The story of David and Goliath might seem so trite that there’s really no point in even retelling it – sort of like hearing Little Red Riding Hood or the Three Bears or something. It’s probably all summed up in one simple picture in our minds: David aiming a slingshot at the big bad enemy. The enemy, Goliath, is dumb, slow, and wrong, and the hero, David, is smart and right – and wins.
But the problem with this kind of superficial picture is that it ends up ringing hollow really quickly – and that’s probably a sign we’re not reading Scripture very well. If we make David into a junior-size version of the American hero, individualistic, pulling himself up by his own bootstraps to fight the bully – and if we make Goliath just a big, dumb, obvious enemy – then there’s just nowhere helpful the story can take us. That’s kind of it. And the thing about Scripture is that it’s never really that simplistic – and if Scripture seems that simple, it’s a good sign we’re probably missing the point. In fact, David himself, as a good Israelite, would have been to first to say that that whole lone-hero perspective on the story was just a lot of hooey.
So if the human hero isn’t the point, then we have to pause before this iconic picture and ask – What is the point? Which means we have to back up even further and ask, What is the story, because obviously David and Goliath didn’t spring up out of nowhere.
The Cliffnotes version is this: Saul, who is talking to David in this passage, is Israel’s first king. And even though the Israelites are finally in the promised land – after going through an awful lot to get there – they still have to duke it out with some neighbors to stake out their territory.
At this point in the story, the neighbors they’re up against are the Philistines, just to the west. Now, the Israelites and the Philistines had been pretty antagonistic to each other – lots of reasons to dislike each other, to blame, to fight. And what’s more, the Philistines didn’t even have the right god – they had some pantheon of gods who aren’t even named in this story, but whoever they were, they weren’t Yahweh, the God of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Leah and Rachel, and the whole gang. So as everybody’s lining up to face off, it looks like the Israelites have the “right God” – only they still seem to be doing all the wrong things. They’re using the same tools of power and one-up-man-ship that everybody else is using, and they just seem to be in the same pickle that everybody else is in.
So – in short – God decides it’s time for a new and improved king. And as Tim talked about last week, the prophet Samuel – the king-picker – comes up with the most unexpected of characters: the youngest son of a family out in the boonies of Bethlehem, a guy named David, probably even just a teenager. And if he was filling out a job application, he’s really only be able to list “tending sheep” as his basic skill set.
So David shows up right as the Philistines had decided to send out their “best champion,” according to the story – a muscular guy, really buff (you can picture him checking himself out at the gym), and totally encased in the very best armor that the 10th century B.C. could buy. And basically David presents himself to Saul as the person to go fight this champ.
Which is where the story picks up today. And the action is brief and to the point. David rejects all the usual armor and weaponry, mainly because he’s too little to handle it, and instead chooses other weapons. And he strikes down the champion – and wins the battle and gets lots of positive feedback.
Ok, so that’s the gist of the David and Goliath story. And as we think about what the point really is – if it’s not just that David had God on his side, and Goliath just wasn’t so lucky – then notice of a couple of things in the story.
For one thing, even though we make a big deal about the name “Goliath,” it’s really only mentioned a couple of times in this whole narrative. Time after time, this guy is called simply “the Philistine.” The Philistine. The Philistine. We never get any glimpse into his humanity, into the realness of the human being, how he felt, what he thought he was doing right, what he thought his duty was, whether he had had a tough childhood, whether his girlfriend had dumped him the night before…. He’s well-defended, he’s superficial, he’s someone we love to hate – in other words, Goliath is a stereotype. So hold onto that for a minute.
The other thing to notice is that David has rejected the tools of fighting that both sides were using and chooses everyday tools instead. Some are what he knows from his work as a shepherd: being alert and quick, using a slingshot to stun an animal. But also the everyday tool of language. Notice: most of this juicy passage that inspires so many pictures of bloodshed and triumphalism is really just David talking – not gory details about how the bones split in the Philistine’s head, but just David talking. And he’s saying really important things. This isn’t an action film – this is philosophy, because David is saying that how we understand the action is what makes all the difference. And it has to do with God.
So when we look at the story this way – both how stereotyped “the Philistine” was, and how David went to a lot of effort to show this was God’s power, not his – the usual picture starts to change a little. The whole thing about a triumphant hero riding in to kick some butt seems to kind of shrivel up.
And then the story doesn’t make it ok to ignore someone’s humanity, like Goliath’s, or to stereotype them as The Whatever – the Philistine, the Muslim, the Christian, the American – in order to justify beating them. And the story doesn’t seem like it’s about God being on the side of the hero – as much as it is the hero being on the side of God. And that might seem like a small semantic shift, but it’s actually a huge change in meaning in how this story is usually understood.
