"How a Kingdom Forgets" (August 16, 2026 Sermon)
/How A Kingdom Forgets
2 Kings 17:1-23
In the twelfth year of King Ahaz of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel; he reigned nine years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, yet not like the kings of Israel who were before him. King Shalmaneser of Assyria came up against him; Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to King So of Egypt and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; therefore the king of Assyria confined him and imprisoned him.
Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the people of Israel and in the customs that the kings of Israel had introduced. The people of Israel did things that were not right against the Lord their God. They built for themselves high places at all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city; they set up for themselves pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree; there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the Lord had carried away before them. They did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger; they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, “You shall not do this.” Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the law that I commanded your ancestors and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.” They would not listen but were stubborn, as their ancestors had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he had made with their ancestors and the warnings that he had given them. They went after false idols and became false; they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do as they did. They rejected all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves cast images of two calves; they made a sacred pole, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. They made their sons and their daughters pass through fire, used divination and augury, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight; none was left but the tribe of Judah alone.
Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. The Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel; he punished them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had banished them from his presence.
When he had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king. Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made them commit great sin. 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.
Have you ever had a moment when everything seems to fall apart, and you look back to pinpoint the exact moment it happened? My guess is that you know what that feeling is. And today, in the passage Catherine read for us — a quite lengthy, difficult, and harsh passage, not a whole lot of grace in it — I imagine the Israelites probably felt pretty similar.
A Kingdom Unravels
This is the low point in the entire span of 1st and 2nd Kings we've been journeying through over the past few months. This is the moment in 722 BCE when the nation of Israel fell to the Assyrians. You may remember that the kingdom had been split after Solomon's reign. If we rewind several hundred more years, this all began in the time of Joshua and Judges, when the Israelites came to God and said, "God, all these nations around us have kings. We want one of those for ourselves." And God said to them, "No, you don't." And they said, "No, we really, really do." And God said, "No, you really, really don't. It's going to be more trouble than you realize." And the Israelites said, "No, we want a king." And finally God said, "Okay, have it your way." And that's how we started with those first three big kings we walked through — Saul, then David, and finally Solomon. There were high points and low points along that whole journey. But then, you may remember, Solomon started worrying a little too much about national glory and his own reputation, and a little too little about whether people could eat or were fed or housed. And the people somewhat rebelled — and that's really what caused the split between the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel.
After Solomon's time ends, we get a slew of kings — some of whose reigns lasted only a couple of years — that I honestly cannot keep track of. And if you've read 2 Kings, it's hard to keep track of them, and that might be exactly the point the author of 2 Kings is trying to make: that there was no political stability at all, and that things kept getting worse and worse and worse. And to make matters worse, the Assyrians were starting to encroach on Israel's sovereignty. They wanted to control the Mediterranean, so to try to keep them at bay, Israel was paying tribute to Assyria. But we all know that only lasts for so long. Long story short: in 725 BCE, the Assyrians laid siege to Samaria, the capital of the nation of Israel, and Israel fell three years later, in 722. The passage Catherine read for us today is a very long theological indictment explaining why this happened.
And if I were to summarize what that long passage says, it's this: Israel fell because of their unfaithfulness to God. And if there's one thing I want you to remember from today's sermon, it's that this was not a sudden occurrence. That really lengthy passage Catherine read for us today was a way — it sounds harsh, but it is harsh — for God to show us the receipts, saying, "Here are the multiple times, over hundreds of years, that I sent prophets to remind you that you belong to the God who calls you to neighborliness." There were all these times, over hundreds and hundreds of years, when there was no single monumental mistake — just years and years and years in which the Israelites forgot that they belonged to God. And they forgot that they belonged to each other. And they forgot that the most important thing was not national glory, but how they treated the most vulnerable among them.
Grace Held for Later
I would love for there to be a bit of grace at the end of this passage. I would love to send us all off with a hopeful word. But unfortunately, that's not in today's passage. So I'm hoping we can sit in the discomfort for a moment. There will be grace — there will be a silver lining we'll come to in the next two weeks as we wrap up our sermon series on 2 Kings. But for now, I want us to rest in this: if it's true that this moment of calamity, trauma, and disaster came after hundreds of years of missed opportunities to course-correct, maybe we can find some comfort in the fact that our worship — the way we order our life together — is likewise a practice of long-term spiritual formation, meant to remind us, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, even for many of us, of who we are and whose we are.
The good news of this passage, if there is any, is that things didn't go wrong because of one bad Sunday, and likewise, things cannot be turned around by one good Sunday. And yet you and I get together, and week after week we remind ourselves — and I am reminded too, as a pastor — that we are called, first and foremost, to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. So though today's story is quite dismal, quite depressing, and quite harsh, it is not the end of the Israelites' story, and thanks be to God, it is not the end of our story either. For you and I will get together this week, and guess what we're going to do next week? We're going to get back together. We're going to worship the week after that, and we're going to remind ourselves what it means to be neighborly toward one another in a culture that doesn't seem to be prioritizing that right now the way it should.
How Worship Reforms Us
So I wanted to lift up, in closing, just a few examples of how worship forms us over the long term and changes us as disciples.
The first thing that came to mind was the passing of the peace. As an introvert, I must admit it’s never been my favorite part of a Reformed worship service. Yet there are days when I think it might just be the most important part of the entire Sunday morning. Over 38 years on this earth, I've been passing the peace with a lot of people I love. I've also been passing the peace with a lot of people who drive me crazy. And guess what — I'm sure other people have passed the peace with me and thought the same thing about me, that I've driven them crazy too.
Every week, we share the peace of Christ with one another across our divisions and differences. We may think it's a small thing, but trust me — over years and decades, it's not. In fact, do we have any Chicago White Sox fans here in the congregation? I bring this up because I saw it at a Chicago White Sox game last week. They passed the peace at the ballgame. Did y'all know this? Did y'all see this? They had “Pope Night” at the White Sox game because the current Pope, Leo, is a Chicago native. So everybody wore Pope hats, and then the Bishop of Chicago made a guest appearance and invited the 45,000 people in that stadium to pass the peace with one another. And that's what they did. Google it when you get home — "White Sox passing the peace" — and you'll see 45,000 people do exactly what you and I did a few minutes ago. I thought it was wonderfully beautiful.
And all the other things we do in worship make a difference, too. The songs we sing form us. The confessions we make — starting every week by admitting how we've fallen short and that God has not given up on us — make a difference. Our benediction response today, when we sing "Guide My Feet," acknowledges that this race of faith is a marathon, not a sprint. Every week we come here and ask God to guide our feet, knowing we're not going to bat a thousand — if I can stay with the baseball metaphor for a second. But we come week after week after week to remind ourselves who we are and whose we are.
So I want you to remember that the title of this sermon is "How a Kingdom Forgets." If that's true, I'd also remind us that when we gather for worship every week, we might call that "How a Church Remembers."
In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, God’s beloved children, say: Amen.