So
often the Old Testament presents us with the most illustrious and captivating
stories in all of the Bible, and today’s reading from 1 Kings is no exception. It
would make a great opera, as it has all the needed tragic and dramatic elements.
It tells the story of the king of Israel, Ahab, and his wife, a princess from
Phoenicia who follows other gods, Jezebel, and their plot against the Israelite
Naboth. It is an old story, but one full of wisdom for us today. It should be
rather obvious after hearing this reading that one of the major themes deals
with justice.
And to put us in the
right frame of mind, I’d like to begin with a quote from Archbishop Desmond
Tutu- “I don’t preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. When people
were hungry, Jesus didn’t say ‘Now is this political or social?’ He said ‘I
feed you.’ Because the Gospel to a hungry person is bread.” I begin with this
quote because, at times, this might sound like a political sermon. At times, I
will say thing that sound like they’ve been taken from a Republican stump
speech. At other places, you might hear me as Democratic speech writer. And
other times, I just might sound plain crazy. But I want to make it clear: I am
simply preaching the text as it was read this morning, pointing toward the
Gospel truths.
As Americans, we’re obsessed
with the law and justice, and our reading from 1 Kings is very much concerned
with law and justice. Supreme Court cases get major media attention, we have
several shows about law and order, and courtroom drama is now its own television
genre. And in particular, the Constitution has become our focal point. We look
to it to discover what is right and what is wrong. But anyone willing to give
our country an honest look will soon realize that the Constitution does not
lead to justice. We have billion dollar mud-slinging contests to decide who
will win the White House every four years, and perhaps the most important job
that any president has is appointing Supreme Court justices. And not even for
one moment does anyone seriously think that any president will appoint
impartial judges to the court; but instead they stack the court with like-minded
people. As the prophet Habakkuk notes, “the law becomes slack and justice never
prevails. The wicked surround the righteous-- therefore judgment comes forth
perverted.” And he might as well be talking to modern day America. One has to
wonder if what we have is actually a justice system, or rather a punishment and
revenge system.
One of the themes that we’ll
run into in 1 Kings is the problem of idolatry. And we have made the
Constitution an idol. But compared the Word of God, the Constitution is just a
piece of paper with ink smeared on it. The justice of our courts is nothing compared
to the justice of God. King Ahab of Israel forgot that. He didn’t have our Constitution,
but he had his own vision of how a nation should be run. He turned from the Covenant
with God, making idols out of everything. And we have begun to do the same. So
let this story about Ahab and Naboth be a reminder to us that we keep our focus
on God’s law and not laws that we create to suit our own desires and needs.
As we enter the text, it
begins with a simple business proposition- “Give me your vineyard, so that I
may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house; I will give
you a better vineyard for it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its
value in money.” Ahab is committing the sin of coveting. He wants what is not
his. And if this doesn’t speak to our human nature of being selfish and
materialistic, then I don’t know what does. Here we have the king of Israel,
with more land than he could ever need, with two palaces, with armies and
servants, and yet he still isn’t satisfied. He still wants more. He isn’t
content with what he has.
And how often do we fall
into that pattern? We all do it, so there’s no sense denying it. As St.
Augustine said, “our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in thee.” But
we put our hearts in other places. We have other priorities that end up higher
on the list than God. We have soccer tournaments that keep us from church, we
have budgets that focus more on our own standard of living than the standard of
living of those homeless people that live in our communities, we put our faith
in political leaders who are just as corrupt as Ahab and Jezebel. We live in a
culture of planned obsolescence, always wanting the next best thing. We have
all committed the sin of Ahab.
Ahab shows us the dangers
of desire; the evils that can come through coveting. You perhaps have seen in
the news over the past few weeks the unfolding saga of the young girl in need
of a lung transplant and the action of her parents to move her to the top of
the transplant list. Now I’m all for a parent doing everything in their power
to help their child, nothing wrong with that. But where sin enters the picture
is when it devolves into coveting in the way that Ahab did. The problem comes
when we focus on our own needs and desires above and against the needs and
desires of others. In all of the media coverage, I have yet to hear about what
happens to those who get “leap-frogged” on the transplant list; as those
parents who have enough money to hire lawyers and create a media-storm seem to
get whatever they want, while not considering how their actions might affect
others. We often say “you have to follow your heart and be true to yourself.”
And the danger in this is that we make desire our ethical standard. We must
consider where our desires leads us.
Ahab didn’t consider what
taking the land of Naboth might do to him. Ahab commits the sin of saying “I
want,” and that is where the whole debacle begins. When we covet, we lose ourselves.
Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than in the character of the same
name in the novel Moby Dick, Captain
Ahab. The captain becomes obsessed with catching the white whale, and is
willing to sacrifice is ship, the lives of his crew, and his own live in
chasing what he covets. It consumes his entire life, and he exclaims “to the
last, I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart, I stab at thee; for hate’s sake,
I spit my last breath at thee.” When we covet as Ahab, both the captain and the
king, did, we lose our relationship with ourselves and with others.
So after this proposition
is made, Naboth responds to the king, “The Lord forbid that I should give you
my ancestral inheritance.” Ancient laws in Israel prohibited the selling or
trading of land, as the land was seen as a gift from God to the family. Even
when the law was ignored and land transactions did happen, every 50 years, when
the Jubilee year came, the land would revert to the original owner. Naboth was
not willing to forget who he was. Ahab was after something that he could not
have, and Naboth respected God’s law, even though Naboth stood to gain a lot of
money or an even better homestead.
There is an interesting
point in Ahab’s speech- he says that he wants to turn Naboth’s land into a
vegetable garden. It seems innocent on the surface, but there is a deeper
meaning. The other time in the Bible where a vegetable garden is referenced is
in Deuteronomy 11:10, where God says “For the land that you are about to enter
to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you
sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden.” Ahab intends to
take the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and turn it into a
new Egypt, a place of slavery, a place of oppression, a place without God’s
justice. And so Naboth refuses to allow this atrocity to happen.
Ahab returns home and
sulks. He is so overrun by jealousy and covetousness that he has made himself
sick to the point where he can’t even eat. Jezebel enters the story, and seeks
to console her husband. She says “Do you now govern Israel? Get up, eat some
food, and be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.”
For the first time in the story, we see the wisdom of that old phrase on
display- “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
What I find to be perhaps
the most disturbing part of this whole story is that Ahab doesn’t say anything
in response to Jezebel. He does not ask, “how are you going to do that?” He
doesn’t say “you can talk to Naboth about it, but be mindful of God’s justice.”
Instead, he just sits there, complicit in the evil that he knows is about to be
done. At the end of the passage, justice comes down on Ahab, reminding us that
we are responsible for the actions of those under us. If you’d like a modern
example of how this works, I suggest you ask President Obama about it. When we turn
a blind eye or abdicate responsibility, the entire house of cards will fall and
it will come crashing down on us.
We should also consider
how we are like Ahab at this point in the narrative. What are we complicit in?
When do we look the other way when it benefits us? There is a great alternative
form of the Confession, that, in part, prays “We repent of the evil we have
done, and the evil done on our behalf.” And it’s a great line- the evil done on
our behalf. For the most part, if we have a comfortable life, it is the direct
result of someone living an uncomfortable life.
I’d like to draw your
attention to the growing movement in Raleigh known as Moral Mondays. It is a group
of faithful people gathering to peacefully protest against the disgusting legislation
being presented before our State legislature. The issue is that the North
Carolina General Assembly is considering bills that will remove Medicaid and
unemployment benefits from many; that would add a consumption tax that will adversely
impact the poor, who will face increased prices on basic goods; and that will
force college students to return to their often distant homes to vote, seeking
to control election outcomes. In short, the Biblical teachings and imperatives
to protect the poor, respect the stranger, care for widows and children, and
love our neighbors are being ignored, much in the same way that Ahab and
Jezebel ignored God’s justice in favor of their own desires and power.
Do we really think that
$4 gasoline, out of season vegetables in every grocery store, and $10 jeans
have no repercussions? There is a price to be paid for convenience, but we’re
not the one’s paying it. Naboth is. And far too often, we are like Ahab,
turning a blind eye so that we can get what we want. The saying is “out of
sight, out of mind,” but nothing is out of God’s sight.
And so Jezebel begins
scheming, and commits several evils in the process. This is the ultimate
nightmare as far as Biblical crimes go. In this one story, Jezebel orchestrates
and compounds the sins of Adam, Cain, and David. First, she creates a national
crisis by proclaiming a fast. This decree would be as if the president
instituted martial law as a means of preventing voters from going to the polls;
it is an extreme abuse of power that would have caused panic. It was a way for
Jezebel to control the situation and not give Naboth a chance. The fast would
have been declared as a way of making amends to God. It was a way of saying, “there
is a sinner in our midst, so we need to fast and find them, lest God’s judgment
come down on us all.” It’s a rather heinous act to appeal to God’s justice as a
way of perverting that same justice. And I can’t help but think of the infatuation
that Fox News has had with Benghazi over the past 6 months as a modern day
parallel of having an inquisition and crisis for political gain. In both cases,
it is a distraction so that people don’t pay attention to the other issues that
are going on. And Jezebel is setting Naboth up for doom by creating the
conspiracy of someone having angered God.
