Sermon Cloud

GOD CARES AND PREPARES LEADERS: 

PART II – LIONS, GOLIATH AND BEARS, OH MY!

             You know how sometimes during our time together, I will remind you that there are things that the Pastor Nominating Committee neglected to tell me about this congregation, and there are some things that I just sort of waited to tell the Pastor Nominating Committee about me?  Well, there is one more thing…I’m afraid of bears. 

     Todd has known this about me for awhile now because I made sure he knew about it when he suggested we take the youth on a trip to Philmont, the Boy Scout camp in the mountains of New Mexico, where one internet site described bear attacks as a “constant threat.”  Todd responded by emailing me a picture of a giant, hungry bear that filled up my whole computer screen and almost gave me a heart attack!  

            There is no reason that I know of for me to suffer from melissophobia.  Isn’t that a weird name for an irrational fear of bears?  When I looked up Melissophobia, I found that Melissa” is the Greek word for “bee.”  That’s interesting, isn’t it?  Bears like honey, so it follows that if you’re afraid of bears, it’s only logical that you should probably also be afraid of bees, eh?  In Greek Melissa means “bee,” and in Hebrew, “Deborah” means “bee.”  So I guess a “Deborah with melissophobia” is a Jewish bee who’s afraid of Greek bears…

            But I’ve never even seen a bear in the wild, except at a distance as we drove by in a national park.  I’m sure I’ve never seen any more scary movies about bears than most people have.  Once when Chris and I took a hiking vacation in New Mexico, I became frightened on the trail because I was convinced I could hear bears grunting just around the bend.  Chris just wouldn’t believe me – but it turned out that it was because when we got to the source of the sound he was able to show me that he could recognize the sounds of grazing cows when he heard them! 

            All of this thinking about my overdeveloped fear of bears reminded me of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man are walking through the deep woods chanting, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”  Every time they say it, they walk a little faster and get a little more scared.  By the time they hear the lion roar, they are so wound up that they collapse in fear.  Dorothy, though, to her credit, recovers pretty quickly.  She steps up to the lion, calls him a coward, scolds him for scaring her friends so badly, and for “picking on her poor little dog.”  When the lion admits to being all roar and no bite, he says that he can’t even get to sleep because he scares himself so much.

            No kidding.  Most of us have lain awake at night at one time or another because we’re afraid of things we can’t see - like bears in Guymon; or things we mistake for something that could hurt us – like bears that turn out to be cows; and the most common fear of all – like the Cowardly Lion, many of us have a fear of being alone with our rotten selves and our own rotten thoughts. Why, even the puny Lilliputians had managed to capture giant Gulliver by tying him up while he slept and pegging him into the ground – but Saul’s army won’t even try to challenge Goliath!  

            And in the New Testament reading from Mark’s gospel, the disciples are in a boat with Jesus, and a storm comes up and Jesus is sound asleep in the back of the boat, so the disciples wake him up.  Now since at this point in Mark’s gospel they still don’t realize that Jesus is God, the only reason I can see for waking him up is so that he doesn’t die while he’s asleep.  Better to die wide awake, eh?  They say, “Teacher don’t you care that we’re perishing?”  They can’t expect him to do anything about it, so what they must really be saying  is, “Teacher why aren’t you afraid like us?  Wake up and get scared like we are!” 

            In each story the response to those who unreasonably fear the power of the giant and those who quite reasonably fear the power of the storm is the same:  David says that no one should lose heart – lose their courage, lose their faith - because of the Philistine; and Jesus asks the disciples, “Why are you afraid – why have you lost your courage?  Have you no faith?”    “Be not afraid” are both the first words and the last words of the gospel story.[1]

             Last week we talked about how our Teacher does care for us, for our circumstances and our fears, and our fears about our circumstances.  And one of the ways that God cares for us is he calls and anoints men and women to lead his people in his Name.  They are the people who are the mustard seeds of the world[2]; none of them are “somebodies” that are noticed by the world.  The Apostle Paul wrote this: 

    Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."[3]

     All of the leaders in the Kingdom of God are a crew of “nobodies” that God calls and equips to be “somebodies,” and this week we have the story of how a “mustard seed” of a shepherd boy turned a ten-foot-tall warrior a “zero foot” tall dead giant.  How does something like that happen?  How do the youngest and the weakest, the lowly and the despised become warriors greater than giants, leaders greater than kings and how do they prevail against logic and against the odds?  And how do they conquer their ordinary fears?

            When God calls and anoints his leaders, he doesn’t leave them to their own skills and devices.  He anoints them, sends the power of the Holy Spirit to them, and then proceeds to equip them for every good work[4] that he has planned for them.

            Now we might think that David was equipped for his encounter with Goliath by having hours and hours to practice with his slingshot while he sat in the pastures watching the sheep.  Maybe he developed a 100 MPH granite fastball.  David also said that he sometimes had to save his lambs from lions and bears.  So with this information, we might conclude that it was David’s own bravery and strength from fighting with lions and bears, along with his skill with the slingshot, that brought Goliath down.  It is more accurate, though, to just say that all those experiences and skills were more like tools he had at his disposal, because David gives us the real reason for his success:   “The Lord, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine.”  The Lord, who saved me before, will save me again.

            David had faced many trials as a shepherd alone in the wilderness and through them he had learned skills and bravery and gained strength.  First, he learned to be alone with his thoughts and fears.  Then he learned which of his fears were reasonable. (Notice I didn’t say, “which of his fears are ‘real’”, because even unreasonable fears are ‘real’ to us.  They’re so real we’re afraid.  That’s what happens at the movies – there’s nothing on that movie screen that’s going to come down and bite us, but we’re afraid nevertheless, and that fear paralyzes us.) 

