David: Loved Jonathan

We began today’s sermon singing together a couple of songs from our own subculture of a few years ago:

Bonnie Charlie's noo awa
Safely o’er the friendly main;
Mony a heart will break in twa,
Should he no come back again.

Chorus:
Will ye no come back again?
Will ye no come back again?
Better loved ye canna be;
Will ye no come back again?

Ye trusted in your Hielan men,
They trusted you dear Charlie!
They kent your hiding in the glen,
Death and exile braving.

Chorus

English bribes were a in vain
Tho puir and puirer we mun be;
Siller canna buy the heart
That aye beats warm for thine an thee…




In Days of yore,
From Britain's shore
Wolfe the dauntless hero came
And planted firm Britannia's flag
On Canada's fair domain.
Here may it wave,
Our boast, our pride
And joined in love together,
The thistle, shamrock, rose entwined, The Maple Leaf Forever.

Chorus
The Maple Leaf
Our Emblem Dear,
The Maple Leaf Forever.
God save our Queen & heaven bless,
The Maple Leaf Forever.

At Queenston Heights & Lundy's Lane
Our brave fathers side by side
For freedom's home & loved ones dear,
Firmly stood and nobly died.
& so their rights which they maintained,
We swear to yield them never.
Our watchword ever more shall be
The Maple Leaf Forever

They don’t make good old days like they used to – and nostalgia’s not what it once was! It was Pride Sunday, and the Sunday before Canada Day. It was also the 3rd of 9 Sundays of David, first ‘David:Chosen’, then ‘David:Hero’ and today ‘David: Loved Jonathan’. It was the Sunday after the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, and sex scandals for the governor of North Carolina and Italian PM Berlusconi. As we echoed the anthems of mid-century WASP Ontario, some of us lamented what and who we had lost, and others were relieved it was over.

How the mighty have fallen…
(or as the King James Version says: How are the mighty fallen…)

Do we sing that verse gleeful that those who were great are not now, and have their comeuppance? Or do we recite with real grief and lament – over who and what is lost to us – since nostalgia’s not what it once was, and they don’t make good old days like they used to?


“How are the mighty fallen” was once a popular catch phrase, a proverb, for the powerful brought down low, each meeting their nemesis. Generations before us knew the story, and we knew the next line before its first use, “your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places”, or the lines after the next repetitions, “in the midst of the battle”, “and the weapons of war are perished”. This was a lament, of real grief and mourning, if ambivalent at commanders’ deaths.

On this 29th Pride Sunday, up to a million folks parade to celebrate gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual, and queer communities as a public, not merely private, phenomenon. On this 142nd birthday of Canadian confederation, 30 million more will celebrate a political, national identity. How will we celebrate GLBTQ culture, part of our community and families? How will we celebrate a multicultural Canada of 21st century diversity? What’s it mean for me, us – or them?

My generation has not fought a war for our nation – though the generation before did, and the one after has already begun. My generation’s big conflict, in my vocation, was about recognizing, affirming, and celebrating GLBTQ Christians as full participants in our church and in its clergy ranks. We who remain could look back today, and simply celebrate that ‘we won’, and that we are a gay-positive church. We could also confess and blame where we were or are not yet fully inclusive, walking the talk. Today’s lesson invites us also to lament who and what we lost. For any who survive a conflict know the unholy alliances or moral quicksand of fights.

Pride Week and Canada Day invite us to celebrate who we are, in all our glorious variety. They tempt preachers to confess and blame, to teach and persuade. Lament is low priority, isn’t it? But we who can sing the songs of our subculture feel nostalgia and loss, not just triumphal unity and unanimity. We sang ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ and heard bagpipes skirl the march, mourning “the ’45”, Scotland’s failed Jacobite revolution of 1745, before Charles ran from the English. We sang ‘The Maple Leaf’, the marvel of British imperial and colonial identity subsuming the warring ‘thistle, shamrock, rose entwined’, symbols of Scotland, Ireland, and England. They teach us how to celebrate, go on to confess and blame, to reach wider sympathy and empathy.

How are the mighty fallen – and the weapons of war perished

Our sexual politics, like our nationalism, and our religion, can take various tones. We can devote compliant childish loyalty, in pre-critical naivete, to the affirmations of the powers that be, the high and mighty of our day, those whose speech is privileged as truth to be accepted and obeyed. We can deliver resistant adolescent kneejerk opposition, to the obsolete bad old ways or to the over- reaching of the new young turks. We can offer sympathy and mature collegiality to forging wider partnerships with our near neighbours under a bigger tent. Ultimately, we might aspire to riper, deeper engagement with the Others who express and act out different gender, orientation, national, or religious identities than our own.

