1 Samuel 17: 38-54
Roger Lynn
January 29, 2017
(click here for the audio for this sermon)
It hasn’t always been this way, but for the past 5,000 years or so most of the cultures of the world have been dominated and shaped by what some scholars refer to as the Empire model. David Korten, in his article in the Summer 2006 edition of Yes! Magazine, “The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community,” describes it this way, “Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.” It is a way of living in which violence is so intricately woven into every aspect of life that it is simply taken for granted and assumed to be “just the way things are.”
This way of understanding life has profoundly influenced our faith as well. We need look no further than our scripture text for this morning to see this dramatically illustrated. The story of David and Goliath. It, along with other Biblical stories like it, has shaped the way we understand God, the world, and ourselves for countless generations. We teach it to our children in Sunday School! And we do it without even flinching. Most of the time we don’t even see the irony which is contained within the story itself. David proclaims, apparently with a straight face, “This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies of the Philistine army this very day to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand.” (1 Samuel 17:46-47) David says this moments before he kills Goliath and then uses Goliath’s own sword to cut off his head. What happened to “the Lord does not save by sword and spear”? Violence and domination and might-makes-right are so deeply imbedded into our way of seeing the world that most of the time we don’t even recognize the inconsistency.
Yes, at the time this story found it’s way into the collective consciousness of the Hebrew people they were a powerless, downtrodden, abused people. It was a story in which they found encouragement, because God would be on their side. They were doing the best they knew how to do at the time to understand God’s message for them. And all these thousands of years later we are living (and dying) with the horrific, deadly consequences of such attitudes. A couple of years ago, in a story on NPR, a US Army Colonel was overheard telling a group of Iraqi soldiers under his command, “The enemy talks about God, but we know that God is on your side.” We cannot continue living as if God chooses sides. We cannot continue believing that violence will save us.
Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it abundantly. He pointed us towards joy and peace and oneness. Even in the moment of his violent, empire-driven death, he reveals another way of living in this world. “O God, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
In his powerful Yes! Magazine article, David Korten continues, “Break the silence, end the isolation, change the story. We humans live by stories. The key to making a choice for Earth Community is recognizing that the foundation of Empire’s power does not lie in its instruments of physical violence. It lies in Empire’s ability to control the stories by which we define ourselves and our possibilities in order to perpetuate the myths on which the legitimacy of the dominator relations of Empire depend. To change the human future, we must change our defining stories.” Such a task can be particularly challenging for those of us in the Church, because our defining stories have been enshrined in scripture. We have labeled them as holy. Sometimes we even refer to them as “the word of God.” There are those who will not understand or appreciate those stories being questioned. It requires both courage and humility to stand up and say, “I know this has played an important role in the history of our faith tradition. And I know we must now face the reality that such stories are (sometimes literally) killing us.” Do any of us really believe that God wants us to cut off our enemies heads? Do we really believe that “enemies” is even a helpful filter for understanding the new reality into which God calls us? Do we really believe that God is on “our” side and will give us the power to slay those who oppose us? Korten is right. Our stories define us. They shape how we understand who we are and how we live. It is time to start telling new stories.
In contrast to Empire, Korten talks about an orientation towards life he refers to as Earth Community, which he says, “organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative cooperation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles.” What does that look like? He continues, “As the stories of Empire nurture a culture of domination, the stories of Earth Community nurture a culture of partnership. They affirm the positive potentials of our human nature and show that realizing true prosperity, security, and meaning depends on creating vibrant, caring, interlinked communities that support all persons in realizing their full humanity. Sharing the joyful news of our human possibilities through word and action is perhaps the most important aspect of the Great Work of our time.”
The Empire world-view of violence and domination is deeply entrenched in our understanding of faith – in our scriptures, in our hymns, in our theology. Sometimes it’s blatant, as in the story of David and Goliath. Sometimes it’s more subtle, but no less real. But there are other perspectives present as well. We have resources with which to begin telling a different story. There is the understanding at the very beginning of Genesis that everything which was created was very good. There are psalms which speak of the awe and wonder to be found in the world. There is the sensual love poetry of the Song of Solomon that speaks of our relationship with God in terms of being lovers. There are the words and actions of Jesus as he reaches out to welcome and include the last, the lost and the least among us – to proclaim in no uncertain terms that God’s love knows no bounds. There are the words of Paul to the church at Galatia, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” There are mystic poets like Hafiz and Rumi who remind us of the transcendent, all-embracing nature of God’s love and presence.
Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase
each other, doesn't make any sense.
– Jalaludin Rumi
Translated by: Coleman Barks and John Moyne
From: The Essential Rumi, ©1985 Coleman Barks
May God give us the courage to stand up and challenge the stories of Empire, whenever and wherever we encounter them. And may God give us the inspiration to begin telling and embodying stories of love and peace and joy and hope, stories of community and partnership and caring and compassion. Together, with each other and with God, may we begin to reclaim what it means to be truly human, carrying in our very being the imprint of the Sacred.
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