|
“NABOTH’S VINEYARD” –
|
A Sermon preached Readings: |
“Ahab said to Naboth,
Let me have your vineyard to use for a vegetable garden,
since it is close to my palace.” 1
Kings 21:2
Before we look at Ahab and Naboth,
some background on that ever popular topic -
Jewish property law in the 9th Century BC.
Basically this was not a good time to be an estate
agent.
There was very little buying and selling of land.
In fact, the law said that no one had the right to sell their family land,
because in the final analysis they didn’t own it –
the whole land of Israel belonged to God,
and those who lived and worked on the land
were essentially God’s tenants, not owner occupiers.
Against this background enter Ahab,
evidently a green fingered King of Israel.
He wants a vegetable garden next to his palace
Problem – the land in question is already in use –
it is Naboth’s vineyard.
Would Naboth sell his vineyard to the King?
No, says Naboth – not just out of sentiment or
economic good sense,
but because the law forbade him from selling his family land.
At this point Ahab throws a tantrum –
the Bible says he went to bed in a sulk and refused to eat.
Now enter Ahab’s wife Jezebel.
Jezebel was a Phoenician Princess
who had married into the Israelite Royal Family.
She was not a worshipper of the God of Israel.
Indeed she had brought her Phoenician idols with her.
In fact tradition says that every day she got Ahab to weigh himself,
and if he had put on weight since the day before,
she then ordered the equivalent weight in gold to be given to her gods.
It is not recorded that she ever put Ahab on a diet.
But back to our story.
Ahab’s Father in Law, (Jezebel’s dad) was King of Tyre.
His was a very different royal style.
Unlike the Kings of Israel (who at least in theory
acknowledged the ultimate sovereignty of God in the land),
the King of Tyre was a good old fashioned despot.
If he wanted a vegetable garden he didn’t consult religious law –
he just took it.
So I imagine Jezebel saying to Ahab
“You wimp – I wish I’d married a Phoenician Prince –
then I might have had a husband who was a real man –
ah well, I suppose I’ll have to do your dirty work for you…”
So Jezebel (who was, as they say, a real Jezebel)
draws up some spurious charges against Naboth,
has him condemned and stoned to death,
and then presents Naboth’s land to Ahab.
All of which might have been the end of the story –
but then, enter Elijah, the
prophet of God –
who tells Ahab that he has been sinful –
and that he and Jezebel and their descendants
will suffer horribly because of their wickedness.
Ahab repents and is spared personally –
but Elijah tells him his Royal House will ultimately still suffer disaster
because of Ahab’s sin.
The parallels with contemporary
history are uncanny.
Remember Ahab and Naboth nearly 3000 years
ago.
Then listen to this passage by Gershom Gorenberg –
also from the land of Israel –
but this passage posted on the web just three weeks ago:
“The hillside
below us is a terraced vineyard,
or was until the bulldozers came.
There's a sharp smell of sage & recent rain,
& the steady grind of heavy machinery. It is a cold day;
a Palestinian man with a black stocking cap pulled over his headscarf
stands in the stiff breeze, his face blank, watching as the two big shovels
push aside greenery & the stone walls that support the terraces
and leave a wound of red clay….
The road that runs along the eastern edge of Gaza
has been ripped up in many places by Israeli tanks …..
Most of the areas we drove through were flattened,
no more orchards, vineyards, or homes…”
“And the Land was Troubled for 40 Years” Gershom Gorenberg, 31 May 2007 MIFTAH
Website
Uncanny how the rulers of Israel 2800 years on
still abuse their power by stealing land and vineyards
from their poor neighbours.
Uncanny how the story’s implications also unfold.
Elijah warns Ahab that his evil and rapaciousness
will not simply be a disaster for Naboth –
the evil will fester and provoke more evil and disaster in generations to come.
This week I listened to a commentator
on the latest horrendous problems for Gaza –
he said of this week’s bloodshed:
“These people, brutalized by the long
conflict with Israel,
now turn so easily to violence in their internal conflicts”.
Tomorrow is the start of Refugee Week,
and we think of all those displaced by violence or disaster,
and today think especially of those in the Palestinian camps.
Ahab continues to persecute Naboth,
to turn him off the land which God wishes his children to share –
and the repercussions of that evil spread in ever widening circles
throughout an increasingly fractured and violent land.
It is of course all too easy to condemn Israel, Ancient and Modern.
But don’t forget how Naboth died –
Jezebel set up a rigged jury and had him stoned to death.
We condemn Jezebel for that –
but we also need to remember Jesus’ words
on another occasion of legal stoning –
“Let the one without sin cast the first stone”
And do we dare cast the first stone
when we attack Jezebel and her like?
Are we not all sinners - all at different
times
keen to satisfy our desires whilst ignoring the weak
should their needs threaten our dreams?
The story of Ahab and Naboth
is not
just the story of Ancient or Modern Israel –
it is the story of the human race.
So what dos this story
have to tell us?
Well it is a bleak story.
The Lectionary takes pity on us and stops short
of the particular gory bits of Elijah’s prophecy at the end.:
'Dogs
will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.'
