Hi First Presbyterian Church,
It’s time for our Mid-Week Meet-Up! I wanted to highlight two important upcoming events for your edification. Lent is coming and begins, as always, on Ash Wednesday, which is on March 5 this year. We will have our traditional service of imposing ashes that Wednesday at 7pm in our sanctuary. This year, you will also have the alternate option to receive the imposition of ashes that same day at 1:30pm in our chapel. Whichever service works best for you, I hope you will join us to mark the beginning of the Lenten season!
During Lent, you will also have the opportunity to get to know our new parish associate Rev. Dr. Ernest Krug during a special Bible study. Every Sunday at 5pm from March 2 through April 6, join Ernest as you journey through N.T. Wright’s book From Wilderness to Glory. Books will be available for you to use for this study. N.T. Wright has been the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and is a world-renown scholar of the New Testament. Come journey with Jesus during Lent and get to know Ernest along the way! Contact the church office (connect@pittsfordpres.org) if you’d like to sign up! It starts this Sunday, so sign up ASAP!
I’m going to sign off now… but for those of you who want to read some of my reflections on our 1 Kings readings from our one-year Bible-reading plan, read past my signature!
Peace to you,
Pastor Aaron
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In our readings today from 1 Kings 22, we are in the concluding part of the saga involving the prophet Elijah and Ahab, the King of Israel. Ahab is the eighth king of the northern Kingdom of Israel.
Do you remember back in 1 Kings 11 when Solomon, who was the successor to his father King David, died and the Kingdom of Israel was divided into two separate kingdoms? Solomon’s son Rehoboam succeeded his father, but Jeroboam (a rival to Solomon) won many of the people of Israel through clever politicking. As a result, Jeroboam was able to gain control of all the twelve tribes of Israel except the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. From this time, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin would become the southern Kingdom of Judah, and the other tribes would become the northern Kingdom of Israel. This is a significant moment on so many levels.
I want you to notice one thing about how this divide occurred. Jeroboam was actually given an opportunity by God to establish the Kingdom of Israel with God’s blessing. Look at what God says to Jeroboam in 1 Kings 11:38, “If you will listen to all that I command you, walk in my ways, and do what is right in my sight by keeping my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did, I will be with you, and will build you an enduring house, as I built for David, and I will give Israel to you.” God had offered to bless Jeroboam and all the northern tribes, if Jeroboam would simply worship and follow God. However, what we see is that Jeroboam did not worship or follow God. We read God saying to Jeroboam in 1 Kings 14:9, “You have done evil above all those who were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods, and cast images, provoking me to anger, and have thrust me behind your back.” In fact, we will eventually discover that there would be twenty kings of the Kingdom of Israel and not a single one of them worshiped or followed God. As a result, the Kingdom of Israel would eventually be conquered by the Assyrians and taken into captivity, vanishing from the Promised Land. “The people of Israel continued in all the sins that Jeroboam committed; they did not depart from them until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had foretold through all his servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day” (2 Kings 17:22-23).
It gets even more interesting. Do you recall the deep divide between Jews and Samaritans that we read about in the New Testament? They hated each other. In John 4:9, it says, “Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans.”
Well, in our readings from this past Saturday, we see the exact point at which this divide began. King Omri, who is described as one of the most evil and faithless kings of Israel, firmly establishes a separate capital city for the northern Kingdom of Israel and calls it Samaria. "Omri bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver; he fortified the hill, and called the city that he built, Samaria, after the name of Shemer, the owner of the hill” (1 Kings 16:24). Henceforth, these northern Israelites would identify as Samaritans. The southern tribes would eventually identify as Jews (which comes from the word “Judahite” or “Judean,” referring to the tribe of Judah). The Samaritans would eventually rewrite the Mosaic Law so that it read more favorably of them. This rewritten Law would be called the Samaritan Pentateuch, and we actually have historical records of this text that you can read today.
The waywardness and faithlessness of the Kingdom of Israel alienated them from their cousins in the Kingdom of Judah and separated them from being part of God’s saving covenant.
AND YET….
We see countless examples in the ministry of Jesus where he wanted his Jewish followers to understand that the salvation he came to bring was not just for Jews but also for Samaritans (the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus’ ministry to the Samaritan woman at the well, his healing of the Samaritan man with leprosy, etc.). And, in fact, the salvation offered through Jesus was not even just for Jews and Samaritans but for all people: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Through this thread that is woven throughout the whole Bible, we see that God expects us to trust and obey God (this is, in fact, what God said to King Jeroboam) and, yet, even when we are wayward and faithless, if we are willing to receive God’s mercy and grace, God is ready and willing and eager to extend it to us and receive us into the saving covenant through Jesus. God’s grace is indeed greater than all of our sin. Hallelujah!