Zoom In - Sermon Transcript

Good morning.

I am Anna Bundy Hagler, one of the associate ministers here, and I am so grateful to be preaching with you this morning.

Before I even begin, let me get my advertisement out of the way.

This sermon was sponsored by the FUMC Dallas Library.

 Really though, I needed an extra commentary for this sermon that I didn't have on my own bookshelf, and I visited our library on the ground floor.

Not only do they have commentaries and religious readings, but they have so many genres and titles that you should check them out yourself.

Get it?

 Yeah, okay.

All right, moving along.

As Roy said, welcome to the first Sunday of our new worship series, Recoloring the Bible.

The associate ministers are leading this series as we encourage Mitchell to take study leave for the next several weeks so that he can prepare for our next year or so of worship series.

 Recoloring the Bible has been a particularly fun series for my department to prepare for.

We wanted interactive series graphics that you will see throughout the series on the front of your bulletin.

We couldn't wait to put our new branding on packs of crayons to hand out that were made just for you.

And during this series, we invite you to join us in the atrium before or after worship for the next several weeks to color a picture of the church with us.

 Our hope during this series is that we're taking familiar Bible stories and recoloring them by bringing them back to life.

These are all stories we learned as kids from our children's Bibles or vacation Bible school, and it's time to revisit them with depth.

This morning, we'll be exploring the story of David and Goliath.

 Admittedly, it's been a minute since I too have explored David and Goliath.

All I remember from childhood is this.

David was a small boy who defeated the giant, Goliath, with only stones and a slingshot because God was with him.

So to check my memory, I looked at this children's Bible, and this is what it said.

 Goliath shouted, who will fight me?

He was over nine feet tall and everyone in Saul's army was afraid of him.

The army did not know what to do.

When David arrived at the camp, he saw Goliath.

Are all of you too afraid to fight me, shouted Goliath.

I'm not afraid of you, Goliath.

I know God is with me, said David.

David put a stone in his slingshot and slung it at Goliath.

The stone hit Goliath in the head.

Goliath fell to the ground.

 Okay, so it seems like my memory served me correct.

Sermon over.

Let's go to lunch.

Just kidding.

I did joke about that all week, though.

And if we stick with just this story, there are many directions we could go in.

Why violence isn't the answer.

How God is with you when you're overwhelmed.

The underdog is empowered by God.

 The direction we're going in today, though, is more about David's life than just what we learned about him as kids.

As a refresher, let's visit 1 Samuel 17 together.

My other joke all week was that my whole sermon would just be reading the whole chapter, so buckle in.

We're starting with verse 3.

The Philistines took positions on one hill while Israel took positions on the opposite hill.

There was a valley between them.

 A champion named Goliath from Gath came out from the Philistine camp.

He was more than nine feet tall.

He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore bronze scale armor weighing 125 pounds.

He had bronze plates on his shins and a bronze scimitar hung on his back.

His spear shaft was as strong as the bar on a weaver's loom and its iron head weighed 15 pounds.

They're really concerned that you know the weight of all of these things.

 His shield bearer walked in front of him.

He stopped and shouted to the Israelite troops, why have you come and taken up battle formations?

I am the Philistine champion and you are Saul's servants.

Isn't that right?

Select one of your men and let him come down against me.

If he is able to fight me and kill me, then we will become your slaves.

But if I overcome him and kill him, then you will become our slaves and you will serve us.

 I insult Israel's troops today.

The Philistine continued, give me an opponent and we will fight.

 When Saul and all Israel heard what the Philistines said, they were distressed and terrified.

For 40 days straight, the Philistine came out, 40 days, y'all, the children's Bible never mentioned that, came out and took his stand both morning and evening.

Jesse said to his son David, please take your brothers' roasted grain and these 10 loaves of bread.

Deliver them quickly to your brothers in the camp.

 And here, take these 10 wedges of cheese to their unit commander.

Find out how your brothers are doing and bring back a sign that they are okay.

They are with Saul and all of the Israelite troops fighting the Philistines in Elah Valley.

So David got up early in the morning, left someone in charge of the flock, and loaded up and left, just as his father had instructed him.

 He reached the camp right when the army was taking up their battle formations and shouting the war cry.

