Making Way With Courage
Making Way With Courage
March 8, 2026
Minister: Rev. JT Smiedendorf
Readings: I Samuel 17:3-11
Download a printable PDF of this sermon here.
CENTRAL FOCUS of the SERIES:
Facing the powers and principalities that we need to face takes faithful courage which comes from trusting God and God’s vision.
The Philistines were on one hill, the Israelites on the opposing hill, with the valley between them.
4-7 A giant nearly ten feet tall stepped out from the Philistine line into the open, Goliath from Gath. He had a bronze helmet on his head and was dressed in armor—126 pounds of it! He wore bronze shin guards and carried a bronze sword. His spear was like a fence rail—the spear tip alone weighed over fifteen pounds. His shield bearer walked ahead of him.
8-10 Goliath stood there and called out to the Israelite troops, “Why bother using your whole army? Am I not Philistine enough for you? And you’re all committed to Saul, aren’t you? So pick your best fighter and pit him against me. If he gets the upper hand and kills me, the Philistines will all become your slaves. But if I get the upper hand and kill him, you’ll all become our slaves and serve us. I challenge the troops of Israel this day. Give me a man. Let us fight it out together!”
11 When Saul and his troops heard the Philistine’s challenge, they were terrified and lost all hope.
These are the words of our ancient tradition.
May the Living Word of God in Scripture be alive within us, among us, and beyond us.
It was the summer of 1974. I was 10 and thrilled to be playing shortstop in little league baseball for 10–12-year-olds, playing on an enclosed field with lights, a press box, a grass infield, the works. Exciting for a sports minded kid. Alas, our team finished the first half of the season almost in last place in the National League at 2 wins and 6 losses. Not too good.
But somehow, midseason, we discovered that one of our average outfielders was a way-above-average pitcher. We rallied in the second half of the season winning 5 more games, making the last spot in a generous playoff format where our losing record of 7 wins and 9 losses qualified. And then, somehow, we won the league semifinal, then the National League title game so that our 9-9 Reds team faced the 17-1 American League Champion White Sox for the Championship.
It was a David and Goliath match up, a story familiar enough to be a cultural expression.
So how did David do it? Because he did overcome Goliath in that original story. Where did he find the courage to even face Goliath? Why didn’t he cower in fear like the rest of the Israelite army?
In Goliath’s words and appearance, something in them and in us is cued, a fear-filled imagination that translates size and armor and a big voice into intimidating power, fear of death, and hopelessness of resistance.
That’s the way of Empire, the way of conventional perception and power. It’s like being in the world of Newtonian physics where all you can imagine is billiard balls on the table, simple lines and simple equations of force and causation. Bigger is better, more is better, simple causation of the visible and material must be ‘the way it is.’
16 Each morning and evening for forty days, Goliath took his stand and made his speech, challenging one from the other side to determine the whole outcome, one on one.
12-15 Enter David who was just bringing food for the troops and his older brothers when he heard Goliath. Something inside David rose up and he wanted to fight the giant Philistine.
King Saul heard this, sent for David, discouraged him, then relented and gave David all his armor.
Yet David took all the armor off, instead taking his shepherd’s staff, five smooth stones from the brook, and his sling. When he appeared on the battlefield Goliath saw this boy and thought it was a bad joke, which angered him. He said he would make roadkill of David.
45-47 David answered, “You come at me with sword and spear and battle-ax. I come at you in the name of God.” And David ran toward Goliath, loaded his sling, and felled Goliath with one stone.
In its time, this ancient story was a kind of George Washington story, a story of the legendary golden age leader told 5 centuries later to legitimate the Davidic line and inspire a heroic glow around King David’s legacy and Israel’s future hope. This story was likely added in the time of exile, that time after the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in 587 BCE (early 6th century BCE) and Israel lost governance of its land, and after some were exiled to Babylon.
I can imagine this story as inspiring and hopeful to an occupied people who hear a story where the large dominating force is overcome, where your oppressed group’s hero is the valiant winner.
