Bible reading was (selected from 1 Samuel 17).

Message.

One of the great classics of Christian literature is John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”. I suspect that it’s not much read today, but generations of children were brought up on it and it became almost as well-known as the Bible itself. Many of its characters are still familiar: Obstinate, Pliable, Mr Worldly Wiseman and Valiant-for-Truth; so are some of its locations (many based on real places in Bedfordshire): the Slough of Despond, the House Beautiful, the Hill Difficulty, By-Path Meadow, Vanity Fair, the Delectable Mountains and the Celestial City.

At one point Christian and Hopeful, tired after their day’s journey, settle down to sleep in a little shelter. What they don’t realise is that this lies within the grounds of Doubting Castle which is owned by the Giant called Despair. The Giant, taking a morning walk in his estate, comes across the two sleeping men and “with a grim and surly voice, bids them awake; and asks them whence they were, and what they did in his grounds”. Although they tell him that they were tired and lost, the Giant says, “You have trespassed on me, by trampling in and lying on my grounds, and therefore you must go along with me”.

The Giant forces the men to go to the castle and throws them into a dark dungeon, “nasty and stinking to their spirits”, where they lie for five days without food, drink or light. Eventually they do what, according to Bunyan, they should have done long before: they pray. And, as they do, Pilgrim remembers that he possesses a universal key called Promise. They open the dungeon door and make their escape. Although the enraged Giant sees them, he has a fit and, we are told, “his limbs fail him”; he cannot follow and the two men are free!

Today’s doctors would say that despair or depression are clinical, rather than spiritual, conditions which are not helped (and may even be made worse) by prayer. People obviously saw things differently in 1678, but it’s clear that this is a giant which still imprisons people, and for more than just a few days! Poor mental health, especially since the pandemic, is a huge and growing problem.

Three thousand years ago the Hebrew army had fallen into despair. They and their Philistine counterparts were encamped either side of the Elah valley, about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem and halfway to the Mediterranean coast, so well into Jewish territory. For forty days the two armies had been cautiously observing each other; every morning and evening the Philistine giant had come out and taunted the Israelites saying, “There’s no need for a big battle. Just send one man to fight me; the winner will decide everything”. We read that King Saul and the Israelites were “dismayed and terrified” by Goliath’s words: not surprising if, as one writer puts it, he “stood 10 feet tall in his stockinged feet, wore a size 20 collar, a 9½ inch hat and a 52-inch belt; with his full armour on, he looked like a Sherman tank”. How much longer would the teasing go on for? The Israelites could see no end to it, as they had no champion who they could sent out to fight.

You don’t need me to tell you how young David took up the challenge and killed Goliath: it’s a story we all know well. What we may forget is the way the Philistines then ran for their lives as the Hebrew soldiers, emboldened (and perhaps a bit embarrassed) by David’s victory, surged across the valley, slaughtered any Philistines they could catch and plundered the enemy camp. David’s victory and Goliath’s downfall had been the catalyst for a military triumph although, as the Bible goes on to tell us, it by no means ended the Philistine threat to Israel. It wasn’t even the end of threats by mighty giants as, in 2 Samuel, we read about Elhanan who killed Goliath’s brother Lahmi in another battle – I bet you didn’t know that (nor did I) – so were there others?

None of us, thankfully, is likely to fight another human being in hand-to-hand combat: which isn’t to say that it’s not happening around the world today, although guns and bombs often mean that killing is done at a distance. There’s no point in asking you to pick up either a sword or a slingshot in order to kill someone; indeed I’d hope that, as people who cherish peace, you’d refuse. We therefore need to look for a less literal interpretation of this story if it is to speak to us today; I believe we can find one by asking, “What are the giants that we must fight?”

The late American community theologian Melissa Browning gave us some suggestions: poverty, racism, discrimination, oppression and inequality. If there was one “giant” she singled out it was her country’s justice system which, she said, sees far too many poor black people, especially women, locked up in prison and constantly humiliated after committing minor offences. She made the point that it’s hard for the “big people” – by whom she meant the rich and privileged – to notice these giants in society, as they are tall enough to be on their level. It’s the “small folk” at the base of society’s heap who are all too aware of these powerful, frightening, figures looming over them. Browning said that those who have the power to change society for the better must do all they can to view that society through the eyes of the powerless; that Christians must learn to see the world as Christ does and then, having recognised the giants that threaten so many people, do all they can to bring them crashing down. That is our calling.

