Sermon - What We Don't Know

Preached on June 16, 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.

Scripture: 1 Kings 21:1-21

Later the following events took place: Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel, beside the palace of King Ahab of Samaria.²And Ahab said to Naboth, “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.” ³But Naboth said to Ahab, “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.” ⁴Ahab went home resentful and sullen because of what Naboth the Jezreelite had said to him; for he had said, “I will not give you my ancestral inheritance.” He lay down on his bed, turned away his face, and would not eat.

⁵His wife Jezebel came to him and said, “Why are you so depressed that you will not eat?” ⁶He said to her, “Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said to him, ‘Give me your vineyard for money; or else, if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard for it’; but he answered, ‘I will not give you my vineyard.’” ⁷His wife Jezebel said to him, “Do you now govern Israel? Get up, eat some food, and be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.” ⁸So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with his seal; she sent the letters to the elders and the nobles who lived with Naboth in his city. ⁹She wrote in the letters, “Proclaim a fast, and seat Naboth at the head of the assembly; ¹⁰seat two scoundrels opposite him, and have them bring a charge against him, saying, ‘You have cursed God and the king.’ Then take him out, and stone him to death.” ¹¹The men of his city, the elders and the nobles who lived in his city, did as Jezebel had sent word to them. Just as it was written in the letters that she had sent to them,¹²they proclaimed a fast and seated Naboth at the head of the assembly. ¹³The two scoundrels came in and sat opposite him; and the scoundrels brought a charge against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, “Naboth cursed God and the king.” So they took him outside the city, and stoned him to death. ¹⁴Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, “Naboth has been stoned; he is dead.” ¹⁵As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to Ahab, “Go, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead.” ¹⁶As soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab set out to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it.

¹⁷Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: ¹⁸Go down to meet King Ahab of Israel, who rules in Samaria; he is now in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession. ¹⁹You shall say to him, “Thus says the Lord: Have you killed, and also taken possession?” You shall say to him, “Thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood.” ²⁰Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” He answered, “I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, ²¹I will bring disaster on you.

Sermon

Reading in the book of Kings about King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, we find ourselves joining a history of God’s people reflecting on how we live, what we value, and the ways that we lose sight of God and are restored by God.

Ahab was king of Israel nine centuries before Christ, and he was just one of many kings who were corrupted by power instead of ruling justly by their covenant with God. But it was three centuries later that his story and other stories were written as the book of Kings at a time when the Hebrew people were in exile in Babylon. The empire of Babylon had destroyed their cities and the great Temple of Jerusalem, and had taken much of the nation into captivity away in Babylon, an exile that lasted for two generations. It was during this exile that the Hebrew people realized the price of their history. Because they had slid away from being a land of justice for all people, including the orphans and foreigners, and had become unjust, with leaders who were corrupted by power.  The trust of the people was damaged, and the leaders sought and broke alliances with other empires with greed instead of honor.  In exile, the people looked back and said “we must live differently.”

They told the story of King Ahab as a metaphor for what had gone wrong.

Naboth had a vineyard in the Jezreel valley. It was his family’s land, the family inheritance, and the Jezreel valley is a good valley. We’re talking Napa Valley quality here: perfect conditions, great crops, and it happens to be beside the new palace of Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab decides that he wants that vineyard, and being king he expects it will be no problem, but to be a fair king he offers money or some other vineyard in exchange.

That might sound OK to us, because we’re used to real estate buying and selling and moving from one place to another. But in this time and place, the family land was the family land. It was all you had. It was your income, your home, your bank account and retirement plan. It was what you had, and, you believed that it was a gift from God, each family on land given by God to provide their needs and secure them in all ages of life. So Naboth couldn’t sell the family land, it wasn’t his to sell. It was a gift from God.

King Ahab goes to bed in a sullen mood and will not rouse even for food, and this is Jezebel’s chance to do her work. She frames Naboth for a crime and convicts him by the protocol: two witnesses in agreement.  With no one to reveal their perjury, the punishment is death. Naboth is executed, and Ahab comes to take the land that is suddenly free of family obligation. This is amazing stuff isn’t it? An evil scheme, criminal intrigue, a corrupt justice system: before The Godfather and Law and Order people read these stories and got it all!

But they also told this story as a warning. It was a warning about two choices. King Ahab can choose to be a king who protects God’s gifts, who protects the land and vineyards of his people, or he can be a king who rules with the full weight of kingly power – as in other empires, and does what he wants. Queen Jezebel represents this second choice. She is a Canaanite woman who has no covenant with Israel’s God, the God who demands justice and protection of the vulnerable. She tells Ahab “do what you want!” And when Ahab can’t do it, she does it herself.

