What’s in a Name?

(In the Valley of Elah)

Scripture Lesson: I Samuel 17: 1-50

Dr. Matthew S. Brown

July 2, 2006

One of the great scenes in the history of television puts a spotlight on the challenges of communicating something to someone who is not yet equipped to hear it. Andy Taylor has just learned that his son Opie contributed a miserly 3 cents to the school’s Underprivileged Children’s Drive. So when Opie drops by the sheriff’s office that afternoon, Andy decides to engage him on the subject of charity.

Andy: “Now, looky here Opie. You can’t give a little piddling amount like three cents to a worthy cause like the Underprivileged Children’s Drive. Why, I was readin’ here just the other day where there was somewhere like 400 needy boys in this county alone. Or, one and a half boys per square mile.”

Opie: “There is?”

Andy: “There sure is.”

Opie: “I never seen one, Paw.

Andy: “Never seen one, what”

Opie: “A half a boy.”

Andy: “Well, it’s not really a half a boy. It’s a ratio.

Opie: “Horatio, who?”

Andy: Not Horatio, a ratio. Mathematics. Arithmetic. Now, look, Opie, just forget that part of it. Forget the part about the half a boy.

Opie: It’s pretty hard to forget a thing like that, Paw.

Andy: Well, try.

Opie: Poor Horatio.

Andy: Now look Horatio is not the only needy boy… Son, didn’t you ever give anybody anything just for the pleasure of it? Somethin you didn’t want anything in return for?

Opie: Sure, just yesterday I gave my friend Jimmy something.

Andy: Now, that’s fine. What’d you give him?

Opie: A sock in the head.

Andy: I meant CHARITY.

Opie: I didn’t charge him nothing.

Andy: I meant something for the joy of giving.

Opie: I enjoyed it.

Certainly there are those times when it is important to wade with your children into the deeper waters of reason, helping them to keep afloat amidst the challenging waves and white caps of ideas and motivations and consequences. But, sometimes you just have to begin with the basics and allow them time to grow into the whys and the wherefores.

Bill Cosby tells of the dissimilar ways in which his parents reasoned with him when it came to the subject of staying in his crib and thus, staying out of trouble at night. His mother would try the route of reason – “We want you to stay in the bed because your life is important to us, and this and that, and O, we’ve heard it all before!” – while his dad would just stick with the basics. “Stay in the bed!” He didn’t think you had to know or understand the reason. You just had to do what he said.

My boys love that Cosby routine and there are those times when they’ll push for reasons why I told them to do this or that, and I’ll just say, “Stay in the bed!” And they’ll know what I’m talking about. You don’t need to know the reasons. You may or may not understand them at some future point but right now, you just need to do what I told you. “Stay in the bed.”

Sometimes you just have to begin with the basics and allow them time to grow into the why and the wherefores. And so it is with some of the great children’s Bible stories like David and Goliath, which would have to be among the most widely known passages in all of scripture.

You may never have opened a Bible in your life, but there’s a good chance that you’re familiar with the story of David and Goliath. Against all odds the young boy vanquishes the mighty foe. How many sportswriters, how many screenwriters, how many politicians, teachers, psychologists, oncologists have looked to the story of David and Goliath to encourage, motivate, challenge, and inspire? You can do it! You can make it! You can win! You can overcome! Just think of the movies – Hoosiers, Rocky, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Star Wars, and the list goes on and on.

Do you remember those movies? You might walk in discouraged with shoulders slumped, but walking out you’d be throwing your shoulders back and strutting with a bounce in your step ready to face anything. “Nothin’s gonna mess with me!!”

David slays Goliath. Many of us first heard this story as children, and at that point we just needed to stick with the basics. At that point we did not need to wade into all the whys and wherefores. At that point, we did not need to enter the debate of whether this story could incite a counterproductive nationalism, or whether the story could be used to rationalize the use of violent or deadly force. No, at that point we just needed what our Bible School teachers told us: That God was stronger than any power on earth and that God could protect and empower the weak in the face of a strong foe.

