Not like us

1 Samuel 17:32-49

I am a person who has been known by many names.

I started my life without a first name. I am adopted and was not given a name at birth. The original birth records from the hospital show my first name as simply, “Baby”.

I was adopted three months later and given the name Gregory.

In high school, my friends all called me Ular.

In my 20s everyone who knew me called me as Sid.

Two years ago I legally changed my first name to Joelle but most people around here simply call me pastor—or if you are Paul Parker you can call me “my pastor”.

Before going in to ministry I was in the Air Force for 20 years and the majority of that time I worked as a historian. The military loves acronyms and everyone’s job is turned in to an acronym. I worked in the History Office, the initials of which are H-O-… so everyone called me the HO. Just as I hear pastor all day long now, back then I was known as the HO. I could be in a staff meeting with the general in charge of the base and when I got called on, it would be as the HO.

As the HO it was my job to document military operations. I recorded everything from training exercises in the United States to the bombing of Serbia. And I was a pretty good historian. I won a ridiculous amount of awards and had a reputation as one the better historians in the Air Force.

One time a general introduced me to a visiting dignitary and said I was such a good historian that I could not only describe every element of the Battle of Britain but that I could tell you what the pilots ate for breakfast.

That is a bit of an exaggeration.

But I did study and record a lot of military history.

And from all of those experiences, from my study of military history, from my experiences as a 20 year veteran, if there is one thing I can say about warfare is that it doesn’t work.

If the purpose of warfare is to bring peace, as is often espoused, it doesn’t work.

Violence only creates more violence.

The violence of the First World War led to the pain and brokenness that created the Second World War.

The unresolved conflicts of the Second World War led to wars in Korea and Vietnam.

The fears of the Cold War created divisions among nations that are still with us today and that can be seen in the wars in the Ukraine and Palestine.

As a person who documented combat, I saw too much of how the sausage is made and by the time I retired I had become a disgruntled pacifist.

I heard high ranking officers openly joke about being excited to blow things up and kill people. Those are things that the military is quite good at and can do with amazing precision.

But if the long term goal is peace, blowing things up and killing people is not the way to get there.

War does not bring peace, violence creates more violence.

And yet, this is what we know. We are told that a powerful nation is one that projects strength.

This isn’t modern politics, it is human nature.

It is behind what we heard in the scripture a couple of weeks ago when the people of Israel said we want a king.

God said you don’t want a king, I am your king.

Samuel said you don’t want a king, a king will take your sons and send them off to war.

And the people said: we want to be like the other big powerful nations, we want big cities and wealth and might… we want a king.

One of those powerful nations was Philistine–the arch nemesis of Israel. The Philistines were known for their iron, spears, swords… for their military strength. So much so that the people of Israel lived in fear of them.

The Philistines would bring out their giant, Goliath, to beat his chest and yell his threats and that would be enough to fill the people of Israel with fear. Goliath could talk some smack. He looked down at David and said:

“Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?’ … ‘Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the field.’

And David could talk some smack right back, but what is David’s smack?

You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord.

David is saying, you are not like us. You may have all the weapons, but we have God.

One of the biggest songs of the year is a song by the rapper Kendrick Lamar called “Not like us”. The song is the result of Kendrick trading diss tracks with Drake. I think what Kendrick does in this song is very clever. He shifts the focus that this is not just you against me, but this is you against my people. In this case, Kendrick is saying you are not like us in Southern California.

David is making the same statement to the Philistines: They not like us.

Philistines, you rely on sword and spear and javelin… but they not like us. We rely on God. David says: God doesn’t save by sword or spear, but God will deliver you in to my hands.

God uses a kid named David, armed with the tools of a shepherd, to bring down a giant and a military power.

Goliath talked smack, but ended up getting beheaded with his own sword.

David had everything he needed to bring down a giant. He didn’t try to match violence for violence or be something he was not. Saul tried to get him to wear his armor, but David succeeded because he trusted in God and all that God gave him and made him.

The theologian Howard Thurman wrote about this scripture:

The great Goliath, the symbol of the might and prowess of the Philistines, is equipped for battle, armor replete, sword and protectors in order. Then there is David, just a lad—perhaps in short shirt. When the great Goliath beheld David, and the full weight of the drama broke upon him with force, it well might be literally true that under the tension growing out of a sense of outraged dignity he burst a blood vessel, resulting in apoplexy.

Goliath’s ego took such a hit in being confronted by a shepherd boy, that perhaps he died from a stroke.

This is an interesting interpretation, not only for its own sake, but for who it is coming from.

Howard Thurman was the grandfather of the civil rights movement. He was the mentor to Dr. King. Thurman had traveled to India and learned the lessons of non-violence from Gandhi and brought those lessons back to the United States.

Gandhi, who like David, brought down the greatest military force in the world at the time, the British Empire, without firing a single shot.

King, who like David, brought down the powers of white supremacy without firing a single shot.

King did not counter violence with violence, but taught that the ethic of love is the only force that can change the world.

We have seen the ethic of love used by Bishop Desmond Tutu to bring down apartheid in South Africa and by his friend the Dalai Lama to stand against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

Over and over again we see the David’s of the world bring down the Goliath’s… not by might and power, but by love.

Love is the force that will change the world.

While the story of David and Goliath is 3,000 years old, we live in a world filled with violence.

Last year we saw the proud boys, armed with weapons, walking up and down the streets of Columbus.

This year we have seen violence across Columbus and here in the South Side.

Not only the violence of shootings and assaults, but the violence of harsh words that fill an election year.

What can we do? Arm ourselves to outdo the hatred?

No.

Jesus told Peter to put away his sword.

Perhaps we need to be a bit like David. To recognize we have all that we need right here.

We are all that we need.

We can’t become like the world in the hopes that it will bring peace.

We can’t yell louder than they do hoping it will change hearts.

We can’t get bigger guns than they have hoping it will scare people in to peace.

They are not like us.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we operate out of love.

King said, “At the center of our movement stood the philosophy of love [and the] attitude that the only way to ultimately change humanity and make the society that we all long for is to keep love at the center of our lives”

They not like us. They operate out of fear, we operate out of love.

Out of love, we gave out 150 gun locks during Avenue for All.

Out of love, we are going out on the streets between services on July 14 and we will sing songs of peace that we will put out love in to our community.

Out of love, we are hosting a community conversation on July 22 about how we can use what we have and who we are to build a safer neighborhood.

To paraphrase David, the world may come to us with guns and fists and fear and hatred, but we come in the name of the Lord. We come as the people of God. If God can use the faith of a shepherd boy to bring down an army, image what God can do with us.