Pentecost 3

1 Samuel 17.1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49
Psalm 9.9-20
2 Corinthians 6.1-13
Mark 4.35-41

Today’s lessons made me think about the final episodes of a couple of television series I’ve seen in the last year or two. One was the Sopranos and the other was the new Battlestar Galactica. Most of you know something about the former. For those of you who don’t know about Battlestar Galactica, it’s a tv show that explores, among other things, the question: what if the end of the world ended up being not all that different from everyday life.
We know from all of the commentary that followed upon it that the final episode of the Sopranos had a lot of people looking at the televisions asking “is that it?” The ending pointed two a couple of possibilities, but didn’t tell you which of them actually came about. And one of those possibilities was that life went on for the Soprano family (both immediate and extended) not terribly differently than it had before – dealing with emerging crises, finding new ways to generate income and getting together for dinner on Sunday afternoon. Violence and sorrow struck the family in shocking ways, but you could argue that such things were fairly commonplace for them. There was no great moral reckoning on screen.
The same was true of the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. Crisis was once again upon the crew of the ship and its leaders had to make an agonizing life and death decision, but they had been doing that on a weekly basis, if not more frequently, for several years by the end of the series. When Nelson and I came to the end of the final episode, I turned to him and said “is that it?”
We like a hollywood ending. We’re probably accustomed by now to it being something other than “they all lived happily ever after” but we like some closure at the end of a story. But the truth is, in real life, closure is elusive and the hunt for it is frequently futile if not tragic.
The story of David and Goliath does have that Hollywood ending. God vindicates the underdog Israelites. The boy David defeats goliath in an unconventional way, against all the odds and then goes on to become the greatest of all their kings. There are stories like that in the New Testament also – Jesus is preaching outside a town, the crowd becomes hungry and nobody has any food, but they are fed from a few loaves of bread and a few fish.
But much of the time, the Bible is a lot like real life. Look at today’s epistle and gospel lessons. The Corinthians are still squabbling, despite Paul’s best efforts, so he tries again – tells them how much trouble he has and is willing to endure to persuade them to live in peaceful community. He pleads with them to open their hearts.
In the gospel lesson, Jesus’ disciples are flying off the handle again. Their boat is caught in a storm and this crew of professional fishermen wake up the building tradesman turned itinerant preacher to ask him what they should do. He calms things down, literally, and urges them to put aside their fears and live in faith.
It would be possible to say that the overarching theme of these stories is that God is on our side. The description of David’s triumph over Goliath certainly seems to have been interpreted in that way, and Paul all but says as much to the Corinthians. I am reluctant to claim God’s partisanship for a whole variety of reasons. There are plenty of Christians who disagree with that position and plenty of them are far more famous and brilliant than I am. They may turn out to be right and you may agree with them. What I do believe is that God is love and our best expression of that love is life lived in relationship to others with a commitment to share the divine love that we have experienced.
The David and Goliath story does have that final sense of moral vindication – the segment from 2nd Corinthians leaves us hanging. And, even if the storm does subside, giving Jesus’ disciples a relative sense of security, they are all still out there on the water at night headed for their next challenge, moving, inexorably toward his death and the time when they will be on their own to continue his work.
In our lives, moral vindication is incremental. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward the realization of our ideals, but it’s good reason to be cautious about believing that some kind of ultimate moral vindication is an all or nothing proposition – a war to be won at any cost. George Tiller’s death did not end the occurrence of genetic abnormalities or horrific instances of abuse that motivate women and girls to consider whether or not it is best to terminate a pregnancy. The fracture of the Anglican Communion hasn’t put an end to the circumstances that motivated it. Life will go on, people will have differing opinions, sometimes they will behave badly, terrible things will happen, some of them completely beyond our control.
The lessons of the gospel teach us how to live with each other during those times in between those fleeting but satisfying moments of moral vindication and relative security. We are encouraged to speak the truth in love, with perseverance and courage. We are taught to respond to human need, to be honest about our limitations but to be generous in the face of them. We are encouraged to open our hearts, even when doing so poses a challenge to our principles. Our options will rarely offer us a clear-cut, morally perfect solution. In this life we will always face risk and struggle, compromise and the tendency to error with all of its consequences.
But we can still create communities that are characterized by faith and courage; we can still offer open our hearts to those who would enter into our community of believers; we can still step into that boat and go out on to the water at night, braving the storm and moving toward the next challenge. Once in a while, David will defeat Goliath; once in a while a great leader will bring about a change that makes us believe that we will never again have anything to fear. In the times between those moments of great inspiration, we continue to learn how to live faithfully and well.