Scripture: 1 Kings 10: 26 – 11:13 and 2 Chronicles 9: 25-31
Sermon: The Face of Hope
Topics: biographies, life-stories, Chronicles, Solomon
Preached: February 1, 2004
Rev. Mike Abma
Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horses, which he stationed in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem.26He ruled over all the kings from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, and to the border of Egypt. 27The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stone, and cedar as plentiful as the sycomore of the Shephelah. 28Horses were imported for Solomon from Egypt and from all lands.
29 Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, from first to last, are they not written in the history of the prophet Nathan, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of the seer Iddo concerning Jeroboam son of Nebat? 30Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel for forty years. 31Solomon slept with his ancestors and was buried in the city of his father David; and his son Rehoboam succeeded him.
I. BIOGRAPHIES
In his review of Lewis Smedes memoir, My God and I, Scott Hoezee starts by mentioning an author who wrote an “op-ed” in the New York Times Book Review. This piece surveyed all the autobiographies and memoirs on the market and dismissed most of them as a waste of time. The problem is, something like 80% of people think their story is interesting enough to tell. By these memoirs, he sniffed dismissively, this was clearly not the case.
A few weeks later, a letter to the editor responded to this article by asking, “Does that mean that twenty percent of people think their life is not worth telling? How tragic.”
Life is a gift, worth savoring, worth remembering.
For this month’s Woodlawn World, I wrote a little piece on how I recently received, read, and am now editing my father’s memoir – a story worth telling. Reading of another person’s life remains a very popular and profitable past-time. Look at the New York Times Bestseller List for Non-Fiction, and you will find biographies and autobiographies on ball players like Pete Rose, politicians, like Madeleine Albright, and giants in history, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Benjamin Franklin. We pick up these books because we want to learn about a person’s life – an honest, open telling of a person’s strengths and weaknesses, their virtues and their vices.
Of course, biographies are such hot sellers that many of the candidates in the Democratic primaries have felt led to write their stories.
John Kerry has A Call to Service and Joe Leiberman has In Praise of Public Life.
Howard Dean has Winning Back America and Wesley Clark has Winning Modern Wars.
And even the younger John Edwards has a book recounting his experience as a trial lawyer called Four Trials. Needless to say, none of these books are on the bestseller list. I read somewhere that they are selling so poorly that the various campaigns are literally giving them away.
The challenge of anyone telling their own story or telling the story of someone else is what to include and what to omit. If you seem to include only virtues, it smacks of propaganda. If you seem to include only vices, it smacks of a smear campaign. Every biography faces the challenge of being balanced, showing that there is a bit of saint and sinner in each of us.
II. THE CHRONICLE OMISSIONS
It is for this reason that 1st and 2nd Chronicles have never been my favorite books in the Bible. Whoever put these books together seems to have tinkered with the story too much. As you may know, 1st and 2nd Chronicles goes over the same territory as 1st and 2nd Samuel and 1st and 2nd Kings. The thing about Chronicles is that David and Solomon receive the lion’s share of attention. David is the dominant character of 1 Chronicles, Solomon is the dominant character in 2nd Chronicles. But the biggest problem with how Chronicles tells the story of David and Solomon is that it gives a whitewashed version. In telling the story of David, there is no mention of his adultery with Bathsheba. There is no mention of his son Absalom’s revolt. There is no mention of any of the real ripples that rocked his reign.
The same can be said for Solomon.
The way the Chronicler describes Solomon, he is all wisdom, all wealth, all splendor, all glory. Did you notice how closely the Kings passage and the Chronicles passage sound when they are describing all of Solomon’s stables, and horses, and chariots? The list is the same:
12,000 horses imported from Egypt
silver as common in Jerusalem as stones
and cedars as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees.
But the minute 1st Kings begins to write about Solomon’s many wives and the corrupting influence they had on Solomon, and the minute 1st Kings begins to write about how disappointed and angry God became, the Chronicler falls silent. The Chronicler decides not to include this.
I don’t know about you, but that kind of thing bothers me.
It would be like writing a biography of Richard Nixon and leaving out Watergate. It would be like writing a biography of Adolph Hitler and spending little to no time on the Holocaust.
So I’m left asking, “Hey Chronicles, what are you doing? Why aren’t you telling the whole story?”
III. REASON FOR CHRONICLES
Before Peter Kladder passed away, he gave me a book. Here it is, The TANACH. It is a copy of the Jewish Old Testament. It has the Hebrew on one side and the English on the other. It is a beautiful translation. It is exactly like our Old Testament with 39 books but there is one difference. The order of the books is changed around somewhat. In the TANACH, the very last books are Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1st and 2nd Chronicles.
