December 17

What Undoes a King?

Lift an old floor and there is sometimes a newspaper under it, printed before anyone in the house was born. Nobody budgeted for that.

Kings sets this in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, with the temple in Jerusalem under repair. In the course of that work a book turned up. The verses here call it the book of the covenant, found in the house of the Lord, and that phrase carries the weight of the day: the words were Judah's already, kept inside the house raised for the God whose covenant they were.

Then the king heard it. He tore his clothes.

Josiah heard his own nation's book, and he took what it said of his people to be true, and he took it to be about him.

When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes.

The king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the prophets, and all the people, small and great; and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant found in the house of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, to keep his commandments, his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to confirm the words of this covenant written in this book; and all the people stood to the covenant.

2 Kings 22:11; 23:2-3

What he does next is go up to the house of the Lord and read the same words in the hearing of everyone there, small and great alike. Then he stands by the pillar and binds himself to it with all his heart and all his soul, and the people stand to it beside him. The covenant is made to confirm words already written in it.

Kings does not soften what followed. The chapter goes on to say that the Lord's anger against Judah was not turned aside, and the exile came. None of what Josiah did could lodge the keeping of it inside a person. The people stood to the covenant that day, and standing to it was the most they could do.

A scene close to this one happens again in Luke's Gospel. A man stands up to read in the synagogue at Nazareth, the book of the prophet Isaiah is handed to him, and he reads lines in the first person, in the voice of someone anointed and sent. He gives the book back, sits down, and tells the people listening that what they have just heard has been fulfilled that day. Josiah stood by a pillar and put himself under what he had read; this man sat down and said the words had been about him. Christmas is the birth of the man who said that.

Josiah carried what he had heard out to the whole assembly. Let some of what reaches you in these days be spoken out loud, in a room with other people in it, whether that is a page of the Christmas story at the table or a carol sung rather than played. The king read out the words that had undone him, and the people who heard him stood.

Your word holds, Lord, whether or not I have been listening. Let me hear it this month as something meant for me, and give me the heart to keep it.