Sermon: If God Is For Us…

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If God Is For Us…

By Charles Rush

June 22, 2003

32 David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him."

33 Saul replied, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth."

34 But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine."

Saul said to David, "Go, and the LORD be with you."

38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.

"I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them off. 40 Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.

41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. 42 He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him. 43 He said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 "Come here," he said, "and I'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field!"

45 David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give all of you into our hands."

ve heard this story since I was a small child and I've heard it differently in every different era of my life. What strikes me is that it is a story told by men about a boy who became a man. Nowadays, I have a certain empathy for the vulnerability of young men with their identity as they assume the expectations of what it means to be a man in our world.

I heard a story, I don't even know if it is true or not, that on the day the Twin Towers were hit by the planes, one Dad on the upper floors of the building realized that he was trapped and called home on his cell phone, left a message on his tape machine that said in closing to his son, “You're the man of the house now.” Those kind of messages are deeply interiorized in adolescent boys, despite the fact that they are not entirely ready to be the man of the house.

When I was thirteen, David's age, I had three friends that I hung around with all of the time. One day, the three of them were walking to school as we always did. I happened not to catch up with them that day. They were walking down a busy access lane during rush hour traffic and one of them stepped out of line, was hit by an oncoming car, and killed instantly. My other two friends ran to a nearby house, secured blankets, wrapped him up til the ambulance got there. They walk on to the school where the principal meets them and hurries them into his office. Their parents are called and fresh clothes are dropped off. The principal, and this is from a different era, makes the decision that the death should not be announced until the end of the school day. He looks at the boys and tells them that he needs to be men and to not say anything about the accident to any other student for the entire day while they go to class. I'll spare the gruesome details, but they have just been through a fairly intense trauma and what they get is ‘go to class, say nothing'. This is what we did for countless generations before us and it is all underscored with, ‘Be a man'.

They did exactly as they were told. Of course, the middle school could talk about nothing else during the day, everyone speculating on the extent of the injury, literally hundreds of people cornering them for information, including people like myself who were saying, ‘you can tell me… come on… this is me asking…” They never cracked.

I remember hearing the announcement during our last class for the day and that my best friend was dead. I quietly got up, right during the middle of class, walked to the door, out in the hall, out the side door and I ran all the way home. And I got under the covers in my bed and pulled them all the way over me. I was just a child. I didn't want to be a man right then.

Years later, I would love to call those guys up and reflect on that day. Young men are vulnerable in adolescence to everything that it is meant by being a man. And in our story today, you have the whole professionally trained army from the Philistines, replete with their hand carved armor. The little nation of Israel is threatening to be overrun and they turn to this young kid. For a moment, I have to put myself in that kids shoes and wonder how it is that it came to that.

Despite this, our story this morning lifts up the virtue of standing in the face of overwhelming odds. Because it is a story is about men and told by men, there is a rather uncritical endorsement of military valor. Ever since the Iliad, men have told stories to other men about what Homer called ‘The great deeds of valor', deeds that outlive mere mortality and keep one alive forever in the shrine of respectful memory of the rising generations. Our story functioned like that, a reminder of what God can do with even puny little Israel, hapless and surrounded by kingdoms of Giants, well organized and equipped with the latest technology.

Because of our social role for tens of thousands of generations as defenders against aggression, men tend to value courage in subterranean ways that they can't even fully articulate. I was talking with a friend of mine about the movie Saving Private Ryan, particularly the gripping opening scene that graphically takes the audience inside the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. After discussing the guts that it took for the American soldiers to just get out of the LST's that day, he said to me, ‘What do you think it must have been like for those German officers in the pill boxes that morning. You wake up, expecting nothing to happen again today. You are having your morning coffee when you look out and see this swarm of enemy soldiers coming right at you. You are on the phone to Berlin and they are telling you to hold the beach no matter what?” Wave after wave coming at you, your guns are getting too hot, you are running low on ammo. What makes people stand in the breach, willing to make such a sacrifice, knowing what is coming? Several things…

It helps that they are young and naïve. It is no accident that we recruit 17 and 18 year olds fight our wars. I have a friend who is fond of remembering his youth by saying, ‘back when I was immortal' as he relays some hairbrained scheme that he was caught up in. I was talking to a retired serviceman, about my age, on why he left the Navy Seals. Physically he was still able to do it. Mentally he still loved the challenge of special operations. But among the list of reasons to leave, he said he noticed that spiritually he had an internal reluctance to engage in certain dangerous situations that the 20 year olds would run right into. He had lived through it to know what was at stake. Robert Kaplan wrote a book about traveling across Africa and he reported that there is nothing as dangerous as a group of 15 year old boys with Ouzi's that have formed their own little militia. What makes them so scary is that they can do anything and they will do anything. The situation is wildly unpredictable. That exuberance of youth combined with naivete has to be carefully controlled. It is capable of great daring.

