"The Voices We Heed" (June 14, 2026 Sermon)

The Voices We Heed

Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing·June 14, 2026·Guilford Park Presbyterian Church

3rd Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)

1 Kings 12:1-17

Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam remained in Egypt. And they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, “Your father made our yoke heavy. Now, therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.” He said to them, “Go away for three days, then come again to me.” So the people went away.

Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, “How do you advise me to answer this people?” They answered him, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.” But he disregarded the advice that the older men gave him and consulted with the young men who had grown up with him and now attended him. He said to them, “What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke that your father put on us’?” The young men who had grown up with him said to him, “Thus you should say to this people who spoke to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us’; thus you should say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins. Now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’ ”

So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king had said, “Come to me again the third day.” The king answered the people harshly. He disregarded the advice that the older men had given him and spoke to them according to the advice of the young men, “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” So the king did not listen to the people because it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord to fulfill his word that the Lord had spoken by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat.

When all Israel saw that the king would not listen to them, the people answered the king,

“What share do we have in David?    We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.
To your tents, O Israel!    Look now to your own house, O David.”

So Israel went away to their tents. But Rehoboam reigned over the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah.

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Last week, we gathered with Solomon and the Israelites as he stretched his arms out to heaven and dedicated the glorious, newly constructed Temple to God’s glory. It had been years in the making. And in that moment, the Israelites celebrated not only this sacred space, but also the credentials it gave them on the geo-political stage. Just two generations prior, Israel was largely a nation of hill-country farmers. But this Temple put them on the map. It established their reputation. And that moment, when Solomon both basked in the glory of his and their accomplishment, was the apex of his reign. Unfortunately, everything pretty much went downhill after that.

To make a long story short, Solomon tasted glory and, as do almost everyone in his position, decided he wanted more. Once someone tastes that sort of power, they rarely find their appetite satiated. Solomon hungered for gold; lots of it. He began to cover everything in gold and seized every opportunity to establish himself and, almost as an afterthought, the Israelites as the golden kingdom of opulence, wealth, and power that everyone else needs to submit to. Famously, in the chapters between last week’s passage and this week’s passage, the Queen of Sheba paid a royal visit to Solomon to witness firsthand his golden empire and his storied wisdom. It would seem, however, that that “listening heart” (or lev shomeya) that God granted him back in chapter three began to listen to a voice other than the God who granted it to him in the first place. Instead, Solomon began to listen to the god of gold rather than the God of neighborliness.

The irony is this: everything Solomon did to increase Israel’s wealth and prosperity was perhaps done with good intentions. It was all done in the name of law and order, national strength and prosperity, success and power. However, he forgot the Torah’s mandate of neighborliness. Or, to put it another way in modern vernacular: a booming stock market doesn’t necessarily mean that the hungry are being fed, the naked are being clothed, and the homeless are being housed.

Instead, Solomon began to care more about his power than the people’s well-being. We can, of course, look at history and find no shortage of political leaders who have fallen into this trap. More than two dozen years ago, Walter Brueggemann said the following about Solomon’s folly: “It is odd and noteworthy that the steps taken toward security produce more anxiety. The provisions for happiness produce more tension.” In other words, Solomon’s efforts to make Israel “great” only led to a widening economic gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” After all, these building projects relied on forced labor and could only be funded by exorbitant taxes that disproportionately burdened the poor in his kingdom. And it’s only a matter of time before those chickens come home to roost.

Therefore, Solomon died a failed king. Mostly because by the time he had died, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and Solomon made the choice to abandon his faithfulness to God’s Torah to follow the pagan religions of his numerous spouses and concubines, most of which were undoubtedly affairs of political alliances and geo-political negotiations. But, most of all, the people had had it. By the time Solomon had died, the people were close to mutiny, fed up with the burden of paying for all of Solomon’s building projects.

Solomon’s Son Inherits

And so it happened that the crown was passed on to Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. However, trouble began to stir before his reign had barely gotten off the ground. The Israelites in the northern part of the kingdom complained to him that Solomon’s reign had been oppressive to their economic security. They essentially asked Rehoboam to turn from his father’s ways and to lighten both the requirements of forced labor for his father’s building projects and their responsibility to fund them with their taxes.