When Naboth is dead, King Ahab visits the vineyard to take ownership and that’s when Elijah shows up.  Elijah shows up to do what a prophet does, which is to speak for God in the face of power, and God’s word is that Ahab has done what is evil in the sight of the Lord.

Now we may object. But Jezebel did it! Ahab didn’t do anything except go to bed, and maybe he should have paid attention to the orders going out in his name, but Jezebel conceived the plot, put it into action, and had Naboth executed. Ahab needed a better lawyer! He had an alibi. But Elijah and the Hebrew people don’t buy it. This story is a way of wrestling with a tricky moral question: are we responsible for what we don’t know?  Are we responsible for what is done if we don’t make the decision, if we don’t know?

The answer given by Elijah is yes.  We are responsible. That doesn’t mean that God will reach down to punish us – remember that Jesus offered forgiveness for the soldiers who crucified him, saying “they know not what they do.” God does not reach down to punish us, but we do have to deal with the results of what we have done. In that way, we are responsible, even for what we don’t know.

King Ahab is remembered by the people in exile as a cautionary story about how they must protect the people of their land.  And here is the grace of this strange and terrible story about Naboth’s death: through this story, God is opening our eyes so that we may see and understand the things that we used to turn a blind eye toward. God is opening our eyes so that we may wonder what is being done in our names, for our interests.  What are the things that we don’t know? This is the grace of this story, because when our eyes are opened, we begin to live as God intended.  We begin to live in such a way that that all of God’s children may be healthy, safe, and secure.

In the Great Depression, when Oklahoma became a dust bowl where crops could find no fertile soil, the tenant farmers who had lived on the land for generations to grow the cotton and keep a share of the profits were forced off the farms by the banks and companies who owned the land. They brought tractors in to do the work previously done by many families, and they evicted the families in a hard time with no good options. Thousands of poor Okies scattered across the country, homeless, looking for jobs that weren’t there.

John Steinbeck wrote about these families in The Grapes of Wrath, and he wrote about the men who came and told them they’d have to leave. The men worked for the banks and companies who owned the land, and they were kind because they hated to do this to the farmers. Or they were mean because they hated what they were doing to the farmers and being mean made it easier. They didn’t want to make the farmers homeless, they just wanted to keep their jobs. And their bosses just wanted to keep their jobs and make profits for the shareholders. And the shareholders didn’t want to make farmers homeless, they just wanted the banks and companies to pay the right interest on their investments. They didn’t know that it was being done by families losing their homes. Steinbeck says that the banks and companies are really monsters. Even though they are made of people, the people are not in control. The monster will do terrible things, even though no one decides to do them, and most people don’t even know.

John Steinbeck raises a question for his readers, which is the same question raised by this terrible story of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel: Are we morally responsible for what we don’t know?

When John Steinbeck and others helped to open people’s eyes to the awful fate of those tenant farming families, I believe that God’s spirit was at work. Because when people’s eyes were opened, they were moved to love, and inspired with the courage to change the basic structure of our society so that there would now be a limit to how low people could fall when the crops are bad for a few years, when the market crashes, when a life’s savings is lost in medical bills. We changed our society on the premise that no one should go without basic food and medical care, and that those who have retired should not depend only on the pension of a company or the value of the market. We created the safety net because our eyes were opened.

Naboth’s family vineyard was their safety net, and when it was taken we learned that we are responsible for God’s justice in this world whether did the taking or not. But God’s justice is not in retribution. Retribution is justice by punishment, and God is not interested in retribution. God’s justice is about distribution. God’s justice is to create a world in which the gifts of God are shared by everyone. Naboth stays on the vineyard. The lives of tenant farmers are put above the law of profit margins.  And when the forces that perpetuate poverty seem out of our control, God opens our eyes to what we can do to alleviate the hardship, to change the systems of power, to let God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The people who lived in exile looked back at their history and God opened their eyes to show them how to live differently. Today we look back on the history of the people in exile, and we look back with John Steinbeck on the history of our country, and today we ask God to open our eyes, to show us what we don’t know.  To show us what is being done today that could be different, should be different, so that God’s people are cared for, and treated with justice.  God continues to open our eyes, and God continues to make the world more just using nothing more than the lives of people like you and me.