And it helps to be desperate, to either have no other option or feel that you have no other option. From my generation, one of the best movie scenes was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid being tracked by a relentless possee over several days prompting each of them to keep asking the other one, ‘who are those guys?' They are finally cornered on a cliff with no way out except to jump 70 feet into a rushing river over rapids. Butch says ‘we'll jump.' Sundance says, “No, I can't swim.” Butch laughs, ‘hell the fall will probably kill ya.' And with that they both grab their holsters and jump. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh. Desperation helps a great deal.

If we were to move up the spiritual chain a notch( naïve, desperate), it helps, spiritually speaking, to have deep seated conviction. This week on '60 Minutes' there was a feature on an Iranian exile who produces a television show in Los Angeles that he smuggles to a region that borders Iran and has it beamed into his country. The show features satire, the surest way to make a moral point to overly serious, overly zealous religious political leaders. Part of the show features people calling in asking questions to Iranian clergy and political leaders, with them dispensing their whacky interpretations of Islam, drawing upon social customs from 1000 years ago and making them laughingly irrelevant to modern situations. The show is a huge hit in Iran and enormously effective.

He has single handedly solidified a huge social reform movement with weighty clout. On September 12th, 2001, the program concluded with a plea to the people of Iran to show their solidarity with New Yorkers and Americans by lighting a candle and walking through the streets of Tehran. That night, with only that solitary plea on television, tens of thousands of people marched together. That is soul force that no tyranny can control. And it is too bad that we Americans are not supportive of creative ways to shape peoples soul around democratic values of tolerance as we are of imposing military security constraints. It is going to take both to effect constructive change.

Charlie Rose interviewed the man responsible for the show. He asked him about threats on his life. There are many. He has had fatwah's issued against him, other threats. He is about in the same category as Salman Rushdie for satirizing the clergy. Charlie Rose asked if that deterred him. He responded that he had fear like anyone but that fear was overridden by his concern for his country and his conviction that this was the right thing to do, that he couldn't stand doing nothing as his countrymen were forced to live in oppression, and that he wanted to be remembered for being part of their liberation. He has moral courage, the courage of his conviction. And when you have that, you can endure a great deal of attack, people can slander you, you can live through deprivation and torture for years on end, like the great humanitarian in Burma Sun Ye Key, who won election before the military coup and who refuses to acknowledge the authority of the military rule. One woman, but with great soul force, she cannot be stopped. Kill her and she will come back like Hydra with 7 heads because she has moral integrity and others see that and even the military dictators know it. Moral authority vests people with superhuman spiritual courage.

But, finally, and our text this morning lifts this up, the assurance of God. We can be filled with a quiet, humane courage when we know that God is with us. Psalm 23 says, ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.' God's assurance is really important because much of our life is not so morally clear and we cannot have that surety of convictions. And some of our threats are not exactly moral either, they are just there.

In our story this morning, David goes out to fight the giant, the Lord is with him, the Lord blesses him. He picks up the smooth stones and lands the one in a hundred shot, a combination of youthful skill, Divine Providence, courageous daring, and good old luck. Courage is like that. It changes the field and opens up possibilities. Once in a while, you will hit the long shot, the outside horse will not only show or place but win, the big over-engineered enemy will falter under the grotesque sophistication of his own design like those Black Hawk helicopters that could be taken down with a simple bazooka shot underneath the rear tail. Once in a while, the hail Mary pass to the end zone will save the day, and the fans in the stands will go berserk and even your Father will cheer you as gilded with gold by the gods. True grit, real daring has a way of altering the odds dramatically and even the disciples of planning tip their hat in deference to it's occasional stunning success.

But real courage is not actually dependent on outcomes. And just as often, indeed, more often, courage makes a great try, a noble try and is smashed by forces too great for us to overcome and we just have to deal with that.

I was reminded of that this week by my neighbors, the McGeough's who buried their 15 year old son Ryan, after a two and a half year battle with cancer that the physicians could not cure. He was a strong athlete in the prime of life and he put up a valiant effort. His parents spent whatever it took, researched everything they could, contacted the best experts in the field, but it was not enough.

