“Swords into Plowshares” Isaiah 36:1-3, 13-20; 37:1-7; then 2:1-4

 There are certain Sundays that just about any preacher is excited to proclaim the word on. Easter Sunday. Christmas Eve. Pentecsot. During the seasons of Advent and Lent. All just to name a few. But there are also some Sundays that are harder to preach on. Days like Trinity Sunday - trying to explain the deep theological truth that God is three in one and one and three. And days like today, Christ the King Sunday. 

If you ask preachers, the struggle with today isn’t the fact that Christ is King - that is so apparent. The struggle with today, at least in American culture, is that we don’t really know what it means to say that Christ is King because we don’t understand kingship.

So we are going back - way back in scripture today to a day and time when people did understand kingship. To the days of the prophet Isaiah. There came a point in the history of Israel when they moved away from looking to God to be their sole protector and provider to wanting the earthly, human kings that saw around them. Kings with flesh on them. 

The problem is that once you put such authority into the hands of a person - well, sometimes you ended up with a good leader and ruler and sometimes you did not. Where we find ourselves in the scripture of Isaiah today is with a good king - Hezekiah. 

Hezekiah bore witness to a horrific attack on the northern Kingdom of Israel. By this point the twelve tribes have been divided into two areas with two different kings. The northern Kingdom and then the southern kingdom, also known as Judah. The northern Kingdom was ravaged by by the Assyrians. 

But even after watching such a brutal attack and knowing that Judah could be next, he wanted to focus his time as King on what it meant to draw close to God. So when he ascended to the throne at the age of 25, he passed reforms that reminded the people that they were to worship Yahweh alone. He repaired the temple. He purged idols from the people. He brought reform to the priesthood so it was once again about serving for the honor and glory of God - and all of this was counted to him as righteousness. 

In today’s scripture the time has come - Judah is under siege by the Assyrians, just like the northern Kingdom was years earlier. And when the Sennacherib king of Assyria thought that he had the upper hand, he sent one of his commanders to essentially taunt the people by telling them that Hezekiah was lying to them. That he would never be able to deliver them. Therefore they shouldn’t put their trust in Hezekiah and his God, but instead come over to the side of the Assyrians. 

And what was Hezekiah’s response? Not to retaliate or to lead the people out into battle. Instead, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth - a sign of deep morning and distress - and went to the temple. 

And he reached out to Isaiah, the prophet. 

Isaiah, who had been the prophet through some tough times before, reminded the king to look not the words of his foe, but instead to the faithfulness of God. God who had redeemed them before and God who would be with them even now. God is going to make the King of Assyria go back home - utterly defeated. 

If you were Hezekiah, how would you respond? Let’s examine that question in our hearts at several points in the story. If you are Hezekiah at the age of 25, a new King, what would you desire to be known for? You look around and the other Kings are known and judged by their conquests. Would you want to start out strong - the one doing the attacking instead of being attacked? Or would you change course and seek to honor God by reforming, not another land, but your own heart and home?

And if you did decide to reform your heart and home, would you be willing to do things differently with pieces of culture and religious practice that people love? Or would you shy away from the hard things. One of the things that Hezekiah addressed was how Moses’s staff had been made into an idol. Something precious to the land of Israel and their history that had become warped in understanding to the point where it was no longer leading people closer to God, but was actually distracting them from him. What would you do?

And if you hear that you are being attacked what would be the first thing you do? Would it be to publicly grieve and then seek the face of God in prayer or would it be to retaliate by your own attack?

What made Hezekiah notable was his focus, which then influenced the choices he made as King. He was a King that wasn’t focusing on his own fortune or fame, but instead wanted to lift high the name of God. 

Christ was similar. He did not come to lift up himself, but to lift up the name of God and to set us, those who were yet far from him free from our bondage to sin by dying a criminal’s death on a cross. Not for his crime. But for us. Our crimes against God. 

Christ the King Sunday is relatively new in the scheme of at the church that has lasted through the ages. It started in 1925 and moved to this Sunday, the last Sunday of our church calendar year in 1970. 

We need this day, friends, to be reminded that Christ is our king, not just in name, but because we give him all authority in our hearts and lives. As righteous of a king as Hezekiah was, Jesus is so much better. Therefore, we adore him in response. 

But here’s the thing - Christ isn’t just our King here on earth, but for all of eternity. From everlasting to everlasting. 

So how are we going to respond to Christ as King of our lives? Are we going to seek to make ourselves known - or by looking into our own hearts and confessing what separates us from him? Are we going to leave sin unaddressed, or are we going to ask God to reveal to us those things we need to repent of? Are we going to try to ignore the sin our lives or are we going to be grieved by it to the point where it leads us to pray?

Let us truly exalt Christ as the Holy King in our lives - and let our lives be changed because of this proclamation. Amen. 

“The Prophet Micah” Micah [1:3-5]; 5:2-5a; 6:6-8

 “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” These words from Micah 6:8 were the scripture uplifted time and again by the seminary I attended while pursuing my Masters of Divinity degree. They were written on walls. Handed out on stickers. Found on the school’s website. 

