Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Please pray with me, O God, tell us what we need to hear and show us what we ought to do to obey Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today's reading is from 2nd Kings 23, verses 1 through 3. 2127.
Then the king directed that all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem should be gathered to him. The king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him went all the people of Judah, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the prophets, and all the people both small and great. He read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to follow the Lord, keeping his commandments, his decrees and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. All the people joined in the covenant.
The king commanded all the people, keep the Passover to the Lord your God as prescribed in this book of the covenant. No such passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, even during all the days of the kings of Israel and of the kings of Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem.
Moreover, Josiah put away the mediums, wizards, teraphim, idols, and all abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, so that he established the words of the law that were written in the book that the priest Hilkiah had found in the house of the Lord before him. There was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.
Still the Lord did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath by which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him. The Lord said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and I will reject the city that I have chosen. Jerusalem, and the house of which I said my name shall be there. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Since back in August, I've been preaching through the book of Second Kings, and in this sermon series we've been looking at stories from that book. Today is is one of the tougher ones. We've looked at stories of the prophet Elisha, that great successor to the prophet Elijah, an inspiring figure. We've also read in Second Kings about a series of monarchs stretching from 854 to 586 BCE. That's a span of time, by the way. That's longer than the United States has been a nation. That's what encompasses the book of Second Kings. Well, the time of Second Kings was a time, you'll recall, of the divided kingdom where there was a kingdom of Israel in the north, with its capital in Samaria, and a kingdom in the south, Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem. The kings in the north, one after the other, according to Second Kings, quote, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. King after king. The story of the south is a bit more mixed, but even there we see some horrible, horrible portraits. The worst of all may be King Manasseh, who we read about in chapter 21 just before we read about Josiah. He's portrayed as a villain, you know, more terrifying than Jason from those Friday the 13th films. He was so zealous in the worship of foreign gods. He participated in a ritual we think was part of the cult of Moloch, where young children were made to pass through fire, a ritual that we understand killed a host of them in this sacrificial rite. And more than that, we read in 2 Kings, chapter 21 that under his reign, there was killing galore. Blood, we read in 2nd Kings 21, was from 1 side of Jerusalem to another due to this king Manasseh. And he led all Judah to do what was evil. This horror show was so great in Manasseh's time that it stirred up the very wrath of God. Evil. Evil can be so heinous sometimes. You know, it cries out for correction, for judgment from the heavens, doesn't it? And sometimes that judgment comes. And we read about in 2nd Kings 21 that it will.
But then, but then we get to chapter 22, and it's like a bright new day unfolds. A new king comes to the throne. And rather than reading that this king did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, we read these wild words. This king did what was right in the sight of the Lord. And no, we didn't read that wrong. That is what the scriptures say. And during Josiah's time, a discovery is made, a discovery we can place around 622bce, a book of the laws discovered during a campaign to refurbish the temple. And this book of the law, we think, was an early form of the book of Deuteronomy. It contained the commandments of God, including the Ten Commandments. This book, long forgotten at that time, 622, was read. And Josiah was so moved, he led all of Judah in a series of reforms. They cleared out elements of their worship that had been steering them toward other gods. They recommitted to worshiping God alone. They started celebrating the Passover again, that great ritual that had fallen by the wayside centuries before. They started doing it again, remembering the God who had liberated this people from bondage in Egypt.
Surely with this king, this king whose reign is summed up like this, there was no king like Josiah, who turned the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might. Surely with this king, God's judgment from chapter 21 would be turned. Josiah's day would continue from then on a series of marvelous new days after new day.
No, that's not what we read in 2nd Kings. As Josiah's reign comes to a close, a ghost, a ghost from Judah's past enters the scene. Manasseh. Manasseh, in this terrifying apparition, reminds Judah of the sins of their past, sins so grievous, their most faithful actions can't undo this fate. And a story of hope and promise in chapter 22, in the first part of 23 ends as a horror film. By the end of chapter 23, Ghosts of the past, they can haunt us, can't they? Figures from our past can reemerge and remind us of hard things from our history we wish we could undo, but. But we can't. We can't go back and undo those things.