Dogs will eat those belonging to Ahab who die in the
city,
and the birds of the air will feed on those who die in the country."
(1 K 21:23-24)
The Bible is not sentimental about sin and suffering.
As anyone knows who has sought to trace
the way in which evil begets evil and feeds on itself,
today’s evil tends to rebound not only on the intended victim
but also on the perpetrator –
and in due course on initially unconnected bystanders
sucked into the action –
No
man is an island –
We sow the wind and the world reaps the whirlwind.
We steal sour grapes and many teeth are set on edge.
In this story, if we are honest, there is little of hope or grace.
OK - Retribution is delayed because of Ahab’s repentance,
but this is only a reprieve –
the House of Ahab, the Kingdom of Israel,
will ultimately still go to the dogs – it s doomed.
This is a sombre warning for those
who look for cheap grace & casual
forgiveness,
Even when we have repented, and turned back to God,
the evil we have done cannot just be unsaid and forgotten –
it is still out there –
and those who have been maimed or brutalised by our evil
may well still be enmeshed in the consequences –
indeed they may have passed on the evil with interest
so that it has taken on a life of its own
and can no longer be recalled by our regret or penitence.
So –is the story of Ahab and Jezebel
ultimately a story of pessimistic despair
for the human condition –
the story of a God who aids and abets,
or at the very least is powerless to prevent,
our descent into mutual destruction?
The answer is No.
The Gospel Victory of life over death, of love over hate,
is still there, albeit not in a glib casual way.
Follow the story through.
1.
Israel sins grievously
2.
Even though some repent and follow the Lord,
the evil of Israel grows and eats away at the nation,
until finally Elijah’s prophecy does indeed come true –
the House of Ahab, the whole Israelite state,
is destroyed and sent into exile.
3.
BUT (and this is the huge but)
God stays with his people – he follows them into exile –
sings sad songs with them by the rivers of Babylon –
never gives up on them –
until finally, when the time is right, he leads them home.
And we – members of the New Israel, the
Church,
know that same pattern.
We sin and hurt each other.
Time and time again we precipitate ourselves and those around us
deeper and deeper into the consequences of sin
and retribution and alienation and mutual mistrust.
But then we come to
the foot of the cross,
and discover that in the midst of the hurt
we have caused our sisters and brothers,
amidst our own suffering – there we find our God,
the God who once wept with his people in Babylon,
suffering alongside all humanity upon the cross.
There is no short cut
from sin to resurrection –
the road leads via the cross.
But at the cross we find a love so deep
that it can ultimately receive and soak up and accept
all the evil in the world with no remainder –
nothing left over to rekindle that cycle of hate and evil.
Such is Christ’s victory.
So in conclusion,
Christ says to you here and now:
Come to my supper, come all of you who have trampled
on the vineyards of the poor – come and drink wine –
wine which is the cup of suffering which you have caused,
wine which I your Lord have drunk,
wine which I have blessed,
and has become through grace a foretaste of the heavenly feast.
So let us commit
ourselves to share
land and wine and love and peace
with all God’s children on earth –
as assuredly we shall all one day
share together in God’s wonderful vintage
- the glorious new wine of the Kingdom.
ORDER OF SERVICE
Sunday, 17 June 2007 Start of Refugee
Week
10.30 am Holy Communion led by Rev
Andrew Sails
Call
to Worship
Hymn 1 “All people that on earth do dwell”
Prayer of Praise and Adoration
Litany of Lament in the Face of Injustice
Bible
Reading: 1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21 (p.364)
Bible
Reading: Luke 19:1-10 (p.1053)
A Hymn for Refugees “God, How
Can We Comprehend?
Tune HAP 528i
Aberystwyth) [© Carolyn
Winfrey Gillette, 1999 CCLI No 58752
Sermon: “Naboth’s Vineyard”
Hymn “We have a dream: this nation will arise”
(Tune HAP 86
Woodlands) Michael
Forster, based on the speech by Martin Luther King Jr,
© Kevin Mayhew Ltd. CCLI Licence No
58752
Prayers and Lord’s Prayer
The Peace
Minister: The
peace of the Lord be always with you
People: And also with you
(Members of the congregation are invited
to turn to those around about them and offer a handshake or other symbol of
peace)
(The Young People join us from their
sessions)
Hymn 258 “Jesu thou
joy of loving hearts”
(with Musical accompaniment by the Mint Orchestra)
(During
this hymn, the collection will be taken and bread, wine and money will be
brought forward)
Holy Communion led by Rev Hwang Gwang
Myung
(The
congregation remains standing)
Hymn 16 “Praise to the
Lord, the Almighty” .( 다 찬양하여라 전능왕 창조의 주께)
(with Musical accompaniment by the Mint Orchestra)
Korean
Blessing.
English
Blessing
[The Call to Worship is from “Along the Way” Dorothy McRae-McMahon (SPCK 2000)
The Litany of Confession is from the United
Methodist Church (USA) General Board of Discipleship
The Eucharistic Prayers are adapted from
the Liturgy of St Mark in the Bouerie, New York]