Rehoboam takes their complaint to two groups of advisors before deciding his response. First, he goes to the “old guard,” the advisors who have been around a long time and remember the time before his father became drunk with power and wealth. They advise him to ease the burden and lighten the yoke for his new constituents. “Listen, Rehoboam,” they say, “your father flew a little too close to the sun. He bit off more than he could chew, and you have an opportunity to adopt a more conciliatory posture and return the focus to the well-being of your people over national glory or personal advancement.” Rehoboam mulls it over but remains unconvinced.

Next, he goes to another group of advisers, which the Bible only describes as “younger men.” Brueggemann suggests that these are naive advisors, young enough to have known nothing but the opulence of Solomon’s reign, who tell Rehoboam exactly what he wants to hear. “Don’t listen to those wimps in the northern lands,” they tell him arrogantly. “Now isn’t the time to let up; instead, it’s time to grab the bull by the horns and take this to the next level.” In fact, they urge the young king to respond by telling the northern tribes the following taunt: “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins.” Now, I will leave you all to extrapolate for yourselves what that particular insult is insinuating. Their entitlement and privilege are music to Rehoboam’s ears.

And so, Rehoboam decides to disregard the people’s discontent. And he does so to his own detriment. In the year 922 BCE, the northern tribes revolt and follow one of his father’s old advisors, Jeroboam, and the kingdom splits. The wonder and the glory of Solomon’s temple are now stained by a kingdom divided. Rehoboam continues his reign in the southern tribes of Judah, and Jeroboam begins his reign as king of the northern tribes of Israel. For the remainder of our time in 1 and 2 Kings, we’ll journey through the divided kingdom until Israel (the northern kingdom) falls to the Assyrians around 722 BCE and Judah (the southern kingdom) falls to the Babylonians around 587 BCE.

Wisdom in Rehoboam’s Folly

Now, I realize this has been a lot of history, and such is unavoidable in the Books of First and Second Kings. But I want to focus on the following because I believe that there’s wisdom to be gleaned from Rehoboam’s folly. I will make the case that Rehoboam did, in fact, inherit his father’s lev shomeya, his “listening heart.” But I believe he learned the hard way what many of us are learning today: that a “listening heart” isn’t a proper moral compass unless we make the intentional choice to listen to voices that help us grow, that challenge us, and give us different perspectives.

I remember back in college reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. In it, she chronicles how Lincoln cleverly filled his cabinet with his former political rivals who differed with him greatly on a variety of political issues. At a time when the country was fractured by civil war and fighting over the issue of slavery, Abraham Lincoln did the very opposite of what Rehoboam did in today’s passage. Rehoboam surrounded himself with nothing but “yes men,” advisors who appeased his desire to continue his father Solomon's vanity projects. Lincoln, by contrast, surrounded himself with people who disagreed with him. And he worked tirelessly to reconcile conflicting factions to bring the war to an end and, along with it, the institution of slavery. Was it messy work? Absolutely. Did it work 100% of the time? Of course not. But Lincoln knew what Rehoboam learned the hard way: that a political leader who listens only to that which he wants to hear is no leader at all.

We Are Leaders Nevertheless

Now, few among us will ever be the president of a country or the king of a nation. But we are leaders nevertheless. We are leaders in our church, in our families and circles of friends, and in our workplaces, non-profits, and boards. We lead simply by being representatives of Christ on earth whenever we step beyond the walls of this sanctuary. And I believe we are stronger when we listen to a multitude of voices and, together, discern which of those voices is leading us in a faithful direction. Because, let us be clear, not all voices are of God. There are voices telling us to turn against one another, to treat our neighbors with suspicion and contempt, and to give in to selfish individualism. But just because we listen to all voices does not mean we heed them all.

So this week, I invite your “listening heart,” your lev shomeya, to be intentional about naming the voices that you listen to and ask yourself the following questions. Who am I listening to? Who am I not listening to? What voices have been pushed to the side?

