Scripture: 2 Kings 6: 24 – 7: 16
Sermon: Hope for the Hopeless – A Sermon in Two Parts
Preached: August 23, 2009 AM
Rev. Mike Abma
2 Kings 6: 24 – 7:2
Ben-hadad’s Siege of Samaria
24 Some time later King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army; he marched against Samaria and laid siege to it. 25As the siege continued, famine in Samaria became so great that a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver ($ 500), and one-fourth of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver ($80). 26Now as the king of Israel was walking on the city wall, a woman cried out to him, ‘Help, my lord king!’
27He said, ‘No! Let the Lord help you. How can I help you? From the threshing-floor or from the wine press?’ 28But then the king asked her, ‘What is your complaint?’
She answered, ‘This woman said to me, “Give up your son; we will eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.” 29So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, “Give up your son and we will eat him.” But she has hidden her son.’
30When the king heard the words of the woman he tore his clothes—now since he was walking on the city wall, the people could see that he had sackcloth on his body underneath— 31and he said, ‘So may God do to me, and more, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat stays on his shoulders today.’ 32So he dispatched a man from his presence.
Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. Before the messenger arrived, Elisha said to the elders, ‘Are you aware that this murderer has sent someone to take off my head? When the messenger comes, see that you shut the door and hold it closed against him. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?’
33While he was still speaking with them, the king* came down to him and said, ‘This trouble is from the Lord! Why should I hope in the Lord any longer?’
71But Elisha said, ‘Hear the word of the Lord: thus says the Lord, Tomorrow about this time a measure of choice meal shall be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.’
2Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, ‘Even if the Lord were to make windows in the sky, could such a thing happen?’
But Elisha said, ‘You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat from it.’
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
Earlier this week I planned to only read the very end of chapter 6.
The story of this distraught mother
seemed too raw,
too heart-breaking,
too painful
for me to read,
for you to hear,
for us to face.
I think this is a pretty typical reaction to what is dark and terrible in life.
We want to avoid it, escape it, turn a blind eye to it.
But this story does not really allow that.
This is the story of the city of Samaria under siege.
They are surrounded by the enemy.
Death is on the outside.
Misery is on the inside.
And there is no escape.
A mother approaches the king.
Her story is absolutely heart-breaking.
You can almost hear the pain in what she has to say.
Her words are filled with desperation.
They are tinged with regret.
She is almost delirious in her despair.
She is hopeless.
The king has a somewhat different reaction.
He feels helpless yet angry – a deadly combination.
“How can I help?” he rants.
“From the threshing floor, from the wine press?”
The point the king is making is that he has nothing to offer.
The threshing floor is empty, the wine press dry.
They are all trapped with no way out.
This story of the distraught mother echoes another older Old Testament story of two mothers and two children.
In that older story, the king is also confronted by two mothers with two babies: one baby was alive and one was dead.
Each mother claimed the baby who was alive.
Each mother rejected the baby who was dead.
And the king was asked for justice, to reunite the live baby with it true mother.
Somehow, in his wise and compassionate way, that king found justice.
But that was a different time — a time of peace and order.
Now everything was the opposite – everything was war and chaos.
And this king is no Solomon.
This king feels surrounded by the enemy
and abandoned by God.
He is angry.
“Why should I hope in the Lord any longer” he rants.
He knows he has lost control of his city,
and he is fuming.
Someone has to pay.
“So help me, I will have Elisha’s head by this time tomorrow,” he raves.
When the King and the Prophet meet,
the prophet only gets the king more riled up.
An inedible, unclean donkey’s head was selling for $500.
That is how desperate people were.
And what does the Prophet say?
He says bread will sell for 5 cents a loaf the next day.
How infuriating is that!
It is a wonder that Elisha stayed alive.
Perhaps it helped that the elders of the city were sitting with him.
I have a lot of sympathy for that woman and even the king.
I can understand why the king was so furious
and why that mother was so utterly heartbroken.
For them, everything was hopeless,
and they were helpless.
Elisha’s words – his impossible words –
must have stung like salt in the wound.
To be besieged.
It is not simply some distant medieval memory.
How many of us don’t feel besieged by one thing or another.
When money is tight, and bills pile up, and debts deepen,
how many people simply don’t open their mail,
or hesitate to answer the phone.
It is easy to feel besieged by bills –
to feel there is no way to get ahead.
There are other ways we feel besieged:
While on vacation, I thought quite a bit about the different people in our church family and the things they are being forced to live through.
What does one say when the news on the health front never seems to get better?
What does one say when the symptoms of Alzheimers or dementia become more and more pronounced?
What does one say when a marriage is so starved of love, miserable, heart- breaking choices are made?
The truth is,
we are besieged more than we care to admit.
We find ourselves between a rock and a hard place.
We find ourselves wishing and praying for things to change,
but helpless to actually bring the change about.
Sometimes we are like the woman,
the desperate woman,
trapped in misery and feeling hopeless.
Sometimes we are like the king,
hearing and seeing the pain of others,
helpless to do a thing about it,
yet feeling angry that things have to be like this.
So, is there hope for the hopeless?
Is there help for the helpless.
2 Kings 7:3-16
The Arameans Flee
3 Now there were four leprous* men outside the city gate, who said to one another, ‘Why should we sit here until we die? 4If we say, “Let us enter the city”, the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; but if we sit here, we shall also die. Therefore, let us desert to the Aramean camp; if they spare our lives, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.’
5So they arose at twilight to go to the Aramean camp; but when they came to the edge of the Aramean camp, there was no one there at all. 6For the Lord had caused the Aramean army to hear the sound of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, ‘The king of Israel has hired the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to fight against us.’ 7So they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, leaving the camp just as it was, and fled for their lives.
