I Samuel Chapter 16: Slaying The Giant
The church should never have a routine, but should always have a purpose. The two are rarely congruent and almost never interchangeable. In routine we find comfort and reassurance in the structure of ritual. In purpose we find the anxiety of the unknown and the reward of the unexpected. The unexpected gifts of unexpected people.
There's this preacher I know
who spontaneously comes up with these extraordinary truths.
Wonderful ideas and precepts that you just want to run and write
down because they have so much meaning for and bearing upon your
life. One day he was praying and he was thanking God for doing
unexpected things with unexpected people. Unexpected people.
Yes. That's about right. Too often, in Our Church Thing, we
marginalize people and pigeonhole people and ignore the greater
good— the enormous wealth of possibility, anointing and purpose—
we all, as fellow strugglers in this humanity, present. Voices
silenced and hands stilled by the Elks Club mentality of routine
over purpose. The church, you see, should never have a routine,
but should always have a purpose. The two are rarely congruent
and almost never interchangeable. In routine we find comfort and
reassurance in the structure of ritual. In purpose we find the
anxiety of the unknown and the reward of the unexpected. The
unexpected gifts of unexpected people.
When the prophet Samuel, under God's anointing, went to Jesse's
farm to find Israel's next king, Jesse presented six of his
seven sons, each more masculine and intelligent than the other.
Jesse paraded these young men, one by one, before Samuel, but
none of these was the one God was meaning to anoint. Puzzled by
God's failure to chose one of these young men, an exasperated
Samuel turned to Jesse and asked him if these were all of his
sons, and Jesse kind of scratched his head and said, well,
there's David— but he's just a shepherd boy, a tall, geeky redhead, who seemed to lack the
stature or the promise of greatness. Samuel told Jesse to bring
the boy to him right away and, sure enough, David was the guy:
the man God anointed as the new king of Israel. But, see, Israel
already had a king. a great and powerfully
anointed man named Saul. Now, Saul had the favor of God and the
anointing of God but, somewhere along the way, Saul started
believing his own press and became a little too full of himself
and, as the bible said, the Spirit of the Lord departed from
him. Saul was suffering migraine headaches and had trouble
sleeping and was a big, self-obsessed crank, desperate for a
remedy to his illness. When someone on Saul's staff suggested
maybe some soft music would help, they sent for the greatest
musician they could find— a shepherd boy named David.
David played the harp for Saul, eased his headaches, and won
instant favor in Saul's sight. Saul promised the shepherd the
world and became David's best bud. But, it was a flawed
relationship in that David could have the world just as long as
Saul was the center of it; so long as
David remained by Saul's side and functioned the way Saul wanted
him to function in the role that Saul envisioned David in,
despite whatever ambition or hopes David himself had. David,
whom the bible describes as, “A mighty man of valor,” became
Saul's constant companion. His personal harpist. His Tylenol.
And, had not God intervened, had David not had the courage to
follow God rather than follow Saul, that's pretty much how this
story would have ended: David would have gone down in history as
the world's greatest harpist. He'd have grown old in Saul's
palace, opening the prestigious David Harp School, and, perhaps,
making history by organizing the Judah Harpist's Union Local
1092, campaigning for better wages and, I dunno, better strings
on the harps. He'd have died at a ripe old age and been buried
with his harp as a sea of royal harpists played an endearing
dirge for the greatest harpist the world had ever known.
But, that's not how the story went, is it? The fact is, most
people don't even remember David was a musician. Because David
is not remembered for being a musician. David is remembered for
slaying Goliath. Something he'd have never done. something no
one would have ever thought to ask him to do, because the
promise of those things, those unexpected things, was not
evident to unspiritual people. People like David's own father
and, yes, people like Saul who had once known God's favor, but
who were now in a state of apostasy.
Slaying The
Giant:: Faris Odeh, a Palestinian boy, was shot and killed
by the Israeli soldiers
on November 9, 2000, a few days after
this photo was taken. Palestinian Affairs Council.