She then lies and bears
false witness, both in concocting the story, but also in signing decrees in
Ahab’s name. Naboth’s initial response was “The Lord forbid that I should give
you my ancestral inheritance.” Jezebel likely committed the same crime that
every news outlet commits on a daily basis- she probably just misquoted Naboth.
It is quite likely that she reports Naboth to have said “The Lord forbid that I
not give you my ancestral inheritance.” And in doing so, Naboth was swearing an
oath before God, and then breaking it by not giving the land to Ahab. And so
the trumped up charges of “cursing God and the king” begin to stick. Words are
powerful, they can be used to build up or tear down. And Jezebel’s twisting of
words urges us to consider how we use them.
Jezebel’s plan is working
perfectly, and Naboth ends up being stoned to death for blasphemy against God. This
is perhaps one of the greatest crimes that we can ever commit: the killing of
an innocent. As I mentioned before, we have an imperfect criminal justice
system. We are not God. And so why we insist on utilizing the death penalty is
beyond me. This story clearly shows that the death penalty can be improperly
applied. Naboth was put to death, following the exact laws of the land- there
were two witnesses that corroborated the crime. And as we’ve seen, DNA results
have cleared those wrongly convicted, the death penalty is unfairly applied to
minorities, and it doesn’t really bring about any sort of justice, but instead
focuses on vengeance.
And now that the land owner has been killed for
violating God’s law, the king can rightfully take the land instead of it
staying with the family, who now has a cursed name. This is the last of the
evils that Ahab and Jezebel do. The prophet Elijah comes to Ahab and asks “Have
you killed, and also taken possession?” The end of the plot has finally been
realized, Ahab has the land. It is a story about the ultimate abuse of power.
You’ll recall the story
of King Midas, the king who turned everything he touched to gold, which wasn’t
so bad until he touched his daughter and turned her into a statue. Power
weakens those who are eager enough to exploit it. King Ahab will live to
experience this truth, as Elijah tells him “In the place where dogs licked up
the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood…Because you have sold
yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster on
you.” There is an old hymn that sings “this is my Father’s world, oh let me
never forget / that though the wrong seems oft so strong / God is the ruler
yet.” It is a truth that Ahab would come to learn, and we would do well to
remember that lesson.
So what do we do in
response to a story like this? How do we live faithfully when justice is so
often perverted? We forgive. Justice unravels when we lose sight of who we are
in relation to God. Once justice is broken, it is awfully hard to restore.
Somehow, we must break the downward spiral of justice and injustice, the cycle
of retribution, the vendettas of vindictiveness. And forgiveness is the one thing
that can do this.
To some of us,
forgiveness in the face of the evils of Ahab and Jezebel might seem naïve or
soft. We worry that we’re not doing anything
to stop these evils from happening again. And we end up pushing forgiveness
aside, because we think it gets in the way of justice. So we charge into the situation
with our own vision of what justice should look like, and the pursuit of
justice becomes an idol for us, and before long, we can’t remember if we’re
Naboth or Ahab.
We must remember that
justice belongs to God. Though the sins we commit are horizontal, going from
person to person, there is also a vertical element to our sin. We sin against
God just as much as we do others when we violate divine justice.
To be clear, forgiveness
isn’t the last thing that Christians are to say in the face of injustice; but
it is to be the first thing. We say, “you can harm me, but you can’t take away
my allegiance to Christ. You can be cruel to me, but you can’t make me become
like you. You can hate me, but I can forgive you.” Forgiveness is God’s
justice; it is the way to make things right and restore order. Of course, repentance
and restitution have to be part of the equation, but without forgiveness, the cycles
will never be broken.
As the former dean of
Duke Chapel, Samuel Wells, writes, “why do we forgive? Because Jesus in his cross
and resurrection has released the most powerful energy in the universe and we
want to be a part of it. Why do we forgive? Because Jesus is dying for us to
forgive.” And he goes on to say that forgiveness is the Christian word for
justice. When Christ came earth and entered the vineyard, he didn’t come as an
Ahab to claim authority and bring about revenge; he came as Naboth, a man who
was killed on false charges. And the way that Jesus sought justice wasn’t in
condemning the wrong, but it was in saying “Father, forgive them.”
It’s a rich story about
justice and forgiveness. We see the problems created by the sins of idolatry, the
dangers of desire, and the evil scheming to get whatever we want, regardless of
the cost to others. This ancient story gives us a good opportunity to consider
justice in our own lives and nation. Where do we sit by and let justice be
perverted? Are we able to recognize those moments when we are Ahab or Jezebel
and need to be forgiven?
If only we could be a
people who were known for forgiveness instead of being obsessed with the law
and our own idea of justice. Perhaps when modern day Elijahs confront us, we
will repent of our sin. Perhaps then we could be less like Jezebel and Ahab.
Perhaps then the Kingdom might come on earth as it is in heaven.
