“The King is Dead; Long Live the King!”

This sermon was delivered at the University Retirement Community Vespers Service on Sunday, August 19, 2012.  The sermon opener was inspired by a children's sermon by Rev. Richard Fairchild.

“The King is Dead; Long Live the King!”

Year B Proper 15, I Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14 and John 6:51-58

Today I want to tell you a sad kind of story.  Once upon

a time a very powerful man who ruled over many countries decided to create

the best people that anyone had ever seen.   They were to be the strongest,

the best looking, and the smartest people in the world.  So this man sent

his servant out all over his empire to find the strongest, best looking,

and most intelligent men and women that they find.  Then he gave orders for

a special home to be built for them and told them that they were to have

babies and that their babies would be highly honored.

So the men and women had babies and when their babies were born they gave

their babies to the Emperor.  He put all the babies in a special nursery

and he ordered that the best doctors and nurses and teachers look after

them.  They were fed the best food in the country - all the things that the

doctors said were good for babies, and they were read the best stories by

the teachers, and they were taught to believe the best things, and they

were kept as clean as clean could be.  They exercised every day, they had

the best toys in the country to play with, and they slept at least 10 hours

every night.  The only thing that these beautiful babies didn't have was

one or two special people to cuddle them and hug them when they felt lonely

or when they got hurt, or when they curled up to go to sleep.

Well it was very sad what happened.  While all the babies had everything

that anyone could ever want, and while they had the best doctors and

nurses, many of them died  while they were very young, and most of the

rest, when they grew up, were very unhappy and all their beauty, and all of

their strength, and all of their intelligence just faded away.

Yes - it was because the man who wanted to make the best people the world

had ever seen forgot the most important thing to give them - he forgot to

give them love.  Thankfully the story doesn't end there.  A few years after

the man died and his empire vanished away all the children who were left in

the special nursery were found and given to people who would love them.

These ones grew up to be happy and healthy - like you and me and everyone

else was grateful that the man who tried to make the best people ever - the

man who was named Hitler - would never be able to hurt anyone ever again. 

Hearing this story again reminds us that shock, awe, and fear are recurring themes in the human

experience.  As we read the newspaper or watch TV we are aware of stories like this one

making appearances on the global scene from many different venues.  They make their way into movies

and prime time programs, too.  Why?

Fear gives us pleasure.  That may be unpalatable to admit, but necessary.  The documented

cases of torture the world over by Amnesty International attest not only to the

universality of human depravity but to the universal pleasure of arousing fear.  Men and

women frighten and torture other men, women, children, animals and things as part of

their everyday life every hour of every day in every city and town in every part of the

globe.  Drill sergeants and teachers and prison guards and professional athletes and

managers and corporations and religious superiors and doctors and parents and teenagers

all attempt, sooner or later, to cow the opposition.  Can you imagine a family anywhere

in which structure has not been maintained or enforced at some point, somehow by its

most fearsome member?

Look at the movies we watch.  Horror and crime films are the most obvious examples.  We

like to be scared and like to see other people being scared.  Furthermore, we respect

somebody who exercises power by fear, whether it is the raised voice, the menacing look,

the glinting gun or the Karate chop.  We find few things more mesmerizing, tantalizing

or fascinating than the one who exercises masterful authority on the basis of just

plain fear.  In 'The Unforgiven', for instance, named as one of the twenty best films

ever, two portraits of fear are stood side by side.  Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman

are both ruthless killers.  Hackman wears the sheriff’s  badge of office but commands respect by

means of sheer fearsomeness: he is willing to be more brutal than anyone else in town.

Eastwood casts himself as a broken-down pig farmer, a former gunfighter who used to be

even more fearsome and even more brutal than  Hackman.  Now, of course, he is a single

dad who simply wants to ensure some kind of security for his two children.  All he has

to do is to murder two cowboys to do it.  We want to like this guy.  We want to believe

that he is the hero who has come to defend the honour of the town's feisty prostitutes.

But what it comes down to is this.  We are led to want to believe that the only way this

good man can accomplish his good goal is to indulge his brutal past and become even more

fearsome than his fearsome opponents.  "And if any of you (S.O.B.'s) try to take a shot

at me, I'll kill you.  And then I'll kill your wife and your children and all your

relatives and your friends, too!"  You tell ‘em, Clint! 

