Sunday, October 29 - Stories
1 Kings 12:1-17
Deborah Laforet
Stories
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
The reading we heard today may not be familiar. It’s not one we hear often during a Sunday church service. It is a part of the Narrative Lectionary which is giving us a quick glimpse of the the leadership in Israel and Judah three thousand years ago, which seems like a very long time and irrelevant to our lives today, but I’m going to take you on a quick trip through history and then tell you why it’s important.
Last week, we heard about King David. For those of you who’ve grown up in the church, King David is a well-known figure in our bible who united the twelve tribes of Israel, and is said to be a direct ancestor of Jesus. Jesus is often Son of David. With Bathsheba, he had a son named Solomon. Solomon is also a well-known figure in the bible. He is seen as a great king, a poet, and one who is filled with the wisdom of God. The story we heard today is about Solomon’s son, Rehoboam.
As I mentioned last week, sometimes we hold up some of the characters in the bible as perfect heroes, but, David was far from perfect and made many mistakes that hurt a lot of people. Solomon is also one who far from perfect. We usually only hear the good, his accomplishment of building the temple in Jerusalem, and of his wisdom, but what we don’t hear about is Solomon’s kingdom and the way he ruled it. Solomon was powerful and rich and the way he became powerful and rich is suspect. In our readings, we hear of his battles and the extension of his kingdom, the accumulation of chariots and horses, of his creation of military outposts throughout the land, and the slaves who built his kingdom and the people who were taxed heavily to fill the coffers. Solomon was building an empire.
Before Solomon died, there are signs of the kingdom beginning to split, people rebelling and nations gaining their independence. Now we reach the part in the story that we read today where Rehoboam becomes king. An assembly of Israelites comes before him and they have only one request. They say, “Your father made our yoke heavy. Now, therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.”
Now, we don’t know a lot about Rehoboam, but we do know that he was a prince who grew up in a very wealthy kingdom. He also grew up with the example of a father and king who put this heavy yoke upon his people and demanded much of them. We know that Rehoboam became king when he was forty one years old. So what might we expect from King Rehoboam?
Rehoboam answers the assembly by asking them to give him three days to contemplate their request, which sounds reasonable. It’s a good first step. He then goes to two groups of people for advice. First we read that he took counsel with the ‘older men’ who had attended his father Solomon and then he talks with the 'young men’ with whom he had grown up, which means they were about 40 years old, and now attended him.
The older men advised the following, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.” Is it possible that these men had observed the way Solomon had ruled his kingdom and thought a that a different way could keep the kingdom united under Rehoboam?
From the younger men, we get different advice. In fact, the words I hear seem filled with the arrogance and wilfulness of men who have grown up with privilege, men who dismiss the words of their elders. They tell Rehoboam to tell the assembly, “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins.” I’ll let you imagine what they mean by that. They continue to tell him to say, “Now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.”
The role of a king or queen or anyone in leadership over a people or a nation should be as a servant to those people and do what is best for that nation. This is the advice given by the elders to Rehoboam, but Rehoboam dismisses them and decides to follow the advice of his friends. This advice splits the united kingdom of Israel in two - the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah, who will continue to have disputes between then and be ruled by corrupt people until they are eventually both conquered by bigger and more powerful nations.
Now, I have spent all this time giving you a history lesson of the bible, because most of us don’t know this history anymore. We tend to know some of the overarching stories like the Creation story, the story of Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, King David and sometimes his son, Solomon, some of us know snippets of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah but don’t really know their stories, and then we skip over to the four gospels and their telling of the stories of Jesus. Without understanding the Hebrew scriptures thought, we will misinterpret the gospels and the ministry of Jesus. We lose that context. Jesus was Jewish and grew up hearing the stories of the Hebrew bible and understanding the history and the oppression of his people. We cannot understand Jesus and his ministry, or the people who followed him, or even why he was crucified, if we don’t understand the stories that came before. These stories matter.
Yesterday, I was at an event at the Oakville Town Hall that the Interfaith Council of Halton led. People from different faith traditions were asked to offer prayers for peace in the Middle East. There is so much division all over the world around what is happening in Israel and in Palestine. People are struggling to understand what is happening. People are choosing sides and making accusations. People of the Jewish and Muslim faith communities are feeling unsafe, even in countries as far away from the Middle East as Canada.
The hymn we will sing next is entitled, “When Will People Cease Their Fighting?” It’s a good question without easy answers. Some say that Israel is just responding to the acts of terror by Hamas, and while others say that Hamas is only responding to the oppression of Palestinians by Israel. Back and forth it goes. There are two sides to every story. It can be so complex and unclear, which causes people to seek out easy answers. Good guys and bad guys become clearly delineated, no in between. Unfortunately, its the winners who record history, who are the ones with the control over who are named the good guys and who are the bad guys. It makes everything easier, simpler, and the winners are free from guilt or apology.
The Hebrew people weren’t often the winners, so it’s unusual to have these recorded stories by those who were conquered, several times, and who have been subjugated and discriminated against throughout our history. By chance, by the will of God?, we have these stories passed down from generation to generation that tell of good kings with many faults, bad kings who tried the best, heroes with very human struggles, and a nation who was conquered over and over again, oppressed and marginalized, whose faith kept them together and made them strong.
Next week, we will honour Remembrance Day. We will remember the dead and pray for peace. As part of our liturgy, we will say, “We will remember.” When we forget our past, we forget our dead, we dishonour our ancestors, we dismiss the stories that made us who we are, and we lose our sense of self, as individuals and as a people, and we risk misunderstanding others, and, as I was taught at a full moon ceremony on Friday, when we risk misunderstanding others, we miss out on loving them.
Now, I’m not expecting you all to become historians. I’m a history major so researching the past happens to be something I enjoy. But we are all a people of story. Humanity has been telling stories around a fire for thousands of years, remembering their ancestors, teaching values and important lessons, honouring the world in which they live, and even sometimes just providing entertainment.
Rehohoam and his unwise decision to follow the advice of his friends is just one of many stories in our bible, which can have several lessons within it, lessons that help us understand what comes later, even what is happening thousands of years later in modern Palestine and Israel. Let’s rediscover the stories that have been lost - our own stories, the stories of our ancestors, the stories of our faith, and the stories of past and current conflicts.
We will remember. We will honour. We will share. We will understand. We will love. May it be so. Amen.