Israel and Philistines took up their battle formations opposite of each other.

David left his things within an attendant and ran to the front of the line.

When he arrived, he asked how his brothers were doing.

 Right when David was speaking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, came forward from the Philistine ranks and said the same things he had said before.

David listened.

When the Israelites saw Goliath, every one of them ran away, terrified of him.

 Don't let anyone lose courage because of this Philistine, David told Saul.

I, your servant, will go out and fight him.

You can't go out and fight this Philistine, Saul answered David.

You are still a boy, but he has been a warrior since he was a boy.

 "'Your servant has kept his father's sheep,' David replied to Saul.

"'And if ever a lion or a bear came and carried off one of the flock, I would go after it, strike it, and rescue the animal from its mouth.

If it turned on me, I would grab at its jaw, strike it, and kill it.

Your servant has fought both lions and bears.'"

 The Lord, David added, who rescued me from the power of both lions and bears will rescue me from the power of this Philistine.

Go, Saul replied to David, and may the Lord be with you.

Then Saul dressed David in his own gear, putting a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head.

David strapped his sword over the armor, but he couldn't walk around well because he had never tried on the armor before.

 I can't walk in this because I've never tried it on.

So he took it off.

Then he grabbed his staff and chose five smooth stones from the stream bed.

He put them in the pocket of his shepherd's bag and with the sling in hand went out to the Philistine.

The Philistine got closer and closer to David and his shield bearer was in front of him.

When the Philistine looked David over, he sneered at David because he was just a boy, reddish brown and good looking.

 The Philistine asked David, am I some sort of dog that you would come at me with sticks?

And he cursed David by his gods.

Come here, he said to David, and I'll feed your flesh to the wild birds and the wild animals.

But David told the Philistine, you are coming against me with sword and spear, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of heavenly forces, of God's Israel's army, the one that you've insulted.

Today the Lord will hand you over to me.

 I will strike you down and cut off your head.

Today I feed your dead body and the dead bodies of the entire Philistine camp to the wild birds and wild animals.

Then the whole world will know that God is on Israel's side.

And all of those gathered here will know that the Lord doesn't save by means of sword and spear.

The Lord owns this war and he will hand all of you over to us.

 The Philistine got up and moved closer to attack David and David ran quickly to the front of the line to face him.

David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone.

He slung it and it hit the Philistine on his forehead.

The stone penetrated his forehead and he fell face down on the ground.

And that's how David triumphed over the Philistine with just a sling and a stone, striking the Philistine down and killing him.

And David didn't even have a sword.

 This is the word of God in scripture, the word of God among us, and the word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

Children's Bibles don't get the action part correct.

I mean, really, we could have watched that in the movie theater.

So thanks for hanging on.

 David is one of the most developed figures in all of Scripture.

We meet him as a shepherd, a musician, a warrior, friend, fugitive, king, sinner, mourner, and a person still being shaped by God.

So if we are going to talk about David, we probably need more than one story to understand him.

 With that in mind, it's important to note that David and Goliath is not our first introduction to David in Scripture, although none of those details give that away.

It's actually our third time meeting him.

We see David first in 1 Samuel 16, where Samuel, chosen by God, is trying to appoint a replacement for Israel's current king, Saul.

Saul has started straying from God, which means that he is also leading the Israelites away from God's direction.

 When Samuel is visiting the house of Jesse, he looks at the oldest son, assuming that the biggest and strongest must be the next in-line king.

God tells Samuel, you may look at the exterior, but I look at the heart.

And Jesse introduces his smallest, youngest son, David.

 David is who God chooses to replace Saul.

When the anointing happens, nothing is said to Jesse or David, but we read that God's spirit came upon David in the exchange.

Our second introduction is in the same chapter.

Saul is troubled, unsettled, and not exactly giving us emotionally regulated leadership.

We read that he is tormented and the thing that brings him relief is music.

So Saul asked his servants to find a musician.

 And what a small world.

One of the servants recommends David, Jesse's son.

While Saul is at home, David remains at Saul's side and plays for him whenever he is overwhelmed.

Now enter the story of David and Goliath.

With the first two stories of David, God has been acting, but David has been passive.

