• I Samuel 17:(1a,4-11,19-23),32-49

Just with a slingshot, David slays the huge, well-armed Goliath, who is vividly described as falling “face down on the earth.”  In another memorable image, the slim, youthful David is swamped in King Saul’s armor,  which he has to take off before he goes up against Goliath.  Still, David, with no conventional armor, is victorious, “so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all the assembly may know that the Lord does not save by sword and spear….”

• Psalm 9:9-20

The psalmist contrasts the fate of nations which deny justice with those who “praise the Lord of Zion.”

OR

• I Samuel 17:57-18:5,10-16

Impressed with David’s victory over Goliath and the Philistines, King Saul takes the young man into the royal household.  His eldest son, Jonathan, is smitten with the “handsome” David.  The King’s admiration turns to jealousy.  Enraged, he tries to pin David against the wall with his spear.  David nimbly gets free “because the Lord was with him, but departed from Saul.”  All of Judah and Israel fell in love with David.

• Psalm 133

The psalmist exults in the Lord’s “ordained blessing,” which can be seen in the harmonious relationship between brothers and is like an extravagant portion of precious oil poured over the head, running down onto a luxuriant beard.  Or, as plentiful and restorative as dew on parched mountains.

OR

• Job 38:1-11

After a long silence, the Lord finally responds to Job in the midst of a violent storm.  The Lord asserts God’s-Self as the Creator, the origin of all that is.  The content as well as the tone of the Lord’s monologue is, to use Walter Brueggemann’s list of descriptors, “lordly, haughty, condescending, dismissive, reprimanding….”  (Theology of the Old Testament, p.390)

• Psalm 107:1-3,23-32

Recalling the return of captives (from Babylon?), this psalmist shifts suddenly (vv 23-30) to the feelings of those rescued after some near-death crisis.  Consider those who make their living on the water, he sings– “Those who go down to the sea in ships.”  Even they can lose their bearings and courage in a sudden and violent storm.  “They reel and sway like a drunkard/all their wisdom is swallowed up.”  But after the Lord’s rescue, it is time to sing the Lord’s praise.

• II Corinthians 6:1-13

Paul is eager to restore his relationship with the Christians in Corinth following his earlier, severe letter to them.  He pulls out all the stops in his own defense.  He reminds them of all that he endured for the gospel, including hardships, dangers, and even imprisonment.  Through it all Paul thrives.  He has opened his heart to others.  Now, “open wide your hearts also.”

• Mark 4:35-41

Mark is a master of the minimalist, heuristic narrative, as this episode illustrates.  Jesus takes his newly recruited disciples on a boat from one side of the Lake of Galilee to the other to get away from the crowds.  Suddenly, a fierce storm comes up and their boat takes on so much water so quickly they could easily drown.  But Jesus sleeps through the entire crisis until he is awakened by the disciples who are furious at him.  Does he not care that they could all drown?  Now awake, Jesus “rebukes” the violent wind and churning sea, which immediately become placid.  “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”  They wonder among themselves about this person whom they have recently begun to follow.  “Who is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?”

The young David’s battle with the mature, heavily armored Goliath and the panic of Jesus’ followers caught by a sudden, life-threatening storm as well as the iconic verses of Psalm 107:23-30 bring up times in life when the odds against us feel  overwhelming.  At the moment of crisis, we see no way forward.  We feel as if we could “drown.”

Jean-Luc Nancy has meditated on that moment in a crisis when we really do not know if we will survive or go under.  He writes:

“…it is a matter of holding oneself… in the place of the impossible, without making it possible but also without converting its necessity into a speculative or mystical resource.  Holding oneself in the place of the impossible comes down to holding to where man [sic] is at his limit, that of his violence and his death.  At this limit, he collapses or exposes himself and, in one way or another, necessarily loses his bearings.  That is the place of vertigo or scandal, the place of the intolerable at the same time as that of the impossible.  This violent paradox is not to be resolved: it remains the place of a gap that is as intimate as it is irreducible….” (Noli me tangere, p.52)

“At his limit,” “loses his bearings,” he confronts violence and his own death”– these are the times of panic and “vertigo,” a time when we are “exposed.”  But it is also a time when the “impossible” becomes possible. 

The above excerpt from Nancy is taken from a discussion of resurrection, Christ’s resurrection.  He modestly writes that he would like to “simply insert this remark: the impossibility of Christian love could be of the same order as the impossibility of the ‘resurrection’.”

It is precisely in times of helplessness when  we are buffeted by storms more violent than we have even known before or a “giant” looms up in front of us and past coping is not adequate this time that this (dormant?) faith emerges viscerally  as a potential life-saver.  But it is not a faith so much in creedal certainties as it is a personal trust in the “impossible,” a less than certain certainty, a pin-point of light in the dark that hints at bright light on the other side of the veil of terror and darkness, an escape we failed to imagine until it appeared.   Right at the moment of our greatest fear and uncertainty, the possibility of the “impossible” — which for believers is primed by the “impossibility” of love, God’s love– appears.  “Why are you afraid,” Jesus asks.  Do you still not trust my offer of an alternative to the abyss, to oblivion, to nothing, to nothingness?

Life inevitably has times when we feel as if we could be defeated by an intimidating threat.  It is in just such periods in our lives we are invited to trust in an escape we cannot even imagine when the power of the threat feels strongest.  “Why are you afraid?  Do you still have no faith?”