Note: I usually post an initial sketch on Monday or Tuesday
of each week; then, I come back with a revised piece on Fridays. I hope my
thoughts nourish your thoughts, that something here helps you think in the
right direction for the congregation you serve. Cheers!
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Do you know where you come from? Can you imagine forgetting
where you had come from? Can you imagine finding a book that tells you who you
are and how to live? In a sense, the reading this week is an ‘everyman’
story—it tells us about how anyone can lose touch with the past, reconnect, and
move forward.
I. Josiah
Josiah decides—for some undeclared reason—to have the
Temple repaired. He orders stone workers and carpenters to renovate. In the
process of the renovations, a book is found…or, more likely, a scroll— ‘the
Book of the Law.’ The priests bring the book, and when Josiah hears what the
book says, he is convicted…and determines that he needs to lead Judah in a new
direction.
II. Grandmother’s Stories
I guess I was a young teenager when I first heard the
stories. My parents were missionaries, so we spent much our lives outside the
US—far away from our family, from aunts, uncles, and grandparents. This was a
time long before cell phones and computers. Letters would often take weeks. As
a result, I didn’t really know my grandparents that well, but one summer on
furlough in the US, I got to spend some weeks with my Grandmother Herrin—and I
was forever changed.
Perhaps I had never had a reason to ask those sorts of
questions, so when the answers came, my identity was shaped like never before.
One afternoon, I began to ask Grandmother about her childhood, growing up in
the mountains of north Georgia. Soon, she began to tell me the story of our
family’s migration…beginning back in the 1740’s in Scotland. The story took us
from Scotland to Pennsylvania down to North Carolina and finally into Georgia.
Suddenly, I had a past, a history, an identity! I went from
being simply ‘Jon Herrin’ to being ‘one of the Herrins’—one in a long line of
people who had traveled and lived through two-and-a-half centuries. My interest
grew, and I went on compile the family history by pulling together all of the
written pieces and oral pieces. An afternoon with my grandmother changed everything.
III. The Book of the Law
We have a sense that something similar to my family epiphany
occurred that afternoon when Josiah heard the reading of Torah—the stories of
Creation, the Fall, the call of Abraham, the sojourn in Egypt, and the journey
of the people with Moses back to the land of Abraham. When the Book of the Law
was found and read to the young king, he suddenly found his identity and that
of his entire people. He also found a code to live by, a standard—a bar set a
bit higher than he be handed by his family. In an instant, the king gained an
understanding of who he was and how he was to live…and he realized he had not
been living the life he should have been. He realized that he had ignorantly
been living ‘other.’ Not only he, but he and his people had not been living as
God had called them to live.
Josiah calls his people together—everyone—and shares with
them what has been discovered, and it changes the way the people see
themselves, understand themselves.
At first, we wonder how this could have happened—how could
someone misplace ‘the Book of the Law’? But, when we realize that Josiah is
living some 350-400 years after the construction of the Temple, when we think
about all that has transpired with the division of the kingdom and the parade
of different kings—some, or many, corrupt—before him, we realize that even
things as precious as this book could have been lost, misplaced, laid aside.
IV. Again…for the First Time.
Of course, the book is not really new for the people of
Judah—it has been around since the days of leaving Egypt and crossing the
wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. This book had once guided Moses,
David, and Solomon. But it’s new for this generation.
I recall when I was a youngster that Kellogg’s aired a
commercial for their Corn Flakes cereal that urged viewers to “try them
again…for the first time.” Well, the fact that I recall the silly commercial
some forty years later certainly speaks to the effectiveness of the advertising
program. And, I have often applied the concept to my own life—getting back to
things important but long forgotten. Judah is called back to ‘the Book of the
Law’…something they as a nation, as a people, were hearing again, for the first
time.
V. Bringing it All Together
In our own age of information, we are easily side-tracked
by all of the materials available to us. Our phones and devices—though they
often contain a Bible app—too often take us to other places and that Bible app
gets lost in a sense. Too often we Christians have been enticed to read all of
the many books written by other Christians about how to live better, how to be
disciples, how to think…and we have forgotten to read ‘the Book’ itself.
In Jesus’ time, the Sadducees—some of the supposedly very committed
students of ‘the Book of the Law’—were reprimanded by Jesus because “you do not
know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). If some of the
very experts in these things didn’t know the Scriptures, isn’t it possible we
might be missing something as well?
Today’s passage urges us to return to the Book, to reclaim
the Book, to re-read the Book. We may have copies lying about the
house…unopened. Why not commit this day to reading a Psalm each day, or a
chapter of Proverbs each evening? If you have heard the story of Jesus but have
never read his story, perhaps reading a chapter a day from the Gospel
of Mark or Matthew is where to begin.
We may not shred our clothes like Josiah—after all, we’re
not reading only ‘the Book of the Law’—Torah; we’re reading what has become a
book of grace that includes the old and the new, the story of Israel and the
story of the Church. We may discover that we have not been living into our true
identity as children of God. We may discover that we have neglected important
parts of this life of faith. We may realize that we, too, ‘do not know the
Scriptures or the power of God.’ If nothing else, we may suddenly find our
real identity as a part of God’s people…we may find our place in the Story…the
story of God’s people that we’ve been following since September. If even that
happens, our lives will be forever changed.
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