King Ahab was in a funk – and that was
because he did not get his own way (which, being king, he was used to getting
all the time), so he went to bed and sulked.
So angry and sullen was he that he turned up his royal nose at both
lunch and supper, which set off alarm bells for his lovely wife, Queen Jezebel,
as she was putting on her evening make up.
She poked around their living quarters looking for him and found him
that stifling hot evening – reclined and pouting.
But let’s take a step back first and
set all this fussing and tantrum throwing in context. You see, King Ahab ruled over the northern
kingdom of Israel from about 874-853 BCE, and he was the worst of all the kings
of God’s chosen people. It says so –
right in the Bible: “Ahab did more to
provoke the anger of the LORD the God of Israel, than had all the kings of
Israel who were before him."
And it did not help his reputation much
to marry Jezebel. She was a Canaanite
woman – a pagan foreigner who brought to the marriage her own religion, which
consisted of a bunch of prophets and the god, Baal.
Jezebel was
bold, wily, and very, very nasty – not hesitating to take matters into her own
hands when she felt the situation demanded it.
In short, Jezebel wore the pants in that particular royal family.
Biblical scholar and United Church of
Christ pastor Karl Allen Kuhn calls the two of them "the most degenerative
royal couple," referring to "Ahab's impotence and self-consumed
narcissism and Jezebel's vicious guile." Perhaps separately, neither one
could have accomplished the atrocity that lies at the center of today’s story,
but together they represented unbridled power and so were capable of
uncontrolled evil.
It all began because Ahab could not get
what he wanted – and what he wanted was Naboth’s vineyard. Now, you would think that a king would have
all the land he needed, but when Ahab looked out of his bedroom window and day
after day saw row upon trellised row of luscious grapes growing in a particularly
fertile field that did not belong to him, his eyes flashed with envy, and his
heart burned with greed.
And so he went to Naboth, a commoner
and the vineyard owner, and attempted to negotiate with him. "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." Not a bad deal, and on the
surface, it looked as if Ahab was offering a win/win situation.
However, Naboth was one of those royal
subjects who still believed in the laws of Yahweh, the God of Israel, and so
his religious beliefs became the crux of the problem because it was on that
basis that Naboth refused to turn over the vineyard to King Ahab.
You see, land had a value and
importance in those days that is unfamiliar to us in modern times. As Lutheran scholar Roger Nam wrote, “Land
was rarely bought and sold, and when it was done, it was only done to people
within the kin….Land was a gift from God, a symbol of provision and conquest.
In a time with limited mechanisms to store wealth, land was the income,
resource, home, bank account and retirement plan of the people. Through the
land, people grew their food, paid their obligations to the royal house,
sheltered their children, and assured some degree of livelihood for their
progeny.”
No,”
Naboth said, “This land is my piece of God's promise and it is the life of my
family. The rules of our culture require that land can only be passed within
families, from father to son in each generation. The LORD forbid that I should
break that rule, and treat this land -- this vineyard -- as a bartering tool
for wealth, rather than as a blessing from God." (Rachel Hackenburg)
Even as king, Ahab could not
legitimately take the land from Naboth under those circumstances, and so, as
UCC pastor Rachel Hackenburg writes, “Ahab returns to his palace, stares out
the window at the tantalizingly unavailable vineyard, and resumes his pout.
Because what good is being king if you cannot get what you want when you want
it? What good is money if you cannot buy quick-and-easy happiness? What good is power if you cannot use it to
persuade and convince and lobby your way into getting the rules changed just
for you?”
In a nutshell, that is why the king was
sulking, and that is where the ruthless Jezebel comes in. “Buck up.
You’re the king,” she says – and, unhesitating, proceeds to trump up a
smear campaign that is sure to bring Naboth down.
It begins with some letters to the
editor outlining all the reasons why the religious elders and town selectmen
should turn against Naboth. It continues
with a classic set up around the dinner table when two scoundrels testify
openly against Naboth. It all morphs
into a quick and dirty kangaroo court that concludes with Naboth being taken
into the marketplace and stoned to death.