As I was preparing this message, Paul’s famous passage about the Christian’s armour came to mind. You know the one: it mentions the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. Yet, as I pondered, I realised that this analogy, wonderful as it is for some situations (but woefully misused by some Christian leaders who quite literally sent soldiers marching to war), is not the right one to quote today. And that’s for a very good reason: David was offered his king’s armour and sword but chose not to use them; he went to fight Goliath unprotected and armed with the most primitive of weapons, a slingshot. Yet it was with these that he prevailed; which means that a better New Testament passage to cite is this one: “We live in the world, but we do not fight from worldly motives. The weapons we use in our fight are not the world’s weapons but God’s powerful ones, which we use to destroy strongholds. We destroy false arguments; we pull down every proud obstacle that is raised against the knowledge of God; we take every thought captive and make it obey Christ”. Today’s giants will not be defeated by violence; they will be brought down by careful argument and thought-through arguments, backed of course by much prayer.

On June 10^th 1941 Arthur Greenwood, the Labour MP and Minister without Portfolio, announced the creation of an inter-departmental Government committee. Its remit sounds bureaucratically boring: “To undertake, with special reference to their inter-relation, a survey of the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied services, including workmen’s compensation, and to make recommendations”. The committee’s report, presented to Parliament eighteen months later, sounds no more exciting: it was entitled “Social Insurance and Allied Services”. Yet this document, prepared in the dark days of World War Two at a time when victory was by no means certain, would provide the master plan for the Welfare State which we take for granted today. It’s better known by the name of the Liberal economist who drafted it: William Beveridge; and it was acclaimed by William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that it was “the first time anyone had set out to embody the whole spirit of the Christian ethic in an Act of Parliament” – even though Beveridge declared his own religion to be “materialistic agnosticism”.

You may have guessed where I’m going with this. Beveridge’s vision, which included plans for better pensions, national insurance, social housing, employment benefits, education and a health service, was to slay the five “evil giants” of Idleness, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor and Want which, he said, plagued society. He believed that Want would be the easiest giant to defeat in a resurgent post-war economy and that this would have a knock-on effect on the others. These ambitious aims may have seemed achievable in the booming 1950s; today we don’t have to look far to realise that those malign giants are still very much alive. Indeed we might want to add Climate Change to their number.

In ten days’ time we will be casting our votes. But it’s been said that many people, disheartened by the shenanigans of the last few years, won’t bother to vote. “What’s the point?”, they’ll say, “What goes on in Parliament doesn’t seem to make my life any better; the politicians are all the same and they all pig themselves from the same trough”. That cynicism may be well-founded but it’s another giant that needs to be dashed to the ground. We dare not hand the running of our country to extreme populists of any hue; we need a sensible Government which, first and foremost, attends to the well-being of its people.

A couple of days before the election was announced, Neil Kinnock  (or should I say Lord Kinnock of Bedwellty?)  gave a lengthy interview to the “i” newspaper. In it he talked about past elections and his failure to become Prime Minister (“John Major was definitely not Thatcher and that was one of the deciding factors”); railed against water pollution (“Why is this happening? This is the United Kingdom. We invented clean water in the 19^th century”); wept over the death of his beloved wife Glenys after years fighting Alzheimer’s (“She wasn’t just my rock, but a continent of rocks”); and broke down when thinking of the world that his grandchildren will inherit (“As individuals I know they can all thrive; but we are leaving them a bloody mess”). His most striking comment was this (and the language is his, not mine): “Progress is being wound back in the 21^st century. C’mon. Bloody hell. In order to prevent despair, I resort to outrage. It’s my permanent condition now”.

Neil Kinnock may not be your cup of tea; and I recognise that we here have a range of political views. That’s absolutely fine; we’re fortunate enough to live in a society which allows that. But I do think he was telling us about some of the giants which, he believes, we face today. Some of them, in particular climate change and its potential effects, are truly terrifying; we are forced to acknowledge their existence but, like the Hebrews facing Goliath, see no way of defeating them. Yet we must not allow despair to overwhelm us. We must take confidence from the words Paul wrote to the church in Corith: “God has chosen what the world calls weak to shame the strong; he has chosen things of little strength and small repute to explode the pretensions of the things that are”; and also from the words he wrote to timorous Timothy: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me”. With God’s strength, let’s do all we can to slay the Goliaths that threaten us today.