King Saul was a great man and a great man of God.
He was
anointed and chosen, and
God was with him. But Saul did not work at his relationship with
God and allowed that relationship to wither to the point where
v14 says the Spirit of the Lord departed from him. No longer
looking with spiritual eyes, Saul saw David as a short-term
solution to a long-term problem: someone to soothe his nerves
and chase the evil spirit away. The long-term problem, of
course, was he was out of fellowship with God. He was out to sea
with no radar. Lacking spiritual eyes, Saul never once stopped
to consider the anointing on David. For it would take a great
anointing to turn away an evil Spirit once God has granted
permission for that spirit to attend you. Saul was not a stupid
man but he was an arrogant man. And he had wandered so far away
from God that he didn't even realize the trouble he was in. He
didn't recognize God's anointed— his own replacement— when he was
standing in the same room with him.
Had King Saul had his way, David would have been known for being
the best harp player who ever lived. One heck of a harp player,
David would have been the king's constant companion, soothing
Saul's migraines with his melodies as Saul went on building
monuments to his own Saul-ness and ego tripping and moving
steadily away from the God Who had so anointed him. But that was
not the purpose of the story of David, a complex man who became,
in his battle with the Philistine, an unexpected person doing
unexpected things.
There are a great many people in life who remain anxious to
categorize and cubbyhole us, cement us into roles where they
find comfort and meaning and understanding, and where we
validate and maintain their existence. Our attempts to move
beyond that assigned duty, to express some new or nagging
ambition or purpose, usually invites disdain and ridicule from
people who allegedly love us. People who allegedly support us,
but who nevertheless blanche and snicker and, yes, move away
from us at precisely the moment we need them the most. Slingshot in hand, staring down the giant, we are suddenly chilled by
the realization that nobody, and I mean nobody, believes we can
slay the giant. I mean, it's not the kind of thing David did.
David was not a giant slayer, he was a harpist. Yes, yes, the
bible describes him as, “a mighty man of valor (v18),” but, in
essence, David was considered a kid. And, for Saul, he was
Tylenol. I'm sure Saul did not appreciate his Tylenol— his only
remedy for the constant headaches he suffered— being wasted
against the unstoppable Philistine.
But, doing the unexpected with The Unexpected is what God does.
It's his modus operandi. It never ceases to amaze me how shocked
people become when God actually does something, well, God-like,
and uses unexpected people in unexpected ways to accomplish
unexpected things. If David had let people keep him where they
thought he belonged, he'd have gone down in history as the
world's greatest harp player.
But, unexpectedly, David the king's lackey became David the
king's armor bearer and then David the king's mightiest warrior
and then, finally, David the King.
Slaying The
Giant:: Faris Odeh, a Palestinian boy, was shot and killed
by the Israeli soldiers
on November 9, 2000, a few days after
this photo was taken. Palestinian Affairs Council.
In Our Church Thing we elect leadership—
leadership of
committees, leadership of auxiliaries and even leadership of
ministries. We hire staff and we appoint people. And, a lot of
the time, we appoint Saul and miss David. because David's
promise is not as obvious as Saul's. David's credentials are not
as readily apparent as Saul's. David is often harder to spot
than Saul because David does not come to the front as boldly or
as readily as Saul. David is often a work in progress. David
requires more vision and more patience than Saul.
But David is the one you want. You don't want Saul because Saul
is going to ultimately fail to live up to God's promise. You
don't want the popular choice, you want the spiritual choice.
You want God's choice, and the people, the greater body of Who
We Are, are never happy with and rarely pleased by God's choice
because God's choice is much harder to understand with our
limited and flawed mortal perceptions.
God never demanded polish. He demands
faith. submission. surrender. Don't worry about courage or even
resources or infrastructure: God's got all of that. All you need
is to let Him have the driver's seat. Let Him bring about those
things in your life that are unexpected. To have you doing
unexpected things in unexpected places at unexpected times and
in unexpected ways.
Christopher J. Priest
5 October 2002
editor@praisenet.org
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