 He had nothing to do with God's choice of him as the next king except for his heart, his passion for God and God's people.

I also think that it was God moving through King Saul's servants that David was brought into Saul's home, bringing David ever closer to the man that one day he will replace.

 This story does not explain why God chose David as much as it lets us glimpse what God may have already seen in him.

He has so much faithfulness in God that he was the only brave one, and the youngest, of the Israelites that was willing to fight the giant.

Saul, the current king and leader of the Israelite army, was paralyzed by fear.

 But David, a man after God's own heart, with a desire to protect God's people, was willing to step into fire.

 This is the first story where we see an active David, a David who has the potential to be a great king for God's people.

We don't only see it in his action of stepping forward to face Goliath, but we see it in his warning to Goliath.

He said, you are coming against me with sword and spear.

Today the Lord will hand you over to me.

I will strike you down.

 When David defeats Goliath, it's a celebration for a multitude of reasons.

The underdog defeated the giant.

The Israelite army will not be captured.

God's people win the day.

But for David, it's the first moment that anyone will remember anything about him.

David's trust in God is incredibly evident in who he is.

 A kid who was sent to the fight by his dad to deliver food and check on his big brothers is so passionate about defending his country and his Lord that he was not willing to sit on the sidelines as the army remained frozen in fear.

We don't get any information about how he was feeling or what he was thinking before Saul sent for him.

 But we can infer that he was so faithful to his God that he was going to lay his life on the line.

And because of his bravery, his courage, and his commitment to God, he's won.

A defining moment.

And this, I believe, is where the story shifts from us remembering the children's Bible rendition and instead lets us see the fuller picture about how God works in human lives.

 Really, the story of David and Goliath just lets us zoom in to one moment in David's life.

But David is much more than the parts of his story.

His legacy is based on the entirety of his existence.

Not to change the subject much, but it kind of reminds me of quilting.

If you don't know me well, I'm a quilter.

I picked up the hobby about four years ago after many desperate attempts to find something to do with my hands.

 I had tried knitting and crocheting and nothing ever really clicked for me until my grana texted me asking, do you want a sewing machine?

And I never looked back.

I love the practice of quilting.

I love that I buy fabric.

 I cut that fabric and then I sew the fabric back together.

Quilting does so much for me in that I get to participate in a centuries long tradition of women working with their hands, creating something tangible and functional for the people they love.

And while I could certainly write a sermon or series on quilting itself and how we can learn faith and community from a hobby like that, I bring it up because it reminds me of how one moment cannot define the whole thing.

 Quilting isn't simply buying fabric.

It's also not simply sewing it back together.

That's a lie we all learn the first time we make a quilt.

There are many parts that make up a quilt.

Pick a pattern, buy the fabric,

 Press and starch fabric.

Cut fabric.

Assemble the blocks.

Sew the fabric.

Press the blocks.

Trim the blocks.

Assemble the quilt top.

Sew and trim the backing.

Make the quilt sandwich.

The backing, the batting, and the quilt top.

Quilt it.

Make the binding.

Attach the binding.

And then you're mostly done.

That's 14 steps.

And really, we're missing a few, but I don't want to bog you down in the details.

 If you did any one of these steps individually, you didn't make a quilt.

You can't zoom in to one part of the quilting process and expect a masterpiece.

It takes the entire process for the finished product.

Truth be told, David and Goliath is only one snapshot of David's life.

 When we read David's story from 1 Samuel through 1 Kings, we see a much fuller, much more complicated person.

In 1 Samuel, David is the overlooked youngest son of Jesse, anointed by Samuel, brought into Saul's court, and eventually known as the one who defeats Goliath.

But he is also the one who runs for his life.

 grieves deeply, waits for his calling to unfold, and refuses to become exactly like Saul.

In 2 Samuel, David becomes king.

He unites the people and brings the ark to Jerusalem and receives God's covenant promise, but he also abuses his power, harms Bathsheba and Uriah, is confronted by Nathan, lives with the grief and consequences that unfold in his own family.

 By the beginning of 1 Kings, David is old, his kingdom is still fragile, and the question of what comes next is anything but simple.

So maybe David's story is not just about becoming the kind of person who can face a giant.