Today’s reading from 2 Samuel was a song, an anthem of David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan. Israel was told to sing it - as Upper Canadians sang “Bonnie Charlie” or “The Maple Leaf”. What’s the bible got to do with cosmoplitan 21st century of sexual orientation, identity and expression, and multicultural Canada? It addresses individual and collective human nature. It teaches us to ‘read’ texts and people, in compliant, resistant, sympathetic, and engaged ways. Learn the skills and habits with scripture, build experience and expertise in local congregations, and you’re ready to ‘read’ who and what you meet tomorrow in the week and the world. (This is all developed from Adele Reinhartz, Canadian Jewish feminist biblical scholar now in Ottawa).

Each week, I’ve been reminding you of Jesus, 2000 years ago, and in turn of another century, 1000 years before Jesus, when a people went from the anarchy of tribes to a united monarchy, and back to division, under kings Saul, then David, then Solomon. As we read through David’s stories, and read repeatedly, we begin to see the cracks and joins of what came together, and how it came apart. A story that has been told and retold for 3000 years, from many perspectives, is richer and offers more depth than a 29 year old tradition of Pride Week, or even a 142 year old celebration of Canada Day, until recently Dominion Day. What did you see and hear?

Saul was the first king. David came next as Saul’s successor. Stop. Think. Who usually is the new king in most monarchies? Is it not the prince, the eldest son of the king? That’s patriarchy, that’s primogeniture. Who is Saul’s eldest son? Jonathan? What about Saul’s other sons, like Ishbosheth? Anybody knows that David should not have been king after Saul. Jonathan was the heir apparent, and after him other sons of Saul by other wives, like Ishbaal, or Ishbosheth, who had the backing of Saul’s general Abner.

Israel knew, and the nations knew, that David’s succession of Saul was suspicious. There were assassinations and intrigues. There was civil strife, treason, and civil war. It’s hard work for any spin doctor to tell David’s story. He was chosen. He was a hero. But Jonathan was to be king. After Saul died, David ruled in Hebron over part of the people for 7 years, then over all 12 tribes for 33 years from Jerusalem. Imagine the first provinces of Canadian confederation, along the Great Lakes, St Lawrence and Maritimes, then multiplying size and numbers to our current state.

1 Samuel tells how Saul was suspicious of David’s ambition. Saul kept trying to get rid of David not only banishing him to go fight, but also to get lost, and finally putting out an assassination contract on David’s life. Who stood up for David? Jonathan, who had the most to lose! We are told that David loved Jonathan, and Jonathan loved David. They kissed. Jonathan took off all his weapons, armour and clothes for David. Jonathan acted as spy, shooting arrows to signal David whether to run or come back into the court of Saul. David loved Jonathan, and sang:

Greatly beloved were you to me;
Your love to me was wonderful
Passing the love of women

Saul died with Jonathan at the hands of the Philistines, on Mount Gilboa in the north. Where was David? 2 Kings tells us David was chasing Amalekites, raiders from the Negeb desert in the south, whom he chased out of Ziklag. When David heard that Saul and Jonathan were dead, he coined the phrase: ‘how are the mighty fallen’. Was he gleefully celebrating their comeuppance and his good fortune? Was he crying the crocodile tears of a politician? Was he, the warrior, indulging in ironic tongue-in-cheek dismissal of lesser, failed fighters? I think that the lament is meant to be sincere grief and mourning – no more ambivalent about who and what was lost than anybody is in any bereavement, personal or political.

Yes, the bible tells a tale of the love between 2 men, with kisses, nakedness, loyalty, and lament. This culture is less homophobic than ours – and less prone to sexualize any intimacy. I’m happy to indulge you in the image of male to male intimacy, more or less homoerotic, in the bible. But I read not only that, but an appeal to something greater, ‘passing the love of women’ referring to a love beyond sexualized exploitation, with more political, ethical and religious resonance. So for the rest of today’s sermon, I tried to speak of that bigger - and gay-positive – good news.

Sure, the David stories are about his life and character as a historic leader of an actual people. But this actual historic state of mind is less important to his writer and to me as a reader, than how he is construed or constructed as an iconic symbol of the people moving from anarchy to united rule by a king, and in turn to division. These stories are how people remembered and sang the collective identity of Judaism, Israel and Judah through conquest, exile, restoration, a people under successive empires. And it was important to remember that David loved Jonathan.

David and Jonathan did not treat each other as enemies, in some zero-sum game where one would win and the other must lost. Others, like Saul, might project that polarization on them, but they resist the conventional narrative of monarchy and succession. They acted against their respective personal interests, in loyalty to their God, their people, and each other. That’s an intimate love of one man for another – and a political love surpassing even “the love of women”. Even upon the death of Saul and Jonathan, David demanded that the people tell their glory, and sing their praises, rather than rewriting them as villains, or ‘airbrushing them out of the pictures’.

This Pride Week and this Canada Day, we have cause to celebrate and be proud of as in terms of our Canadian cultural, political, and religious identity. That’s a compliant, patriotic and loyal response to our current privileged voices. We have lots left to confess and to blame about too, not only in our past but also in our present failures to walk the talk of diversity and inclusiveness better. We are free to choose, vote, realign our participation in community, politics and religion to build wider partnerships with sympathetic allies of varied gender, orientation, ethnicity, or political partisanship. We might even lament and grieve today, as David did, over the Other.

