I Slew Goliath With a Sling and Stone

These days I find that a considerable subset of my friends and acquaintances are either involved in professional ecclesial ministry or are somewhere in the process of preparing for professional ecclesial ministry. That being the case, it is not especially rare for me to be extended opportunities to participate in the occasional extracurricular activity with a vaguely ecclesial flavor. One such vaguely flavored opportunity stumbled in my direction yesterday morning, when a seminary colleague of mine informed me that he had been prevailed upon to deliver a chapel message to a local Christian elementary school and he wanted me to assist. Being somewhat elementary myself, I eagerly agreed only to find out that the extent of his expectations for me were to channel my theatrical qualities in the portrayal of Goliath the Philistine. Discouraged, dejected, and disenfranchised at this obvious under-appreciation of my homiletic skills, I dutifully resigned to throwing every fiber of myself into the role of Goliath. After all, I reasoned, it's for the chill'ens.

After the perfunctory song-and-dance portion of the chapel had exhausted itself, my colleague was introduced and began establishing some basic context for the time-honored story of David and Goliath as I waited anxiously in the wings for my cue. After a brave volunteer had been extracted from the student body to take on the role of David, I heard the speaker announce, “To finish this story, I'm going to need a little help from my friend, Goliath the Giant!” as he gestured beckoningly in my direction. Primed and ready to deliver, I galloped clumsily from stage left and shouted, “Oh, YEAAAAAAAH!!!” Somewhat unexpectedly, the audience burst into cheers and applause as I lumbered to my blocking with my arms raised in my hands clasped together in a mayoral posture of self-congratulation.

When the orator eventually got to roughly the 1 Samuel 17:25-26 part of the narrative, he stuck his microphone in my face and asked, “Now Goliath, what do you have to say about the Israelites?” Perhaps I simply wasn't prepared for the improvisational aspect of portraying Goliath the Philistine or perhaps I was simply reacting to some sort of synaptic misfire, but whatever the reason, I chose to say the following: “Why, it should be quite obvious that I just don't much care for the cut of their jib!” Blank faces and bewildered silence canvased both the audience and the speaker. “Oh right.” I thought to myself, “That's one of those expressions that's only used by me and sailors from the mid-1800's.” Thinking quickly, my colleague elected to give me another crack at the question, apparently figuring that I couldn't possibly damage the situation further, “What else do you have to say about the Israelites?” Doing my best to remember that my audience had a median age of 7, I went with “I think they smell funny!” Tumultuous laughter erupted from the crowd as I felt my last vestige of both homiletic and thespian pride clutch its throat in agony as it fell to its knees.

After the service had ended and the students had mostly been ushered off to their respective class rooms, I hung around the chapel area and assisted my colleague in the tear-down process (he had brought his own sound equipment). Seeing as I had busied myself with the untangling of about 12 feet of XLR cable, I failed to notice a teacher leading her little six year-old charge up to me. When notice them I did, the teacher spoke first, “This is Toby, and he has something he'd like to say to you.” I'm not sure exactly how much Toby really wanted to say something to me because he just stared at the floor and grinned sheepishly until his teacher shook his hand and encouragingly said, “Go ahead.” Sheepish grin still intact, Toby managed to muster enough moxie to mumble the following: “Hi, Giant...” I looked quizzically at the teacher whose prideful beaming suggested to me that that was in fact all Toby had planned to say, and so I turned my attention back to Toby and said, “Well, hi there!” He giggled and tugged persuasively on his teacher's hand and they departed. After that account I felt reassured that my portrayal had faithfully captured the subtle themes of Davidic heightening and the prevenient establishment of the Hebrew covenant that are present in the David and Goliath narrative and that Toby was well on his way to becoming a well-rounded exegete.

Ever have one of those days where you ask a buddy if he wants to grab some doughnuts and he winds up inviting you to run in a 5K race that he's organized in order to raise funds for a local not-for-profit? Well, that happened to me today. I mentioned more than once to my friend (the event organizer) that I was concerned that I would get lost and take a wrong turn somewhere along the line but he assured me that the route was well-marked with brightly painted orange arrows and that it would be virtually impossible for me to fall off the track.

When I arrived at the starting line, I immediately took stock of my competition (there must have been almost 30 of them!). Gal pushing baby stroller? No big deal. Guy walking dog? Nothing to worry about. Octogenarian? Seen better. Guy wearing running watch and XC jersey? Aw, crap. Over the years I've become conditioned to recognize athletes wearing watches as generally being among the more serious runners in any given group and so I despaired of my chances of winning my first race ever. Much as I suspected, when the gun went off, my watch-wearing opponent instantly shot forward and I did not see him for the rest of the race. This was troubling because it meant that not only would I not be able to catch him, but I would also not be able to use him as a guide to make sure that I made all the correct turns.

My fears were assuaged somewhat as I dutifully plodded along the trail and noted the bright orange arrows directing me ahead. The familiar scenery of Shadyside Park sailed by as I huffed and puffed my way almost three miles into town. Once I made it as far as Meridian Street I noticed two things; the street on which the booth for the not-for-profit had been set up ran south but a bright orange arrow directed me farther west. “Should I run to where I think the finish line is or should I follow this arrow?” I wondered. Going against my better judgment, I followed the arrow but I had gone less than a block before I thought better of it and wheeled around to head back in the direction of the promotional booth. Tired, confused, and a little aimless, I finally made my way back to the proper street and I saw my friend gesturing wildly to me to run his direction. I summoned all of my remaining drive and nigh collapsed at his feet. “Awesome, man! You're the first one in!” he exclaimed. I regarded him strangely and said, “That can't be right; there was a guy that freakin' smoked me.” I stood bolt upright as I thought of the misleading arrow that I now realized was just a municipal road construction marker. Exhaustion notwithstanding, I took off back down the road toward the turnoff as the number two runner was nearing the finish line. Sure enough, I saw my watch-sporting opponent turn onto the road from the wrong direction, all red-faced and angry-looking. “Hey man, did you take a wrong turn?” I asked sympathetically. He simply glared at me and ran past. It turned out that yes, he did.

As you might imagine, this wasn't a super-high tech fancy-schmancy type of 5K and we weren't outfitted with timing chips or anything like that; there was just a guy at the finish line with a stop watch. Things being confused as they were, I failed to elicit my finishing time from the clock-keeper but the guy who came in behind me told me that he'd run just under twenty-two minutes which makes me wonder if I hadn't run a block too far if I would have been close to twenty minutes flat which would have been a PR for me. Psh. At least I got a t-shirt.

You can see the route we ran here.

As I was milling about after the race, a lady came up to me and said, "I'm sorry, but did you play Goliath at my son's school?"

-Ryan