Solomon became the son-in-law of Pharaoh, Egypt’s king, when he married Pharaoh’s daughter. He brought her to David’s City until he finished building his royal palace, the Lord’s temple, and the wall around Jerusalem. 2 Unfortunately, the people were sacrificing at the shrines because a temple hadn’t yet been built for the Lord’s name in those days. 3 Now Solomon loved the Lord by walking in the laws of his father David, with the exception that he also sacrificed and burned incense at the shrines.
4 The king went to the great shrine at Gibeon in order to sacrifice there. He used to offer a thousand entirely burned offerings on that altar. 5 The Lord appeared to Solomon at Gibeon in a dream at night. God said, “Ask whatever you wish, and I’ll give it to you.”
6 Solomon responded, “You showed so much kindness to your servant my father David when he walked before you in truth, righteousness, and with a heart true to you. You’ve kept this great loyalty and kindness for him and have now given him a son to sit on his throne. 7 And now, Lord my God, you have made me, your servant, king in my father David’s place. But I’m young and inexperienced. I know next to nothing. 8 But I’m here, your servant, in the middle of the people you have chosen, a large population that can’t be numbered or counted due to its vast size. 9 Please give your servant a discerning mind in order to govern your people and to distinguish good from evil, because no one is able to govern this important people of yours without your help.”
10 It pleased the Lord that Solomon had made this request. 11 God said to him, “Because you have asked for this instead of requesting long life, wealth, or victory over your enemies—asking for discernment so as to acquire good judgment— 12 I will now do just what you said. Look, I hereby give you a wise and understanding mind. There has been no one like you before now, nor will there be anyone like you afterward. 13 I now also give you what you didn’t ask for: wealth and fame. There won’t be a king like you as long as you live. 14 And if you walk in my ways and obey my laws and commands, just as your father David did, then I will give you a very long life.”
15 Solomon awoke and realized it was a dream. He went to Jerusalem and stood before the chest containing the Lord’s covenant. Then he offered entirely burned offerings and well-being sacrifices, and held a celebration for all his servants. (Common English Bible)
“The Dreaming Architect:
Solomon, David and Bathsheba’s Son, King of Israel,” Week One
Where
were you on May 18, 1980?
I
couldn’t tell you—I was still negative-six or so years old.
But
I bet at least some of you probably do know. Because that’s the day when our
great big majestic neighbor to the northeast, Mt. St. Helens, famously erupted.
Killing over fifty people and inflicting more than one billion dollars in
damage, it was a watershed event for a nation that had not seen this sort of
volcanic activity in sixty-five years and has not seen it since.
Many
among the cast of characters who died were larger-than-life heroes: Robert
Landsburg, a photojournalist covering the changes in the volcano, was on the
mountain itself that morning and when he saw the ash cloud, he took as many
photographs as he could, put the film back into his backpack, and then, knowing
that he had been given a death sentence by the same fate and chance that
happens to the swift and strong alike, laid his body down atop his backpack in
the hopes of protecting its contents.
He
died, but his film survived, was developed, and became evidence for geologists
to study the eruption patterns of volcanoes for future such explosions.
One
such geologist would have been David Johnston, a thirty-year-old volcanologist
who was also just several miles from the summit when the explosion triggered a
series of pyroclastic flows of hot gas and rock traveling at near-supersonic
speeds. At such pace, it took only seconds for those flows to reach Johnston,
giving him just enough time to radio out that the explosion had indeed begun
before he was snuffed out…all in the matter of a minute.
The
writer Joan Didion, in the wake of the death of her husband John, began her
memoir The Year of Magical Thinking
with these words: Life happens fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down
to dinner, and life as you know it ends.
Life
changes in the instant. If only for this simple yet profoundly hard truth we
often fantasize about being able to control the warp and weft of time’s
movement—we create movies, television shows, and science fiction novels about
time travel, we read about wormholes and the theory of relativity.
Yet
even in Scripture, there is a moment when time itself slowed, at a place called
Gibeon, where in the book of Joshua, God hangs the sun in the sky in order to
give the Israelites more time to defeat the Amorites. And now, several books
and a few hundred years removed from the events of Joshua, Gibeon once again
makes an appearance where time itself seems to slow in in the momentous,
life-changing dream of a young king, so that he and God might have the first of
what will become many conversations between the two.
This
is a new sermon series for a new season in the church—spring is moving into
summer, and just like a couple of years ago in 2014, when, if you’ll remember,
we spent most of the summer reading verse-by-verse through the beginning of
Acts, we’ll once again take on one big narrative in Scripture.
Only
this time, that narrative will be the life and reign of King Solomon, a
fascinating figure in Israelite history who has probably been somewhat
mythologized and made into a King Arthur-esque national legend over the years, but
who nonetheless represents an epoch centered around a singular truth that was
not achieved again for hundreds of years, and then again for thousands: ruling
over Israel as a unified and independent kingdom.
Believe
it or not, a unified and independent Israel is a rarity in history. After
Solomon, an independent and unified Israel would only really exist twice:
during the short reign of the Maccabees (of whom you have probably heard via
the Hanukkah story), and during present history since 1946.
