Pentecost 3
June 21, 2009
Someone told me a few weeks ago after church that they were surprised I haven’t been mentioning my new grandson more in sermons. Well here goes, and I’ll show you pictures after church if you want.
Next week Mary and I will get to spend a week at the beach with Margie and her partner and with James, who will be almost eight months old. I have visions of walking down the beach at dawn with little James in one of those kid carrier things on my chest, sipping a cup of coffee. I’m looking forward to the times to come with the kid, and I am remembering a goal I set for myself back when I was a kid, a goal probably having a lot to do with my grandfather. By the time I was ten, I knew that someday I wanted to be a wise and gentle old man. I knew some old men who had time for kids and who appreciated kids, and I wanted to be that way when I got old. I think too, that some of the appeal of the kind-old-man role had to do with the contrast between my grandfather and my father, who was still very concerned about appearances and fighting demons in his life. The wise and gentle old men seemed secure, grounded, not concerned about the little things. I get an image of Harry Carey in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, just sitting up there in his seat grinning to himself as everyone else is absorbed in the conflict and drama taking place on the Senate floor. By the time I was ten, I wanted to be in the world the way he was.
I didn’t set out to write a father’s day sermon, but this David and Goliath story has had me thinking about men. I know that if you bring up the subject of how difficult it can be for fathers and sons in a room full of men, you will very likely see a lot of heads nodding in understanding.
I hear often about how complicated relationships can be for men--with sons, yes, but also with anyone who could be a real ally in life, wives daughters, even buddies. That’s not true for all men of course, and probably not for any men all the time. And of course women have their challenges in relationships too, but I’ve been hearing and thinking about men and relationships in recent weeks, and this is father’s day.
And, this great old story from Hebrew scripture about David and Goliath kind of set me thinking. The barrier to relationships that I am thinking about--the one I’ve been noticing lately--has a lot to do with the kind of armor we think we need to suit up with and lug around in order to feel safe in the world. I see it in my story and the stories of people I meet.
My father and I had a complicated relationship that we worked on like two blind sculptors for four decades. Some time in my early thirties my father drank himself into the hospital with a stomach that was coming apart. It was touch and go for several days and he ended up at a veteran’s hospital for a couple of weeks. I went to see him every day, well, almost every day. Somehow it seemed like the thing to do. I think I even told him I loved him during that stay, which was a major step for me. It was a rich kind of time.
One day, in the second week, my schedule got all tangled up and I wasn’t able to get to the hospital. The next day when I walked into his room, I went through the door apologizing for having not been there. He started in about how I didn’t need to keep coming every day and about how he hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t there the day before. I had lots to do. He was fine. Don’t worry about coming to see me, he said. Just then a corpsman came through the door and said, “Hey, what happened to you yesterday. Why, your father here spent the whole day talking about you, wondering where you were. He just knew you were going to show up.” Dad was busted.
And just this week I was talking with an Army chaplain in the park. He talked about how hard it can be for people returning from battle to make the shift from the defensive vigilance of combat to the open trust required to do family well. “We tell them they have to put away their guns,” he said, “Lock that stuff up, shift to a whole different way of relating, but it isn’t easy.” A recent article in the Post told of how difficult it can be for returning soldiers to talk about feelings--to seek help. Seeking counseling, said the article, is still often seen as a sign of weakness in a culture that survives by strength. “We try” says the chaplain, “But it isn’t always easy.”
And then I have a recent picture of a young couple sitting talking about their relationship and their future. They talk about fighting. They aren’t fighting, but as they talk, he becomes more animated. He knows his voice gets louder when he is angry. He knows that makes any chance of really connecting even harder. As they talk about fighting it is as if they kind of are fighting. Separate. Faces taut. A silence falls. A quiet moment. And then. “You know,” he says, “You know what I’m really afraid of when I do that?”….. She turns and looks at him, looks in his eyes, reaches out her hand and rests it on his to help him through the door he just opened with that big word, “afraid.”
David is headed out to face the Philistine. Saul, the king, gives David all his best armor, his finest sword. He is completely covered in bronze and steel. His suit marks him as a warrior. It protects him. And, it weighs a ton and he can’t move in it.
David says I can’t wear this stuff. He peels it all off, leaves it behind and goes out to face his challenge trusting his God. Secure. Vulnerable. Safe as he needed to be.
I am asked sometimes to explain the difference in the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New, as if there are two different Gods. There is only one God, but we have told different stories about our God from the very beginning. We have spoken of God as wrathful, mighty in power, armed warrior, and we have spoken of that same God naked and hanging on a cross. I have to believe that the differences in story have to do with the story tellers and not so much with changes in God. It can take a long time to make the journey in our understanding from trusting in strength to trusting in relationship. It is true in our human relationships. It must also be true in our relationship with God.
None of us throws off our armor all at once. We do it over time in little moments of risk and discovery. We free ourselves as we expose little bits of our stories and hearts in the exchange of shared humanity with those around us.
One of the reasons I think I noticed those wise, gentle old men when I was a kid was that they seemed comfortable, at ease in their skin. They weren’t impatient or worried about the small stuff. Boy do I have some work to do before little James is old enough to start noticing such things. But I had some good models, and now the motivation of a new grandson, so there is hope.
Sure, the David and Goliath story is about relying on God and not on our own resources. But I am sure the master story tellers who crafted the story enjoyed the metaphorical possibilities of David stripping off his mail shirt and his bronze helmet. I’m sure the story teller was intentional in describing the move from one kind of imagined safety to another--to a more precarious feeling kind of safety that is true safety. It’s just a great story. And not a bad story for Father’s Day. Amen.
JB