8When these leprous* men had come to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent, ate and drank, carried off silver, gold, and clothing, and went and hid them. Then they came back, entered another tent, carried off things from it, and went and hid them.
9 Then they said to one another, ‘What we are doing is wrong. This is a day of good news; if we are silent and wait until the morning light, we will be found guilty; therefore let us go and tell the king’s household.’
10So they came and called to the gatekeepers of the city, and told them, ‘We went to the Aramean camp, but there was no one to be seen or heard there, nothing but the horses tied, the donkeys tied, and the tents as they were.’ 11Then the gatekeepers called out and proclaimed it to the king’s household. 12The king got up in the night, and said to his servants, ‘I will tell you what the Arameans have prepared against us. They know that we are starving; so they have left the camp to hide themselves in the open country, thinking, “When they come out of the city, we shall take them alive and get into the city.” ’
13One of his servants said, ‘Let some men take five of the remaining horses, since those left here will suffer the fate of the whole multitude of Israel that have perished already;* let us send and find out.’ 14So they took two mounted men, and the king sent them after the Aramean army, saying, ‘Go and find out.’ 15So they went after them as far as the Jordan; the whole way was littered with garments and equipment that the Arameans had thrown away in their haste. So the messengers returned, and told the king.
16 Then the people went out, and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a measure of choice meal was sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
The scene switches from the government to the gutter,
from the king and the prophet,
and the officers and the elders,
to four lepers huddled in the city gate.
In a way these lepers are trapped in an even more hostile no-man’s-land.
Outside the city are the Arameans, the enemy.
Inside the city are the starving Israelites.
Even in these miserable conditions
they were not about to let some unclean lepers into the city.
So here are these lepers, literally caught between a rock and a hard place.
Not allowed into the city.
Not willing to venture out of the city.
So what were they supposed to do?
The thing about these lepers is that they seem so down-to-earth.
They have no illusions of control.
No illusions of heroics.
No illusions that their wisdom or chutzpah will save the day.
They knew life was tough.
They had lived a while with this incurable disease.
They had been declared unclean and rejected by society.
They had depended on charity to survive.
In the face of an enemy that would probably kill them,
and a city that wouldn’t bat an eye at seeing them starve,
these lepers don’t get angry.
They don’t even wallow in despair.
Instead, they simply ask, “What can we do?
Going into the city, we’ll starve.
Staying here, we’ll starve.
If we set out for the enemy camp, who knows, we may die, we may live.
We may not have much, but at least we have each other.
And we have nothing to lose.”
Did you notice when they set out to the Aramean camp?
It is at twilight, at dusk.
It is when it is dark outside.
They are walking in the dark,
and they have no idea what they are walking into.
They are expecting to meet the enemy.
They are expecting to meet with death.
But they keep walking.
Why?
Because their world has no other hope to offer.
Do these 4 lepers remind you of anyone else in the Bible?
Do you recall 4 other outcasts,
4 other nobodies
walking in the dark to meet death?
Let me give you a hint:
Mary Magdalene
Mary the mother of James
Salome
and Joanna.
These were the women who walked in the early morning darkness
expecting to face the enemy,
expecting to find a tomb full of death.
The 4 lepers do not find the enemy – the enemy had fled.
They do not have to face death – instead they find a source of new life.
They do not find a famine – they find enough food to feast royally on.
They do not find poverty – they find riches beyond what they could imagine.
These lepers are almost delirious with delight, going from one tent to another.
This story has an impossibly good ending.
These lepers know they can’t keep it to themselves.
“This is a day of good news” they say to each other.
And so, the race back to the city to share the good news.
When the news reaches the king,
he is reluctant to hear it, reluctant to believe it.
It must be a trap. It must be a trick.
It is simply too good to be true.
The same was true when the women
finding an empty tomb,
finding life rather than death,
and hope rather than despair,
rushed back to the city to tell the disciples.
The disciples also could not believe it.
It sounded too good to be true.
Is it too good to be true?
CONCLUSION
On our vacation, we visited some big cities: Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary.
Cities have this way of showing you some of what is best
but also some of what is worst in life.
Sure, we saw markets filled with incredible sea-food,
and delicious pastries,
but we also saw the pan-handlers on the street,
begging for something to eat.
We saw gardens, and parks, and beautiful mansions,
but we also saw urban blight,
concrete wastelands,
and hovels for homes.
Of course, it isn’t only poverty that causes misery.
There were enough people driving BMW’s,
or lounging beside condominium pools,
who never laughed,
never smiled,
and only seemed to carry sadness.
The lyrics to the old BEATLES song still ring true:
“All the lonely people, where do they all come from?”
It was while in Seattle, at the Pike Place Market,
that I saw an older man sitting on a stool,
looking a little tired.
He was humming a tune
and slapping a rhythm on his knee.
An open hat rested on the ground.
I thought,
“another homeless man asking for help.”
A while later, we walked by that same spot.
That man had been joined by some friends.
He was still sitting on a chair,
still keeping time by slapping his knee.
But now he and his friends were all singing,
a cappella, with wild and enthusiastic abandon.
They had smiles on their faces,
and joy in their voices.
They were singing the gospel songs.
One of the songs they sang was,
“Soon and very soon
We are going to meet the king.”
A big crowd had formed,
and soon everyone was clapping.
When I thought of those 4 lepers,
this a cappella group popped into my mind.
For here were people who knew the misery of the world,
who knew what it meant to be besieged,
but who also knew God’s way in the world,
bringing life from death
hope from despair
and fullness from emptiness.
Here were messengers,
at the city gates
bringing the surprisingly good news:
Death has been defeated,
the enemy has fled
Christ is risen.
Alleluia.
0 Comments