Our generation has come out as avowedly “inclusive”, after decades of struggle, and unholy alliances on both sides of the issues of welcoming full participation in the church regardless of gender or sexual orientation. We proudly invite couples to celebrate here, regardless of gender, orientation, or previous partnerships. I dared today to lament who and what we lost on the way, and to say that I loved the homophobic and racist bigots of my roots, who raised me. Their parents had learned to unite with former blood enemies: Scots, Irish, and English. They learned after 2 world wars to be good neighbours to their German, Italian, and Japanese former enemies, ‘displaced persons’ of mid-century. They learned to celebrate, and even to confess or accept some blame to make that wider union. But when they lamented their past, I refused to weep too.

How are the mighty fallen –
and the weapons of war perished

Today we tried to learn that skill and habit with scripture a bit better, build that experience and expertise in church, to prepare apply it everywhere we go. Sure, we had better be prepared to engage in relationships with gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgendered, queer members of our families and community and nation. We had better be better at relating with people of other backgrounds and generations who don’t know the songs of our subculture. But we also need to learn how to engage the Other who are homophobic, racist, moralistic puritans, anti-choice pro-life activists.

Learning to lament who and what we have lost in our own conflicts with those who fought with and for us, humans and heroes, hard to love and harder to leave, equips us to engage the Others we will next meet in the week and in the world. Perhaps we will someday even learn to love our enemies, as David did, and as Jesus did. If we’re going to make peace, we’ll have to learn how. They don’t make good old days like they used to, and nostalgia’s not what it once was.

Carly Simon sang in my youth that ‘these are the good old days’. Around the same time, in 1978 in Montreal, an Italian immigrant Raymond Filip wrote this poem, with which we closed today, called in part “The Mighty Buck… Melting Pot Luck”:

Right off the boat, or Boeing
I admit being tongue-tied.
For I am the language that is lost
The name that is changed
The ghost of welcome houses & Saturday schools
I am men in sheepskin coats from the Old Country
I am their New Country descendants: women in Persian lamb.
I am Euro-paeans
Songs you won’t sing and dances you won’t dance.
I am hard money.
I am the inalienable right to alienation.
The Horatio Alger Algerian, the Haitian electrician
The Cuban security guard, the cab driver from Calabria
The Jewish landlord who lives in Florida
The Vietnamese orphan, the Romany musician
I am Hutterite, Mennonite, Wahabite, Bahai, Sikh, and Alcoholic.
I am the Canadian Mosaic: a melting pot on ice
I am always the next generation
The child with which good immigrant fiction ends.
I am that child grown up, writing in English,
Mother tongue in mind, adopted tongue in cheek
You were Commonweath, I am common loss.
Like a citizen of the world, in exile,
Or an overseas package return to sender
I am nothing left to be but Canadian.

Our prayer for grace today went like this:

God who creates us, who knit us together in our mothers wombs, who birthed us into family, community, heritage, who made each of us, part of all of us…
We pause to praise and celebrate your name, and bring our own many names – for you know us by all our names, as we are and who we are….
God who creates us – speak to us again now, reminding us who we are, and whose we are

God who recreates us, who invites and calls us to change, to grow, to be and to do all that we were made to be and to do, each of us, part of all of us…
We pause to confess to confess & blame ways we’re wrong, not yet at one with you, with one another, ourselves, and bring our many guilts & grudges – for you know our faults, our foibles, our foes, flaws, yet you still see & show how to make something of it all as we are becoming, as who we might yet become
God who recreates us – speak to us again now, reminding us who we are, and whose we are

God who sustains and steers us, who works in us and others to share creation’s joy, to transform opportunities into more truths and justice,
We pause to lament & mourn those who fought with us and for us; humans, heroes; hard to love, harder to leave, and we bring our many memories & hopes – for you know our direction from whence to whither, you who were always there, are now, and will be, present and pervasive in all our greatest and least bits
God who sustains us, speak to us again now, reminding us who we are, and whose we are.

God who creates us. God who recreates us. God who sustains and steers us –
What word do you have for our hearts. Give us ears to hear Amen

I promised some Canadian poetry that didn’t get air time, songs and laments related to this reflection on David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan – referring to Canadian history and characters on this same theme of lament for the lost):

Brave Wolfe (Traditional – 2 of many verses)

Brave Wolfe drew up his men
In a line so pretty
On the Plains of Abraham
Before the city.
The French came marching down
Arrayed to meet them
In double numbers ‘round
Resolved to beat them

Montcalm and this brave youth
Together walk-ed;
Between two armies they
Like brothers talk-ed,
Till each one took his post
And did retire.
‘Twas then these numberous hosts
Commenced their fire.