            The thing is, after David fought the wild animals alone, he gained a sense of not only his own strength, but also the weakness of the animals.  He adjusted his understanding of his enemies with every bite, every scratch and every lost sheep and every successful rescue.  We don’t learn about our enemies’ weaknesses by running from them – we learn about their weaknesses by going out and fighting them when they attack.

            Every time we get sick, we learn what it takes to become well, and we eventually become less afraid of a cold than we are of an open wound.  Every time we lose a job but don’t starve, or find another job, we are able to do better work at our next job, because we aren’t so afraid of losing it.  Every time we move to a new town and make new friends, we become less afraid of the unknown.  Every time God saves us from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, the experience builds our faith and makes us less afraid of facing the giants who are all talk and no action.  And as our faith is built, like David we aren’t afraid to be alone with our own thoughts, we aren’t afraid to make our fears known to God, and we aren’t afraid to close our eyes and rest in his care. 

            How God prepares and equips us for the giants in our futures is not by teaching us to use a slingshot better.  God prepares and equips us for the giants by helping us to face our fears and rest in faith that God will save.  A lot of the Christian life is about God teaching us how to sleep in the boat like Jesus does.

            Now I could stop preaching here and we could all leave feeling good about God and hopeful about the future.  But it wouldn’t take very long before we remembered – or before something happened to remind us – that sooner or later, everyone is going to die of something, whether they die slowly of cancer or suddenly in a car accident; whether at the hand of some giant who is faster than Goliath was and able to dodge our slingshots, or by drowning in some little boat in a storm.  Even John the Baptist went to jail and his friends buried his body without its head.[5]

          Paul wrote that:   

“…[he endured through] troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger…in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet [living] on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

            And later, in the same book, he adds that he has:

“…been in prison…been flogged… and been exposed to death again and again.  Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.”[6]

And finally, in the next chapter, he writes of having what he calls “a thorn in [his] flesh,” some physical ailment or limitation that tormented him and slowed down his work.  He asked God to heal him and said that,

  ^“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But [the Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore [Paul writes about himself again] I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.”[7]

            But in spite of all of these trials, Paul overcame his fears – his reasonable fears – and met each new challenge knowing that God was in control of his destiny. 

            In David’s story, Saul saw that David, too, was weak and so he offered him his armor, helmet and sword – but David took them off, both because they were a hindrance and because he was confident of God’s ability to give him success.  He didn’t need them and as he ran out to meet Goliath, he shouted, “the Lord does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand.”

            Sometimes, when we think we should be afraid of what we see and know, the things we see aren’t reality.[8]  The army of Israel thought that reality was the giant, but he was not as powerful as they believed him to be; they forgot that God had led them to victory against greater odds than one to a thousand.  Goliath thought that reality was that he could be confident of victory since the guy standing in front of him was short and armed only with a slingshot; but reality for Goliath was that he should have been afraid because his opponent was the living God.  Only David knew that reality was what he couldn’t see with his eyes:  that God would fight and win the battle for him even though everything he could see indicated otherwise.   The Bible teaches that “…though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.”[9] 

            I can stand up here and look out at this church family and see people that I know are battling serious illnesses, or who are dead broke, or afraid of being broke; or who are struggling with substance abuse, or who have lost the will to live, or who are worried about their children and their parents, or who just plain scared of dying.  Everyone has their own storm, and to each of you, the response is the same:  Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid,” not because there isn’t anything scary out there, or because the danger is just in our imaginations – but don’t be afraid because God is with us in the battle, God is with us in the boat. 

            God will work his purpose for you out, no matter how many storms and giants there are that seem to say otherwise, because God is able to do far more than anything we can ask or imagine.[10]  What kind of difference would it make in our lives – and in the life of the church and in the lives of our neighbors in the world – if we would quit cowering in our pews the way the Israelite troops cowered in their foxholes day after day while they listened to Goliath blow smoke?  What if we really believed that, as Scott Hoezee of Calvin Seminary wrote, “the Word of God alone is strong enough to get the job done, and that the Holy Spirit can use our witness and the force of our examples to accomplish much…?[11]

            God prepares us to fight giants by fighting the giants we’ve set up ourselves.  God prepares us to ride out storms by putting us in the boat beside him.  And the paradox is that every storm – every encounter with a giant – makes us stronger by making us weaker.  In every new battle we take off our armor and lay down the weapons of the world just a little sooner than we did the time before.  As time goes on, we learn that there are many circumstances of life – war, sickness, poverty, injustice – but only a single reality: the purposes and power of God lived out through us.  We don’t need to learn how to respond to each of the thousands of circumstances that will challenge our well-being – we only need to get a solid footing in God’s reality.

            The Bible tells us that David picked up five stones, but he only used one – that left four stones in his pouch.  David knew that in reality Goliath had four brothers who would come looking to avenge their brother’s death at David’s hand – maybe not today, but one day in the future.  There is always another giant, another brother, another storm on the horizon.

            So we meet them one at a time, each time a little weaker, a little more willing to turn to God sooner than later, a little more at peace, a little less anxious and angry about our circumstances – and in our growing weakness we grow stronger in Christ.

©2009 Deborah Hollifield

[1] Matthew 1:20; John 14:27

[2] Mark 4:31

[3] 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

[4] 2 Timothy 3:17; Hebrews 13:21

[5] John 14:12

[6] 2 Corinthians 11:23-28

[7] 2 Corinthians 12:8-10

[8] Scott Hoezee, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/

[9] 2 Corinthians 10:3-4

[10] Ephesians 3:20

[11] Hoezee