These are important messages, important messages that remain at the heart of the text. But as we mature we gain the capacity to perceive nuance and context, and these gifts help us to embrace an even richer meaning in this classic story.

You see, the crisis that day in the Valley of Elah involved so much more than the threatening, blustering presence of an intimidating warrior comparable in size to Shaquille O’Neill. Indeed the larger issue was a crisis of faith. Understand that Israel was a people formed from the seed of Abraham, the bearer of God’s promise. They were a people led from slavery to freedom by Moses through the power of God. They had been sustained in the wilderness by the manna, quail, and water provided by God. They had entered the promised land under the leadership of Joshua emboldened and empowered by God. Time and again they had been told to remember that the God who brought them to that place would be the same God who would lead them into the future.

But the future brought settlement and complacency and jealousy and a sense of entitlement. Eugene Peterson writes, “At that moment the religious traditions of Israel were in shambles and its spirituality in tatters. The patriarchal, exodus, and wilderness traditions had all been developed in a nomadic culture. Now God’s people were settled in a world that was agrarian and urban. The recent past, in which charismatic judges had shown flashes of brilliance, had disintegrated into anarchy.” (Peterson, Leaping Over a Wall) The people’s decision to switch to a monarchy was already proving to be a failure. “Coming out of a century or two of moral disintegration compounded by political chaos, Israel was at the point of losing its identity as a people of God, losing touch with its history, losing hold on the theme of salvation, which provided meaning and coherence to life itself.” (Peterson)

It was in obsessing over their neighboring nations that the people had demanded a king, like a child fussing and fretting until she received the same designer jeans that all the other kids are wearing. And now, their jealousy had turned to fear as an incomparably arrogant warrior named Goliath taunted them. The people now had more fear of the Philistines than faith in Yahweh.

The God language was no longer working in the minds of the people. Fear had become a more comfortable, more embraceable language.

Yes, the valley of Elah is the place we are so tempted to live our lives. Fear is an easy place to get to, you don’t even need a map. Do health concerns dominate your life to the point that you can’t notice the beauty of blooming lavender, can’t rejoice in glory of an infant’s smile, can’t relish a rerun from M*A*S*H or Seinfeld or Andy Griffith? Are you so obsessed with fears, whether they be financial, relational, familial, global, or local that any words of gratitude are forced but never felt because you can no longer sense that life is a gift? Why is it that the pathway to power these days is paved by the candidate’s ability to make you afraid of something? And why do they have such an easy time accomplishing that goal? Just invoke the phrase, “war on terror,” and we’ll go along with anything no matter how far it is removed from the spirit of Christ’s teaching. Yes, the valley of Elah must be one prized piece of real estate because it seems that everyone wants to live there.

And so, David comes bouncing into the valley of Elah, so innocently full of faith and faith language, and the people don’t know whether to ignore him, disdain him, or mock his youthful naivety. “The kid just doesn’t understand what we’re up against, something more powerful than his Sunday School faith.” As Peterson suggests the people are “Goliath-dominated” while David is “God-dominated.” Out keeping the sheep where the threats to life were no less real David “had practiced the presence of God so thoroughly that God’s word, which he couldn’t literally hear, was far more real to him than the lion’s roar, which he could hear. He had worshiped the majesty of God so continuously that God’s love, which he couldn’t see, was far more real to him than the bear’s ferocity, which he could see.”

In David’s mind, no threat posed a threat to his faith in God.

When you’re up against it (whatever it is), do you believe there is power in the name of God or do you side with the cynical? Do the phrases “The Lord is my shepherd” or “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” hold any meaning anymore for you? That is what is being asked in this text. Will we choose to settle in the valley of Elah or will we walk on in faith?

G. K. Chesterton said, “Once men believe in nothing, they will believe in anything.” Will it be fear or faith? In what will we believe?

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