Northwest Passage (Stan Rogers – chorus only)

Ah, for just one time,
I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin
Reaching for the Beaufort Sea
Tracing one warm line
Through a land so wide and savage
And make the Northwest Passage to the sea…


Macdonnell on the Heights (Stan Rogers – 3 of several verses)

Too thin the line that charged the Heights
And scrambled in the clay
Too thin the Eastern Township Scot
Who showed them all the way,
And perhaps had you not fallen
You might be what Brock became
But not one in ten thousand knows your name.

To say the nae, Macdonnell,
It would bring no bugle call
But the Redcoats stayed beside you
When they saw the General fall
‘Twas Macdonnell raised the banner then
And set the Heights aflame
But not one in ten thousand knows your name.

You brought the field all standing
with your courage and your luck
But unknown to most you’re lying there
beside old General Brock
So you know what it is to scale the Heights
and fall just shore of fame
And have not one in ten thousand know your name…


1838 (Dennis Lee- all 4 verses)



The Compact sat in parliament
To legalize their fun.
And now they’re hanging Sammy Lount
And Captain Anderson
And if they catch Mackenzie
They will string hi in the rain.
And England will erase us if
Mackenzie comes again.

The Bishop has a paper
That says he owns our land
The Bishop has a Bible too
That says our souls are damned.
Mackenzie had a printing press
It’s soaking in the Bay
And who will spike the Bishop till
Mackenzie comes again?

The British want the country
For the Empire and the view
The Yankees want the country for
A yankee barbeque
The Compact want the country
For their merrie green domain
They’ll all play finders-keepers till
Mackenzie comes again

Mackenzie was a crazy man
He wore his wig askew
He donned three bulky overcoats
Iun case the bullets flew
Mackenzie talked fo fighting
While the fight went down the drain
But who will speak for Canada?
Mackenzie, come again!


Flanders Fields – John McRae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


Oh, Canada – (John Robert Columbo)

Canada could have enjoyed:
English government,
French culture,
And American know-how.

Instead it ended up with:
English know-how,
French government,
And American culture.



How are the mighty fallen…
In the midst of the battle…

How are the mighty fallen…
And the weapons of war perished…

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David: Hero

This is was the 2nd of 9 weeks of sermons on the bible stories of David. I’m speaking 3 times on David’s Choices, then Ruth will speak about David’s Journey, Doug Whidden gives us relief on August 16, while I finish with 3 stories of David’s Foes and Flaws.

Last week, our worship committee confirmed that this emphasis on David comes from the revised common lectionary, as printed on page 1004 of our Voices United hymnbooks. We heard some appeal that we avoid the violent and barbaric texts and select ones conveying loving principles. I’m afraid these David & Goliath tales fail the test, and I resisted concluding the sermon with ‘the moral of the story is’ summaries.

As I said last week, tales about David, his predecessor Saul and successor Solomon, take up a big chunk of your bible – not to mention all the Psalms attributed to David as a musician and poet. 1,000 years before Jesus, David’s century marked a change from anarchy to centralized kingdom to division. Reflected upon through fall, exile and restoration, the stories give deep perspective on the nature human nature and leadership. All the Gospels tell you that ‘if you don’t know David, you don’t really know Jesus, yet’ – born in David’s city, of David’s line, Son of David.

I had just spent 3 days at a conference on ‘Rediscovering Calvin’, 500 years after the birth of the French reformer who led the Reformation movement in Geneva. John Calvin is crucial to our roots in the United Church, and the North American Protestant experience ever since the Puritans and Pilgrims, the Scots Presbyterians and Dutch Reformed folks who shaped us. One keynote speaker, Pulitzer prizewinning author Marilynne Robinson, whose novels Housekeeping and Gilead resonate with traditions from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter through Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, explored and challenged stereotypes of dour, repressed, dark Calvinism. Union Seminary president Serene Jones, spoke of “My Three Calvins”, that one man a source for Bush imperialist exceptionalism, left wing liberalism, and academic secular humanism.

These were my people: a couple hundred academics and pastors. I was at least as aware of how I fit and resisted those stereotyped identities as I was engaged doctrinal and dogmatic content at the conference. What a lot of doughy, pale, vague, tweedy, bearded men and earnest murmuring women! People with little fashion sense, overdue for haircuts, told me how and what to preach or teach, often by demonstrating how and what not to preach or teach. It was often dull and esoteric, with few shining role models. I left with early summer resolutions to lose some weight and get some sun, having seen the reflection of myself in my peers.

This was also Fathers’ Day Sunday. Those of us who were raised in the last century, by the men of the ‘Silent’ or ‘Civic’ generation of the Depression, WWII, and postwar prosperity, have particular role models and images of fathers: ‘Father Knows Best’. ‘Leave It To Beaver’, and ‘My Three Sons’. Many of you were those guys, sole breadwinners for nuclear families who provided homes and even cottages, education and support for your children. Thanks!