This particular seminary wanted to lift up this verse in so many ways so that the scripture because written on our hearts. Not something that we just know with our heads, but seek to live out with our hearts. I once had a parishioner who would always remind me that the most dangerous place for our faith journey is the foot-or-so between our head and our heart. And the prophet Micah also knew that to be a dangerous place for the people he was trying to speak to. 

Micah prophesied during the 8th century, during a time when things were not well. Things were not well in the world. The people of Israel were living in a time of threats within and threats without. Externally, they were constantly under the threat of the Assyrians attacking them. But to try to mitigate that threat, there was also a threat within - as their own leaders in Jerusalem tried to appease the Assyrians by paying them tributes, but that was passed on to the poor. As a result, they were under threat of losing their homes by the choices their own leaders had made. A gamble that may or may not work. 

But things weren’t just not as they should be in the greater world - constantly under threat of war and oppressing the poor. Things were also not right in the people’s spirits and relationships with God. The people may not be able to control the greater world, but they could be attentive to their own spiritual lives - only they were refusing to do so. And it was noticeable through their very actions - the way they were living their daily lives.

Enter Micah, who is not a happy prophet. But he doesn’t just want to share with the people how they are falling short. He also wants to speak hope into a hopeless people and hopeless world. Micah is telling the people that things are not going to always be as they are now. In fact, God is going to change things by raising up a new leader.

But its a leader who is going to come from a surprising place and rule the people in a surprising way.

By this point in history David has been dead for quite some time. Yet, the people are still looking to have someone in his lineage come and lead them as he once did. Even if at this point none of them would have lived under his rule themselves. They keep looking back to the past to define who they are. 

To which Micah encourages them to look forward in hope to what is to come and to let that define who they are as the people of God. For the old way - that wasn’t working any longer. So God was going to raise up for the people a leader who is not from Jerusalem, but from Bethlehem. 

The season is almost upon us church when we sing with reverence “O Little Town of Bethlehem” but on this side of history and the New Testament we forget that Bethlehem was not a place to be revered during the time. All power was centralized in Jerusalem, the Holy City. So for Micah to speak of the leader who would set the people free coming from Bethlehem - that was unheard of. It would be similar in tenor to Philip’s response in the Gospel of John when Nathaniel tells him that they have seen the Messiah. Do you remember what his response was? “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

The people may have been wondering, can any leader truly come out of Bethlehem. But Micah isn’t done yet. He also tells them that this new leader would be from humble origins. He wouldn’t come from a place of power and prestige in the world. 

And the way that he would lead them wouldn’t be anything like what the people have experienced before. Because he would not lead with sword or spear or through war. He instead will serve as their shepherd, ushering in peace. 

Micah is frantically trying to get the people to look beyond what they know with their heads in order to see with their spiritual eyes the hope that is to come. In other words, he wants them to look beyond the immediacy of their circumstances, as terrible as they are, in order to claim the hope and promise of God that is yet to come. If the people truly believe that God is trustworthy and that his promises are true, then they would be willing to let their hope rest in him alone. Even if that hope comes from an unlikely place. Even if that hope is shown in unheard of ways. 

But Micah also didn’t want to let the people just passively wait for hope on the sidelines. No they were to be part of the process. First by examining their own hearts and seeing where they may have been swept up in a spirit of idolatry. Church, the things that we make idols of are often good things. Things that God has entrusted us to be stewards over. The problem is instead of being stewards we let them control us. The people have made an idol of the monarchy and Micah is calling them to repent of this, and of anything else they have lifted up above the place of God in their lives. 

Second, Micah wants the people to seek the will of God. Is that not a question that we still ask today, Church? What is the will of God? To which Micah lifts up this oft-quoted verse. To seek justice. To love mercy. And to walk humbly with our God. 

And how do we do those things? By remaining in a vital relationship with God. Lifting up God as first in our lives. And allowing God to direct our steps in a way that brings him honor and glory. 

In other words, Micah is inviting the Israelites, and us by extension, to be living to close to the heartbeat of God that we reflect him in the world. Because - justice and mercy - friends, those are attributes of our God. Justice is part of his nature. So in mercy - expressed in compassion towards us. 

When we walk humbly with God, allowing him to be glorified, we become people shaped by him. Living for him. Daily. 

And when we are living for God daily it makes it a bit easier when God calls us to do things beyond our wildest imagination. Like living for hope. Even in the midst of the heartache of the lack of hope in our world. 

Friends, Micah is still calling us to examine our hearts and lives today to see if we are truly living out what we believe to be true. Asking us if we are clinging to man-made hope or the hope of our Savior who has set us free. And when we are free, are we living like folks who are free-indeed? Amen. 