“There,” says Jezebel, wiping her hands
on her brocaded robe and, in a sense, washing them of the matter as another
Biblical character will do on a balcony in Jerusalem in a future year. “Now you have your vineyard.”
However, as with all good Biblical
stories, this one does not end on such a petty and grossly unjust human note. God, perhaps strangely absent through all
this, chooses now to step in – and does so through the prophet Elijah.
Now, a king like Ahab had a bunch of
prophets advising him. Later we will
find out that he had a good 400 Baal-worshipping ones that Jezebel brought in
from Canaan. They all realized, however,
what side their bread was buttered on and so told Ahab only what he wanted to
hear. It was only
Elijah who spoke the truth of God’s passion for justice to this petty King of
Israel.
One can certainly imagine that King
Ahab and the prophet Elijah never got along.
In fact, Ahab was quite surprised to see Elijah after a three-year
hiatus during which Elijah had minded his own business – and not the
king’s. But Elijah spoke now as God has
told him to do – and the words were not pretty.
“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."
This is not a story for the faint of
heart or delicate of stomach! For so it
would come to pass – for both Ahab and Jezebel.
Dogs did finally eat Jezebel’s body after a
vicious and bloody death (she was thrown off a high castle wall by a couple of
eunuchs), leaving only the bones of her skull, her feet, and her hands.
And Ahab? Well, he died a soldier – interestingly
enough, a noble death. But it is said
that his chariot was so filled with blood that it had to be washed out in the
river where the prostitutes bathed, and when it was, dogs came and licked up
the blood, just as Elijah had foretold.
Perhaps in giving
Ahab a good death though, God reminds us that even at our worst, the Holy One
still is merciful and, in the end, forgives.
Surely that is one lesson we can take from this story.
However, ultimately,
this is a tale about power – about the misuse of human power and the ultimately
victorious power of God. And because it
is a story about power, it is also a story about justice – because power and
justice are intimately intertwined – and because justice lies at the heart of
God’s dream for the world.
This is also a story
for us, and in many ways, about us. It
is a story that challenges us because we live in a culture where there are
startling similarities to that of Ahab and Jezebel. We live in a culture where the rich and
powerful still take away from the poor the little that they have. It happens in our own nation, and it happens
between nations. It is a story with three
more lessons for us.
As United Church of
Christ pastor Kate Huey wrote, “We often try to
forget what we may be dimly aware of, just as Ahab tried to forget what he knew
quite well, that if we stand by and let others do things that benefit us, we
are participating in the wrongdoing all the same.
We may wish it weren't true, but the
story of Ahab reinforces that liberation theology teaching about God's preferential
option for the poor. We may not have the power of kings and queens, but we do
have some power, and with it comes the responsibility to use it for good and
not for our own selfish ends, individually or collectively.”
That is the first of the three
additional lessons we can glean from this story: When it comes to how we treat the poor and
marginalized among us, our actions – even our individual actions - have
consequences. The choices we make every
day matter to God because each time we are choosing whether or not we will be
just. We have a responsibility to the
poor and marginalized, to the ones like Naboth who get bullied and trampled
upon by the power brokers in our world.
The next lesson has to do with the role
of God’s power in our lives. What good
is God’s power if we refuse to let it flow through us, we who are the hands and
feet of Jesus? What good is God’s power if we do not acknowledge and affirm the
Holy Spirit swirling about this place, urging us to speak out and stand up – to
be anything but silent - for the ones like Naboth? What good is God’s power if it does not move
us to work for justice and healing in a world filled with Naboth’s?
Ahab was a weak king, and Jezebel was a
nasty woman. Together they were a
ruthless pair and stirred up a lot of evil doing. And yet, in the end, God prevailed – and
surely that is the final lesson this story teaches us – and perhaps the most
important one of all.
In spite of the blood and gore, in
spite of the bullying and pushing around of the little guy, in spite of the
might that seemed to prevail and the right that appeared to falter, this story
is a hopeful one because when all was said and done, God prevailed. What a glorious fact to carry with us as we
leave this place of worship. For surely
that fact means that our work for justice, for healing, for transformation, our
work of ministry in the name of Jesus will, in the end, not be in vain.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.)
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