Our very nostalgia for those models of fatherhood suggests that we already know they are over. That version of patriarchy has passed. We are anxious about ourselves, our sons and grandsons as fathers – because they’re not the same. The models are less clear for my generation and the next, for being men or being fathers. Measured against our own fathers’ standards, we feel like failures more often than we feel righteous about rejecting the old models. Just as I was feeling how I fit and resisted stereotypes of academics and pastors at my conference, we all were feeling how we fit and resist the stereotypes of men and fathers, in our church, home, and community.

The Globe & Mail newspaper last Tuesday cited the Sunday Times of London, recognizing a new term, ‘mancession’. The term ‘mancession’ was coined to recognize that in the current recession, men’s jobs have been swept away faster than women’s. These papers report that 4 out of 5 jobs lost in the last 2 years had been held by men. The gender gap between unemployed men and women is the highest since the US started keeping statistics on unemployment in 1948. The Christian Science Monitor says this is the biggest shift in domestic roles since the depression and “if it weren’t so sad for families, this would be an incredible social experiment”.

Looking to the next generation of fathers, Dr Leonard Sax got a lot of press this winter on a local visit. I read his book Boys Adrift: Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men this week, and cited some of his diagnostic facts, if not his prescriptions:
• 1/3 of young men 22-34 are still living at home with parents, double the rate of 20 years ago, College enrolment is now 2 women for every man, from 50:50 in my day, 2 men for every woman in 1959, and over 70% male in postwar years,
• Diagnosis and prescription for ADHD (attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder) runs at 1in 3 white suburban boys, and lower for girls, less affluent, and non-Caucasian youth.
• Only 1 in 4 white boys in grade 12 with college educated parents can’t read at a standard proficiency level, compared with 1 out of 16 of their grade 12 female peers

During and after worship, many of you enthusiastically affirmed that these claims seemed plausible to you in our suburban middle class context. High school and college students in the congregation, of both genders, were not offended or surprised – though we did clarify that lacking high academic literacy and school motivation was not that same as lacking intelligence!

These were just reminders, as we gather on Fathers’ Day Sunday, about our nostalgia for the roles of males and fathers a generation ago, and about our anxiety for ourselves, for our children, and for our children’s children as males and fathers. We’re not a reactionary crowd seeking a return to unjust patriarchal privileges. (Some folks at lunch suggested that the ‘mancession’ might reflect that there were still too many men overpaid for their value to employers compared to underpaid women, and smart businesses were just completing corrections of old inequities.)

Nor are all these sociological phenomena utterly novel this year. In the Adventures of Huckelberry Finn, do you recall how Tom tried to impress Becky Sharp? The Sunday School offered tokens for every bible verse memorized. The person with the most tokens won a bible. Tom bargained for other people’s bible verse memorization tokens, and won the bible. The presenting adult invited Tom to show off his knowledge, asking him to name a couple of disciples. Tom replied, in his ignorance, “David and Goliath”?

I owed you a sermon on David and Goliath, not a collection of pop psychology panaceas. Plenty of people, in plenty of media, will offer you lots of ‘how to’ solutions. As we all reflected on masculinity and fatherhood, role models and anxieties, and I fretted about academics and pastors, and those role models and anxieties of mine, I proposed to simply retell the stories, and leave you to find yourself in the story, and reflect on how you might tell it differently than I do. My conference heard from Augustine (400CE) : ‘Preachers ought to leave difficult ideas to books’. We also heard from George Herbert (1650CE) : ‘Sermons are dangerous things… none goes out of Church as he came in, but either better, or worse’.

Last week I told how David was chosen, rather than making all the choices himself. Samuel set out to anoint Saul’s successor. Saul wasn’t ready to give up, but God had given up on Saul’s failure to follow through, and habit of creaming a bit off the top for his profit from Amalekites. Jesse the Bethlehemite paraded his sons for Samuel to anoint one: first Eliab, the big and buff eldest, then Shammah, Abinadab, and 4 more sons, his best and brightest. Samuel asked about the son Jesse didn’t talk about or show off. David, the youngest, the least and last, the youngest and most implausible or least likely to succeed, the part time musician, was not present. David was off at his McJob, doing lamb-care as sheep-nanny, security guard for the family flock, working in the unglamorous back office supply chain of the food industry, not even up front. That’s who Jesse saw, loved, and chose – as God sees, loves, and chooses.

Today, we heard parts of the story cycles related to David and Goliath. We heard a couple of clips or trailers, and I encouraged you to reread the whole thing, as if for the first time, this season. What we’re doing here is like the promotional website for a movie, which gives you teasers and tastes, but can’t replace the whole thing, which bears re-watching.