Then they had to live probably every parents worst nightmare and sit vigil with him as he died over the course of a few short weeks. And I have wondered about the courage to actually do that. We don't beat the giant that day. And we all, each in our own way, will have to face that trial at some point, sitting vigil with others or for ourselves.

We can't do it for other people; we can only support them in our prayers, in the tangible soul force that comes from being surrounded by a community of care. What does it mean to be a community of care in a situation like that? And how can you share support for someone that you don't know all that well? Over the years, what strikes me is the value of a thousand small acts of thoughtfulness. There is a great value to thinking about the small things at times like this.

A couple years ago, one of our Church members stopped me in the grocery store. Like so many people that heard about the McGeough's, she wanted to do something, in addition to praying for their family, their son. I said to her, ‘it doesn't have to be very dramatic, which is really overwhelming anyway. Why don't you just do what our grandmothers have done before us because you do it so well.' ‘What?' she said. “Make them a pie.” She didn't say anything. She was considering in her heart what she should do.

Early the next morning, if you had been in her kitchen you would have heard the rolling pin pushing dough between sheets of waxed paper and by the time I was up for coffee I could smell karo syrup baking with eggs, supporting a sea of pecans. It is the way that in the South we were taught to say so many things that really cannot be spoken because they are too intimate or just too much. And there began the first of many pies that she baked over the next couple of years for the McGeough's, delivered when she pronounced that they were needed.

And I don't know what they thought or how they received them. At a minimum, they are damn fine to eat and I say that without prejudice. But in the small exchanges that we shared with them over the months, I know that they communicated more fully and more reservedly than our words alone could have. I only share that with you because, over the years, I've learned to appreciate the value of both in these situations- fullness and reserve. It is a thousand small acts of thoughtfulness.

We wonder about what to do in the Church, especially for people that we don't know that well. A lot of little things work well. A short note. Lifting others up in prayer. A little gift. Inviting kids over. Just showing up with food. You don't have to be witty or wise to touch others. You just have to reach out. And somehow, someway all of those small graces around us are just enough to keep us human, to remind us of what is valuable. It is just enough to give us the courage to bear the losses that we cannot control and to move through the wounds that really won't ever quite heal. The situation may not change, but we will. Prayer and love have that power and they give people great courage, maternal courage, courage we all will have to have. I share with you a short reflection on the simple virtue of pie, thinking back over the past couple of years.

I saw you today

And I wanted to tell you how sorry I was

That you have to carry this heavy burden.

You looked tired and I wished for a moment

That I could magically lift your worry and your doubt

I wanted to give you a talisman that would ward off all potential evil

Or at least carry some of that burden for you for a while

The awful baggage of anxiety that parent has for child.

But I can't and I couldn't. So I just touched you instead.

So here have a pie and may it nourish you for the great unknown ahead.

I heard that the cancer came back

And I wanted to call you and ask you about fear.

I wish I could pray you to safety in the midst of the threat,

Assure you, bathe you in peace even as the storm rages round.

But you need to muster your strength,

Steel up against what mayhem might bring you,

Focus on what needs to be done today

And plot the daily tasks that head toward recovery.

It is not the season to contemplate fear,

Despite the fact that it palpably surrounds us all.

I prayed for you instead.

And here, have a pie, may it bring you comfort and strength.

I saw you in the middle of the day,

You were walking alone

I wanted you to know that you are not isolated

That there are dozens of people praying this day for you

And they have sent e-mail to hundreds others

A great cloud of witnesses surround your family,

And collectively they are washing you in blessing and grace,

I hope you can feel them holding you up.

But I know you don't need the drama

Just the tangible network of active support around you

So I just said, ‘you are not alone'

And here, have a pie from all of us, the great horde of the unseen that hold you up.

Your son is dying

Nothing can stop that now

I'm afraid to visit you because there is nothing I can do.

My token gestures seem so feeble, gelid, flaccid

against the cold steel of tragedy and death.

But I know that if you live that big drama it is only through the simple rhythm of the day,

Of feeding, medicating, checking for pain, cleaning, changing sheets and watching as the life force drains away one drop at a time.

Standing outside your door, I worry that my gift is banal, superfluous

That somehow I've completely missed the point.

But seeing your face, worried but warm, grimaced but graced

I just know that I don't need words tonight

And we don't have to exchange verbally at all

In order for us to have shared

And I know that my puny little offering is just enough

So please take my pie, and share a piece of sweet love with your family.

It is a thousand small thoughtful gestures that get us through, keep us humane. And usually what you need to do is one thing immediately at hand. May the Spiritual force flow through you and may you be privileged to be the assurance of God for those around you.

Amen.