Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Would you pray with me, O God, source of all light?
By your word you give light to the soul. Pour out on us today the spirit of wisdom and understanding that by being taught by you in Holy Scripture, our hearts and minds may be opened to know the things that pertain to life holiness through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The first reading today is from the book of Second Kings.
And in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came with all his army against Jerusalem and laid siege to it. They built siege works against it all around. So the city was besieged until the 11th year of King Zedekiah.
On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine became so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land.
Then a breach was made in the city wall. The king, with all the soldiers, fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, by the king's garden. Though the Chaldeans were all around the city, they went in the direction of the Arabah. But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho.
All his army was scattered, deserting him.
Then they captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, who passed sentence on him.
They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, then put out the eyes of Zedekiah.
They bound him in fetters and took him to Babylon.
In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the 19th year of the king Nebuchadnezzar of King Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He burned the house of the Lord, the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, every great house. He burned down all the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, carried into exile the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon, all the rest of the multitude but the captain of the guard left some of the poorest people of the land to be vinedressers and tillers of the soil.
And from Revelation, the first chapter of Revelation, the fourth verse, John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia, Grace and peace to you from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne. And from Jesus Christ the faithful witness the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father. To him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.
Look, he is coming with the clouds. And every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. And all peoples on earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be. Amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, The Almighty. This is the word of the Lord.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: So that scripture reading from Second Kings and this sermon represent the final in a series where we've been looking at the book of second kings. That reading from Angela is from the 25th or final chapter of that book. And so for the final sermon in this series on Second Kings, I thought I would share with you a story about kings that is also one of the most embarrassing moments for me of the last decade.
It occurred back in 2016. I was enjoying a summer sabbatical with my wife Jill and my daughter Lucy in the United Kingdom. And after some wonderful weeks in Scotland, we had a full week in London. During that time we took many excursions. One of them was to Hampton Court palace, where we could visit exactly the place that monarchs have lived for centuries. Our visit was on a Sunday and we were delighted to learn that during our visit we could even attend worship at the Chapel Royale, a chapel which hailed itself as having a vibrant living congregation, heavenly music and an opportunity to worship where kings and queens have gathered to worship for centuries as well.
We worshiped there and the music was wonderful. I was sitting next to my 11 year old daughter Lucy at the time and we had one of those things, you might remember it from the old days called a bulletin. You know, a paper bulletin where you follow kind of from piece to piece. And we were using that. I was showing Lucy at various points what was coming up in the worship service, the meaning of different elements in this high Anglican worship service. And I recall it being a nice bonding time with my daughter. At the end of the service, the congregation rose and they sang together the song God Save the Queen.
I was a bit thrown by this. I wasn't expecting it. And when we stood up and I was looking with my daughter at the words, I remember wondering, as an American, am I supposed to sing this or not? I mentioned something to that effect to Lucy and we had a giggle. About that.
Oh, Lord, how I wish today I could take back that laugh and substitute for it the most somber and serious expression I could possibly, possibly muster for a woman saw me laugh. And during the tea fellowship afterwards, as I was sharing with other people who are part of this congregation how much I'd enjoyed the service, this woman came up to me and in no uncertain terms made it clear I had deeply disrespected her and the church, and it would be best if I leave right now.
I apologize profusely, but that did no good.
I felt terrible. I still do. Jill and Lucy had to leave with me. It was embarrassing.
She's not here today. She's in New Jersey. So I can tell that story. She's like, oh, you're going to tell the story about Hampton Court. Please don't. So she allowed me to do it when she was gone.
I can't take that back, that laugh back. But I can learn from it. And I did learn this. It was a lesson I also picked up later that week in London when I saw a television show, this is on British tv, where British celebrities were asked, what's one thing that they wish Americans understood and appreciated about life in the UK and for so many of them, they cited two words. The Queen. The Queen.
I learned that summer of the deep connection a people can feel today with their monarch.
Now, as an American, I had long been a bit confused by contemporary British monarchy. Political power, I've been told, was squarely in the hands of the prime minister and the two houses of Parliament. I heard the role of the monarch was largely ceremonial or symbolic. What I failed to fully realize until that time in London was how powerful that symbolic role truly could be. I later put something like this. You know, you can criticize, you can even mock the prime minister or members of Parliament, but the Queen or the King?
No way.
For many in the UK, I learned, the monarch, they are us, we are them. Whatever your political party allegiance is, we are people together through that unifying figure, the monarch.
Identity. That's big stuff, isn't it? It's the kind of thing that can send us into fight or flight mode. The kind of thing that can lead us to confront anyone or anything that might disrespect it. Whether we draw identity from a monarch or a national symbol like a flag, whether we draw it from our family or tribe, our religion or race or ethnicity, our gender identity, our sexual orientation, our political party or our school or whatever serves to define for us who I am, who we are. That's big stuff. Sensitive stuff, charged stuff. Scoff at an identity marker and them's fighting words for without identity, who are we? Who are we?
