Naboth’s Vineyard (I Kings 21:1-21a)

The reflections below are an edited portion of a sermon preached this past weekend at St. Francis Church. The full manuscript can be found on the church's webpage. http://www.stfrancisholden.org/documents/NabothsVineyard.pdf

This month all of our Old Testament readings come from First and Second Kings, vignettes from the ministries of two prophets: Elijah the Tishbite and his successor, Elisha. Last weekend, we heard about Elijah and the widow of Sidon, where the prophet shows up at this poor woman’s house in the midst of a severe famine. The situation is pretty desperate and she has nothing left in the cupboard except a little flour and oil. In fact, the narrator tells us that the situation is so desperate that she is preparing to die. And yet when Elijah knocks on her door and asks her to share the little bit that she has, she sets another place at her meager table and basically says, “my house is your house.” Miraculously (as so often happens when we choose generosity over fear) it turns out that there really is enough.

Today we have an opportunity to explore a much darker side of the human psyche: in the story of Naboth’s vineyard we encounter the antithesis of neighborly love: envy and greed. These emotions are sadly just as real a part of our experience and perhaps more familiar. If it is true that the poor who have next to nothing often have the most to teach us about generosity, then it is also true that sometimes those who seem to have everything still feel like it is not enough. In the twenty-first chapter of First Kings, Ahab and Jezebel take what doesn’t belong to them, without regard for human life. It’s an all too familiar story of how easily the powerless are abused by the powerful. When you combine the human propensity to want what does not belong to us with the power to do whatever you want and get away with it, innocent people will always suffer. Most of us are not thieves. But many more of us have some experience with the corrosive sin of envy. Like Ahab, we may even have pouted or stewed once or twice over wanting something that we can not have. But usually we are able to stop short of just taking it, if for no other reason than that we don’t want to risk jail time.

So that’s where the story of Naboth’s vineyard begins: with the corrosive power of envy. Noboth has a vineyard that Ahab wants. He has plenty of wine, but he hopes to convert Naboth’s vineyard into a vegetable garden and grow heirloom tomatoes and organic cucumbers. The problem is that Naboth is not at all interested in selling: it’s the land he grew up on, the land his parents and grandparents sweated on. It’s not about the money for him. It’s about being connected to that hallowed ground that his parents and grandparents farmed. Unfortunately, however, his refusal of the king’s offer (which we are told was a reasonable one) will cost him his life. Our narrator suggests that Jezebel practically taunts her husband: “so who’s the king here anyway?” She takes care of things, and before you can snap your fingers Naboth has been set up, convicted, and murdered. It isn’t clear whether Ahab knows of this plan and goes along with it or if he has chosen to have plausible deniability or if in fact he knows Jezebel all too well and she is doing his dirty work. It doesn’t matter really; because in the end dead is dead and Naboth is dead. The issue here is about power—it’s about the king and queen’s belief that they are above the law. Ahab has his heirloom tomatoes.

It is into this breach that the prophets speak on behalf of God and those who have been silenced or disappeared. Some of us have been taught to think of the prophets as fortune tellers, as people who made predictions about a future messiah. But the core vocation of a prophet is to speak the truth to power. And that is exactly what Elijah does here. He tells Ahab and Jezebel that there are consequences for their actions; that what goes around will one day come around, and that what they have done is reprehensible. Elijah has the chutzpah to say these things, even at great risk to his own life. But it should come as no surprise that the powerful don’t tend to enjoy having truth spoken to them, especially when it doesn’t jive with the narrative they have been feeding the media and perhaps even themselves. And so this will get Elijah in some trouble, as it always gets prophets in trouble, right down to our own day.