William H. Willimon - "A Children's Story" (September 4, 1994)

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-	It is a story which is child-like and playful,	0:11
	and full of enough blood and gore	0:14
	to please any child's lust for these qualities.	0:18
	I remember that after I discovered	0:24
	that my children's favorite bedtime story was	0:26
	The Three Billy Goats Gruff,	0:29
	I never turned my back on them again.	0:31
	(congregation laughs)	0:35
	It is a story which is remembered	0:35
	and it's beloved by children.	0:38
	Not only because,	0:41
	only a diminutive child could fully appreciate	0:42
	a tale of great Goliath's defeat	0:46
	by little David and his slingshot.	0:49
	But also because children living in a world	0:55
	of thunder-speaking, oppressive giants, adults,	1:01
	delight in seeing David give big, bully Goliath	1:07
	what he deserves.	1:13
	How many times did you watch the Karate Kid	1:15
	when you were in junior high?	1:18
	I'm sure that if you remember,	1:21
	know Bible stories from your childhood,	1:23
	you remember this one.	1:26
	With all the armies of Israel trembling	1:28
	before the great giant Goliath,	1:32
	little David runs quickly and takes a stone,	1:35
	and slings a stone and strikes Goliath,	1:38
	and Goliath falls, end of story.	1:41
	And yet the teller of this tale	1:45
	skillfully builds the tension in the narrative.	1:47
	Now, the Philistines gather their armies for battle.	1:52
	This would be cause enough for Hebrew fear.	1:56
	And there came out from the camp of the Philistines,	2:00
	a champion named Goliath,	2:02
	whose height was about 10 feet.	2:06
	And he had a helmet of bronze,	2:08
	and he was armed with a coat of mail weighing 150 pounds.	2:11
	His spear had weighed 19 pounds.	2:16
	He's big Goliath.	2:20
	I think the narrator lingers over	2:24
	the tales of Goliath's immense armaments,	2:26
	thus to impress us with the immense odds against Israel.	2:29
	"Give me a man that we may go out and fight together,"	2:36
	taunts Goliath.	2:40
	And up pops the youngest son of Jesse.	2:43
	Goliath demanded a man.	2:48
	He gets little David.	2:50
	David happens to be on the battlefield bringing lunch	2:54
	to his older brothers.	2:57
	And the contrast between this heavily armored giant,	2:59
	come out to fight a man,	3:05
	and the little boy bringing lunch,	3:07
	it couldn't be greater.	3:09
	Where is King Saul of the Israelites?	3:13
	You may ask.	3:16
	Well, he's paralyzed by fear.	3:17
	He and his whole army hunkered down in the trenches,	3:19
	and little David swaggers up to poor, quivering King Saul,	3:24
	tells him he'll go fight Goliath.	3:29
	Hey you're just a kid.	3:32
	David tells the king that while guarding his sheep,	3:35
	he's become quite good with a slingshot.	3:39
	The Lord save me from the paw of the lion	3:42
	and from the paw of the bear,	3:45
	and will save me from this Philistine.	3:46
	Now you will note that this is the first time	3:49
	that God has entered the story.	3:52
	Something more we find out with this mention of God	3:54
	is going on here in this story.	3:58
	Something more than merely a human schoolyard contest	4:00
	between a nice little boy and a schoolyard bully.	4:04
	"Go!" says the king,	4:09
	"And may the Lord go with you."	4:12
	And that's really the only hope that little David has,	4:17
	that maybe, the Lord is with him.	4:20
	You will note that though King Saul talks about the Lord,	4:25
	note that he puts his real trust	4:29
	in the same place as Goliath,	4:32
	in armor and in the sword.	4:34
	King Saul offers his helmet,	4:37
	and his coat of mail, and his sword to little David.	4:39
	Both the Pagan giant and the Hebrew king	4:44
	want to brag at the other royal coward.	4:48
	Trust in arms and armament,	4:51
	but David does not, he trusts God.	4:55
	With God's help and his shepherd's sling,	5:01
	and just five smooth stones, it's enough.	5:04
	The equalizer between the oppressor and the oppressed	5:08
	therefore is not technology,	5:11
	it's not arms, it is not the NRA,	5:13
	it's not a good defense program, it's God.	5:16
	David's stone finds its mark.	5:20
	Great big Goliath falls dead at David's feet.	5:22
	Now this little story, beloved and believed since childhood,	5:27
	is marvelously transparent.	5:33
	We need not linger long on it's import.	5:36
	However, I do want to say something about it's significance,	5:40
	particularly, for you students.	5:44
	'Cause I assume that maybe with the exception	5:49
	of the children in this morning's congregation,	5:52