I learned that summer in the UK about the identity framing power of a monarch, even in our time. And it helped me read books like first and Second Kings with new eyes.
Finally, I could see why the ancient Hebrew people back in the time of the prophet Samuel, might clamor for a monarch. Sure, there are dangers of monarchy, and the prophet Samuel warned the people of those dangers. You crown a monarch, he warns, and they will surely demand 10% of your assets. That monarch will enlist your children to fight in their armies and to serve on the court as their bakers or other servants. God is your sovereign. Samuel famously proclaimed, warning, don't crown some monarch to that role.
And on the one hand, I want to say with Samuel, that's right, that's right. I'm a Presbyterian. Our church system is all about checks and balances. We're keenly aware of human sin and the dangers of giving anyone in the church or in politics too much authority. Danger, we would say with Samuel, danger. Because human beings are fallen, infallible, they'll be prone to abuse power. Learn from scripture, I want to say, along with the prophet Samuel, but part of me too desperately wants that sense of unity a king or queen might bring.
Be honest, wouldn't you like that too? Especially right now. Heading up to this last presidential election, we knew, we knew roughly half of the US population was going to be deeply disappointed with the results. Roughly half. One way or another, they would learn. The person representing their political party, perhaps representing them personally in powerful ways, people with whom they felt some degree of connection, identity wise, that candidate was going to lose one way or the other. Isn't the idea at least a little appealing to you that there could be some person who could still provide a sense of unity across that division, that even if my candidate for prime minister won or lost, if yours won or lost, we could still say, well, at least we can toast together, you know, to the Queen.
To the Queen. God save the Queen.
I want to tell the prophet Samuel, I hear you. I hear all the dangers about crowning a monarch, of needing vital checks and balances, but I yearn for that kind of connection with others. A monarch might bring a sense I'm one community, one kingdom or queendom with others.
Please, Samuel, I need that monarch. I need identity as a people.
Okay, Samuel says, you asked for it. And the people of ancient Israel embark on this grand experiment in governance called monarchy. The first king Saul is A sore disappointment. But with the second king, we finally get a picture of the kind of unity a monarch can bring to a people. For a time. For a time, these 12 disparate tribes of Israel are connected with one ruler on the throne in Jerusalem, David. It's a connection so deep that when God makes a covenant with David, promising to never withhold God's steadfast love and care from him and his house, it's like God is making that covenant with all the people, with the whole reign and realm, with all of the kingdom. That's how powerfully they're linked, people and monarch. I want to tell the prophet Samuel right here. See, it's right there in the book that bears your name, 2nd Samuel, chapter 7. God makes that covenant with David to be with him and the kings who would follow him for all time.
And for a time, we see it, they are one king and people, queen and people, monarch and their community connected.
But I see Samuel shaking his head and I hear him saying, I warned you. I warned you. And then I watch how just a few chapters later, in 2nd Samuel 11, how great King David abuses that power he's given. He gazes on Bathsheba bathing, and then he sends her husband off to die on the front lines of war, essentially gives him a death sentence, and then takes Bathsheba for his wife. All sorts of commandments are broken there. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. It's like David goes on a commandment, breaking marathon.
Monarchs, even David, they are all too human. They disappoint, and often they do great evil. And if David hasn't taught us that lesson, just keep reading. Read of King Solomon, David's son. He starts so strong, he asks for wisdom. God gives it. He builds a great temple, a center for worship in the life of ancient Israel. But then he chases after foreign gods. He breaks that first commandment, I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods but me. And after Solomon, that once united, briefly united, kingdom under David breaks in two, 10 tribes in the north break away and call themselves Israel. Two tribes remain in the south, Judah and Benjamin, they call themselves Judah. In the north, kings like Ahaz and those that follow, time after time, we read this, you'll recall this king. Then that king did evil in the sight of the Lord. And then in 722 BCE, the kingdom in the north, Israel, falls to the empire of Assyria. The only king left after that was the king of Judah. Kings in the south do a little better and certainly a high point was in King Josiah. He led those grand reforms. You'll remember having found a book of the law, a book we think was Deuteronomy, and how he turned people back with him, king and people to God's commandments. But there were also awful kings, awful ones like Manasseh. It said in scripture of him that during his reign the slaughter was so great that blood filled the city from one side to the other.
And then in the years 587 and 586 BCE, Judah too would fall to a foreign kingdom, this time not Assyria, but Babylon.
That fall is described in gory detail, not just in the passage that Angela read in the final chapter of Second Kings. You can also read about it in Chronicles and in Jeremiah. It's like scripture saying, don't miss this. This is an important, important moment in the life of God's people. The king of Judah, Zedekiah, rebels against Babylon, hoping an alliance with Egypt might protect them. It does not. The Babylonian empire lays siege to Judah and its capital, Jerusalem. King Zedekiah flees with soldiers outside of the city, hoping to get away. But we read the Chaldeans, that's group of people that were prominent in the kingdom of Babylon. So prominent the word Chaldeans is sometimes used interchangeably with Babylonians. The Chaldeans chase him down in Jericho, capture him and bring him before the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. And then we read how that king is forced to watch as his sons are killed and then his eyes are gouged out.