So
Solomon’s reign—and his father David’s before him—is unique. How Solomon is
remembered matters because of it. And we’ll get a chance to read this dreaming
architect’s story from his building of the original temple in Jerusalem to his
eventual downfall and even more, beginning today, with the story of how Solomon
comes by his divinely-bestowed wisdom for which he is eternally famous.
Solomon
became king not by divine right, though—even though he was apparently favored
by God, as evinced by this story of God appearing to him in a dream and saying,
“Whatever you wish, I shall give to you” like he’s a magic genie with a lamp,
smurf-like blue skin, and a Robin Williams accent.
No,
Solomon had to take the throne at the tip of the sword, holding off the designs
for power by his rival and half-brother, Adonijah, whom Solomon eventually has
summarily executed by Benaiah, Solomon’s chief bodyguard. Adonijah’s primary
supporter, David’s army commander Joab, meets a similar fate (and,
scandalously, Joab was killed while actively seeking sanctuary before the Ark
of the Covenant), and another supporter, the priest Abiathar, is sent into
permanent exile.
So
basically, Solomon’s reign begins less gloriously and divinely, and more Game
of Thrones-y and coup d’etat-y (yes, those are words, no, don’t look them up).
Yet
Solomon, 1 Kings says, still loved the Lord, walked in the Lord’s ways, and
made sacrifices to the Lord. And when God does appear to Solomon in a dream,
you can imagine the length at which this conversation between God and Solomon
stretches out. Even though biologically, REM sleep (the time we spend dreaming)
may only take place for several minutes at a time, our dreams often seem as
though they stretch on and on—as though time itself has stood still for our
minds to engage and indulge in that which our subconscious has placed before
us.
It
is so very appropriate, then, that this dream of Solomon’s does indeed take
place at Gibeon, where God made time stand still to give His people more time
to defeat their enemies. Not because we should see that as a particularly good
thing today, no, in our day and age we rightly are repelled by gratuitous
bloodshed.
But
rather, it is the providence of God that is what Solomon can take away from
this latest divine encounter at Gibeon. Like his father David, Solomon is a
profoundly flawed, murderous individual. Yet somehow, he has found favor with
God, and that occasion of finding favor is enough for Solomon to reach for his
more virtuous side, his more humble side, and he remembers just how little he
truly knows, how much more he has yet to learn, and just how much that wisdom
which he might stand to learn might help him discharge his duties as king of
Israel.
Time
may have stood still in Solomon’s dream, but Solomon has no such static designs
for himself.
He
will go on to build the Jerusalem Temple, establish diplomatic alliances and
relationships, and expand trade, but to do all of those things, he needs the
wisdom and foresight for which he is famous—Solomon is, after all,
traditionally held as the writer not only of the Song which bears his name in
the Hebrew Bible, but also the author of Ecclesiastes and much of Proverbs as
well.
Solomon
knows what he needs to be an effective king. He also knows that, at present, he
lacks it. He is humble enough to recognize that shortcoming and ask God for help
in remedying it.
Can
we really say that we are ourselves so humble before God and each other today?
Can we truly be that honest about our foibles and our flaws, our inabilities
and inhibitions? Can we be more like the tax collector of Jesus's parable in Luke, who stands in the corner and humbly looks down when he prays, rather than the Pharisee who stands in the very center of the sanctuary, using his prayer to brag on how just gosh-darn awesome he is?
I
am not so sure we can anymore, not when we—and by we, I mean the church in
general, including us—tend to make God in our image rather than the other way
around, so that God is an idealized version of ourselves, replete with the
exact same thoughts, views, opinions…and shortcomings.
Solomon,
then, who may be politically savvy and street-smart (recall again just how
brutally ruthless he was in consolidating his power), is not yet wise. Were his
God simply a holier version of Solomon, that God might well have no such deep
wisdom to give.
But
God does. Because Solomon, for all his faults—and there will be many—does not
simply treat God as an optimized extension of himself. Solomon comes to God not
as creator, but as the created, the creation.
Our
faith, then, like Solomon’s is about coming to God not as a creator of God and
God’s image, but coming to God as God’s creation, created in God’s image,
asking God for help in our shortcomings and aid in our mistakes.
On
some days, on truly dramatic days, like that morning in May of 1980 when Mount
St. Helens exploded, we are in even more dire need of God’s help than usual.
But we are always in need of it.
I
cannot promise you that the answer will always be like God’s answer to Solomon…in
fact, considering that God’s answer to Solomon includes the giving of wealth
and fame, the answer to us probably shouldn’t be the same answer God gave to
Solomon.
But
the God who remains faithful to Solomon in spite of Solomon’s many
transgressions that will pile up over the course of this sermon series—just as
God was faithful to Solomon’s father David despite David’s own varied and
severe sins—that God who was faithful then remains faithful now.
Faithful
to you who believe. You who also have faith. You who yearn to do good in God’s
name.
And
may that faith, like the sun in the sky at Gibeon, be forever and truly
timeless.
Thanks
be to God. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview,
Washington
May
29, 2016
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