	it's your students that maybe know most about this story.	5:54
	Because you know firsthand,	6:04
	what it's like to be the victim of those who are giants.	6:07
	Giants in their field.	6:13
	This is not for those grownup-types among us,	6:16
	who have so perfected our armor to the point	6:18
	that we feel strong, big, autonomous,	6:21
	totally invulnerable, and impervious.	6:25
	It's meant for those of us who know what it's like	6:28
	to come up against a bully	6:31
	on the playground or in the classroom.	6:33
	Those who know what it's like to be small,	6:36
	and powerless, and on the bottom.	6:39
	Anybody whose ever been exposed	6:42
	to the power wielded by others	6:45
	who are bigger, or richer, or smarter,	6:48
	or more mature, more better armored than they.	6:51
	And of course around here,	6:57
	anybody who receives grades is small,	6:58
	and anybody who gives grades is always susceptible	7:03
	to the temptation to bully.	7:06
	She is now a Duke professor,	7:12
	but she told our class that	7:15
	when she was a student in graduate school,	7:17
	she used to sit through hour after hour	7:19
	of graduate seminars and never open her mouth.	7:22
	And after a seminar,	7:28
	she would go back to her carrel in the library,	7:29
	and she would just weep,	7:33
	because she thought she had something to say,	7:37
	something to offer,	7:39
	but she felt so small.	7:42
	This little story is not neutral.	7:49
	It is not disinterested in contests	7:53
	between the giants and the small.	7:55
	It is prejudiced.	7:58
	Prejudged towards first year students and sophomores,	8:00
	and it tends to be biased against university administrators,	8:05
	particularly the Registrar, as well as the Dean's Council,	8:09
	and alas for me, even clergy,	8:14
	were backed up by giant gothic steeples,	8:16
	and hide behind well-armored, limestone pulpits.	8:18
	I'll put it to you straight,	8:24
	you are meant to identify with,	8:26
	and to draw encouragement from the actions of little David.	8:29
	Unlike the entire army of Israel and it's great king,	8:34
	David doesn't hunker down in the trenches	8:39
	and wait for fate to work its course with him.	8:41
	He acts, he takes what he has,	8:45
	he takes what he knows and he acts.	8:49
	He is not skilled in the martial arts.	8:53
	He never had a course in the military science.	8:57
	Yet he does know how to use a lowly slingshot right well,	8:59
	and by God's grace that is enough.	9:04
	Now your Generation X of young adults,	9:10
	deeply suspicious about the viability	9:13
	of political solutions to what ails us.	9:15
	Too easily, I think, reconcile to the world as it is,	9:19
	and cynical about talk of the world as it could be.	9:23
	You need to hear this story of little David who acts.	9:29
	You need to believe that it's true.	9:34
	In our first year student's seminar,	9:40
	Dr. Hague and I asked students to read Victor Franco's book	9:41
	about his survival in the Nazi prison camps.	9:46
	And one sentence from Franco always stands out	9:52
	in their reading.	9:55
	It's where Franco says the Nazi's stripped their victims	9:58
	of every dignity, every shred of their humanity	10:02
	except the last of human freedoms.	10:07
	To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.	10:12
	To choose one's own way.	10:18
	Did Franco, the Jew, know this story	10:24
	of David and Goliath?	10:27
	Yes, and time and again in their fiery trials,	10:28
	what hope God's people must have found	10:33
	in this narrative of little David.	10:36
	Of how little David, who wasn't large,	10:39
	and he wasn't well armored,	10:41
	used not only his wit but also his faith in God	10:44
	to triumph over Goliath.	10:50
	To those who trust God,	10:54
	there is a way even when there is no way.	10:56
	And we have difficulty believing in this story,	11:04
	and we have difficulty believing it,	11:07
	not simply because we're modern and we're mature,	11:09
	and therefore we come to the Bible	11:11
	prejudiced against its truth.	11:14
	We have difficulty believing this story	11:18
	because of a lack of faith,	11:22
	because we're just not too sure	11:25
	if we really believe the gospel.	11:27
	For today, that little Jesus,	11:31
	without the benefit of a medical education	11:34
	or government certification,	11:36
	went out and cured this daughter of this poor woman,	11:38
	and cured a man who was deaf and blind.	11:42
	We're just not too sure.	11:45
	We have difficulty believing the story,	11:48
	and a lack of faith in God renders us immobile to act.	11:52
