Naboth's Vineyard

1st Kings 21: 15-22, OT page 329 As 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.” As 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. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, “Go 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. You 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.” Ahab 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, I will bring disaster on you; I will consume you, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel; and I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah, because you have provoked me to anger and have caused Israel to sin. Sermon I spent the summer after my junior year in college in Argentina. I was what the Presbyterian Church calls a missionary intern, meaning that I spent two months working beside a missionary in a small city not too much bigger than Columbia, located forty or so miles south of the capitol city of Argentina, Buenos Aires. I would ride the train up to Buenos Aires for meetings and things, which was wonderful. The trains were old and without air conditioning or seat belts. You could walk from one car to another, but at some risk, as there were no guard rails to keep you from flying off during the transition. People still did it, even while the train was moving, often to sell things to the passengers. Coffee vendors would go from one train car to the next, and so would others so that you could buy a nice pastry, a newspaper, or cigarettes. But some of these venders were selling nicer things – a salesman might walk from passenger to passenger wanting to show you a beautiful dress or a watch. On a train in Argentina you could buy a Rolex for five dollars that would tell the time perfectly until the exact moment you stepped off the train and onto the station platform. Then you would want your five dollars back but it would be too late. Sometimes these vendors would walk up and down the aisle giving their sales pitch to each individual, but often they would stand in front of the train car trying to get everyone’s attention all at once. The most notable sales display that took place at the front of one of these train cars closely resembled a commercial you’ve probably seen – a knife that can slice through a tin can without fail, managing to avoid going dull, and even after cutting through that tin can it can still perfectly slice a tomato into paper thin slices. Now you’ve seen that display from the safety of your own home, but I’ve seen it live on a moving train. And what would happen should the train hit a bump and the knives go flying? I don’t know but this man was selling those knives for only 19.99 – a compete set and the case was included. During this trip to Argentina came the realization that the rules that we have here to keep knife dealers out of moving vehicles, the inspectors that we have who give licenses to coffee sellers and other restaurants before they go selling their product to customers, and the laws – the laws that at their best are drawn up and legislated for the purpose of protecting you from any entity, the government itself included, who might do you harm – these standards by which our country runs – they are the standards by which our country runs and are not the standards by which every country runs. Traveling in another country is sort of like spending the night at a friend’s house then, you realize that not every family is like the family that you were born into, and while every kid grows up thinking that his family is normal, the truth is that the family you were born into is not normal but exceptional. I was invited out to dinner with a friend’s family when I was 6 or 7, and this family had always seemed to me to be perfectly normal, not at all unlike my own, but rather than having the chance to order chicken nuggets at the McDonalds like I had always done before, in this family all the orders were placed by the father and so I was handed a cheeseburger, which I wouldn’t have picked but I managed to eat any way, because part of getting along with others is being willing to adjust to new standards of behavior. I was later invited to spend the night at that same friend’s house, and at the breakfast table everyone poured milk on their cereal, then after eating all their cereal they either drank the excess or poured the remaining milk back in the milk jug to be used the next day. Now that was a difference I just couldn’t stand for, and so I quietly dumped my remaining milk down the drain. Some things you have to adjust to, you have to be tolerant of, but you can’t be tolerant of everything. It’s true that not every family orders at McDonalds the same way your family does. Not every family eats cereal the way you grew up eating it. Not every child was treated by her parents the way you were or are treated by your parents, and you can’t expect to find the standards of conduct that you grew up with at work in the world. What you have to get used to then are not absolutes, rules that all people everywhere subscribe to, but competing standards of conduct, justice, and righteousness. Take freedom for example. We are a people whose life is lived with laws, both sacred laws and secular laws, who, at their best encourage us to live within certain boundaries, standards of right and wrong, which allow us to live without doing ourselves or each other harm. But so many believe that freedom is something else. Janis Joplin sang that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left the loose,” which I don’t really agree with, but even worse is what King Ahab seemed to think – that freedom was the power to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, and this idea of freedom was shared by his wife who re-enforced his assumption. King Ahab’s standard of freedom was different, and this different standard of freedom informed King Ahab’s philosophy concerning property. You might call King Ahab a pure capitalist. In his world view everything is a commodity. Things