"The Last Page Isn't The End" (August 30, 2026 Sermon)
/The Last Page Isn’t The End
2 Kings 25:8-12, 27-30
In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month—which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He burned the house of the Lord, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. All the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon—all the rest of the multitude. But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest people of the land to be vinedressers and tillers of the soil.
In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, King Evil-merodach of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, released King Jehoiachin of Judah from prison; he spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat above the other seats of the kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes. Every day of his life he dined regularly in the king’s presence. For his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king, a portion every day, as long as he lived.
I also want to thank Travis and Dr. Bill for that beautiful anthem, which offers a heartbreaking yet hopeful testimony to the kind of storm Ed read for us — the beginning of the Babylonian exile, the single most traumatic event in the Israelites' lives in the biblical narrative. I really appreciate the text Travis sang for us: here in the shadow, where we linger in this darkness we call home, where the sighs are deep and doubtful and our aspirations groan. And especially that last line: love incarnate, hold your children till the storm of life is past.
And so Ed read for us the storm, the story of the beginning of the Babylonian exile, and we fast-forward now 37 years later in just a couple of verses.
So we have this storm, and yet the very last four verses of 2 Kings don't give us a rosy picture, but they do offer a glimmer of hope. Here are the last four verses of the book of 2 Kings, verses 27 through 30 of chapter 25.
"In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, King Evil-merodach of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, released King Jehoiachin of Judah from prison. He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat above the other seats of the kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes. Every day of his life he dined regularly in the king's presence. For his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king, a portion every day, as long as he lived."
Our Little Systems
All right — do any of you remember this hymnal right here? This is the 1955 hymnal of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — although it wasn't the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 1955. But this was the hymnal our denomination used back in 1955, all the way until the blue hymnal came along in, I think, 1990 or something like that. But I was introduced this week to a hymn I don't think I was familiar with at all or had ever heard before. It's number 228 in the old hymnal. It's called "Strong Son of God, Immortal Love," and it was penned by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in 1850. And the third verse goes like this:
Our little systems have their day;
they have their day and cease to be;
they are but broken lights of thee,
and thou, O Lord, art more than they.
So I've been dwelling on that little piece of poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson this week because I think this passage is a reminder of what it feels like to look around and see all the little systems we construct — the institutions, the ideologies, all the little systems around us — seem to be crumbling. And we can look around and see all the devastation, the violence, the destabilization, and the disorientation in the world. And we can be given to despair.
In fact, I have had so many pastoral conversations with many of you over the past several years, and they are all very similar. You all come to me and express what I and so many of us feel — this feeling of being overwhelmed, this feeling of a fire hose to the face of all that's going on in the world right now, when our little systems seem to have their day and are crumbling.
And so I just want to use that as a metaphor as we talk about the disorientation and disruption of what's known as the Babylonian exile, when King Nebuchadnezzar conquered the southern kingdom of Judah despite Josiah's reforms that we discussed last week. In this moment of national upheaval, calamity, and disorientation, Walter Brueggemann offers a helpful metaphor for how we tend to respond in times of existential crisis.
Four Ways We Cope
Walter Brueggemann says there are four kinds of coping mechanisms we tend to fall back on when everything around us seems to be going — you know — nowhere in a handbasket. These are Walter Brueggemann's false responses to crises. None of these things are bad, but I just want to lift up, before we go through them, that they are not strategies for effective social change. They're natural and understandable coping mechanisms.
And the first one is this: denial. How many of y'all have ever been in a state of denial? I know I have, right? Or, as Brueggemann says, the royal embrace, which he describes as the refusal to acknowledge that the current system is failing, unjust, or coming to an end. So sometimes we just — is it the ostriches that bury their heads in the sand? Is that — yeah. That's — we're all guilty of that from time to time, and that's okay. I'm not trying to shame any of us for feeling this way. I'm merely trying to point out that these are not strategies for effective change; they're coping mechanisms. So the first one, and the one we sometimes rely on, is denial.
