The desperate man sits in the corner of the church assembly.  Dry mouth, moist palms. He scarcely moves. He feels out of place in a room of disciples, but where else can he go? He just violated every belief he cherishes.  Hurt every person he loves.  Spent a night doing what he swore he’d never do.  And now, on Sunday, he sits and stares.  He doesn’t speak.  If these people knew what I did…

He could be an addict, a thief, a child beater, a wife cheater.  He could be a she – single, pregnant, confused.  He could be a number of people, for any number of people come to God’s people in his condition – hopeless, hapless, helpless.

How will the congregation react?  What will he find?  Criticism or compassion? Rejection or acceptance?  Raised eyebrows or extended hands?

Our Hero, David, is also desperate.

David is on the lam, a wanted man in Saul’s court.  His young face decorates post office posters.  His name tops Saul’s to kill list.  He runs, looking over his shoulder, sleeping with one eye open, and eating with his chair near to the restaurant exit.

What a blurring series of events!  Was it just two or three years ago that he was tending flocks in Bethlehem?  Back then the big day was watching sheep sleep. Then came Samuel, a ripe-old prophet with a fountain of gray hair and a horn of oil.  As the oil covered David, so did God’s Spirit…

David went from serenading sheep to serenading Saul. The overlooked runt of Jesse’s litter became the talk of the town, King Arthur to Israel’s Camelot years, handsome and humble. Enemies feared him.  Michal married him.  Saul hated him.

After the sixth attempt on his life, David gets the point. Saul doesn’t like me. With a price on his head and a posse on his trail, he kisses Michal and life in the court good-bye and runs.

But where can he go?  To Bethlehem and jeopardize the lives of this family?  Into enemy territory and risk his own?  (That becomes and option later.) For now, he chooses another hideout.  He goes to church.  “Now David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest” (1 Sam. 21:1).

Scholars point to a hill one mile northeast of Jerusalem as the likely site of the ancient city of Nob. There, Ahimelech, the great-grandson of Eli, headed up a monastery of sorts. Eighty-five priests served in Nob, earning it the nickname “the city of the priests” (1 Sam. 22:19).  David rushes to the small town, seeking sanctuary from his enemies.  David is desperate.

David is also desperately seeking food.

His arrival stirs understandable fear in Ahimelech.  He “was trembling” when he went to meet David.  What brings a warrior to Nob?  What does the son-in-law of the king want?
 David buys assurance by lying to the priest.  David tells him that he is on the king’s business and needs food (1Sam.21:2-3).

Desperate, David resorts to mistruth.  Does that surprise you? So far David has been stellar, spotless, stainless – Snow White in a cast of evil witches.  He stayed calm when his brother snapped; he remained strong when Goliath roared; he kept his cool when Saul lost his.

But now he lies like a mob boss at confession.  Blatantly.  Convincingly.  Saul hasn’t sent him on a mission.  He’s not on secret royal business.  He’s a fugitive.  Unfairly, yes.  But a fugitive nonetheless.  And he lies about it…

The priest does not question David.  He has no reason to doubt him.  He just has no resources with which to help him.  The priest has bread, not common bread, but holy bread.  The bread of the Presence.  Each Sabbath the priest placed twelve loaves of wheat bread on the table as an offering to God.  After a week, and only after a week, the priests, and only the priest, could eat the bread.  (As if anyone wants week-old bread.)  Nonetheless, Ahimelech’s options and clerical collar shrink.

David is no priest.  And the bread has just been placed on the alter.  What’s Ahimelech to do?  Distribute the bread and violate the law?  Keep the bread and ignore David’s hunger?  The priest looks for a loophole: “There is no common bread on hand; but there is holy bread, if the young men have at least kept themselves from women” (1 Sam. 21:4).

Ahimelech wants to know if David and his men have been behaving.  Blame it on the smell of fresh bread, but David responds with lie number two and a theological two-step.  His men haven’t laid eyes, much less hands, on a girl.  And the holy bread?  David reasons that it is oven baked and wheat based.  Bread is bread.

