As I’ve been saying for the last two weeks, included among the exiles in Babylon were a group of Holy Historians. Faced with their collective kidnapping,
they asked the big questions: How did we get here?
And: What is God up to now?
They traced their situation back to key transition points:
-The pivot from Judges to Kings,
-Saul’s reign and its eclipse by the rising sun of King David
-And then the complex dance that was the Davidic Kingdom,
which endured in one fashion or another,
until the capture and destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple,
and eventually these Holy Historian’s own day, exiled in Babylon.
How did we get here? What now?
Prayer
It’s a familiar story, that the Holy Historians are telling. One that has even led to the coining of a phrase: “It was a David and Goliath contest.”
The giant Goliath outmatches anyone in King Saul’s army. But then,
young David sneaks to the front,
bribing his brothers’ CO with cheese along the way,
to bring them food from their father.
And David takes a look at Goliath
and sees a man no more fearsome than the beasts that stalk the family flock,
and he says so:
“I’ve killed lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
The LORD saved me from them,
he’ll save me from Goliath of Gath as well.”
It reminds me of that famous line in Star Wars: A New Hope,
a pilot says hitting the Death Star’s tiny Thermal Exhaust Port is impossible.
Luke Skywalker responds:
“I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they’re not much bigger.”
Or remember the famed Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps,
every time he swims his coach shouts “Play the Tape.”
You see, he imagines the perfect swim in his head thousands of times, before he actually swims it.
David recites and remembers God’s faithfulness to him
—he tells the story of God’s goodness and salvation,
and trusts that God will continue to be good, be faithful.
He plays the tape of God’s Goodness,
he trusts that God is trustworthy.
When you know of God’s salvation
you are surely more likely to see it again,
believe that it is possible at all.
And isn’t that what those Holy Historians are up to?
Telling of God’s past faithfulness,
so they can trust in it again,
even in their awful situation of Exile?
By telling God’s story, they are writing themselves out of Babylon!
-Abraham fled Ur and God was faithful.
-We were slaves in Egypt, and God sent Moses to bring us out!
-The Philistines oppressed us, and God used David to Deliver us!
And so too now!
Let’s look for the new thing that God is up to!
Let’s trust that God is at work now too! Even in Babylon.
And we Christians, when we testify about God’s goodness
—Have God conversation,
the mutual up-building of believers,
whatever term we want to use
—we are conversing ourselves out of peril,
“rubbing God’s promises in God’s ears.”—Luther
-I was at my lowest low,
and God found me there!
-I was in need of prayer,
and someone prayed for me!
-I was lost and alone,
and then I went to Church and was part of something,
the Body of Christ.
And we do this as community too!
When it feels like the Church is on its last legs,
unfaithful or broken or in need of renewal and reformation…
We can tell the story of God’s faithfulness!
-When the Church was beat down,
God turned Paul around and, as he affirms in 2nd Corinthians, he could take a punch,
and did so frequently for the sake of the Gospel.
-When the Church wedded itself to Imperial Power, and couldn’t tell if they were citizens of Rome or citizens of Heaven,
God sent Augustine,
and he unraveled that mess.
-When the Church grew obsessed with money God sent Francis,
He rebuilt the church, sometimes literally,
taking the bloated Church of his era out into the world.
-When the Church was sorely afraid of the Bubonic Plague and wondered if there would be a future at all,
God sent Julian of Norwich and she affirmed,
All shall be well, all shall be well, and in all manner of things, all shall be well.”
- When the Church became blind to racial injustice,
God sent Dr. King and Bishop Tutu to call out evil
and call in repentant siblings.
And so, Saul sends eager David out.
Saul puts his kingly armor on David, his armor bearer
—helmet and mail and sword
—and the poor guy can’t walk
(remember Saul is a big guy, David, not so much.)
And David can’t walk, or move.
It’s too big for him,
he’s not familiar with Kingly Armor…
the trappings of Kingship are unhelpful for saving his people.
Instead he goes out as he did against the Lions and Tigers and Bears.
He embraces simplicity and humility,
instead of pomp and circumstance.
These Holy Historians are trying to figure out where they went wrong…
How did we get here?
We put on that kingly armor!
We shunned simplicity and humility.
Power ought to be held loosely, if at all.
But we put on heavy armor,
a bronze helmet that hurts our neck,
a sword that trips us up.
We’ve become immobilized, here in Babylon,
Because we embraced kingship, power, control…
now we’re under a different King—the King of Babylon
—when you choose to play the game, you better not lose!
I think of my time in England, when I was trying to figure out where to worship. It felt like there were some strange dynamics going on that I, as an American wasn’t quite… getting…
Eventually a colleague spelled it out to me
—the Anglican congregations were part of a State Church,
and that was sort of a good deal for the State,
-one more connection point with its citizens,
-the monarchy made holy,
-the government baptized
It was a good deal for the State, but disastrous for the Church
—at extremes congregations became nothing more than places to celebrate Englishness,
instead of worshipping Jesus Christ.
Confusing Nation and Faith slaughters more souls than you’d ever imagine.
These Holy Historians named the immobilizing evil inherent in the trappings of power, even as they told the story of David’s triumph…
David, as we know,
who too will eventually succumb to the seduction of Kingly power.
(After all, Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely)
But at least for today,
David, is also the one who slays Goliath
—the humble triumphant over the braggart,
the frightening oppressor defeated by the little guy.
To tie these three week all up in a bow, here’s the bottom line,
These stories about the transition from Judgeship to Kingship
ask a lot of the Holy Historians
and a lot from us too,
big questions:
-How did we get here? What now?
-These stories point to Holiness and Trust in God,
as more important than embracing a sure thing.
-They insist that God is a God of second chances,
and that we ought to look at the world with the Eyes of Faith.
-They recite God’s goodness,
and call us to simplicity and humility.
Amen.