The second is nostalgia. Nostalgia is a very potent drug, y'all. Or, as Walter Brueggemann calls it, the manufactured past. He says it is the aggressive over-remembering of a golden age that likely never existed. And I want to point out that he wrote these words 26 years ago. I just think that needs to be mentioned.
Number three is despair. How many of you all have ever felt despair before? I know I have. It's okay. He calls this the loss of agency. This is the paralyzing assumption that because the old way is dead, no new future is possible. Despair is okay to feel, but we can't set up camp there, because that strips us of any and all agency to build something better.
Finally — ironically — optimism. Or, as he calls it, the superficial fix, which he calls a dangerous counterpoint to despair that thrives on the fantasy that things will get better on their own.
So I invite you to be curious with me this week about which of those four you tend to default to when everything seems to be crumbling around you. And again, it's okay. It is natural to feel that way. But for the third time, I want to emphasize: these are not strategies for building something better. These are coping mechanisms.
And optimism, that fourth one, is often confused with hope. In fact, they're very different things. Optimism is kind of this belief that, oh, everything will get better on its own. Whereas hope is an orientation of the spirit that doesn't depend on the outcome or the likelihood of success.
A King Named Jehoiachin
Today we are introduced to the final character in 2 Kings, this young king named Jehoiachin. Say his name again with me: Jehoiachin. He was very young when the Babylonian captivity began. In fact, I believe Josiah, whom we discussed last week, was his grandfather.
And so, in a few verses that Ed read, we fast-forward 37 years — which means he would be about my age. I'm 38 years old. And in this moment, at the end of 2 Kings, we have this very understated story. After this time, there's a change in leadership in the Babylonian Empire, and the person who is the head honcho there decides to release Jehoiachin from prison. Not to restore his empire, not to go back to the way things were, but he puts off his prison clothes, is welcomed to dine at the table of the king of Babylon, and is given a pension, if you will, to sustain him for the rest of his days.
If you're curious about that clay tablet you see on the screen: archaeologists were excavating a site in Babylon — which is, I believe, modern-day Iraq — in the early 1900s, and they found this Babylonian ledger that detailed, in very specific terms, the pension given to an exiled Judean king named Jehoiachin. So if you're just curious, we have archaeological records that prove this story happened.
So we have this story of hope. Now notice: it is not denial, because it starts by saying this was 37 years later. So this is already 37 years into the exile. It's not nostalgia, because it's not taking Jehoiachin back to Jerusalem. It's not despair, because there's this little "and yet" he gives us at the very end. And it's not optimism, because — you know — he's given a pension; he's not given a mansion. Those are two very different things.
And so I was reminded this week while reading David LaMotte's book, "You Are Changing the World Whether You Like It or Not." David says this — and he'll talk about it when he joins us in a few weeks — "Hope is the conscious decision to live toward the world you would like to see, but to take action to move closer to a better way, regardless of your chances of achieving your goal." He goes on to say, "Hope, it seems to me, is both an active choice and a choice to be active."
God’s Holy “And Yet”
And so, friends, I leave us with these last four verses to remind us of God's holy "and yet." Because sometimes that's all we've got when we come to worship. We just need to sing a little about God's "and yet," God's "nevertheless," and to commit together not to remain in denial, nostalgia, despair, or optimism, but to practice a hope that compels us to build something better in its place.
So again, I invite you to take stock this week of the reactions you have when everything seems to be falling apart around you, and to take one tangible step to build something better in its place. Maybe it's sticking around after worship today to put together care packages for our neighbors at the Pride Festival in a few weeks. Maybe it's volunteering for A Simple Gesture — which, by the way, needs three additional drivers for the Green Bag program next Saturday if you're available on September 12th.
So together, friends, let us remember those words from Alfred, Lord Tennyson: that our little systems have their day, they have their day and cease to be; they are but broken lights of thee, but thou, O Lord, art more than they.
In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, God’s beloved children, say: Amen.