The first clip or trailer painted the picture of an impasse between Philistine and Israelite armies. On one mountain the Philistines camped. On the other were the Israelites. Between them lay the valley of Elah. Daily, the warriors would suit up, line up in the valley, stare each other down, and listen to the trash talk and taunts. Imagine the House of Commons, or the national anthems before a football or hockey game. Each team or party or army stands up for their people. Picture Goliath, 9 or 10 feet tall, draped in hundreds of pounds of brass armour, with lots of heavy weapons. Have you seen news coverage of the heavy equipment carried by Canadian or American soldiers these days in Afghanistan or Iraq? Here is the image of a champion, proxy for a whole army. He challenges Israel to provide a champion for sole combat. If Goliath wins, Israelites will serve Philistines. The Israelites listen to the bully for 40 days in a row – but they are all scared – and God knows none is equal to Goliath of Gath.

Things don’t change, do they? Combatants still line up in the Gaza strip, that coastal link between Egypt and Africa to the south, and Europe and Asia to the north. Young men stand up as warriors and champions, and they are scared, and they stand up for their people and nations, with the complicity of the rest of us. What’s at stake, and what’s at risk? I asked who noticed the 2007 movie ‘Valley of Elah’, and who recognized the reference to this bible story. I confessed that I had not either until recently. The movie is about a young American soldier back in Texas from Iraq, and his fate and unfinished business. Jason Patric is the heart-throb, Tommy Lee Jones his mother, with Susan Sarandon, Charlize Theron, and Josh Brolin playing roles written by Paul Haggis of London Ontario. We’re still sending young men to line up in the desert, along a line in the sand. It’s an old story, and an unfinished one.

Meanwhile, as Eliab, Shammah, and Abinadab are suiting up and lining up in the Valley of Elah every day, David’s back home doing his lamb-care, sheep nanny, security guard, food service and transportation McJob. His mother sends him to the front on an errand, to deliver a care package of food treats for his brothers, and for their officers. (It can’t hurt to have them onside!) David leaves the stuff at the Israelite mountain camp, and wanders up to the front, to experience the front line posturing and trash-talking for the first time. His brothers are mad, or embarrassed, but David is a cocky kid, who just gives Goliath as good as he gets. It’s a bit like a Bugs Bunny cartoon: ‘come back and fight like a man!’ says the pipsqueak to the giant.

We pretty much know the last scene. Saul gives David his own heavy suit of brass armour – but David can’t move, let alone fight in it. It’s a bit like a kid trying on a suit and tie for his first job, and feeling like an imposter, preferring business casual wear. David takes his slingshot, picks up 5 smooth stones form the wadi, and walks out to face the giant, the bully, the champion, Goliath. They exchange a bit more trash talk about whose body will feed the animals and birds – then David kills Goliath, improbably. Our lesson ended ‘and David did not have a sword.’

Lots of you, given a chance, identified with that moment of facing impossible odds alone, or at least like an imposter with too much expected of you. Some spoke of terminal illness, others of jobs in a failing economy. I have some empathy, as a United Church pastor through years of decline! I tried to lighten up for a moment with a chorus from the old ballad of “The Preacher and the Bear”, as the preacher is moved to pray:

O lord, you delivered Daniel from the lion’s den
Delivered Jonah from the belly of the whale and then
The Hebrew children from the fiery furnace
So the Good Book do declare
Now Lord, Lord, if you can’t help me
For goodness sake don’t you help that bear

I declined to finish with ‘the moral of the story is’, or some principle or ideal. You all know how to do that. David, the musician, the lamb-care sheep-nanny security guard food service transport worker, gets a new role as hero, improbable and against all odds. Is that a glorification of barbaric violent warfare or a satirical farce making fun of martial male pretensions? Can we be militant without being patronizing? Can we be masculine or paternal without being patriarchal and abusive? Heroic without war-mongering? How does it help us, to retell these stories, and re-imagine who we are and whose we are, and what we might do about it?

I was preoccupied today with being too doughy, pasty, and deadly boring, too much like my people the scholars and pastors, after a conference where the models were keynote women. Fathers’ Day made us a bit nostalgic for old models of masculinity and paternity, and anxious about current and emergent models. So we listened to a bible story about David and Goliath. How did I tell it, or you hear it, differently this time? How will you tell it and live it next time?

God knows what you made of it – or what God made of it for you. That’s no more or less my sole fault than my life can be credited to or blamed on my father alone. ‘Sermons are dangerous things… none goes out of Church as he came in, but either better, or worse’. How’d you do? Next week, give us another chance, on Pride Sunday, with bible stories of David and Jonathan, for David loved Jonathan, with a love that surpassed that of a woman. Don’t miss it!
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DAVID: CHOSEN

Text: 1 Samuel 16:1-16

This was the first of 9 weeks of David’s story. I’ll speak for 3 weeks on David’s Choices, then Ruth for 3 weeks on David’s Journey, then I’m back for 3 weeks of David’s Flaws and Foes. This is based on the revision to the common lectionary: Protestant churches like ours argued that we missed important stretches of the Hebrew scriptures in the old assigned lessons, and the ecumenical partners said ‘go ahead, take a run in the summer through some books’. Hence, last year we preached through Genesis, and this summer, through the David stories.