“Elisha Heals Naaman” 2 Kings 5:1-15a

 One of the passions that emerged from a difficult season in my life is a passion to work with people who are grieving. I must confess that I don’t know what is going to come of it, but it is one of the things that drew me to volunteer with hospice. And one of the gifts that I offer to people - to sit with them in times of deep sorrow and to just be present. 

As a culture this may seem odd - especially when we try to minimize suffering and put limits around grieving. It strikes me as impractical to only give folks a few days off based on how close they were to a person who passed away - as if grief could be limited to those particular days. 

But then again, as a culture we struggle with suffering as well. As those who bear witness to suffering and those who go through times of deep suffering ourselves. We would rather not talk about it. We would rather try to sweep it under the rug. But the truth is suffering persists.

Case in point - today’s scripture passage. 

There was a man who was strong in both physical ability and power, named Naaman. Now we only know a few things about this particular individual. One, he was the commander of the army for the king of Aram (hence how we know that he is physically strong and powerful by virtue of his position). Two, we know that he wasn’t a Hebrew. He was from Syrian. Three, we know that he was struck with a leprosy 

Now we don’t really know what that means. It may mean what we now call Hansen’s disease - this long term skin infection that can attack the nerves and cause folks to no longer be able to feel pain. Leprosy - that disease that people feared coming in contact with because of how much it could alter a persons life. To the point where, even though the disease is not that contagious, folks were put into colonies on the outskirts of communities, away from everyone else. 

But this word may not mean that at all. In fact, some translations do not use the word Leprosy, but instead say skin disease, because in Biblical terms, “Leprosy” was used as a catch all for all skin aliments. 

Whatever this skin infection may be, it has caused Naaman to go from place to place seeking treatment, but to no avail. He is so desperate, that when a female slave tells him to go to see the prophet in Samaria, he is willing to listen. To set aside social class and listen to a prisoner, because maybe, just maybe, she was right and he would finally find the answer he was searching for. 

But with all of that seeking and searching had come expectations. He had an idea in his head how he would find healing. And when that wasn’t the case - well watch out. 

First, Naaman goes to his King, the king of Aram, and asks that he be sent to the King of Israel. Which he agreed to - sending him along with a letter. And Naaman set out with a lot of money. This is a point not to be missed, my friends. He literally thought he could buy his healing. Why he thought he could do so from the King of Israel through “his” prophet, is unclear, since he hasn’t been able to buy healing from anyone else up to this point. 

Which of course, confuses and terrifies the king of Israel. Who is he that this captain thinks he can buy healing from him? That’s not within his skill set. Surely, this was just the king of Aram trying to pick a fight. 

Then, when Elisha, the one that the young woman was trying to point Naaman to in the first place, intervenes and tells him to go wash in the Jordan seven times - something so simple to address this problem that had been plaguing him, he became angry and went away. Surely he didn’t come all this way, offering so much for this. Where’s the tincture? Where’s the miracle? Where’s what he came expecting?

Thankfully, one of his servants, both wise and courageous, called him out - asking that if he was told to do something more difficult by Elisha, wouldn’t he do it? All in hope to find healing?

Now maybe we haven’t traveled with the blessing of a king to find healing from a prophet, but can you identify in some other ways with Naaman here? Have you ever been so desperate to find healing that you were willing to do just about anything? Have you ever went from place to place, doctor to doctor in hopes that something, anything would releave just a bit of what you were going through?

Because the truth is - as much as we want to pretend that suffering doesn’t exist - it does. As much as we want to wish, hope, or ignore it away - that isn’t how life works. 

I think what Naaman was really getting upset about in the simplicity of what Elisha said is that it surely couldn’t have been the answer all along? It surely couldn’t have been as simple as turning in trust, could it?

We, too, can get frustrated when healing doesn’t come in our way or in our timing. Because we want control. 

Yet, all life and healing, friends, that lies beyond our control. It lies with God. 

And maybe that is why I have this passion to be with people who are grieving. Because I know that is beyond my control. And instead, all that I can do is show up. Not show up in my own strength or power, but show up and witness to the Spirit. The One who will never leave us or forsake us. 

And that work of showing up, that isn’t a quick one time thing. Just like the culture of the world tries to get us to hurry along with our grief and suffering, it can feel that way even amongst those who deeply care as well. Folks show up for the first week with offers of help and casserole dishes and condolences, but what after that? How are we showing up in the longterm?

And church, that is where we can shine. Being the ones who show up week after week, bearing witness and sitting with people. Responding to the promptings of the spirit to not forget, but continue to be with people in their grief, suffering, and pain. 

If only we are willing. 

Are we willing?

The Greek word for salvation, translates to me - complete, whole, in harmony. It’s a whole lot like the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, which has a more expansive meaning than what we can sometimes comprehend. Yet, that’s why we show up. To point folks, by our very presence to the one who can offer healing and hope beyond what they expect. The one who can bring complete wholeness and peace. But to do so, we actually need to show up. And so I ask you again, Church, are we willing to go to the places of deep hurt and need, not to fulfill the expectations of the world, but to simply be present to the One who sets us free? Amen.