And so ghost stories have been told through history, reminding us of how goats can haunt us. You've probably heard one of the most famous in recorded history. An emperor of the Roman Empire from 117 to 138 of the common Era, Emperor Hadrian had a young lover named Antinous. During a trip to Egypt, this young person, who wasn't yet 20 years old, drowned in the Nile River. Hadrian was devastated. For years thereafter, he would sometimes see the ghost of Antinous appearing to him with a melancholy expression. And the stories are told that Hadrian would try to talk to his former lover, plead for forgiveness, say he's so sorry that he wasn't able to save him that day. But then he would realize he's talking to a ghost.
Sculptures, art, all sorts of stories were written about that loss Hadrian experienced and the ghost that haunted him thereafter.
William Shakespeare, you know, so often incorporates ghosts into his plays. And the most famous of all may be that ghost of Hamlet's father. That ghost comes to haunt Prince Hamlet and encourage Prince Hamlet to kill his uncle Claudius. The one that this ghost of Prince Hamlet's father says killed him. Ghosts of our parents can haunt, and this particular ghost encourages Hamlet into a cycle of violence that ends as a horror film, a tragedy. Even spaces you know, they can seem haunted sometimes by ghosts. You might know that back on May 20, 1896, tragedy took place at the Paris Opera House. There was a 7 ton bronze and crystal chandelier hanging over a number of the back seats on floor level. That terrible day, one of the chandelier's counterweights broke from free and burst through the ceiling, killing a concierge.
Ever since that day, actors and actresses at the Paris Opera House will sometimes speak of seeing a ghost or hearing a ghost that recalls that concierge who died in the tragedy. You might have heard how that story was retold many years later in Phantom of the Opera, the novel and then the musical and film spaces. They can seem haunted by ghosts sometimes. In today's text, we read of how Judah was a place haunted by a ghost. Manasseh.
So what do you do with ghosts that just won't go away? What do you do with a memory of a loved one that's no longer with you, or a loved one with whom you are estranged and can't seem to reconcile? What do you do with a former lover who is now absent from you and their absence feels like a kind of ghostly presence, you know, what do you do with sins not just of your own past, but of a people of which you are a part? What do you do with those things from your past you can't undo? And those things of a people of which you're a part that you also can't undo? What do you do with mistakes you made with family members who are no longer with us?
And what do you do when you learn in school or studying your own family history that say your own forebears once enslaved people of African descent or drove indigenous people from land they'd occupied for generations?
What do you do, what do we do when you're haunted by ghosts?
That was a question Judah had to confront some 2600 years ago, as this ghost of Manasseh rears his ugly bloody head.
Well, we just celebrated a day of Ghost Stories on October 31st, but today it's not Halloween. Today is All Saints Sunday.
And I love that sequence of events. From remembering ghost stories to recalling, as we do today, saint stories, they can remind us of a great truth of our faith. Times of ghosts and apparitions will come, but God's word brings renewal and the promise of a new day, no matter what ghosts might haunt us. Second Kings will close in many ways as a horror story. For we'll read of that great invasion of Babylon, not only into Judah, but even into Jerusalem. An invasion that led to a host of people dying, a number of others being taken away into exile.
But that time of loss and terror you remember would be followed in our scriptures by a time of rebuilding and renewal according to God's word, inspired by God's strength at work in God's people. Times of loss and terror come and will come, and then there arrives, like a gift from the heavens, a season of renewal and return. God's faithfulness, as we read about it in the pages of the Old Testament, just won't. Relentless, even in a time of exile, we read of these words following accounts of God's anger. They are ultimately overwhelmed by words of God's love. Like this. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases and his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faith. That's from the book of Lamentations.
In the reign of King Josiah, we see this happen. A horror show in Manasseh's time is followed by a season of reform and renewal. And yes, the curse of Manasseh returns and arrives like a ghost. But a new day of restoration and return will arrive. We know the story.
Time and again, ghosts of sin and evil and loss haunt the world, haunt our world. But then, time and again, by the power of God's word, renewal comes. Justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
And as Christians, we believe in the fullness of time, God sent a living word, Jesus Christ.