are bought and sold, the price is set by the market value, and people like Naboth, well, they just don’t make any sense to people like Ahab. King Ahab goes to Naboth and said, “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.” It doesn’t sound like he’s trying to cheat or take advantage here. If anything, King Ahab is trying to make Naboth a fair offer, but what King Ahab doesn’t understand is that his philosophy of property and Naboth’s philosophy of property are different. Some things aren’t for sale, but some people can’t live with that reality. Nicole and Fred Stallcup have had a bus parked in their driveway for some time, and people assume it’s for sale, though it isn’t, and one man who went to the house asking Nicole if the bus were for sale got so frustrated when she told him that it isn’t, he told her to put a “Not for sale” sign on it. People assume that many things are for sale even if they are not and some people believe that everything is for sale, but Naboth was raised not thinking of his land as a commodity that could ever be bought or sold – no, to Naboth the land, his family’s land, was not something anyone could ever put a price tag on. In this case of differing views – you might even say competing views of how property should be handled, tolerance is not the answer, because one side has been informed by the Lord and the other by the desires of a King drunk with his own power. So Naboth said to Ahab, “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.” It is as though he were saying, “It is not mine to give, and even though the King seems to allow it, even though it is the King himself who wants to buy it, the Lord, who is a greater power than any king forbids it.” Then King Ahab, like a spoiled child, confused by a person who is playing by a different set of rules, goes home “resentful and sullen… He lay down on his bed, turned away his face, and would not eat.” But Jezebel, the King’s wife, was also raised with a different philosophy of property, a different understanding of what power really looks like, and a different idea of what freedom really means. She is disgusted by her husband’s frustration and asks him, “Do you now govern Israel?” In her mind the Governing authority should be free to do what he wants, take what he wants, and read whatever emails he wants. A King should be able to decide what can be bought and sold, should be able to order people around, and no power should be greater than the King’s force of will – so Jezebel sees that Naboth and his foolish ideas about property and laws set by God must be silenced. And he is, as such voices often are. The rights to the family farm – well those rights are fine and good so long as those rights don’t stand in the way of progress, agribusiness, and innovation. Of course your friends or co-workers don’t want you to sacrifice your morals, but they still want you to go along with them and they may not want much to do with you if you don’t. And sure you all should have opinions, sure you should hold tight your standards of right and wrong – but don’t you dare make too much of a fuss should those opinions and standards get in the way of the wave of the future because you don’t want what happened to Naboth to happen to you. At least that is what Jezebel was counting on. That should she get Naboth out of the way than all these old fashioned ideas about land being something priceless that couldn’t be bought or sold would go away. But she wasn’t counting on Elijah showing up. Elijah went to King Ahab in Naboth’s vineyard once King Ahab had taken possession of it, and Elijah said, “I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord.” I suppose that is what King Ahab had forgotten – that when you abuse your power, when you give up on the ways of your people and when you sacrifice what is right to do what you want, whatever you gain in the process is nothing for you have sold yourself. While power has been abused and will continue to be abused, this truth will not go away. The nation who claims that justice is blind, who claims that all are innocent until proven guilty, may go and investigate her people without probable cause, encroaching on their privacy, but must not be so foolish as to think that she still stands for justice after doing so. And you, you must know that there are standards that you are called to, there are rules that should govern your life, and you cannot expect your friends, the company you work for, you cannot even expect your government to enforce them for you. But in abiding by these rules and standards, while the temptation will always be to compromise, nothing that might be gained by compromising can compare to what will be lost. Our world, as though Jezebel were whispering in its ear, tells us what freedom really is – that you are free when you can do whatever you want, when you are free to choose what is convenient, when no one stands in the way of what is best for business or what seems in the moment to be absolutely necessary – but as the words to our final hymn put it so plainly, “We are not free when we’re confined to every wish that sweeps the mind.” That will not be the most melodious line you ever sing, but it is among the truest. King Ahab thought he was free, but he wasn’t. Know that freedom, true freedom, is found when standards of right and wrong set the limits of your behavior. Know that with such freedom there is much to be gained; but in following every whim, every wish, every temptation, you will lose much and may even lose yourself. And know also, that when everyone else seems to be living by a different code of ethics from the standards and limits that you have been taught to observe, when these standards and limits seem dangerously inconvenient or seem to be holding you back and setting you apart from everyone around you, know that in this moment you are not alone, for the Lord is with you. And the Lord set these standards so that you might know what freedom really is. Amen.