The books of I and II Samuel are working out a dilemma for the nation state and faith of Israel between faith and practical political power. Perhaps, we are like ancient Israel struggling in some way to make sense of how to follow God AND have things work out in the world. We, too, might be those who want something other than Empire—who want another way of perception and living, one that’s more idyllic and just, but who really wonder if living that way of God’s love actually works in the “real” world.
At some level, this story could be heard to not change the conventional power game, just the outcome. We, too, and our organized Christian tradition can struggle with getting out of conventional perception and story, can also just think that bigger is better, and substitute God as our proxy for power over others, make God our winning team mascot. The growing movement of Christian nationalism does exactly this. Maybe David just had a better weapon system.
But there is more possibility in this story than ‘our side wins,’ our tribe dominates your tribe. That level of interpretation and possibly intent is here, but it won’t serve us now. It won’t serve us in this time when we realize our profound earthly and human interdependence. It won’t do to simply try to Make America Great Again, to rebrand the Empire, to simply use more violence and greater dominating force to take Goliath’s place.
I invite us to another view into an old story.
Our clue to the alternative power of courageous faith in this story is found in the speech of David when he refers to God’s power. While others fear Goliath and let fear dominate their imagination, David’s faithful imagination is focused on God, focused on a greater power, and so is not bound to fear. This allows him to see what others cannot. He sees that Goliath’s power is full of arrogance in its mocking of others and of God. He sees that Goliath’s overconfidence in his form of power makes him vulnerable to another power. David finds courage because he trusts God’s power, a power not of conventional form, but of the new possibility and therefore David sees another way, sees the creative possibility, even in the small. He sees the Spirit’s ability to use the small, use the leaven, use the one, even the young one, the single one to find a way.
As the ancient story goes, it was David’s vanquishing of Goliath that sapped the Philistine troops’ morale and sent them into retreat while lifting his own troops’ morale such that the battle was turned. The battle was won in a shift of imagination of what was possible, of seeing another vision and trusting it into action.
And so it goes with faithful imagination and the courage it inspires…
Greta Thunberg, the young one, saw it and sat outside the Swedish parliament on strike daily and inspired hundreds of thousands to strike for climate healing, to live another way.
Malala Yousafzai, who survived a terrorist assault, saw that “With guns you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism” and is inspiring the liberation and education of girls and women around the world.
Friends and neighbors and communities in the Twin Cities and Minnesota saw that the great invading force and attempted intimidation of the population by ICE agents could be turned by courageous witness, communication, public demonstration, and mutual aid.
My friends, our Goliaths will appear on the world stage of history and politics and even in our own hearts and minds. Some kind of Goliath will step forward in each of our lives.
If we are afraid of death, then our mortality will be an intimidating Goliath for us from which we will cower in fear.
If we believe that people are in their deepest nature selfish and violent and that there is nothing that can be done, that history is a train wreck, then what is coming in the 21st century will indeed be a Goliath and will make us and our children roadkill.
If our ultimate trust is in stealth bombers and in shock and awe weapons, and in the politics of intimidation and division, then we have become Goliath and will be struck down.
Yet, if we perceive faithfully, resisting the fear that can dominate our imaginations and hearts, and instead trust God and perceive another sacred way of power in the world, and trust it all the way into creative action, then Goliath will again fall. Facing the powers and principalities of this world takes a different kind of trust, a different kind of imagination, a faithful one that generates courage.
I and thousands of others will bear witness to this sacred alternative power in a procession to the state capitol on Palm Sunday afternoon. More information will appear in this coming week’s Friday email.
Oh, yes, back to that 1974 Championship game, the one with the 17-1 White Sox and the 9-9 Reds. A miraculous 2-run rally in the last inning gave our underdog Reds team a 6-5 win, a winning record for the season, and the Little League championship.
And, I know that a Little League championship victory is a small thing. But the memory of it, the story of it, is useful on the path of faith because faithful imagination that generates courage and possibility is not a small thing. That kind of faithful courage can make all the difference when we face the Goliaths that come our way and get in the way of justice and peace, of healing and hope for each one of us and for the earth and the seven generations to come.
May it be so. AMEN.