And like back in the time of King Josiah, the living word too brought transformation to a people of ancient Judah, or call it ancient Judea. Only this word of God, this living word was also the very monarch a people had dreamed of and the prophets had foretold. They had imagined a day that swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. No longer would a people learn the ways that made for war. They would become peacemakers.
You'll recall how God's living word cast out demons, ghosts and apparitions with words of peace. He spoke truth to power, but did so in love. He called for extending love to neighbor and even to enemy. Jesus spoke of the word of God, that transforming word we saw in Josiah's time like a seed that a planter put in the ground, and when it landed on fertile soil, oh, what A harvest came from it.
That story of God's living word, Jesus Christ, you'll recall, ends for a time in a horror story, in a bloodbath. The one some called Messiah was tortured and even put to death.
But then, in all of the gospels we read a day of renewal, restoration, even resurrection would follow. And that earth shattering event would point forward to a day yet to come when the fullness of restoration and renewal that we've glimpsed would come completely. The forgiveness, the justice, the mercy we glimpsed in Christ and the kingdom he proclaimed would be known in full in that great banquet we look to in the future. We'll taste and see it in part at our communion table today, but it's only in part. We look for the completion of that day in what Revelation calls the new heaven and the new earth.
But still, as we await that day, we have a way as Christians to deal with all those ghosts that might haunt us. We can see them with new eyes, if we choose to, as reminded of the different ways we can look at ghosts from our past. I was reminded of it when I was reading the book Born to Run, the biography of autobiography of Bruce Springsteen. Have any of you read it? Our former treasurer, Josh Lush, once gave it to me. He knew I love rockumentaries and rock autobiographies and rock in general. But in this book, the Boss recounts his journey of going through therapy and how that journey equipped him to see ghosts with new eyes. If you're familiar with Springsteen's music, you will know that a ghost that often hovers, hovers over the scene is Springsteen's father. Sometimes domineering, sometimes neglectful, sometimes a voice of blame and belittling, sometimes missing from the scene entirely. An absence that's like an ominous presence.
Later in life, after a hard personal journey and a period of estrangement from his father, Springsteen writes of coming to this conclusion quote, I decided between my father and me that the sum of our troubles would not be the summation of our lives together. In analysis, you work to turn the ghosts that haunt you into ancestors who accompany you. You work to turn the ghosts that haunt you into ancestors who accompany you.
That's what we have in Josiah, and that's even what we have in Manasseh. Don't you see? We have not merely ghosts from the past that haunt us. Josiah, with his impossibly great faithfulness, we can never hope to match or hope for from our political leaders and Manasseh, with evil so great, we fear they will haunt us forever. In Josiah and Manasseh, if we have eyes to see it, we have ancestors who accompany us. Their faithfulness can inspire us.
Their sins can instruct us, guide us in that classic Christian journey of confession, repentance, and seeking ever and always to make things right.
This All Saint Sunday all argue that we have something even more than ancestors from those who've gone before us. We have not just ancestors to accompany us. We have saints.
Saints. A communion of saints, a cloud of witnesses to surround us. We have a family that spans time and space, uniting broken and imperfect people like you and me into one community made faithful by God's work in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. We have Christ at work in us today. We're made vessels of God's forgiveness, justice, blessing to all peoples and nations. We're made part of a grand communion of saints, that ghost of some person from your past or our past. They're not merely a ghost, that person of faith, more than an ancestor. They're a saint, a member of that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds you and me today and wrap us all up in that great fellowship divine.
Well, each year on All Saints Sunday, we have this tradition of lighting candles on our communion table. After you come forward to receive the bread and the cup, you can then, if you wish, along with your children, go up to this table and take one of the larger pillar candles and with it light one of the smaller candles. And when you come up to light one of those candles, you are invited to remember a person or a whole group of people who represent for you not just ghosts, not just ancestors even, but saints. You know, I've done this before, and I thought of people like my grandparents, like my Grandpa Mac. I've done this before and thought of teachers or mentors for me in my life faith.
