SMALL IS BIG
I Samuel 17, Psalm 107, Mark 4:35-41
June 22, 1997 by Tad Mitsui
I once saw the one and only 10th Dan judo master doing a demonstration. As you may know, in judo the black belt class has ten levels. Each level is called "Dan" – like the first level is "1st Dan". The minimum requirement to be a master, with a licence to teach, is a 3rd Dan. There is only one 10th level person in the whole world. I believe that in Canada, the person who holds the highest level is a 4th Dan. Anyhow, this 10th level person was a shrimp of a man, barely 5 ft tall. He was 76 years old. But he threw down men who sometimes looked almost twice his size, one by one. It was a spectacle of skills over strength, a brain over muscles.
God created us with many faculties. They must work together under the direction of intellect and wisdom. Even though we all know that the body must follow the dictate of the mind, a strange thing about us is, we keep coming back to the most uncivilized value. We keep regressing to the respect of brutal force. The story of David and Goliath teaches us how stupid this attitude is.
We love beautiful and powerful things; cars, machines, trees and mountains. However, we seldom stop to think what they are for. They can be good or bad. They are nothing unless we give them their worth. Like Jesus said, "a pearl means nothing to a pig." Whatever we treasure must serve our purpose. I may have told you about the air raid that burnt down the whole city, where I was living, during the last world war. I tried to help an old lady who was trying to get out of a burning house. I took the neighbour”s hand and started to run. But she said she left something behind, and went back into the burning house. Her charred body was found next morning. Whatever she forgot surely could not have been more valuable than her life. Possessions and even our bodies can destroy us unless we know what they are for and use them appropriately. Sense of priority comes from wisdom, and wisdom helps our mind to decide how our bodies should behave. Wisdom belongs to the spiritual world.
Goliath was a giant. He was nine foot tall, and wore the armours weighing 250 pound and carried a spear that weighed 15 pound. The highest known man in the world today is said to be a Korean basketball player, now training in Canada, by the name of Michael Ri. He is 7 feet 9 inches tall. Considering an average height at the time being 5 feet or less, a mere sight of Goliath must have caused absolute terror among the Hebrew troops. People with little confidence and imagination can easily be intimidated by superficial show of force even though it may be empty inside. Excessive bigness is not only useless but nuisance, like a combine harvester in Muriel”s patch of vegetables in our backyard.
Then appeared David, a tiny boy of about fourteen years old but was full of self-confidence and tricks. He volunteered to take Goliath on, alone. Everybody laughed but David was serious. King decided, "Why not. What we”ve got to lose. He is only a little boy, hardly a loss to the nation." So they gave him the whole set of armours and weapons and told him to go out to kill the giant. The armours and weapons were useless to him, too big and too heavy. He only needed what he always used. A slingshot and a stone were all David needed to defeat Goliath. The same kind of story keeps repeating itself in our history. And yet, we, especially men, keep admiring physical strength and big sizes. We keep glorifying muscles, guns, big machines and big explosions on movies and TV stories. The lessons from the story of David and Goliath are still poignant today.
How, then, does one acquire such self-confidence and wits like David did? The story of young David gives some interesting insight into the way he grew up. He had to live alone in the desert looking after his father”s sheep, fending off lions and wolves not with muscles nor weapons but with a few little tricks. He not only acquired survival skills, he also sung his own songs with his small harp, probably hand-made. He learned to cope with boredom and loneliness with his own music and poetry. He wrote many songs of praise and about his faith, some of which are still with us in the Bible. Many psalms were written by David. After the victory over Goliath, David was promoted to become King Saul”s page, whose job was to comfort him with music. Isn”t it telling? Even after the spectacular act defeating Goliath, which clearly proved David”s intelligence and military skills, Saul could see only a little boy who could sing and play a harp well. Saul did not understand true meaning of art that would inspire spirits and nurture intelligence.
From ancient of times, human race expressed the deep feelings and thoughts; their faith, love, thanksgiving and prayers in arts, dance, drawings, paintings, music, and poetry. Before writing was invented, humans expressed themselves only in dancing, music and paintings. Ancient paintings are still being found in caves in Africa. Old musical instruments were found in many archeological sites. Arts and music are very important tradition of our faith. This is because God is beyond our limited vocabularies. It is because many of our aspirations of our faith are beyond the existing means of communication, so we sing, hum, and enjoy hearing others making music.
Reformer John Calvin tried to abolish music and art in the church. He believed that the words were the only good enough expression of faith and arts could lead us to idolatry. But he never succeeded. He did not understand how important for people to express their faith and feeling towards each other in arts that inspired them. Calvin was constantly in pain with migraine and ulcer. Poor man! When I was a student, with disdain we, the Methodists, used to look at the Presbyterians class mates, followers of John Calvin, and said, "the preacher who can not sing becomes a Presbyterian minister." Of course, the Presbyterian students said of us as "those who can sing but can not preach a decent sermon." The point is; David was a man of faith, that”s why he was a poet and a musician. If you forgive my male oriented language, I say, "Arts ain”t for sissy." King Saul did not understand that. David was a good and cunning soldier, because he was an artist and a poet. He was a musician and a poet, because he was used to having conversations with God alone in the desert. Arts gave him a sense of himself, and self-confidence.
When the boat ran into a sudden gale coming from Golan Heights, Jesus was fast asleep. But the disciples were afraid. Even today, a gust of sudden wind is not uncommon on the lake Galilee. It comes suddenly but it goes away in a few minutes. Disciples should have known that, because some of them were fishermen. But they panicked. We too panic when we don”t know what is going on and are not sure of ourselves. Do you remember the last time you panicked. I do. At the parking lot at Dorval Airport. I could not remember where I parked my car. I happened to have a lot of cash in the glove compartment on that day. I panicked. I shouted to Muriel, "the car”s stolen." Jesus said to the sea, "Peace. Be still." But actually, he said that to the disciples. "Be still, I am here. What”s the problem.", says God. A regular conversation with God in solitude is an art we lost in these days. We must recover that. We can do that in the garden, in the field, in the barn on the road alone doing whatever we are doing. We can sing and dance. Nobody has to see it. We will find God and ourselves like David did.