Maybe it is also about what it means to be fully human before God, overlooked and chosen, brave and afraid.

 fateful and messy, capable of courage, capable of harm, and still invited back into grace.

And this is where grace matters, because the life of faith is not simply a matter of trying harder to be good.

It is the lifelong work of letting God continue to form us.

 In seminary, I remember reading 2 Samuel and loving to hate David.

He does some pretty horrific things as a king, and it's really easy to read something in black and white and to label it.

 But when I reread David and Goliath this week, remembering my many papers about David's reign actually saddens me.

There's more to say here about accountability, repentance, and redemption, because David's harm is real and grace does not erase consequences.

But for today, I want us to notice that David's life is more complicated than a clean label can hold.

 He does not start out as a villain, and he is not only remembered as a hero.

He is a person chosen by God, capable of great courage, capable of real harm, and still being called back toward God.

 The Book of Belonging, which is a book I've referenced many times in this sanctuary before, gives us a helpful way to hold that complexity using the story from 1 and 2 Samuel and the Psalms attributed to David.

The book reads,

 When God had chosen David as a king so many years before, everyone was surprised.

But God looks at the heart.

And the heart of David was not hard to see.

It was large and loud with all of those big feelings coming out in bursts.

But David's feelings were so big that sometimes he got overwhelmed.

And at times David hurt and harmed.

He grasped for God's gifts.

 He used other people's bodies to grab for what he wanted.

He felt insecure and acted in a greedy way.

He felt angry and acted in a violent way.

He felt powerless and acted in an abusive way.

Because even kings chosen by God make terrible choices sometimes.

 david's big feelings were true and important and powerful when he trusted god's names for him his feelings helped him unite god's people and remind them of god's ways he felt compassion and acted with justice and kindness david felt sorrow and acted with humility after his messes and missteps

 He felt horror over the hurt and harm he caused.

He admitted his mistakes, apologized, and trusted that he still belonged with God.

Isn't that what we all struggle with?

The human condition?

 That we were all created in God's image and God loves us so much that we were gifted free will?

With our freedom, we make real choices?

Some of those choices reflect God's image in us, and some of it distort it.

But God's grace keeps calling us back, reshaping us, and inviting us to become more fully who we were created to be.

 Surely there are many people you've encountered in your life that your friends or family love and you did not understand the appeal.

Or maybe even more often, you've met someone with a horrible first impression but later wondered what that was about because you got to know them and they're wonderful.

Or even the opposite, sometimes people are wonderful at a first impression and then you get to know them and you say later, what was I thinking about them?

 Just like David, we contain multitudes.

 Just like David, we too experience the human condition.

We were all created in the image of God, and every day we get the opportunity to choose living into that image or distancing ourselves from it.

And the complicated part is that it's not even really a straight line.

We can experience it all in a day.

We can show pure, generous love towards our partners and then be short and frustrated with someone in the service industry.

 We can make incredibly kind, wonderful first impressions with strangers and then treat our family members unkindly.

The good news is this.

Our lifelong work is not simply to try harder to be good.

Our lifelong work is to keep returning to the God who is already at work within us.

 In our United Methodist understanding of God's grace, sanctifying grace is the phrase we use to talk about God's ongoing work in our lives.

It is the grace that keeps transforming us, drawing us closer to God, and shaping us into people who reflect God's love more fully.

 John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, believed that because of sanctifying grace, we could move towards Christian perfection.

Not perfection in the sense of never making a mistake again, but perfection in love, spiritual maturity, a heart turned toward God, and a life that more clearly reflects God's grace in the world.

 Friends, we have lifelong work to do.

And may David's story be a reminder of that.

Even faithful followers of God struggle with choosing God's ways in every single thing that they do.

We also will struggle.

Just as David's moment with Goliath is one piece of his puzzle, we too experience pieces of other folks' lives.

 Not only that, but people are experiencing us in the same way.

Just a glimpse.

 We're all human.

The journey of faith is not that we get everything right.

The journey of faith is learning again and again and again to return to God, the God who made us, loves us, forms us, forgives us, and calls us to reflect love and grace in the world.

May you remember that you were created good in God's image.

 And may you remember that everyone else was too.

In the name of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

Amen.