I’ll close with this observation. In a few short weeks, we will observe the 250th anniversary of the United States. For many of us, this will be a time of celebration. And I want y’all to hear me when I tell you that we don’t have to choose between being Christian and being patriotic. However, part of being patriotic Christians is having honest conversations about our nation’s lev shomeya, its listening heart. Who has this nation’s heart listened to? And who has this nation’s heart dismissed, disparaged, and dehumanized over its 250-year history? As we study this book of the Bible that chronicles the rise and fall of Israel's political regimes, we face the reality that all kingdoms rise and fall eventually, but only God’s faithfulness remains. And you and I can be thankful for the parts of our country that are good and just and moral, while also attuning our lev shomeyas to the voices of those for whom that promise of “liberty and justice for all” has not come to fruition.

Tuning Our Listening Hearts

And so, we close this sermon together by tuning our listening hearts, and our singing voices, to our next hymn, “O God of Every Nation.” I particularly want to draw our attention to the prayer of the second stanza that we will sing together:

From search of wealth and power and scorn of truth and right,
from trust in bombs that shower destruction through the night,
from pride of race and station and blindness to your way,
deliver every nation, eternal God, we pray.

Let us sing…

[sing “O God of Every Nation”]

In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, God’s children, say: Amen.

"Can God Really Dwell on Earth" (June 7, 2026 Sermon)

Can God Really Dwell on Earth?

Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing·June 7, 2026·Guilford Park Presbyterian Church

2nd Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)

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1 Kings 8:22–30

Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly of Israel and spread out his hands to heaven. He said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love with your servants who walk before you with all their heart, the covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand. Therefore, O Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant my father David that which you promised him, saying, ‘There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children look to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me.’ Therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed that you promised to your servant my father David.

“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! Regard your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; hear and forgive.

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You all get a little bit of an unscripted sermon this morning, because it’s been one of those weeks. So I’ll keep my comments brief.

I am grateful this morning for the anthem that Jordan and Abigail just lifted up for us, because it is an incredible segue into the text before us — specifically the line they just sang: the heavens are your tabernacle. The heavens are your tabernacle. “God of glory beyond our galaxy” is a wonderful way into this story, in which Solomon dedicates the temple that had been years and years in the making since the beginning of his reign.

So, friends, let us pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Yes, indeed, the heavens are God’s tabernacle. But most of us don’t have the ability to go up into the heavens, so we make places like this one, where we can come and encounter God. And I want to begin by saying that this is not a bad thing.

The Holiness of Beautiful Spaces

I have had the privilege of worshiping in some of the world’s most fantastic and beautiful worship spaces. On Tricia’s and my honeymoon, we went to Rome, and I stood in St. Peter’s Basilica. How many of you have been to St. Peter’s? It is hard to imagine — hard even to explain — just how big and beautiful that space is, with St. Peter’s Square reaching out its arms to embrace the world, as Jesus would have us do. Back in college, I traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, and stood in the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. The Hagia Sophia is so grand that you can look up and literally watch birds soaring near the top. I’ve worshiped at Washington National Cathedral. I’ve been blessed to officiate two weddings this year at Duke Chapel — even though I hate Duke, it is a beautiful space. And Jasmine and Joshua, as many of you know, were married at Riverside Church in Manhattan. These are beautiful spaces.

And of course, I want to include our own beautiful space here. It may be humble in size, but it is no less beautiful, and it means so much to all of us, for good reason. This sanctuary was one of the reasons I chose to be your pastor. It was very low on the list — because I came here for the people — but the people of this church have gathered in this space since the late 1950s. For decades, this has been a beautiful place where we have gathered: to celebrate weddings and baptisms, to worship and sing, and to weep as we have said goodbye to those we love.

I love that this worship space truly is ours. If you are new to our congregation, when you leave today, take a look at the wood carvings at the end of each pew — carved by members of this congregation nearly seventy-five years ago. This table, at which we are about to break bread, was built by Rick Cromer, whom we sang to heaven about a year ago. And these beautiful stained-glass windows were purchased in the 1950s for a whopping $600. But aren’t they beautiful? This is a wonderful space where we gather, and I want to honor it and give thanks for it.