There are times when we need our wits about us when reading the Bible.  It is just not

enough to use the old Sunday School mentality, however ingrained it has become and no

matter how successfully we retain our childhood religious education.   Take the story of

Solomon, for instance.  It is not a nice little folk tale about how to be wise.   A mere two verses

after today’s reading ends, you can read the famous example of Solomon’s wisdom in the story of the

women whose quarrel the king proposed to settle by cutting a living baby in half.  I don’t even have to

read that story to you, because I know that it’s one that everyone remembers from their childhood.  

The writer of this book want us to believe in Solomon’s wisdom, but, in the final analysis even he could

not cover up the plain facts of history.  The plain fact is that Solomon was the child of that scandalous

liaison between King David and Uriah's wife Bathsheba.  Not a terribly auspicious beginning even if it

wasn’t Solomon's fault.  More to the point, Solomon was brought up in that hot-bed of oriental

intrigue and ostentation that was his father's court.  Not the most conducive environment

for the development of solid, moral character.  To make matters worse, he spent his

formative years under the thumb of his beautiful but conniving mother Bathsheba.  And

when Bathsheba wasn't telling him what career move to make, the prophet Nathan, who by

this time had become as devious and deceitful as the royal crowd he hung around with,

was instigating royal plots of his own to make sure Solomon - and only Solomon - ended

up in the Oval Office.

No sooner was the crown placed on his pampered little head than Solomon was settling

scores for his dear-departed dad.  They were called "blood feuds" in those days, the

thought being that if you didn't get even with an enemy before he died, a curse would

reign down on you and your family for generations.  David issued the orders to Solomon

on his death-bed, and the younger "Don" carried them out with brutal efficiency until

there was nobody left to give him a hard time, not even his older brother Adonijah.

And that was how... the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon the author tells

us.  That was how "the Lord God of Israel... granted one of" David's "offspring to sit"

on the throne of Israel.  Well, maybe. But my vote says that the good old human power

of "fearsomeness" had a lot more to do with it than "fear of the Lord."

Which brings us to this week's text, which really is a nice story about Solomon paying homage

to  God at one of the many cultic shrines in Israel, high up in the mountains.  Despite the fact that

this was where most of the pagan cults did their business,  Solomon’s plea sounds very pious-not like

asking for three wishes from the genie.  Instead  he asks for one:

    "... Give to your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people,

    able to discern between good and evil . . ."

It pleased the Lord that Solomon had  asked this, the storyteller tells us.  Like being conned into wanting

to believe that the retired gunslinger is not the brutal killer he used to be, we are led to believe that

Solomon has suddenly had a change of heart, that he now wants to become a wise (translate that

"peaceful and compassionate" monarch) who really cares about people.  Well, let's see.

In truth, the facts about Solomon’s reign, if we were to look at all of them, would be shocking and not

a little frightening.  In addition to killing his father’s enemies, his brothers, he had relationships with

hundreds of foreign wives.  His building programs made him the most productive king in all of the

region, but he raised taxes to a crushing level and conscripted thousands of his subjects into forced

labor.  It seems he departed from the wisdom given him by God.

It seems he had even forgotten the Wisdom this  Proverb attributed to him urges: 

A READING FROM PROVERBS 9:1-6

   (NIV)  Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn out its seven pillars.

   {2} She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine; she has also set her

   table. {3} She has sent out her maids, and she calls from the highest

   point of the city. {4} "Let all who are simple come in here!" she says

   to those who lack judgment. {5} "Come, eat my food and drink the wine I

   have mixed. {6} Leave your simple ways and you will live; walk in the

   way of understanding.

The kingdom of Israel rose, fell, rose again, and divided, suffered and faltered under 35 more

rulers before Jesus would arrive to take his place in the succession of the kings.  Roughly a millennium

elapsed from the first glorious days of King David.  But such a king as Israel never imagined!

On that day in the countryside around Galilee, days after the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus  assures his

People of something as shocking, awe-inspiring, and fearsome as any of the most incredible things

that  his forebears had decreed.  Jesus is the very bread and the very wine it takes to give them

life.   It doesn’t matter how many kings have passed on before. 

Jesus does not demand forced labor, burnt offerings, or giving the government our children.  He doesn’t

threaten us with the gunslinger’s retribution.  He offers us the table which we approach and lays himself

upon it for the sustainment of our lives.  He does this without fear and to allay our fears.  He knows the

power of love for it is his nature, his very being.

The love that Jesus brings us along with the bread is the life.  It is the banishment of fear and the

assurance of a healed future, no matter what has gone before.