and in its worship, as warrior-king and psalmist.  His life epitomizes God’s call of the youngest, the most insignificant and lacking in resources, so that power may be made perfect in weakness.  He is also, crucially, very human – “flawed but favored” as one scholar puts it – a penitent and one who knows deeply that it is God who works in him for good.  As such, David is not just a mythical figure but a kind of everyman.  The Scriptures sometimes call all humanity or any given person by the name ‘Adam’.  Perhaps each one of us is invited to say: “I am David.”
 
To illustrate what I mean, I would like to take a stroll with you through one story that we all know very well, that of David and Goliath.  Here is the scene: Israel and the Philistines stand on opposite sides of a valley, prepared for war.  But instead of joining in battle, one man comes forward from the Philistine ranks.  He is Goliath of Gath, a man of great stature, seemingly invulnerable in head-to-toe armor, calling out his challenge: “Today I defy the ranks of Israel! Give me a man, that we may fight together” (1 Sm 17:10).  We are told that the Israelite army trembles before this towering figure and his all-or-nothing proposition.  In our lives, we too sometimes meet Goliath.  Do we not find ourselves trembling before a larger-than-life situation which threatens us and leaves us paralyzed with fear?  Some sources say that Goliath was “six cubits and a span” that is, 9 foot 9.  He’s a monster!  Others contain the more moderate, but still significant “four cubits and a span” or 6 foot 9.  OK, he’s big, but not off the scale.  A problem can march up to us, get in our face and start yelling, allowing us to see no way out.  We can be so overcome that we’re not able to see it for what it is.  Our fear magnifies the danger to epic proportions and leaves us quivering uselessly before what is actually just a figment of our imagination.  Like the Israelites we ask ourselves: What do we do about Goliath?  Who will save us?
 
Here comes David.  We see him first as a shepherd-boy and his father’s gopher, sent to the front lines to bring provisions to his older brothers and carry news back to the family at home.  Interestingly, he is also portrayed as a brash adolescent, elbowing his way into the ranks and immediately starting to gossip about the “uncircumcised Philistine” and what should be done about him.  His brother Eliab tries to cut him down to size: What are you doing here, little squirt?  Just want to get a taste of battle, did you?  Leave this to the big boys and go back to your sheep.  David’s reply could have come from the mouth of any teenager: “What have I done now?  It was only a question” (1 Sm 17:29).
 
Nevertheless, we begin to sense that there is something more than adolescent bravado here.  When David’s mouth leads him to stand before King Saul, as the only one who is not cowering in fear before Goliath, we wonder why he should be taken seriously.  Saul says to him: You can’t do this.  You’re just a kid, and he’s been fighting since he was your age!  David replies by telling of his experience as a shepherd, how he had to defend the sheep against lions and bears.  We might have responded: So, David, you chased after the lion or the bear and knocked it down and took the lamb out of its mouth, did you, then when it came after you, you grabbed it by the jaw and killed it?  Sure!  Tell us another one.  But that is not what happens:
“David said, ‘The Lord, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine.’  So Saul said to David, ‘Go, and may the Lord be with you!’” (1 Sm 17:37).
 
David is actually offering himself to stand for Israel against a very real threat: the man Goliath.  And Saul is letting him do it.  What the heck!  Is this crazy, or is this a level of faith beyond what we can comprehend?  What could make this young man so confident in God’s power and will to save, that he will risk his life in a battle of absurdly mismatched proportions?  What could lead us to stand before the threatening circumstances of our lives with confidence in God’s power and will to save?  We have to remember our encounters with those lions and bears, with life experiences that have tested us beyond our capacity.  Have I met a lion or a bear, an impossible situation or a heavy burden, something I just couldn’t handle by myself?  Have I experienced what it is to be delivered by the power of God, to rely on him with desperate neediness and then, at length, to find a source of strength within to confront and to work through the problem to a resolution?  If so, then I can stand before Goliath, knowing that the Lord, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from this, too.
 
Now there’s a question of armor.  We can’t let that lad go out to meet Goliath dressed in his tunic and short pants.  Give him the king’s armor!  Yes, that will even things out.  A helmet for a helmet, a coat of mail for a coat of mail, a sword for a sword.  I love how the storyteller expresses David’s clear perception that this is not going to work:
“David strapped Saul’s sword over the armor, and he tried in vain to walk, for he was not used to them.  Then David said to Saul, “I cannot walk with these; for I am not used to them.”  So David removed them.”  (1 Sm 17:39)
He is obviously in touch with some important facts about himself:
First, David is not Saul.  Dressing up to look like Saul is not going to make David a better opponent to Goliath.  Likewise, allowing ourselves to be dressed in other people’s solutions is not going to help us solve our problems.
Second, David does not need to be like Goliath.  Donning armor for armor is only going to impede David’s capacity to respond.  Just because a big man rushes at me in full armor waving a sword and yelling, doesn’t mean I have to get big, get armor, get a sword and start yelling.
Third, David needs to be himself.  He takes up the tools he knows: his staff, his shepherd’s bag and his sling.  Into the pouch he places five smooth stones that he has chosen from the wadi.  I am fascinated by these stones.  I notice that they are specially chosen, much as one might choose small, flat stones well-suited for skimming across a pond.  By spending time to weigh carefully different ways to respond to a problem, I can choose a smooth stone to oppose a sharp sword.  I notice also that there are five stones, much like the five loaves and two fish offered by the small boy to feed the multitude in the gospel.  Five stones seem every bit as inadequate for the task in hand as five loaves, but just as the multitude in the gospel have bread to spare, so David will need only one of his stones to fell Goliath in the end.
 
At last comes the confrontation.  Goliath looks down on his opponent with disdain: “he was only a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance” (1 Sm 17:42).  David himself gives no thought to how things look on the outside.  He is clear on the source of his strength:
“You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.  This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand…that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand.” (1 Sm 17:45-47)
The culminating scene is so brief and simply narrated as to be almost anti-climactic.  David simply takes out one the stones from his bag and slings it toward Goliath, striking him on the forehead – his one vulnerable spot – and that’s the end of him.  So much for this monster, this invulnerable opponent, this man threatening the destruction of all Israel.  So much for the problem, the trial, the impossible situation that swallows up all else in our imagination.  Along with Goliath, all threats, real or imagined, fall away.  This does not mean there will not be another Goliath someday.  But perhaps we, like David, can learn to approach every Goliath in our life with the simplicity of one who knows God’s power working within.
 
Let us be David, then, each of us: flawed and favored, small, insignificant and weak, and so perfectly suited to be vehicles of God’s saving power.  In this sense, we are persons after God’s own heart.
“for it was not by their sword that they won the land,
    nor did their own arm give them victory;
it was your right hand, your arm,
    and the light of your face,
    for you loved them.” (Ps 44:3)