Now Ezra and Nehemiah are all about the exiles in Babylon returning to Jerusalem. It is all about these exiles rebuilding the Temple and rebuilding the city. What placing the books of Chronicles after Ezra and Nehemiah does is remind us who these books were written for. These books were written for the returned exiles. These books were written for Jews who were no longer a great power. These books were written for Jews who were constantly being ruled by one foreign power after another, Jews who themselves were asking big questions: Who are we as a people? Do the old promises still apply?
What does our future hold for us?
What does our hope look like?
1st and 2nd Chronicles were written to give shape to their hope.
Sure these books were written about the past, but they were written with an eye to the future. In other words, Chronicles tells the story of David and Solomon, but it tells the ideal story of David and Solomon. It tells the story of a strong and righteous David and a wise and wealthy Solomon because these were the very qualities that every Jew was looking for in their Messiah, their future King, the son of David who would restore Israel to its former glory. This is what the face of hope looked like for them.
IV. SURPRISE MESSIAH
No wonder Jesus caused so much bewilderment?
No wonder Jesus caused such anger.
His kingship didn’t look regal – it looked like servanthood.
His wisdom didn’t look wise – it looked like folly.
His wealth didn’t look like riches – it looked like poverty.
The face of hope looked so different from what they were expecting.
But when Jesus comes, he is the face of hope.
He is greater than David. He is wiser than Solomon.
In the Sermon on the Mount, it is no accident that Jesus lowers the image of Solomon somewhat by saying that not even Solomon, in all his splendor, was arrayed like one of these flowers.
Later Jesus mentions that the Queen of Sheba came a long way to hear Solomon. Then he adds, “But now one greater than Solomon is here.”
Jesus is greater than David and wiser than Solomon.
Jesus is our face of hope,
But his crown is of thorns,
his throne is a cross.
and his kingdom has no end.
It is his story – his birth, his death, his resurrection, his ascension – that becomes our story.
We are baptized into it.
In him, we die to our old self. In him, we rise to a new self.
V. JESUS – RE-WRITER OF HISTORY
What does that mean?
What does it mean that Jesus’ story becomes our story?
What does that actually mean?
One of the reasons biographies are so popular is that we all like a juicy story.
We all want to hear the story, the whole story.
It is why people flock to read Hilary Clinton’s memoir.
It is why people flock to read the memoirs of Princess Diana’s butler.
We want to hear it all.
But when it comes to our own story, we suddenly would rather be more reserved, more reticent, more quiet. We do not want to tell all.
This fall I read Paul Elie’s book, The Life You Save May be Your Own. It is a book about 4 Roman Catholic authors of the 20th century: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor. Of that list, Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day had already written their autobiographies. Merton’s is called The Seven Storey Mountain and Dorothy Day’s is called the Long Loneliness. Even though their autobiographies were very open, honest, and engaging, there were still things too painful and too shameful to mention.
Thomas Merton wrote an autobiography and tens of thousands of published pages, and yet he never once mentions that he fathered a child in England before becoming a Trappist monk.
Dorothy Day wrote an autobiography, five other books and 1,500 columns, and yet she never once mentions that she had an abortion before becoming a writer for The Catholic Worker and a leader of the Catholic Workers Movement.
Clearly these were memories too painful to tell.
What life doesn’t have things too painful to reveal to the world?
What life doesn’t have things we would rather keep secret, keep hidden?
When we read someone else’s story we want to know all – we want it to be like 1st and 2nd Kings.
When it comes to our own life, we’d much prefer it to be more like 1 and 2nd Chronicles.
So at the end of the day, how will our stories be told?
On the one hand, the Bible tells us, even warns, that there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed; Nothing concealed that will not be brought into the open (Luke 8:17). We are told that All secrets will be judged through Jesus Christ (Romans 2:16)
But this is also where our hope lies — that Jesus Christ is our king and our judge.
All our secrets will be judged through Jesus Christ.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the day, Jesus is our Ultimate Chronicler.
He knows what we do in the light of day and in the dark of night.
He knows our virtues and he also knows our vices, our secrets and our sins.
Where Satan is the Grand Accuser – the one who wants everything in the open, and every
juicy detail of our lives exposed –
Jesus is the gracious forgiver.
When our life is hidden in him, so are our sins.
When Jesus chronicles our life to his Father,
It will be our ideal life that he tells.
for we will be presented as holy, pure and spotless,
without blemish, and free from accusation (Colossians 1:22).
That is why Jesus is the face of our hope
For he is not only the author and perfecter of our faith.
He is also the author and perfecter of our life.
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