Why David? The history books, the ‘former prophets’ in the Nevi’im of Tanakh, Joshua & Judges, 1 & 2 Samuels, 1&2 Kings, as retold and extended in the wisdom writings, Kethuvim, are grouped together to make up at least 1/5 of our bible, not to mention the Psalms, attributed to David. In the second century after Jesus, despite Marcion, the church decided you could not understand Jesus if you didn’t know these stories. I think they were right.

Imagine: 1000 years before Jesus, in the course of a century, the loose tribal anarchy responding to external threats by ad hoc alliances under charismatic judges moved to a united monarchy, then in split into 2 kingdoms, north and south, Israel to fall 750 years before Jesus to the Assyrians, and Judah to fall 600 years before Jesus to the Babylonians. They came home and restored something over the 500 years before Jesus.

The evangelists who wrote the gospels said Jesus was born in David’s town, of David’s line, called him ‘Son of David’, and said Jesus taught and argued by appealing to David stories. David is the type and shape of ideal leadership: warrior, prophet, and king. David is the measure of all future leaders, not only Jesus. But if you don’t know Jesus, you don’t know Jesus yet!

There are several voices edited together in the history books. The people said they wanted to have a king like other nations. Prophets asked if they were sure, and warned them to be careful what they asked for, lest they get it. The prophets pointed out that being a nation with a king like the rest of the world would mean taxes and wars. But the people prevailed, and God told Samuel to anoint Saul, and in turn David, who was succeeded by Solomon.

We’ve been at this for about 3000 years, telling the stories of that key century, a millennium before Jesus: Samuel, Saul, David, Nathan, and Solomon. We retold the stories in disaster and success, in division and exile and restoration – and the stories got better. If you want to know about Jesus, and if you want to understand your own leaders and nations, you need to learn the stories of David. So that’s what we’re up to this summer – I hope you join us.

I’ve also been reading this week about preaching, according to a famous guy called Willimon. He says that in the last century, preachers speaking to mainline congregations tended to narrative and inductive preaching, telling our own stories, then bringing familiar scripture to bear on it. He says that now, too few folks know the basic stories, and we have to preach longer, and spell out the old stories before applying them to our lives. I’m sorry for being a 20th century guy – but I will try on this theory, and see how it works for you. I hope you’ll give it some time.

I did ask you if you watched reality TV: The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Canada’s Next Prime Minister, America’s Next Top Model, Survivor… you seemed unanimous in denying you watched them, or at least that you liked them. But you knew how they work, like beauty pageants or social Darwinism: survival of the fittest, fastest, or most glib.

I also asked you about graduations form college in this season, or at least report cards from the academic year now ending, and stories of admission to new schools, or hiring to new jobs. You knew more about that, if only in terms of your grandchildren and neighbours, and acknowledged that it seems to be tough out there for young people today.

The popular culture myths of meritocracy are dear to us in the middling classes, even if we don’t like the TV show, and regret the pressure on our kids. Hard work and talent pays off in upward mobility, our civil religion, and the best and brightest prosper. That’s what the world keeps telling us, and we keep telling ourselves.

What about downward mobility? Is the world sometimes unfair? Falling from Grace – the experience of downward mobility I the American middle class, came out in 1988, written by Katherine Newman. She pointed out that 20% of Americans experience downward mobility, blaming business cycles, recessions, or deindustrialization and other restructuring. A generation later, we know she was right, as the middling class thins out, and middle management is flattened in the new global economy. Some folks never catch up again. Is all their fault?

We in the middling class cling to the myths of meritocracy, but we know the anxiety of change: we’re worried about our kids finding a place in a world with a few much richer and more much poorer. We asked to become ‘world class’, in a global economy. Our prophets warned us that the glory came with the pain, and told us to be careful what we prayed for.

So it’s no longer just hard work and loyalty and middle management and union jobs, that let a generation have one breadwinner with a home, family and a cottage. A service economy has lots of hi-tech skills jobs – and also a lot of McJobs flipping burgers for minimum wage. We’ve got to admit we’d rather our kids and grandkids had rare skills that let them be consultants for Ehealth Ontario – but that most us have kids falling on the other side of the fence.

We’ve had a great century of economic growth and success – if we can forget the horrors of world wars and nuclear threats. We in the middling classes have nearly been able to hold on to the myth of meritocracy in the face of anxiety, as the 2/3 world joined us here in the 1stworld. Each generation of immigrants grabs for the same middling class myths, and finds the same anxieties – and we all drive the kids to do what they can to come out on the safer side.

I’ve quoted my mentor Jack Shaver before here, from early 80’s:

In our zeal to be blameless, we destroy our kids

Will they really be safe if they get more tutoring, enrichment, opportunity and education? Do we really not care about the ones who don’t? Don’t we worry about the commonwealth? Can’t we let the next generation take the credit for their own successes, or responsibility for their own failures? Have we left the social safety net in shape for those who inevitably will not experience upward mobility and win the various Darwinian games of economics and politics?

