LICENSE TO KILL…GOLIATH [R, 6-24-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

LICENSE TO KILL…GOLIATH   [R, 6-24-21]

 

When The Rev. Mary Beth Morgan, one of the pastors at St. Mark’s UMC, asked me to read the scripture for last Sunday’s worship, even though she knows I don’t do that sort of thing anymore, but wanted me to do it because I have been on the support team for Craig Stewart, the recently retired director of Indiana University’s Pervasive Technology Institute [don’t ask!], as he has worked toward certification as a lay preacher, she offered to come over to our house and video me doing the reading and then put it up on the screen during worship, so that both the people who have come back to worship in person and those who still lounge around in their pajamas and worship via livestream, as we have done since the start of the pandemic isolation, could hear the scripture.

Helen and I had decided not to return to in-person worship “til we have faces,” [C. S. Lewis] meaning mask-less, but we took Mary Beth’s invitation as a sign, a sign that we should get up off the sofa and put down the coffee cups, and get out of our pajamas and return to worship with the rest of the vaccinated denizens of St. Mark’s on the Bypass. [We don’t have to “go to the byways to compel them to come in” because we are already on the byway.] {Mt. 22:9-11}

 Then Helen said, “Well, you’ll have to get a haircut, and let out the waist of your suit pants, assuming we can even find your suit, and you’ll have to type up the scripture in big font since you can’t see those little words in the Bible when you’re at arm’s length in the pulpit, and remember to print it before the big storm knocks the power out [She didn’t say that, but power outage became an issue!] and you can’t eat a donut during the sermon…”

 I began to wonder, “Just how much do I like Craig, anyway?” Apparently enough, because I showed up and read the story of David and Goliath, the lectionary scripture for last Sunday.

I was a little bit surprised that Craig decided to use the lectionary. He’s worked on a sermon about Jeremiah for a long time, each reworking making it better. The Jeremiah story, buying something [a field] for the future when it looked like there wouldn’t even be a future, is about hope. I was looking forward to hearing it in person. I like to be reminded about hope. But every story in the Bible, and every opportunity for cancer-survivor Craig, is a story about hope, including David and Goliath.

It certainly looked hopeless for David, going up against Goliath, with all his strength and armor. Good grief, the Philistine was nine feet tall. Mike Woodson, IU’s new basketball coach, would have offered him a scholarship, but being a philistine, Goliath didn’t want a free education, he wanted to make all of Israel into a bunch of slaves. {I Samuel 17}

Craig pointed out that David didn’t try to match Goliath on the warrior’s terms. To him, armor and sword were hindrance, not help. He used the tools he already had and knew how to use—his sling shot and a smooth stone and his faith in God.

I must have done a good job as Craig’s mentor for his license to preach studies; it was a really good sermon, very hope-full.

John Robert McFarland