Sorry, I did not record the first reading.
1 Kings 11:26-31, 37-40; 1 Kings 12:1-5, 12-20; Matthew 10:34-39
September 26, 2021
- God’s faithfulness in division
You tell me what is wrong with this picture: you are one of twelve children and all of you grow up and go on to have your own families. You all stay in touch and live near each other, and your families get bigger and bigger over the generations. After a good, long while, there are lots of people in your families, loads of cousins. One day, however, one of the families (the family from say #4 of the original siblings) says that it is the best one at living the way mom and dad intended, so they get to make the decisions for the entire family going forward. They will act like the parent now for the rest of the larger family. If you are thinking like I am, I would say this might not end well.
But wait. There’s more. They don’t even do such a good job being in charge for long, but they still say that everyone else must listen to and follow them. How well do you think this family is doing on the happy family scale? If you are wondering if that family is going to survive, that is a good question. Of course, if this were all true today, this family would also get its own reality television show and make lots of money, but the truth of this story is that it is a very old one. It is actually the story of the first civil war.
If you are astute, you will have picked up on what I just did with that story. My illustration was a rough comparison to the people of Israel, the 12 tribes that came together as one nation under David but did not really last long – only 73 years once David became king. Yes, it was loosely a nation under Saul, but a lot of the people thought David was basically the king then, anyway, and God had rejected Saul as king. Then, it divided, again, for seven years after Saul died. What we really think of as the true united Kingdom of Israel, its strong days under David and Solomon was less time than the average lifespan today. So if you are older than 73, you have outlived that nation of Israel. I find that pretty staggering.
Now here’s the thing. Once they quit being a one united nation, things got uglyt. They even went to war with each other from time to time. Immediately after the passage I read today, Rehoboam (Solomon’s son and the king of Judah) tries to go to war to force the northern tribes back into the nation. God says no.
And that is really a puzzle for me. We might think that God would want the people of Israel to work it out and stay together and find a way to go forward as one covenant people, but that does not seem to be an issue, at all.
In fact, it reads as if this was all God’s idea and plan to begin with. The reality is a bit murkier. The twelve tribes were never really all that united. It did not take much to separate them from being one nation or to divide them as a people. We know they were really only together for a brief period of their history. Nevertheless, God seems to be fine with their separation, a nation literally ripped apart as Ahijah tore his new garment.
This rebellion, this stoked rebellion among people who were not that happy to begin with, ushered in a time of change that the people then had never seen. The stability of the kingdom was at an end, and the Israelites who were most oppressed by Solomon’s slavery were now free to determine their own path. Jeroboam in the North had a huge task ahead of him, though, in creating a new nation. Change, change, change was everywhere. Of course, life is always doing this.
Hundreds and hundreds of years later in that same land was the arrival of Jesus, and the greatest change the world had ever received. Even though the average person might not have perceived the change that arrived with the presence of Jesus, many, many people did see the difference and felt the new ways that were going to be. Jesus’ teaching, his miracles, and his exorcisms all pointed to this radical change called the Kingdom of God. No longer were people bound to human or earthly kingdoms. The new kingdom that superseded all of them was the Kingdom of God, also known as the Kingdom of Heaven.
Here’s the thing. What happens when big times of change come over us? We might remember these moments as stepped out on our own or began a new phase of our life or had to figure out a new birth or how to live without someone. Maybe it was a new job or just the changing world in which we live like today. When life changes or we change or both, we have to figure out how to adapt and what to do with new ways of living and doing because one of the things that happens is that our priorities and commitments also change.
A move or new responsibility or a new relationship or a new life that depends on you or a shocking loss all affect what’s important to us. This is a natural and necessary. We cannot just assume that we will be the same or feel the same when things are moving around us. That’s what the people of Judah and Israel had to wrestle with and that is what Jesus was pointing us to.
That passage in Matthew is strange and shocking and does not sound a whole lot like Jesus. We would just assume Jesus wants us to be good families and uphold our relationships, but what he says sounds like the opposite, like he wants to divide families. Well, he actually doesn’t. He does not actually want to divide families, but he is trying to make sure we have our priorities straight in the change that comes from meeting him as Lord. Yes, just meeting the Christ is another change time, a pretty significant one. When we become followers of Jesus, it is for keeps. He is the only Lord, and that is what he wants us to realize. There is no relationship that comes before our relationship with Jesus. Unless we come back to that realization again and again, we run the risk of forgetting and having our priorities off. It does happen. People get their priorities out of whack all the time.
Take for example Marcin Muchalski who back in April of 2004 had his priorities challenged. As he was pedaling to work in NY, a mugger stopped him and demanded his cell phone. Marcin had no money and nothing else of value. He was also in a big hurry to get to work on his bicycle. He refused to hand over his cell phone. After all, the .38 caliber handgun that the mugger was holding did not look to him like a real gun, and he certainly did not think the mugger would actually shoot him for the phone. Until, the mugger shot him – in the leg. You might think that that point you hand it over. Not Marcin. The robber put the gun to his arm and shot again. This time Marcin decided to run away with a sad hobble – zigzagging in case the guy tried to shoot him in the back. Thankfully, the mugger gave up quickly and took off. Marcin then called the police with his cell phone. Yes, the mugger was caught.
Maybe slightly messed up priorities. I won’t even tell you about the woman who ran into her burning home to rescue her season tickets to the Philadelphia Phillies and nothing else, only to learn that they would have been reprinted if they had been destroyed.
Fact 1) People have all kinds of priorities and commitments – some of which are batty.
Fact 2) We do not often consider our commitments or priorities, especially in times of change, when they must also change whether we realize it or not.
Fact 3) As followers of Jesus, we cannot just assume our priorities or commitments are correct just because we do churchy things. In fact, we can get into real trouble assuming we are OK the way we are and don’t need to check our priorities because we are proper church members. This very fact, that church people can become smug or complacent, means we are even more at risk of having wrong commitments or priorities. They might sound or look good, but they could well be more self-serving than God-serving.
In the time of extreme division that followed the death of Solomon, his son Rehoboam became king of the southern kingdom Judah, and Jeroboam became the king of the northern kingdom Israel. There is no one guilt or blame for this, but it became a fiasco of every person for himself. Neither nation survived. One nation came back and reformed. They forgot what was important to God and rarely bothered to think about what was truly important to them as children of God.
More than anything else, what we need today are godly priorities that will guard life, the dignity of all life, and preserve the good that is in all people. No one is really the enemy here. Even those whom we identify as the enemy are those who deserve our love, too.
I was speaking to a gentleman yesterday who was greatly vexed about how he was living a mile away from 6,000 Afghani refugees with nothing between them except for woods. He was truly nervous but also confident that if they did not come waving the American flag and singing Amazing Grace, they were going to meet his guns. This is one priority that we hear and see these days. It just does not sound like Jesus’. We cannot love anyone more than him, and he said to love our neighbor as ourselves. Period. That is been law since the beginning – God’s law, Jesus’ law. His new commandment was to love one another as he had loved us.
Our changes today may push us into some kind of new civil war. I pray not, but I do know that we had all better check what’s important to us and whether what is important to us measures up to what is important to Jesus. We are about God’s glory here and the love of God’s children, all of them. Period. Amen.