	In 1955, about 3,000 American children died	12:01
	from poliomyelitis.	12:05
	It was a huge national initiative to find a cure for polio.	12:09
	And wonder of wonders, the polio vaccine was developed.	12:16
	I can still remember my third grade school teacher	12:20
	telling us about little Dr. Jonas Salk	12:24
	just working in the laboratory,	12:27
	Who defeated the big giant polio	12:31
	with nothing more than a few test tubes,	12:33
	and a petri dish, and an education.	12:36
	Interestingly, in 1993 about 3,000 American children	12:41
	died from gunshot wounds.	12:47
	Yet there is no national outrage,	12:53
	there is no great initiative against	12:57
	the horrible plague of children dying by guns.	13:00
	Now why is that?	13:07
	Well, the NRA owns much of the US Congress, yes,	13:10
	but is there a more fundamental reason	13:14
	that we no longer believe that we little us,	13:19
	working in some laboratory at the university,	13:23
	that we can conquer anything?	13:25
	What can just one little person do?	13:28
	And I'm telling you that a great deal depends	13:33
	on which stories you know by heart.	13:35
	Which stories you dare to believe.	13:40
	When Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall died,	13:45
	Justice Sandra Day O'Connor	13:50
	who disagreed with Justice Marshall on most things,	13:51
	she said, what I will miss most	13:57
	about Thurgood Marshall is his stories.	13:59
	Those stories about the tough days	14:06
	in the civil rights movement.	14:08
	When there was only Thurgood Marshall	14:10
	and a couple of NAACP lawyers going up against a great,	14:13
	legally-sanctioned, ingrained system of racial injustice.	14:17
	I will miss those stories	14:26
	because they changed the way I look at the world.	14:29
	Thus Jesus told his little band,	14:38
	"They will arrest you and persecute you,	14:41
	"hand you over to prisons,	14:44
	"you'll be brought before kings and governors because of me,	14:46
	"you'll be betrayed by your parents,	14:49
	"and your brothers, and relatives, and friends,	14:51
	"but not a hair on your head will perish.	14:53
	"I am with you."	14:57
	Well-armed, big, bragging Goliath on one side,	15:02
	well-armed, quivering, cowardly King Saul on the other.	15:07
	Now, whose going to triumph in this conquest	15:14
	between the two available alternatives.	15:17
	Go on get your armor!	15:22
	Your psychological, sociological, economic defenses	15:23
	and just hunker down 'cause it's either Goliath or Saul.	15:27
	But wait, there's another warrior in the battle.	15:33
	Someone else is moving forward into the fray.	15:39
	And I'm not talking about brash,	15:44
	sophomoric, upstart little David.	15:47
	I'm talking about God.	15:51
	The God who is determined not to leave history up	15:54
	to the bloody refuse that's leftover	15:58
	after ignorant armies have had their clash in the night.	16:01
	The God who is prodding even little shepherds into the fray.	16:05
	As long as there is God there are surprising twist	16:12
	and turnings in our story.	16:16
	The world is not yet fixed or finished.	16:18
	Listen up all you small ones.	16:23
	There is space enough even for the small and the vulnerable	16:27
	to do something with history	16:32
	if you dare let God put you to godly purposes.	16:35
	(triumphant music)	16:54

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "A Children's Story" (September 4, 1994)

Description:

Preaching from the story that little David defeated the giant Goliath by trusting in God alone, the preacher argues that in a world of oppressive giants, the little ones who put their faith in God can make a difference. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4wd3qg49

Date:

September 4, 1994

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

1 Samuel

Chapter and Verse:

1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-11, 19-24, 32-49

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0717
ref9466_36l
uachapelsermaud
duke:321215
dcrau001450
ark:/87924/r4wd3qg49
b4d8548e-9318-4684-b2c8-b78088eef397

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "A Children's Story" (September 4, 1994)

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1. William H. Willimon - "A Children's Story" (September 4, 1994)

Duke University Archives

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William H. Willimon - "A Children's Story" (September 4, 1994)

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Duke University Archives

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