But today I'll be recalling a particular group of people from this congregation's past. I was reminded of this group and their impact on Knox by our clerk of session, Tom McGinnis, an intrepid saint of this church if ever there was one. He came to Knox with his wife Anita Back in 2007, just about the same time that I was connected with Knox and Tom was going over the church registry. You got to do that as clerk of session to look at the members registry and update it each year to make sure the records are accurate. And he noted some dates. He noted that on October 21 and then on November 14, 2004, a whole series of new names were suddenly added to a registry that had not had new names added for quite some Time. Well, today is November 3rd. It's right between those two dates. October 21st, November 14th, we're here. November 3rd. It's the 20 year anniversary of those names getting added.
That was a season 2004 when I read about Josiah and that time of renewal in Judah, long ago, I tend to think of, you see, in 2003, just before that, this congregation was facing a situation so many congregations faced today. I visited one in Michigan. That was exactly the situation. It had dwindled down to 10, maybe 12 or so people attending on a given Sunday. And the challenges of just keeping the building maintained, you know, it was just too much. People were exhausted. And so the clerk of session at that time, Jan Sperry, together with the part time designated pastor who was looking to her own retirement, made plans with the presbytery of San Gabriel to close their doors in an appropriate and thoughtful way. And a congregation that had been around since 1895, just over 100 years at that time, was getting set to close.
Around that time, some of you know, a group of friends had a conversation about church. This group was not nearing retirement age. Many in the circle had young children or about to have young children. Many had connections through nearby Fuller Theological Seminary. And all of them were separately feeling a tug of the spirit to take some new journey when it came to church.
Well, over dinner one night, I'm told a number of people in this group started talking about church and they thought how cool it might be to be part of a church together. Then they thought, well, what might that church be?
They were not part of this church at that time. And so they played with the idea. They wondered what form church might take for them. Should they join a big church with lots of resources?
Should they start a new church? At least one couple in this group had been part of a new church plant in New York City.
Or should they decide to come alongside an old struggling church and just see what God might do in the midst of that journey? Well, as conversation unfolded, one in that group was the Reverend Dr. Pam King. Pam had done an internship at Knox back when she was a seminary student preparing to earn her Master of Divinity degree and preparing to become a Presbyterian pastor. She now serves as the director of the Thrive center at Fuller Theological Seminary and is a professor of psychology. And she said, oh, I know the perfect church, Knox. And so this group called up other friends of theirs and they came and joined, decided to become a part of this congregation.
They continued that journey and some three, four years later, they finally called a pastor. And thank heaven he didn't totally wreck the place, though. He tried his best.
Instead, he got to see that renewal continue. Each new name, each series of names that got added to that membership registry, they became a new rebuilding, a new period of renewal, a new reformation. And so many that joined since that time would go on to be leaders like the ones we enjoy today.
And all of that would be spurred on, they would say, by God's word at work in them, taking an intergenerational journey together in life together, faith together, being a communion of saints. Well, some from that congregation of 2004 are still with us, thanks be to God. Pam and Brad Norton, Cynthia, Clint and Jill, Toby and Laura, Sam and Celeste, Jason and then Laura, his wife, and so many others, too, who joined us at that time or shortly thereafter or some years later. But some active in 2004 at this church are not here. They're not. Many of them have gone to be with the Lord, like my grandma Katie, and we've held memorial services for them right here in this congregation. Some others over the years, found their journeys of life and faith taking them to new places.
Okay, full disclosure. Some days I'm haunted by the ghosts of those from 2004 who are no longer with us.
Sometimes I look at where they used to sit. There, there, there in this sanctuary, and their absence is like a kind of presence.
Sometimes I'm haunted by expectations I imagine them articulating and that I failed to meet. And sometimes I want to say I'm sorry.
Sometimes I might even want to defend myself. But I'm talking to a ghost.
But I choose today, as I often do, to see those departed from us, not as ghosts that haunt, but ancestors who accompany. I choose today to see them and myself with them as one broad people, a communion of saints full of shortcomings and sin and full of faithfulness, too, full of failures and full of triumphs. Full of the stuff of earth and by God's work in Christ, full of the stuff of heaven, too. I will see myself not haunted by them, but accompanied by them. More than that, I will see them as who they are in God's eyes, saints. Saints made so by the grace of God in Christ.
May your ghost stories become all saints stories. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.