David was very clear about it. The point was never that he was smarter than Goliath. It’s was God who was smarter than everybody, and David was just smart enough to get that.
You see, this is about power, yes, but it’s about subversive power – power that goes underneath the obvious kind of power that everyone’s trying to use and not doing very well with. It’s about power that comes in the back door and shows that what seemed strong and unbeatable and monolithic may not be so strong and defended after all, and what seemed ordinary and insignificant is still something God can use in ways we don’t expect.
That’s kind of a side door into the David-and-Goliath story. But when we slip in through that door, the trite images might come alive for us in a more authentic way that we can make a little more real. Because, think about how that power works in our own world for a minute. Think about how a Goliath happens.
After all, here in the story, Goliath is a stereotype of an enemy. He’s a composite of every negative thing we need the Philistines to be in order to fight them. Which means the point isn’t really a lesson plan about how to go fight our enemies. Instead, the point is fighting the distortions in our own minds. The Goliaths that can spring up there.
There are no perfect examples of how to do that, but let me offer a couple of recent imperfect ones. And we have to stay in the realm of the imperfect, because if we want for something perfect, we’ll never get off Square One.
To stay in our present world, it’s what I liked about President Obama’s recent speech at Cairo University addressing mutual misperceptions between Americans and Middle Easterners, folks who were Islamic, or Jewish, or Christian. And in mentioning the speech, I’m not making a statement about political parties or particular policies. And there’s obviously no singular act that’s going to fix all the tensions between cultures and religions.
But I have to say that when those tensions become galvanized, personified, into a stereotype of what it is to be Christian, or American (and we all know the real range among Christian Americans is mind-boggling in itself), Jewish, Muslim, to be from Pakistan, from Egypt, from North Korea, or wherever you’re from – when that becomes so rigid and fixed and huge in our minds, it starts to feel to me like that can be just as dangerous an oppressor as the other dangers we legitimately want to fight against, In other words, what we have to look out for is when the people in our minds, whether from our personal lives or people from the world’s stage, start to feel like Goliaths.
And when we’re facing Goliath like David did, a speech is an effective tool. David’s actions are important only because of how he frames them with his speeches to both Saul and to Goliath himself. And though Obama and all of us still have a lot of work to do on cultural differences, I think the speech did a realistic job of hitting Goliath – not the a particular enemy, but the stereotypes that are a composite of what Arabic people are like, or Muslim people, or American people, etc. Those stereotypes, which we live with all the time, are Goliaths, and Obama took his shot, not as an individualistic hero, but as someone speaking on behalf of thinkers and believers and activists around the world. And in fact, even this morning in the New York Times is an article analyzing the effects of several recent things, including Obama’s speech, on the riots this week in Iran.
Or – and I realize I’m probably skating on thin ice here, and I’m gonna hear about it at coffee hour – what about Stephen Colbert, the Comedy Central talk-show host who took recently took his show to the war zone in Iraq. Not that there wasn’t precedent with lots of great entertainers who’ve gone to the troops in the past, but Colbert took it even further. He had top-level Iraqi and American military officials on the show, and he used his satire, his humor, even getting his hair shaved, all to toss a few stones at stereotypes, including the stereotype of himself as a left-wing satirist. He used his everyday tools to see how far they could go, not at hurting anyone, but at loosening up the boundaries.
Having said that, let me back out of it now, and say that Obama’s speech and Colbert’s shows are just a couple of examples, and that Goliath hasn’t fallen down yet. But I use them as something we can quickly leave behind, as we turn to our own lives for the Goliaths that are there. And we can and should look for where the power is, where we are most oppressed and fearful on the inside, where the things are that loom large, and what frees us up from them.
What are the places of oppression, maybe very complex oppression, that you find on the map of your life? Maybe they’re personal. Maybe they’re social means of oppression. Maybe they’re both.
And what are your tools? David used his skills he learned tending sheep – a pretty basic skill set that was usually left to the people who weren’t the major “deciders.” What are the gifts you find inside yourself, what’s in the toolbox you have for dealing with life?
Is the Goliath something you encounter in someone else’s mind, as they look at you and see a distortion, a composite you know does not reflect your own humanity – your pain, your struggles, your intentions, your loves?
Is the Goliath something in your own mind that has become larger than life, and takes more life than it gives? Is it something that keeps you cowering or hesitant inside? Is there a way to bring that Goliath down to human size?
These are all just questions to take where you will. Because the point of David’s victory was never might or militarism or triumphalism. The point of this really vivid, complicated story comes down to something very simple: God’s gently whispered promises for the wholeness of our humanity – and the fact that God is working that out, and using whatever’s on hand to do it.
As soon as that becomes the point of this story, the Goliaths of the world and of our minds can begin to deflate. And all that will be left will be a kid standing in the dust holding an empty slingshot – with his eyes on God.