Ahimelech may have wondered if he had done the right thing.  Did he break the law?  Did he obey a higher law?  He decided the hungry stomach was a higher call.  Rather than dot the “i” of God’s code, he met the need of God’s child.

David still is in great need.  He is desperate for a sword.

David’s faith is wavering.  Not too long ago the shepherd’s sling was all he needed.  Now the one who refused the armor and sword of Saul requests a weapon from a priest.  What has happened to our hero?

Simple.  He’s lost his God-focus.  Goliath is on the big screen of David’s imagination.  As a result, desperation has set in.  Lie-spawning, fear-stirring, truth-shading desperation.  No place to hide.  No food to eat.  No recourse.  No resource.  Teenaged and pregnant, middle-age and broke, old-aged and sick…Where can the desperate go?

They can go to God’s sanctuary.  God’s church.  They can look for an Ahimelech, a church leader with a heart for desperate souls.

Ahimelech had given David bread; now David wants a blade.  The only weapon in the sanctuary is a relic, the sword of Goliath.  The very steel David had used to guillotine the head of the giant.  Author and pastor Eugene Peterson sees this interchange as the function of the church. “A sanctuary,” he writes, “is…where I like David, get bread and a sword, strength for the day and weapons for the fight.”

Bread and blades.  Food and equipment.  The church exists to provide both.  Does she succeed in doing so?  Not always.  People helping is never a tidy trade, because people who need help don’t lead tidy lives.  They enter the church as fugitives, seeking shelter from angry Sauls in some cases, bad decisions in others.  Ahimelechs of the church (the leaders, teachers, pastors, staff ministers, and the like) are forced to choose not between black and white but shades of gray, not between right and wrong but degrees of both.

Jesus calls the church to lean in the direction of compassion.  A millennium later the Son of David remembers the flexibility of Ahimelech.  (Read or tell the story found in Matt. 12:1-5.  Jesus’ disciples were eating grain on the Sabbath, and when some Pharisees took issue with this, Jesus pointed out they were trying to follow the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law.)

At the end of the sanctuary day, the question is not how many laws were broken, but rather, how many desperate Davids were nourished and equipped?  Ahimelech teaches the church to pursue the spirit of the law more than its letter.

David teaches the desperate to seek help amidst God’s people.  David stumbles in the story.  Desperate souls always do.  But at least he stumbles into the right place – into God’s sanctuary, where God meets and ministers to hopeless hearts.  He stumbles into the lap of a gracious God, who wants to be our Father so much He gave up his only Son to make us right with Him.  Our loving Father in heaven who has forgiven us for our stumbling through Jesus Christ.  So friends, if and when you stumble, you stumble into the right place when you stumble into God’s sanctuary…

For proof, return to the story with which we began: the breathless, disheveled man who sits in the church assembly…  Remember him? 

Did I mention the size of the congregation he sat down in?  It was small.  A dozen or so souls clustered together for strength.  Did I tell you the location of the gathering?  A borrowed upstairs room in Jerusalem.  And the date?  Sunday.  The Sunday after Friday’s crucifixion.  The Sunday after Thursday night’s betrayal.  He stumbled into a church of desperate disciples.

It was Peter.  Peter cowers in the corner and covers his ears, but he can’t silence the sound of his empty promise. “I’d die for you!” he had vowed (Luke 22:23).  But his courage had melted in the midnight fire and fear.  And now he and the other runaways wonder what place God has for them.  Jesus answers the question by walking through the door.

He brings bread for their souls.  “Peace be with you” (John 20:19).  He brings a sword for the struggle.  “Receive the Holy Sprit” (John 20:22).  Bread and swords.  He gives both to the desperate.   He still does.   Amen.

This sermon adapted from Max Lucado’s book: “Facing Your Giants.”