Here’s our story told another way, in an ancient way: 1000 years before Jesus, in one century, a people moved from tribal anarchy, to kingship, union, division – and for the next centuries lived out conquest, exile, and restoration. We might have something to learn from ancient layers of review of those experiences. The key is to tell a story, and learn the characters.

The people wanted to be a nation like other nations, with a king like other kings. The prophets warned them that they might get what they asked for, with the taxes and conscription and wars that went with it, but the people prevailed. Samuel anointed Saul as king.

Saul blew it. He had a chance to trounce the Amalekite bullies once and for all for all. But Saul, whether as a wimp or an opportunist, prefers plunder, pillage, ransom, and booty. He tries to take a bit of profit on the war, keeping hostages like the king for ransom. Samuel calls him on it, and beheads the Amalekite king in front of him, his most valuable asset.

God says to Samuel: ‘How long will you mourn Saul? I’m done with him! Go anoint another!’ Samuel says ‘Saul will kill me for treason!; God says to use religion as a cover. Go to worship, and do your political anointing in the middle of it all. One of Jesse’s boys will be the new king – invite them all to come to worship, and I’ll point him out to you there.

Jesse presents Eliab, the eldest, the big buff guy most likely to win at reality TV. But God does not keep score by the world’s rules. Eliab is not his guy.

Jesse presents Abinadab, Shammah, and finally 7 sons in all, but none of them get the rose of ‘The Bachelorette’, and none is revealed as ‘Canada’s Next Prime Minister’

Samuel asks, ‘Are these all you boys, Jesse?’ Jesse admits that ‘well, there is the youngest, but he’s off working at his Mcjob in the service economy, keeping sheep’ Who figured he was relevant to the search for leadership and blessing? Samuel says nobody sits or eats till the boy comes – and when he does, sure enough, he’s the one, the future.

David did not choose. He was chosen. He did not love first, but he was loved first. God saw him, even when his father and brothers overlooked him. He had ‘ruddy cheeks and bright eyes’ – nobody knows what that means, but I’m guessing he was not melanin deficient like me. This is a tale of providence, not prudence, of fortune, not merit.

David was the underdog, the youngest, smallest, doing the most menial work. What does it mean for the faith? What does it mean for Jesus? What does it mean for you? Are we not still making Jesse’s errors, parading our big buff boys first? Are we judging as the world does?

We in the middling classes are always eager to tell the stories of ‘my son the doctor’, of our upwardly mobile minority. You have to listen harder to recognize who’s missing, the children who are David, off keeping the sheep, and not even invited to the anointing at worship. We celebrate our college kids – but what about our honorable young people who work and live out other stories, in other ways?

What about the kids with trades, and service jobs, and talents? What about those who survive the psychiatric, social service, special education, or criminal justice systems? What if we could see as God sees, and love as God loves, and choose as God chooses? Wouldn’t we celebrate our Davids, and invite them to the party along with our Eliabs and Abinadabs and Shammahs?

Church – our church – should be a place that tells a different story than the world does. We’re not all about reality TV and social Darwinism. We should be about seeing the David that the world overlooks, so those kids know themselves known. We should be about loving the Davids that are not big and buff – but have their own beauty and charm, so those kids knows themselves loved not despite, but because of who they are. We should be about choosing the Davids, and telling them the potential that we see in them, and anointing them our future leaders.

More folks than usual seemed to make sense of this sermon. Perhaps Willimon is right, and I have been preaching wrong. Perhaps you heard a better sermon than I preached. After all, you’re the crowd that serves breakfast at the local school every morning, runs Handicapable for developmentally disabled adults every Wednesday, and Camp Handi for 50 of that crowd in July. It turns out that we all see, and love, and choose our own Davids – but we weren’t sure that the church did, or that God did. Apparently that needs saying again.

After all, we’ve known this for millennia, a thousand years before Jesus. We always said that you can’t understand Jesus if you don’t know David. The gospel of grace says it’s not all about us, but about God: seeing how God sees, loving how God loves, choosing as God chooses. That’s what Hebrew scripture means about a chosen people – what Calvinists mean by election. In this is love – not that we loved God, but that God loved us. We don’t earn or deserve or merit love – have to learn how to live as if we were already loved. Apparently that needs saying too.

That was the 1st of 9 Sundays this summer retelling the stories of David. I hope you’ll join us in reading a bible – or Joseph Heller’s novel God Knows, or renting the Richard Gere movie - or just reading these notes as half a dozen are posted on this blog, and all are available at Thornhill church library in hard copy. If you don’t know David, you don’t really know Jesus yet – and you may not recognize what’s coming next! Next week, we’ll revisit David and Goliath – and I’ll talk about ‘David: Hero’, with lots of reliance on Thomas Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero Worship.

What word do you have for our hearts, O God
Give us ears to hear. Amen
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