Solomon’s Remarkable Curveball

I want to set the stage with all of that, because at this point in 1 Kings, it has been several years since Solomon prayed the prayer we journeyed with last week — the prayer in which he asked God for a lev shomea, a listening heart. Since then, Solomon has spent years building this temple. It was a staggering achievement. (If you ever have trouble falling asleep at night and want a few chapters of the Bible to drift off to, the chapters that precede today’s story do nothing but list, in excruciating detail, the temple’s dimensions and adornments.)

And then we arrive at this moment, after all those years of building, when it is finally time to dedicate it. It is important to recognize that this temple was not only a theological accomplishment but also a political decision, meant to place Israel firmly on the geopolitical map alongside other major players. There were many reasons this temple was built. But in this moment, Solomon gathers all the people together in this beautiful worship space and gives thanks to God for meeting them there, going on at length about how the holy will be encountered there.

So we hold that in one hand. Then Solomon throws a remarkable curveball. After rightly giving thanks that God is met in this place — whether that place is the temple, Guilford Park, St. Peter’s, or a small church in the middle of rural North Carolina — it doesn’t matter, because this is where God finds us — after all of that, Solomon has the wisdom to say this in verse 27:

But will God indeed dwell on earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built.

I love that line because I think Solomon knew what many of us know: that we sometimes treat our worship spaces in ways we don’t even realize. Without intending to, we can try to domesticate God. As Walter Brueggemann observed many times throughout his scholarship, whether we realize it or not, the very places we build to gather can become places where we attempt to manage and possess the holy. But Solomon says this cannot be done.

God Cannot Be Contained

I want us to remember this day. Yes, indeed, this place is holy. It is where we gather to sing, to pray, to wonder, and to be challenged by the words of Scripture. And yet, Solomon was right: we cannot contain God in this space. My guess is that a sermon like this has been preached from this pulpit before. But all of us — pastors included, myself included — need that reminder from time to time.

Because yes, God is here. And God dwells everywhere.

God dwelt in the hospital room a few weeks ago, beside the bed of Skip Bailey, as I gathered with his family to sing, “There is a Balm in Gilead.” God dwells in the veterinary office when we gather to say goodbye to our furry loved ones. God dwells at the kitchen table during uncomfortable conversations about how we will afford groceries or rent. God dwells in the auditorium where our graduates celebrate their achievements and wonder what comes next. And God will dwell wherever this bread is carried after today’s worship, to our sick and our homebound.

I think this is what makes communion so special. We share it mostly in this room — but not always — because we are gathered in this beautiful space to dwell with God, and then we leave with God, and God goes with us.

Come to the Table

So here is your simple homework assignment for today. Come to the table. Come just as you are, with whatever brokenness you may feel, whatever joy or burdens you may carry, and dwell with God in this space. Meet God here — really here. And then carry the God you meet here out into all the places in the world where God already dwells.

In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, God’s beloved children, say: Amen.

"Disciples Wrestle with God" (October 19, 2025 Sermon)

Text: Genesis 32:22-31

All right, friends, this is one of my favorite stories in Genesis, and I only get to talk about it for five minutes, so this should be fun. It's a really great story because I think that who among us doesn't know what it feels like to wrestle with God? Who among us doesn't know what it feels like to wrestle with God and maybe, like Jacob, walk away with a little limp but also a blessing? I could preach dozens of sermons just on that one question, but I wanted to remind us of what was happening in this passage.

Sarah and Abraham had a son named Isaac. You may recall that he was called Isaac because that is the Hebrew word for laughter. Sarah famously laughed when she was told she would have a child, so that child's name was Isaac, which means “laughter” in Hebrew. Later, Isaac married a woman named Rebekah, and they had two sons named Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau were twins and were often at odds with each other right from birth. Esau was born first, and Jacob was born grabbing Esau's heel, which is how he got the Hebrew name Yaqob. From the very start, Jacob and Esau were rivals. Rivalry among siblings is a common theme in the Bible, especially when one parent favors one child and the other parent favors the other. In this case, Isaac favored Esau, the firstborn, while Rebekah favored Jacob, the younger.