And we wonder, is that the end of kings, the end of identity for the ancient people of Judah? The ancient people of Israel were kingship. The only loss that this people faced, and horrific as the fate of Zedekiah's son would have been, such an event alone would not have sought to yank their very identity from them. But we read of how the ancient people of Judah also lost their city, lost their great sanctuary, lost their home. Many were killed. Many others were taken into exile in Babylon, pressured thereafter to assimilate to the Babylonian way of life and lose that identity they had known as the Kingdom of Judah, as God's people in exile, far from your land and worship space, what power a king might have, especially then and there to remind you how you're still connected to other others across space and time through that king. But King Zedekiah's sons are all killed. And so we wonder, is that the end of kings? Is this the end of what was once the twelve tribes of Israel Under King David. Is this the end of God's people? It's a question Scripture invites us to ponder as we reach this final chapter in Second Kings.
But if you read on in Second Kings, chapter 25, you'll note it's not altogether gloom and doom. We read of how a former king of Judah, Jehoiakim, is freed from prison. Jehoiachin, who also went by the names Coniah and Jeconiah, had been dethroned as king in Judah back when Nebuchadnezzar reigned over Babylon. Jeconiah was then brought to Babylon as an ex and imprisoned. But in the final verses of Second Kings, we read of how a new Babylonian king, Abu Merodach, releases Jeconiah and allows him to dine with the king of Babylon.
Perhaps, perhaps that center of ancient Israel and Judah's identity, a monarch in the line of King David, perhaps that story around which a people knew identity and might know identity in the future, perhaps that that great end of kings that can be a gift of identity, would not be at an irreversible end.
And then we read in the very first pages of the New Testament, the very first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew of Jehoiachin, again, that descendant of David, that one who we see at the very end of Second Kings. And we read of how Jehoiakim had a son, Salathiel, and then we read of how Salathiel had a son. And the lineage is then followed all the way from David through Jehoiakim to a man named Joseph. And we read he would be the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah. Messiah, that means the promised king or Christ, or center of a people like David had been a person in whom God's covenant to a people through David might be spread out anew to a people.
Jump now to the last final book of the New Testament, Revelation, a book written in the late first century of the Common Era, almost 700 years after the events we read about about in Second Kings. It was a time when the conquering empire or occupying superpower of the day was no longer Babylon, it was Rome. But in the eyes of the author of Revelation, John of Patmos, the two empires are so similar that when he speaks of Babylon, he's often speaking of Rome. It was a time when Jews and Gentiles that had claimed Jesus as their Lord were undergoing persecution. The Roman emperor Domitian was trying to eradicate this people from the planet. John Apatmos wrote this book, we think, from a place of exile himself and yet far from home with a superpower like ancient Babylon having seized the land of Judea, John writes to all the churches in Asia, friends, we are still people. We are God's people. We're still a kingdom. That's a word he uses. Sure. The king of Babylon may occupy the land, the king of Rome may occupy the land and believe he is in charge. He may be trying his best to get rid of us, or worse, take from us our identity.
But we're still a people, a priesthood, a kingdom. And it's not that emperor's kingdom. We have a center. No ruler on this earth can dare assume or take from us. They tried the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, condemned Jesus Christ, the son of David, to death. But he rose and he now reigns. Revelation proclaims from heaven a monarch, a above all monarchs of earth.
We may be a scattered people over the earth, John writes, but we are a people united by one king of kings, one monarch of monarchs, Jesus the Christ. In him, we are forever linked with Him. We are never destroyed. Our identity is steadfast, not just as individuals, but as a people made one. In Him, Christ fulfills that great end of kings, giving a people identity, marking them as God's people, now and forever.
That woman at the Chapel Royale may have been deeply angry with me that day, but I like to think of it as a family squabble. A family squabble. I was connected with her not as a stranger, but as a member of my people. She and I may live in profoundly different political systems. She in a constitutional monarch, me in a representative democracy. We may have different views or different experiences as to how respect is shown or received.
But we both have one common monarch of monarchs, before which all human leaders and we ourselves are judged. That monarch gave his life in love to God and neighbor, in commitment to truth and God's way, and dedication to radical welcome and forgiveness in the work of justice for those who had been oppressed.
Christ gave himself. In Christ, we have someone who marks us as no other monarch or nation can. It's a mark that is made on us in baptism in Christ. We have a cross national, cross cultural, cross tribal, cross lingual, cross border Savior who is the head of the body. We have a life trajectory in him, that life of taking up our cross, holding to the values our Savior proclaimed and following where he leads. We, like the kings of Scripture, will fail. We will. But the promise of steadfast love and faithfulness made to King David is fulfilled in Christ and extended to us in him. We are made new. He does what no monarch or national leader ever can do. He makes us one people, now and forever. He makes us God's people. What a glorious purpose. What a great end of a king.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen.