From the start, they don't get along very well, and you might know some stories about how Jacob famously cheated Esau out of his birthright as the firstborn, both with a cup of soup and by pretending to be him, because Isaac was famously blind and Esau was famously hairy. Jacob put on a sheepskin at his mother's insistence to appear hairy like his brother. Jacob cheated Esau out of his birthright twice, and understandably, Esau was not the happiest camper in the world! So much so that he was ready to kill his brother Jacob. If this begins to sound like a soap opera, it's because it really is. Long before there was ever “General Hospital,” “The Edge of Night,” or any other of your favorite soap operas, there was this soap opera called “the Book of Genesis.” Eventually, because of the rivalry between Jacob and Esau, Jacob decides that he needs to lay low until Esau cools off.

So Jacob goes away to a far land and falls in love with a beautiful woman named Rachel. He then goes to Rachel's father, Laban, and gets tricked into marrying the wrong sister. Instead of Rachel, he marries her sister Leah, which is a great ironic moment because Jacob is known as a trickster himself. He's sometimes called the “trickster” of the Old Testament. This marks a surprising turn of events: the trickster becomes the tricked. As a result, he has to work as an indentured servant for Laban for a while. Long story short, things turn out pretty well for him—he marries both Leah and Rachel, becomes quite wealthy, and starts a family. After some time, he starts to believe that Esau might have cooled off, so he decides to go back and try to make amends with the brother he hurt.

So he's on his way back to his family when all this happens. Jacob sends the women, the children, and the livestock ahead of him, maybe as a bit of a 'buffer' in case Esau is still a little upset. He stays behind, and this is when this divine wrestling match occurs. We don't know what caused it. The text is frustratingly brief on details. But this man, this angel, this presence wrestles Jacob through the night, and we don't find out who it is until the next morning, when Jacob realizes he's been wrestling with God. Interestingly, it's not Jacob who tires first. It's not Jacob who says, “Uncle!” Instead, God eventually says, 'Okay, okay, I'm done.” So another topic for a sermon could be “what does it mean to wrestle with God and have God be the one to say enough?” But that's another sermon. Then God says, 'Release me,” and Jacob replies to God, “No, I will not let you go unless you bless me.” He insists, “I'm not walking away without something to show for it.”

And that's exactly what God gives Jacob—His blessing and a new name: “Israel.” “Israel” means "he or they who wrestle with God,' derived from the Hebrew verb “to wrestle.” Therefore, the Israelites are God wrestlers, and by extension, we are as well. That's what disciples do—they wrestle with God.

I don't know what you're wrestling with right now, but I have had enough pastoral conversations with you all over the past few months to know that we are all struggling with a lot. There's a lot going on in the world, in our families, at our workplaces, and perhaps even in our churches and other communities. So, if you're feeling frustrated or think you're lacking in faith because you're wrestling, I have good news for you: if you're wrestling with God or anything else at the moment, you're in good company. In fact, wrestling is how we grow. Wrestling means receiving God's blessing, yes, and sometimes walking away with a limp.

But the good news is, in the context of this story, on the other side of wrestling is reconciliation. I don't know what was going through Jacob's mind as he wrestled with God, but I do know that after receiving this blessing and walking away with that limp, he went to Esau and admitted he had done him wrong. He asked for Esau's forgiveness, and Esau forgave him. So I hope that, as you all wrestle with everything going on in the world and in your lives, you are reminded of the promise of reconciliation. And may we always hold on to the truth that, in whatever we wrestle with, we worship a God who welcomes us to that wrestling match and gives us a blessing for our faithful struggle.

Find ways to remember that, whatever you're struggling with. The verse right after today’s passage says that the Israelites to this day do not eat the meat of the thigh muscle to remember this divine wrestling match. So, friends and fellow God wrestlers, you're in good company. We are in good company, and there is reconciliation and growth through our wrestling with God and our faith.

I also want to close with a quote from Mr. Rogers, who as you all know, stays up here in the pulpit with me. He once said, "There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth."

Friends, in the name of God, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, the God wrestlers, say, Amen.